Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Aspen took a long pull of wine.
Maddy was leaning in towards her ex-boyfriend, animating with her hands as she spoke, and laughing.
Actually laughing. Not the controlled huffs of air that almost resembled a laugh from the storage unit. Not even the solitary chuckle she had gotten out of Maddy. But a real—face-lit-up, eyes shining, teeth showing—laugh. For Jake.
Up until an hour ago, Aspen had been killing it on this date.
Danielle was easy company. She asked Aspen about the worst injuries she’d rehabbed, and then listened to the whole answer.
And when Aspen asked Danielle about her job in return, Danielle launched into a story about a lab mouse they named Steve, who they had injected with a modified protein and were currently monitoring to test his immune response.
The conversation hadn’t flatlined. Danielle shared stories, Aspen asked thoughtful follow-up questions, she kept her elbows off the table.
Killing it. The Friend Zone Plan had been holding strong.
She had only brief, passing encounters with Maddy over the past week that she kept completely cordial, and her texts had been purely Cup-related.
Logistical. Zero flirtation. Maddy only responded about twenty percent of the time, but when she did, her responses were less barbed than they had been the week before.
They had been making progress. As friends.
Then Maddy walked into the Huxley with Jake and ruined her fucking night. Aspen had completely forgotten, momentarily, that she was on a date. A date whose name she couldn’t recall because her head was swimming and all she could hear was the sound of blood rushing between her ears.
Then Maddy’s hand closed around Jake’s bicep, and Aspen’s chest squeezed so tight she was afraid if she had taken a breath, it would have made an audible wheezing sound.
For two years, Aspen had sat in the bleachers of their high school football games and watched that same hand do that same thing to that same arm.
Aspen had known of Jake since the first week of high school.
They had a few classes together. He was a popular jock.
But he wasn’t on her radar until junior year when he had become Maddy’s boyfriend.
Then he was everywhere. Holding Maddy’s hand at parties, leaning next to Maddy’s locker after fourth period, scooping her into his arms at the end of football games.
And just like that, Jake Howell had become her biggest rival.
Jake had read Aspen perfectly. He had clocked it freshman year before Jake himself was anywhere near being Maddy’s boyfriend.
And he had clocked it senior year, when he very much was.
And Jake—for reasons Aspen had never quite understood at the time, and had also, in the fifteen years since, never asked about—had simply elected never to mention it, not to her, and not to Maddy.
Perhaps because he never saw her as a threat. Or perhaps because Jake was not the kind of guy who would ever claim ownership over his girlfriend. Not that anyone could ever own Maddy Sterling. Lord help them if they tried.
“—and so I wrote Brian a five-hundred-word email that essentially said no.” Danielle laughed at her own story.
Aspen forced a laugh. She had no idea what was funny. She only caught enough of the story to understand that Danielle was talking about a postdoc who had a crisis of conscience about keeping the mice locked in tiny cages.
Danielle kept going, and Aspen’s eyes drifted back to the table thirty feet behind her. This time, they landed on Jake. Because Jake wasn’t her rival anymore, he was one of her closest friends.
The day after James Sterling’s funeral, Maddy had left. Without a word to anyone. Including Jake.
The Sterling Cup gathering three weeks later didn’t have the usual games and laughter.
Her father had tried to convince Bunny to cancel it altogether, but she refused—it was James’ favorite day of the year, Aspen had overheard her say.
So instead it turned into a community potluck with her dad at the grill, Bunny holding court with a drink in her hand, but her voice lacking its usual bright, high arc, and a massive, undeniable elephant that everyone was tiptoeing around.
And then, Jake arrived.
Aspen had been holding a paper plate with a hot dog she had no plans to eat, picking at the edge of the bun when three feet to her left, Jake stepped past her and approached Bunny. The whole patio went still.
“Bunny.” His voice was soft and hesitant, in a way she had never heard from the star quarterback. “Have you heard from her? She’s not returning my calls.”
It was barely above a whisper, but Aspen was certain the whole island had heard the question. Bunny placed an empathetic hand on his arm. Her voice also went softer than she had ever heard it. “Oh, sweetheart. Maddy’s gone to LA early to start a summer program. She said she needs some… privacy.”
Jake took the information with a small nod, eyes downcast, and every ounce of the jealousy and spite Aspen had felt towards Jake for two years had disappeared at once.
That night when the fireworks came up over Glorietta Bay, Aspen drifted away from the party with a Smirnoff Ice she had snuck from Bunny’s cooler.
She walked the wet-edge sand a quarter-mile down—and Jake was already there.
Arms locked around his knees. Head tilted toward the sky. He didn’t turn when she sat.
They watched the fireworks erupt in the sky. Listened to the surf lapping against the shore.
Neither of them spoke. Aspen wordlessly offered the Smirnoff Ice, Jake accepted it and took a sip, then handed it back. At some point, Aspen felt a single tear slide down her cheek and quickly blinked before any more could fall.
Without ever glancing over, Jake slowly leaned an inch toward her until his shoulder pressed gently against Aspen’s, and held there.
That small gesture held the entire conversation that neither of them was willing to start.
A silent, mutual understanding between two people who had been left with their hearts aching and no instruction manual for how to navigate a situation when the girl you love’s father dies, and she disappears without a word.
That was the place she and Jake had built a friendship from.
“Aspen, are you still with me?” Danielle asked with a patient smile.
“Sorry.” Aspen’s eyes shifted back to Danielle. She smiled apologetically. “Yes. I’m following.”
She was emphatically not following.
Danielle gave her a small, forgiving smile and continued her tale about how Brian lost Steve in the lab after freeing him from his cage.
Across the room, present-day Jake said something into the rim of his beer glass that made Maddy laugh, again.
It occurred to her just then that, technically, Maddy and Jake had never broken up.
Danielle segued from Steve’s jailbreak to a similar story about her rescue greyhound, Fibonacci, escaping from the dog park.
Aspen nodded at the appropriate intervals, but in the space inside her head where the questions about Fibonacci’s whereabouts should have been forming, instead, Aspen was running through a highlight reel of the past two weeks.
Of Maddy yawning in her pajamas with pillow creases on her cheeks.
Of Maddy watching Aspen’s hands when she washed them at Bunny’s sink.
Of Maddy sitting across from her at the dinner table, describing what Aspen was like in high school.
Of Maddy looking at her over the rim of her binder in the storage unit.
Of Maddy admiring Aspen’s bungalow. I like it. It suits you. Of Maddy—
Jake’s laugh echoed through the room, drawing Aspen’s attention. Maddy’s eyes were already on her. Across thirty feet of warm-lit dining room, over the candle, around the curve of Danielle’s ear and past Jake’s left shoulder, Maddy held her gaze. And then the corner of her mouth lifted on one side.
Aspen’s eyes widened. Did Maddy Sterling just smirk at her? Intentionally?
Her heart raced. Blood rushed between her ears again. She could peripherally see that Danielle’s mouth was still moving and heard none of it.
Her eyes shifted quickly between Maddy and Danielle. Back and forth. Back and forth. A frantic energy building inside her. Until finally they landed back on Maddy and stayed there. Maddy was laughing again. Her whole face lit up. Aspen had never seen anything more beautiful.
Fuck it. The thought thundered through her.
Aspen was tired of pretending. She didn’t want to be friends with Maddy. She wanted Maddy. She wanted her with an intensity and a certainty that she hadn’t felt in fifteen years.
The tightness she had felt in her chest all week began to release. Like her body had been waiting for her to stop resisting this feeling that was just second nature to her. Possibly even first nature.
She felt it the second Maddy had appeared in Bunny’s kitchen doorway twelve days ago, and it was useless to keep fighting it.
* * *
Aspen parked at the curb and was out of the driver’s door before her foot had finished leaving the brake.
Grace’s casita was tucked behind a larger house on B Avenue. Aspen speed-walked down the brick path that ran along the side of the main house and ended at Grace’s pale green door. She knocked swiftly.
When the door didn’t immediately swing open, she knocked harder. She heard footsteps approaching just before the deadbolt turned and the door swung open.
Grace was in light-blue pajamas, her dark hair loose around her face, eyes wide. “Jesus Aspen, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I want Maddy!” She said it so fast she wasn’t even sure it was coherent.
Grace’s spine straightened. “I’m sorry, what?”
Aspen’s pulse was racing. She was gripping her keys so hard that they were cutting into her hand. She willed the adrenaline coursing through her to simmer down and tried again, slower. “I want to pursue Maddy.”
“What are you—I thought you were on a date tonight?” Grace shook her head, clearly trying to catch up to Aspen’s manic declaration.
That made two of them.