Chapter 18 Maya
MAYA
I’d arranged the living room like a woman preparing for battle.
Wine bottles on the coffee table, three red and two white. A cheese board that I’d spent way too long assembling, considering the state of my life. Crackers fanned out in a neat arc. Grapes. That fancy fig jam Poppy had given me last Christmas that I’d been saving for a special occasion.
A full-scale emotional crisis counted as a special occasion, right?
Emily was cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table, slicing cheese with the focus of a surgeon. She’d been next door at Cam’s when I’d texted the group chat and had appeared at the front door within ninety seconds, still wearing his hoodie.
“Look at you, gracing us with your presence.” I uncorked the first bottle of red. “I’m honored you could tear yourself away from Cam’s for the evening.”
“What can I say, I’m a giver.” She looked up at me then, her expression shifting from playful to careful. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
“You bought five bottles of wine and enough brie to satisfy Napoleon, for a Friday night. You’re not fine.”
She wasn’t wrong, but I needed everyone here before I got into the details.
The doorbell went, and then it kept going, because my friends didn’t arrive so much as descend. In five minutes, every seat in my living room was claimed. Wine was poured. The cheese board was already taking casualties.
Poppy started proceedings. “So. You called an emergency meeting.”
“I did.”
“On a Friday night.”
“Correct.”
“Which means something has happened that is bigger than Pictionary night.” She leaned forward. “I didn’t think that was possible, but here we are.”
Seven pairs of eyes turned to me. Waiting.
I took a very long sip of wine.
Then I told them everything, leading right up to the kiss.
Poppy’s hand flew to her mouth. Mia grabbed Emily’s arm.
Hannah whispered, “Holy shit,” with the reverence of someone witnessing a religious event. “And where was this?”
“On the ridge trail. By the eastern lookout. There was a falcon, and I had my hand on his chest, and he just...” I gestured vaguely, because some things resisted language. “It was the kind of kiss that rewires your brain.”
“I need details. Tongue? No tongue? Hands? Where were his hands?”
“Samara!”
“What, Annie? It’s relevant information.”
“One hand was on the back of my head, the other one around my waist. And uh, yeah, there was tongue.”
A collective sigh rippled around the room, which would have made me smile, under other circumstances.
I told them about what happened next. The way he’d pulled back.
The apology. The two days of silence that followed.
The burning rage of him pulling into the lot in a brand new truck, which I promptly wanted to set on fire.
“He bought a truck?” Hannah perked up. “What kind?”
Cassidy shot her sister a look. “Not the point, Han.”
“It’s a little bit the point. You can tell a lot about a man by his truck.”
“It’s a Tacoma. Can I finish?”
She sat back, satisfied, and waved me on.
So I told them about the parking lot. All of it, until I got to the part that was still lodged under my ribs like a splinter I couldn’t reach.
“He said he can’t stay in Esperance. That starting something with me when he knows he’s leaving wouldn’t be fair.” I stared into my wine glass. “And then he kissed my forehead and walked into the station.”
The room was quiet for a long moment.
“I’m going to kill him.” Poppy’s calm tone belied the fire in her eyes.
Hannah cracked her knuckles. “Get in line.”
“He wants you, though,” Mia interjected in that gentle, cutting-straight-to-the-bone way she had. “He told you that. He actually spoke the words out loud, to your face.”
“And then followed it up with ‘but I’m leaving,’ which kind of takes the shine off.” By some miracle, my voice stayed steady.
“Does it?” Emily tilted her head. “Or does it mean he’s scared and using geography as an excuse?”
I opened my mouth to argue, snapping it shut a second later, because the theory hit uncomfortably close to my own thoughts.
Samara put some cheese on a cracker and handed it to me. “The man kissed you on a mountaintop. That’s a man who’s completely hooked.”
“It was a ridge trail, not a mountaintop.”
“Same energy.”
Annie, who’d been quiet through most of this, set down her wine glass. “What do you want, Maya? Forget what he said, forget the leaving thing. What do you actually want?”
The answer was so obvious it barely needed saying. Every sensible, safe, careful instinct I’d built my life around crumbled against the fact that Nate O’Hare wanted me, and I wanted him right back.
I met Annie’s steady gaze.. “I want him. He’s here, he wants me, and if he thinks he’s leaving this town without us finishing what he started on that ridge, he’s got another thing coming.”
A slow grin spread across Hannah’s face. “Fuck yes!”
Cassidy reached for the tote bag at her feet. All evening, she’d been sipping her wine with that calm, observant energy she carried like a second skin. But now there was something deliberate in the way she unzipped the bag, proving she’d been waiting for exactly this moment.
She pulled out a heavy, tattered book and placed it on the coffee table.
Poppy’s eyes lit up. “She brought the Yearbook.”
“Damn right she did.” Hannah slapped the table.
I stared at it. The cover was battered and faded, half the glitter long gone, the spine held together with tape and stubbornness.
Poppy and Hannah’s masterpiece from high school, the scrapbook they’d poured themselves into one summer, assigning every girl in our group a “Most Likely To” with the absolute conviction that only teenage girls possessed.
“Emily texted me,” Cassidy smiled, completely unapologetic. “She said you might need this tonight.”
I shot Emily a look. She shrugged and reached for a cracker.
Cassidy opened the book, flipping past pages until she stopped on mine.
The page was covered in green glitter, because fifteen-year-old Poppy had decided that matched my eyes.
There were photos of me at various ages, most of them terrible, all of them candid.
Me at the lake. Me on the trail. Me holding up that enormous fish with a grin so wide my face could barely contain it.
And across the top, in Hannah’s bold, loopy handwriting:
Most Likely to Tempt Love.
The room was quiet for a beat, and then Poppy let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a war cry.
“I forgot about that.” She pressed both hands to her cheeks. “Oh my God, Han, we were geniuses.”
“Fuck yes, we were!”
I ran my fingers over the words. It was strange, seeing yourself through the eyes of the people who’d known you longest.
“Most Likely to Tempt Love.” Samara tapped her chin, rolling the words around like she was tasting them. “I mean, if that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.”
“It’s not a sign, it’s a prophecy,” Poppy declared, pointing at me. “You were destined for this, Maya Brookes. We called it over a decade ago.”
“You called it because I spent all of ninth grade doodling Mrs. O’Hare in my notebook margins.”
“And look how far you’ve come. Now you’re kissing soldiers on mountaintops.”
“Ridge trail,” I said again, but nobody was listening.
“Okay, so here’s what I’m hearing.” Emily uncrossed her legs and sat up straighter, wearing the expression of a woman assembling a plan.
“Nate wants you. You want Nate. The only thing standing in the way is his stubborn, noble, absolutely infuriating belief that walking away is the right thing to do.”
“That about covers it.”
“So don’t let him walk away.” Hannah said it like it was just that easy. “Make it impossible.”
“Making him stay isn’t the goal, Han. He’s a grown man and he can do what he wants.” I topped up both our wine glasses. “But he’s not leaving before he takes me to bed. And if he thinks he can, he has severely underestimated the situation.”
A shiver of delight went around the room.
Samara’s eyes sparkled. “So, this is a seduction mission.”
Poppy gestured at the Yearbook, still open on the coffee table. “Most Likely to Tempt Love. It’s literally right there in glitter. You were born for this.”
I stared at the faded glitter, the messy handwriting, the faces of my best friends looking back at me with absolute faith. Every sensible instinct I possessed screamed to play it safe. But one kiss from Nate O’Hare wasn’t nearly enough.
“Fuck it. Yes. This is a seduction mission.” I lifted my glass, ignoring the surge of heat pouring through my system.
Cassidy pinned me with her most commanding stare. “So, let’s just be clear. You have every tool you need to make that man lose his mind. You just have to use them.”
“Strategically,” Mia added.
Hannah flashed her a wicked grin. “Ruthlessly.”
“With plausible deniability.” Every head in the room turned to Annie, as she calmly swirled her wine. “What? If he thinks you’re trying too hard, he’ll put his guard up. It has to feel accidental.”
Samara pointed at her twin. “This is why she’s the dangerous one.”
“We need a name for this,” Poppy announced, topping up glasses with the last of the second bottle. “Every operation needs a name.”
“Operation Tempt Love?” Mia suggested.
“Too subtle.” Hannah shook her head. “Operation Bang Nate.”
I choked on my wine. Poppy howled. Emily buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Even Cassidy, unflappable Cassidy, pressed her lips together hard enough that her composure was clearly hanging by a thread.
I wiped the wine from my chin. “We’re not calling it that.”
“We are absolutely calling it that. All in favor?” Hannah raised her hand.
Six hands went up. I sighed, signaling my surrender.
“To Operation Bang Nate,” Poppy said, raising her glass with the solemnity of a woman toasting a matter of national importance.
Seven glasses rose to meet hers.
I clinked mine against the nearest one and drank, the wine warm in my chest and something fiercer burning underneath it.
Game on.