Mayte
I TIGHTEN MY JACKET AROUND MY SHOULDERS AND LOOK AROUND THE dark parking lot. I don’t see Claire’s or Leo’s cars anywhere, so I pull out my phone.
ME: Gonna go grab a table.
There’s a pang of sadness in my heart as I walk into Hammonds.
The last time I was here was for the disaster of a date with Auggie.
It’s strange how circular it all ended up: we started out hating each other and then we became friends and then we almost became something more and here we are hating each other again.
Not that I actually hate him.
Of course I’m angry. Of course I feel betrayed. Of course part of me never wants to talk to him again. But the other part of me misses him. The other part of me wants to ask him how he was able to see so far into my soul, to see my hidden pieces and then show them to me in a story.
“How many?” the hostess asks once I get up to the front.
“Three,” I say. “Still waiting on the other two.”
“Great,” she says, gathering three menus. “Go ahead and follow me.”
She begins to walk through the dining area, and I follow her, but before we reach the table, I stop in my tracks.
There’s Auggie, sitting at the same booth we sat in that first night, dressed in the blue sweater and ripped jeans. His hair is tousled. He looks gorgeous.
He gives me a little wave and I give him one back. And I start to realize I’ve been duped again.
I walk up to his table. “I assume I’m not meeting Leo and Claire here.”
“Unfortunately, no,” he says, and nods behind me. “I think your hostess is trying to figure out where you’re going to sit.”
I look behind me at the hostess, who’s staring at us. I slide into the booth across from Auggie. The hostess shrugs and goes back to her station.
“So, you talked to them or what?” I ask.
“Yeah, I did,” he says.
We’re silent, neither of us looking at each other.
Then I say, “I read your story” at the exact moment Auggie says he’s sorry.
Then we both say, “No, you first.”
And now we’re both laughing.
“Rock, paper, scissors?” I ask.
I prepare my hands. He does the same. I win with paper.
“I read your story,” I say again. “And I’m not saying I’m okay with the fact that you wrote about me and didn’t tell me, or that you only hung out with me to get information for it—” I can tell he wants to interrupt and say something, but he doesn’t, only nods.
“But, Auggie, I’ve never read anything like it before. Your story… it’s so beautiful.”
His eyes take on a warm glow. “It is?”
“I think you understand me better than I understand myself.”
“I really wanted to capture you perfectly,” he says. “To show what you were going through.”
“And the end,” I say.
He smiles.
“There’s no way any college could turn you down. You’re going to have your pick. They’ll probably all accept you.” I stare at the table. “Auggie, I feel like it gave me hope.”
He opens his mouth to speak but the waitress interrupts us. We order our food quickly, and then I look at him, waiting for him to say what he was going to say.
He chuckles and looks down, then back at me. “I’m not sending it to colleges.”
“What do you mean you’re not sending it to colleges?”
“I’m just not. I’m going to send another story,” he says.
I can feel my face heating up. “So you ruin everything by writing a story about me and then it turns out the story is perfect and beautiful and incredible and now you’re just doing nothing with it? Just hiding it on your laptop where no one will ever—”
“I deleted it,” he says.
“You did what?” I shout.
“I deleted it,” he repeats, seeming to shrink into himself.
I stand up, hands on the table, leaning toward him. “What do you mean you deleted it? Why would you do that?”
“Because I care more about you than I do about a story,” he says.
I shake my head. “No. Auggie, you can’t do that.”
He shrugs. “Well, I already did. It’s gone. Permanently deleted.”
“Auggie,” I say, sitting back down. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to—”
He reaches across the table and grabs my hands. “Hey, don’t you dare put it on yourself. It’s not your fault. I did something awful and insensitive, and I completely wrecked our trust. I didn’t intend to but I did, and I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say.
He shakes his head. “It’s not okay. It’s okay for me to apologize and for you to tell me it’s not okay.
” He takes a deep breath. “I have been absolutely enchanted by you since the moment I met you. And when I saw the pain you were in after Aida died, I just wanted to do something to help you. And all I know how to do is write. But then my priorities just got so mixed up and everything became about me and my college acceptance and my literary dreams, and that’s not ever what this was supposed to be about.
It was supposed to be about supporting someone I love. ”
Someone he… someone he loves?
“I want my writing to show the world who I am,” he says. “And I don’t think I’ve fully figured out who that is yet, but I know it’s not someone who hurts people.” He squeezes my hands. “Who hurts you.”
“You… you love me?” I ask. I’m crying and I’m not stopping it.
He smiles. “Stupid, huh?”
I laugh through the tears. “I thought we weren’t ever even friends. We’re not supposed to fall in love.”
“Who said?” he asks, standing up.
“The movies, the stories.”
“Well, screw character tropes.”
“Character what?”
“Never mind.” He takes my hands and pulls me up out of the booth. I’ve never seen him so smooth, so confident, so sure. He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me in close, his hand on my cheek, and I stare up at him. “Let’s just write our own story.”
He kisses me. It starts out soft and gentle, my breath catching, but before I know it, he’s dipping me backward into something more intense, more passionate.
When he lets go, people are staring, and I hide my face in my hands, laughing. “Auggie, what the hell?”
I can hear cheers coming from the parking lot. I slide into my seat and look out the window. Claire, Leo, and Janko are outside screaming and jumping up and down.
“Worth the wait?” Auggie asks, smirking.
I kick him under the table and shoot the smirk right back. “We’ll have to test it again later.”
A man in a white apron approaches our table. “Excuse me,” he says. “This is a family establishment. Can you please keep the PDA to a minimum?”
Auggie and I try to hold back our giggles.
“Yes, sir,” Auggie says. “Sorry about that.”
When the man walks away, Auggie leans across the table. “I’m not actually sorry about that,” he says, planting a kiss on my cheek. Then he grabs something from his side of the booth and places it on the table.
It’s a notebook. The front is covered in flowers and has my name written in crooked, boyish handwriting. I look up at him.
“Your story is important,” he says. “But I’m not the one who should have written it.”
My brain is wrapped in clouds. I’m floating. I can’t take my eyes off the incredible boy sitting across from me. I’m so in love that I can’t even think straight. And then I do think straight. And I realize something.
“Wait!” I shout, grabbing my purse. I pull out the copy of Auggie’s story that I read to Aida and unfold it. “I still have a copy. It’s kind of a mess because I took it out in the rain, but I’m sure you can still make it out enough to type it up and—”
Auggie shakes his head and smiles, putting his hand on top of mine on top of the story.
“I’m not going to submit it, Mayte,” he says.
“I don’t want it back. It spoke to you, meant something to you, gave you hope.
That’s enough. That’s what I wanted before everything got mixed up for me. You keep it.”
A smile takes over my face. “I think I have a better idea.”