CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE His Exit
Jalen's exit was less dramatic than Maya expected.
There was no screaming in a parking lot.
No brokenglass. No midnight confession.After the conversation outside her office, he disappearedfor six days.Then he sent one final email.Maya opened this one.I loved you the best way I knew how when we were kids.I wanted to believe I could love you better now.
Maybe Istill don't know how. I am sorry for what I did.
I'm alsosorry we kept trying to turn our history into a future.
Ihope you find Andre if that's what you really want.
I hopeyou find yourself even if you don't.Maya read it twice.The last sentence angered her.Then it made her cry.Because beneath everything else, there was truth in it.
She had spent months asking which man she lovedmore.She had not asked why she needed either man's choiceto confirm who she was.That evening, Maya drove to Griffith Observatory.
She had not been there in years.Tourists crowded the railings.
Couples tookphotographs against the city.
Children ran betweenparents. Los Angeles stretched below, enormous andglittering.Seventeen years earlier, Jalen had brought her here afterone of their worst fights.Maya had been angry because he had ignored her allweek.
Jalen had arrived at her house, apologized, anddriven without telling her where they were going.
At the railing, he had held her from behind andwhispered, "Look at all those lights.
There are millions ofpeople down there and I still found you.
"At eighteen, Maya had thought it was the mostromantic thing anyone could say.At thirty-five, she heard the other truth.Finding someone was not the same as keeping themwell.She stood in nearly the same place now, alone.
For years, Maya had polished that old memory until itshone brighter than the nights she cried in parking lots,the messages she discovered, the promises Jalen broke.
Memory had edited him.Longing had completed the job.She did not hate Jalen.That surprised her.The girl she had been loved him.
The woman shebecame had needed to see whether the boy in her memorycould finally become the man she imagined.He could not.Maybe nobody could survive seventeen years of fantasy.
Maya looked out over the city."Goodbye," she whispered.She was not sure whether she meant Jalen or the versionof herself that had been waiting for him.Maybe both.On the drive home, she played the old song that hadstarted all of this.For the first time, it sounded like music instead ofprophecy.