After the Moment (24 page)

"Hey, Mill, you remember that romance?" he managed to get out over the sound of her blowing on her fingernails (she'd been painting them when he called).

"Which one?" she asked cheerfully. "I have like a thousand up in the attic. It's weird how I can never throw any of them out. I should donate or someth—"

"The one you were writing," he said. "The year I lived with you."

"Oh, yeah," she said. "The year Dad died."

His year marked by Maia was Millie's marked by Seth Davis. It was unbelievable that he had to be reminded of that. God, he could really be a thoughtless prick. Which he already knew, and hardly had to call his sister to discover.

"Did you ever finish it?" Leigh asked. "You know, writing it?"

"No, I don't think I did," Maia said. "It's hard to write a romance. Everyone thinks it should be easy because they're so obvious, but it's way hard to make them good."

"Well, do you remember what was going to happen?" he asked, ashamed to be asking, humiliated that he remembered the names
Dexter Clayton
and
Meredith Franck.
"How it ended?"

"Sure, of course I do," Millie said. "He saved her, he killed the evil earl, who was holding her captive for her money—not a good plot, but easy. And then, I guess they got married and lived happily ever after."

Someone knocked on the bathroom door, making Leigh turn a faucet on.

"You guess?" he asked.

"Well, that's how they all end," Millie said.

He turned on the other faucet, looking in the mirror as the tears, which he had held back on the day Maia left Calvert Park, fought their way out.

"Leigh, are you okay? You sound like an echo."

"I'm in the bathroom," he told her.

"I'm fine," he added.

There wasn't time to let them all cry out, so Leigh threw water on his face, pressed one of the linen towels against his eyes, and rejoined the party.

~~~

When it was time to leave, he went to get Kathleen's coat and found Maia waiting for him by the closet.

"I didn't mean that," she said, moving away from the door. "What I said about how you loved me."

The chandelier's dim light cast shadows from her earrings, giving him reason to stare at her neck.

"You might have meant it," he said. "And you're probably right. I did love you like that."

He pulled Kathleen's coat out from the hordes of black cashmeres. God, couldn't anyone own a regular coat? Like his fake tweedy one that had seen him through countless cold Chicago nights. Was he really standing less than a foot from Maia Morland, thinking about coats and the weather?

"You made me feel like I walked on water," Leigh said. "No girl—no woman—has done that since."

He should have stuck with the weather, a thought he had no time to finish, because he said, "But I also loved you. Just you, with all your crazy, amazing crap. I loved you more than I wanted to have sex."

Leigh paused, giving her time to answer or, more likely, walk away. But she was still, as if waiting.

"And I was seventeen, when sex is pretty much all that matters," he said, "so you think about that before you pass off what happened as a goddamn funny story about your high school boyfriend who failed to be a hero."

"Leigh," she said, her hand going up to his face and brushing something away.

"Or a gentleman," he said, his heart frozen at her touch, his body less so. "Or however you decide to tell it."

"I'm sorry ... it was an accident we met like this. I had no idea it would be so..."

"Difficult," he said, relieved that he felt no bitterness at how painful it was to see her.

Maia pointed to the coat. "Is she your girlfriend?"

"No, she's Pete's sister," Leigh said. "Kathleen Tahoe. She's my step-aunt."

"They got married?" Maia asked. "That's so great. Your mother still writes as Lillian Hunter, so I wasn't sure. And, you know, there's a limit to what Millie will tell me. She guards you, and so ... so I don't ask much."

Maia began to rummage through her purse. Small, covered in velvet and silver. From it she took a card case and a thin pen she had to twist open.

"I'm going to do something stupid," she said. "Which means it's up to you to be smart."

She wrote on the back of a card and then handed it to him.

"The number on the front is Josh's office, but the e-mail is mine," she said. "I traveled for a few years before starting college, and he had them made for me."

Leigh studied the engraved writing on the card in his hand.

"My cell's on the back," she said. "You do the smart thing, and don't call me."

"Don't you ever wonder?" he asked her. "Don't you wish you knew what it would have been like with us?"

He supposed he did mean sex. Being twenty-one hadn't really changed how much it mattered, but he also meant all the other parts as well. The ways she had loved him, the ways he'd tried to love her.

"Every day," she said. "I think about it every day."

Maia rose up onto her toes, one hand on his arm, and kissed him. Twice—one kiss on each side of his face.

A man who knew, among other things, what he wanted would know what to do with this card. Such a man would either throw it out or program the number into his speed dial.

Leigh put the card in his wallet. It wouldn't matter if he called her. They might run into each other or not. Millie might remain a conduit of information, but even Millie would grow out of the crush she'd formed in the months before her father died.

He wouldn't say goodbye to Maia now, just as he hadn't four years ago. It turned out that Janet was right. His heart couldn't break again over Maia Morland, but the crack she had created still ached. Leigh saw that he would spend his life saying farewell to Maia, the way one might to a childhood dream.

If he was lucky, he'd come to see it clearly. And that ache would no longer be for a first love or a lost one, but for a memory, full of pleasure and regret.

acknowledgments

I am indebted to my editor, Julia Richardson (a.k.a. Julia Whom We Love). Her comments and suggestions were offered with humor and thoughtful care. Everyone should be on the receiving end of such a warm intelligence. Robin Rue, Betsy Groban, and Sharyn November helped me navigate while I wrote the manuscript.

Before approaching the story of a young man's first love, I looked for books that would deepen my understanding of coming of age from a male perspective. Amos Oz's memoir,
A Tale of Love and Darkness,
and the opening section of Orhan Pamuk's memoir,
Istanbul,
reminded me that male adolescence is far more thoughtful than often depicted. Peter Behrens's novel
The Law of Dreams
expanded my understanding of narratives in which the main character is a young man. Ten years ago, the writer Stan Burns let me read a draft of his book on men in America. His death prevented the work's completion, but it—and he—have shaped my thoughts in more ways than I know.

Many of my female friends asked their husbands, sons, and boyfriends to speak to me about their memories and experience of young love (and sex). I will be forever thankful to each for his time and trust. My male friends were less anxious to have me probe into their past, and I am, in retrospect, grateful for that as well.

Polly Milius and Tara Weyr gave me comfort, encouragement, and quiet places to write. My husband and my father read drafts whenever I asked; both, in separate ways, have made my career possible, and what I owe them is beyond measure.