CHAPTER SIX What Andre Didnt Know
Tomorrow arrived and Maya did not stop.Instead, she became more careful.She muted Jalen's notifications. She answered him
during lunch, on elevators, in the parking garage, or after Andre fell asleep. She never wrote anything that looked incriminating. If someone had printed the messages and laid them on a table, Maya could have pointed to every line and said, See? Nothing happened.
What she could not explain was the hiding.Hiding changed the meaning of ordinary words. How was your day? from Jalen felt intimate because
Andre did not know Jalen had asked.
Remember when we skipped senior picnic? felt dangerous because it belonged to a history Andre had never been invited to understand.
You still hate olives? felt tender because memory itself was a form of attention.Jalen remembered everything.He remembered that Maya used to order fries with no salt because she liked to add her own.
He remembered the tiny scar near her eyebrow from a childhood fall.
He remembered she hated being sung to on her birthday and loved old houses with wraparound porches even though she had lived in Los Angeles her entire life.Andre knew all those things too, but differently.Jalen's knowledge made Maya feel preserved.Andre's made her feel known.She did not understand yet that those were not the same thing.One Thursday evening, Andre found her smiling at her phone while they waited for a table at a restaurant in Santa Monica.
"Who's funny?" he asked.Maya's thumb moved before her conscience did.
She locked the screen."Tasha."The lie was small and immediate.Andre smiled.
"Tell her she still owes me forty dollars from bowling.
""She says that game was rigged.""She lost by thirty points.
"Maya laughed, grateful for the change in subject.At dinner, Andre reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
"I want your opinion.""On what?"He slid it across the table.It was a listing for a Spanish-style house in View Park.
Three bedrooms. Two and a half baths. Arched doorways.
Original hardwood floors. A backyard with a lemon tree.Maya looked up.
"Andre.""I'm not saying tomorrow. I'm saying maybe we should start looking.
""At houses?""At ours."The word ours sat between them.Andre leaned forward.
"We're paying too much for that townhouse and pretending we don't know it.
We have savings. Your office is close enough.
My commute wouldn't be awful. And your mother would finally stop telling me I moved you too far west."Maya smiled, but her chest tightened.
"This is serious.""I am serious."His eyes were warm.
Certain.For seven years, Andre had moved toward her without games.
He had never made her chase clarity. When he wanted a relationship, he said so.
When he wanted them to live together, he made a plan.
When he imagined a future, he put it on paper and invited Maya to draw beside him.She reached across the table and took his hand.
"I like the lemon tree."His whole face changed.
"That's my girl."Maya smiled back.Her phone vibrated once inside her purse.She ignored it until Andre went to the restroom.Jalen: Random question.
Were we ever good together or do I just remember the good parts now?
Maya's fingers went cold.She looked at the house listing beneath her hand.Then at the message.She typed slowly.Maya: We had good moments.Jalen: That's not what I asked.Maya: We were young.Jalen: Still not what I asked.The waitress approached with water.
Maya turned the phone over.When Andre returned, he began talking about mortgage rates, inspection contingencies, and how much he hated flipped houses with gray laminate floors.Maya listened.But under the table, her mind kept returning to Jalen's question.Were we ever good together?
The honest answer was complicated.They had been electric.They had been addictive.They had been cruel to each other in the careless way young people can be when they believe there will always be another apology.They had also once loved each other with a sincerity Maya could not dismiss just because the relationship had failed.That night, after Andre fell asleep, she answered.Maya: I think we loved each other.
I don't think we knew how to love each other well.Jalen replied almost immediately.Jalen: I still think about that.Maya held the phone above her chest.She should have asked, About what? She did not need to.She knew.