13. Maya
Maya
Humming along to the music playing in my earbuds, I sketch rough outlines of the people walking the park as I sit, nearly hidden from view, against a tree overlooking a small pond.
I always come here when I want to think; when I want quiet. The air is chilly, but the sun rays keep me warm, beaming against my black coat.
Looking up again, I notice a new figure standing on the opposite side of the pond. Dressed in a hockey jersey and sweatpants, Jamie stands staring out at the water.
He should be at practice right now.
For the second time now, I go against my better judgment and decide to talk to him. He wouldn’t be here if something wasn’t wrong. Maybe we can clear the air.
“Hey,” I greet, hesitantly. “Everything okay?” Jamie’s shoulders stiffen at the sound of my voice. I expected nothing less.
“Not really,” he says, shocking me with a fragment of honesty.
He turns his head, looking over his shoulder at me, and I note the fading yellow of a bruise under his eye. His black hair blows loosely in the breeze, and his strong jaw is tensed. “What are you doing here?” he asks.
“I come here sometimes to draw. What are you doing here? I thought you all had practice.”
He bends to sit in the grass, and I take him not telling me to leave as an invitation to sit down beside him.
“Yeah…I ditched practice. I got into it with your dad.” I try to keep my surprise hidden. Last I’d heard, he doesn’t even speak to my dad at practice.
“Oh,” I say lamely. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” he repeats, still looking out at the water. Still avoiding looking at me, in general.
We’re silent for a moment; he picks at the grass between his bent knees.
“I’m sorry,” he says out of nowhere. “About how I spoke to you in the library.”
“It—it’s okay. I deserved it.”
“No, Maya, you didn’t. I just…I don’t know how to be around you anymore.” It’s not really an explanation, but I have a feeling that if I don’t tread lightly, it’ll be all I get before he clams back up.
“I should’ve stopped you. At Halloween. I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you?” he asks, peeking at me from beneath the dark strands of hair that have fallen over his brow.
I hesitate, trying to think of how best to explain. Truth, it seems, is a hard thing to admit to when facing your ex-best friend. “I…because you’re you. And I liked having you to myself.”
He laughs mirthlessly. “You liked having Jameson Booker’s hands on you?”
“No,” I say with as much conviction as I can muster. “No, I liked having Jamie’s hands on me. It’s not the same.”
He watches me for a second, out of the corner of his eye. “No, I guess it’s not.”
“I hate this, Jamie. I hate that you can’t even look me straight in the face, and I don’t even know what I did wrong. I hate that you’ve been here, under my nose, for three years, and yet we’ve never felt further apart.”
He picks at the grass some more, mulling over his response. Pretty soon, there may be a bald spot on the ground where he’s sitting.
“I don’t hate you,” he says, and my heart skips a beat.
“You don’t?” He shakes his head. “Then why have you been avoiding me this entire time? My dad said…” I trail off, not sure how to accurately describe the things my father was spouting in his drunken state that night all those years ago.
“My issue with your dad and my issue with you aren’t the same,” he says cryptically.
“What am I supposed to do with that, Jamie? That’s not an answer.”
Finally—finally—he turns and meets my eyes. His gaze peruses over my face, my hair, my lips. I see them stop on the little gold stud piercing the side of my nose.
For the first time, Jamie lets himself examine me up close, and my insides turn to liquid.
“I can’t be your friend, Maya. I don’t know how to be your friend.”
“But we were friends. Before. We were kids, but we were friends, too.”
“No,” he says. “We weren’t. We were so much more than friends. Even at nine years old, I was wrapped around your little finger.”
My eyes widen, breath halts, hands begin to shake. “I don’t understand,” I whisper.
His throat bobs, as if he’s trying to swallow back the words he wants to say.
He drops his head, letting it hang between his shoulders. When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet, gravelly, as he changes the subject.
“Your dad told me I needed to get my head out of my ass.” He chuckles coldly again.
“I found out something terrible about one of my friends, something I should’ve paid closer attention to, and your dad called me right out.
But I’m trying, Maya. I’m not trying to hurt people, but I don’t know how to fucking do this. ”
“No one’s asking you to do anything. But you have to give yourself some grace, Jamie. You’re human. You’re allowed to make mistakes, too.”
He scoffs, reaching a finger up to absentmindedly scratch over the remnants of the bruise under his eye, and I wonder, not for the first time since I approached him, how he got it. But now doesn’t feel like the best time to ask.
“I should probably go,” he says, pushing to stand up. “I can still make it back to the second half of practice.”
He reaches a hand down, helping to pull me to my feet. Standing in front of him, he doesn’t let go right away. He swipes his thumb over the back of my knuckles, and I shiver at the contact.
“I’ll see you around, Maya.”
Later that night, I’m lying in bed, scrolling through social media. No matter now hard I try to distract myself, I can’t get the conversation with Jamie out of my head. Before, in the library, he’d been fired up, angry.
Now, he was resigned. As if he’d given up on whatever fight he’d been internally battling, and I hated it.
As I scroll, like the universe can read my mind, a video of Jameson Booker appears on my screen. He’s on stage, hammering away at his guitar alongside his celebrity father.
Deciding to torture myself even further, I click on the page that posted—a fan page for Ross Booker—and scroll through the videos and pictures from this weekend.
Dozens of images emerge, of Jamie singing, playing guitar on stage, drinking at a party with a woman clinging to his chest. I scroll through, unable to fathom how this is the same sad boy I just spoke to.
I swipe away from the page, unable to stand the sight of Playboy-Jamie any longer. On my main feed, a video from my favorite account emerges.
I watch, transfixed on the way User7319764’s lithe fingers move over the strings of his guitar. The lighting in this one is different, and the background has also changed. Instead of being in his usual red-lit room, this one is dim, but with shadow rather than colored LEDs.
I watch the video three times over before I notice the faint scar on the knuckle of his left pinky finger.
A scar I recognize. Both from my childhood and from earlier this afternoon.
A scar Jamie got when he was eight, using a knife to cut open a box after his mom told him not to.
The same scar I had seen just a few hours ago, when he’d offered me his hand to stand up.
Holy shit. Holy. Fucking. Shit.
My virtual, anonymous crush—this entire time—has been my very-real childhood best friend.
User7319764 is Jameson Booker.
And Jamie is way more famous than I thought he was.