CHAPTER 64: Come Anyway

POV: Maya Castellano

Maya packed three times.

The first bag was sensible. Neutral clothes, laptop, chargers organized into their little case the way a person did when they were trying to convince themselves they were fine. She stood back and looked at it and felt absolutely nothing which was probably the answer.

The second bag happened twenty minutes later and was a different person entirely.

The black dress she’d bought eighteen months ago for a dinner that got cancelled and had been hanging in her wardrobe with its tags still on. The gold earrings Selene brought back from Marrakech. A novel she’d been meaning to read for two years and kept putting down. She put all of it in the bag before she understood why and then stood looking at what she’d packed and felt the discomfort of someone who had just accidentally told the truth.

She took it all out.

Started again at 1 AM with neither version, just enough clothes for a person going somewhere for six days.

“This is ridiculous,” she told the room.

The room offered nothing.

She sat on the edge of the bed with a shirt still hanging from her hand and thought about how she’d reached thirty years old and still hadn’t learned that packing was never actually about packing.

The problem wasn’t the trip.

The problem was somewhere between between coffee meets, Kofi had become important quietly. 

Her phone buzzed.

You awake?

Unfortunately.

The typing bubble. Then:

You sound stressed.

I’m deciding whether a person can overpack for a six day trip.

A pause that lasted long enough that she thought he might have fallen asleep.

Then: I keep thinking about whether I asked too soon.

Maya read that twice.

You didn’t.

You sure?

I’m still awake at one in the morning unpacking the same bag for the third time so.

Another pause.

Come anyway.

She looked at the phone for a moment.

Then at the open suitcase.

Then at the novel on the bed with its two year old bookmark still in it.

She picked it up and put it back in.

The next afternoon she was at Selene’s apartment pretending she’d come to borrow earrings.

“You own more earrings than a small museum,” Selene said from the kitchen.

“That’s not the point.”

“You’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“You alphabetized your cosmetics bag.”

Maya went still. “Who told you that.”

“Your face just now.”

Selene came in with two mugs and sat beside her on the couch with the patience of someone who had absolutely nowhere else to be and no intention of pretending otherwise.

“When do you leave?” she asked.

“Thursday.”

“How long?”

“Six days.”

Selene nodded 

Maya looked away first.

“It’s just a trip,” she said.

“Mm.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“I’m drinking coffee.”

“The face while drinking coffee.”

Selene said nothing, which was somehow worse than if she’d said something.

Maya leaned back into the cushions and let out the kind of breath that had been building since 1 AM.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “That’s new because I always know what I’m doing even when it’s a terrible idea. Even the terrible ideas have a logic I can follow.………. This just feels like stepping off a kerb in the dark. You probably land fine but you don’t know until you’ve already stepped.”

Selene waited.

“He looks at me like I’m real,” Maya said quietly.

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

“You are real,” Selene said eventually.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

There were people who looked at Maya and saw what she handed them first. The brightness, the humor, the easy version she’d learned to produce early and produce well because it was simpler than the alternative. Kofi looked at her like he’d already seen past that and was just waiting, unhurried, for her to notice.

It was the unhurried part that undid her.

“He asked me last week whether I ever get tired,” Maya said.

“What did you say?”

“Made a joke and changed the subject.”

“Of course.”

“And he just—” She turned the mug in her hands. “Let me. He didn’t follow me into the joke, didn’t push or let me go and still kept looking at me the same way after.”

Selene was quiet for a moment.

“The letting matters too,” she said.

Maya didn’t respond immediately.

She sat with it.

Thought about every person who had chased her into the joke, accepted the easy version and asked no further questions because it was convenient for both of them and had let her disappear into her own performance and called it charm.

Thought about what it meant that Kofi had simply waited.

“Yeah,” she said finally. “It does.”

Thursday arrived the way things did when you were simultaneously dreading and wanting them.

Kofi was already outside when she came down.

He got out of the car when he saw her suitcase, stared at it for exactly two seconds.

“You brought the large one,” he said.

“You said six days.”

“I did say six days.”

“So.”

“So nothing.” He took the handle from her without ceremony and lifted it into the boot.

She hated that about him.

“You look nice,” he said. 

“So do you.”

He leaned against the car and looked at her liike he had time and had decided to use it on her specifically.

“Still deciding?” he said.

“If you ask me that I’ll go back upstairs.”

“Will you though.”

“No,” she admitted. “Probably not.”

His smile was small and lived mostly in his eyes. 

Maya looked up briefly at the building. Somewhere behind those windows Selene was watching and pretending not to and Maya loved her for it.

She got in the car.

Kofi closed the door behind her and Maya Castellano, who always knew exactly what she was doing, let herself go somewhere without knowing who she’d be when she came back.