Maybe Once, Maybe Twice by Alison Rose Greenberg

Author:Alison Rose Greenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

29

TWENTY-NINE

IF I HAD KNOWN THAT breaking up with Drew Reddy would gift me a hit song, I would have done it sooner. To be transparent, he dumped me two months into our New York love-bubble. While I had left that night at the bar knowing Drew and I were temporary, I wasn’t yet tired of his companionship. Or the sex. It was the kind of sex almost worth living a mediocre life for. Almost. When our fundamental differences hit the fan, I was relieved to let Drew be the bad guy. My entire body exhaled when he tearfully and melodramatically cried, “New York is killing me, Maggie. I have to go home.” I patted his head, telling him to go back to Los Angeles—where I knew he would find things that killed him just the same. I didn’t miss Drew nearly as much as I should have. But one early morning, when I should have been sleeping, I thought about the way he ran his hand down my spine, and how nice it was to have someone who touched me like that night after night, and a song came swinging inside my brain. It was a yearning, folksy ballad, called “When I Can’t Close My Eyes,” and now a preteen was going to make it a hit.

Garrett tilted his glass of Veuve toward mine in a dark, swanky bar high atop Columbus Circle.

“To Maggie Vine, and her first of many hit songs.”

“Fuck yeah,” Summer echoed, bumping against my shoulder with a proud smile.

“Why are we making this about me? I thought these were goodbye drinks,” I said, eyeing Garrett.

Garrett was temporarily moving to San Francisco tomorrow, leaving us for nine months. He was going to fully immerse himself into his father’s company, starting with the West Coast branch. The only reason I hadn’t let it fully break me was because I knew he was coming back.

“It’s not a goodbye, it’s a ‘see you later,’” corrected Garrett.

He smiled at me, and under that Cheshire cat smile, there was a shift, his lips coming together into something apologetic. Garrett knew it wasn’t his leaving that was a letdown, it was his reasons for leaving. When you love someone and you’ve seen the way their heart beats when they’re doing what they love, it kills you to watch them extinguish the fire from their chest. He was officially becoming his father. He would come back to New York City in nine months, be promoted to SVP of his dad’s company, and fold into a life he knew deep down he didn’t want.

“Can we get drunk already?” Summer asked, her glass dangling in the air, waiting for Garrett and me to stop reading each other’s minds. “Congrats, you superstar,” she said, eyes beaming on mine.

All three of our glasses clinked as Central Park hummed outside the window.

Two months prior, a music producer had stumbled across “When I Can’t Close My Eyes” on YouTube, and I had just received a nice fat check in exchange for allowing a prepubescent male heartthrob to have my song.

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