I WAS LYING IN THE sun at Bowman’s. I stopped before work this morning, but I couldn’t force myself to face the rest of the day. I was falling in and out of sleep when Chris texted me yet again: Where are you?
I started tapping out a lie—at work—when his next message came.
I know you’re not at work. Come meet me. I’ll be waiting in the barn.
I clambered to my feet, heart instantly pounding out of rhythm.
As I raced my bike home, every part of my body, inside and out, was vibrating. I hopped off my bike while it was still moving, and it crashed into the side of the barn. I barged through the door to see him standing in front of the wall, looking at the photos.
“Please,” I said, trying once more to slow the unending advance of the catastrophe I had created, but could not stop. “Just let me—” explain.
“Maia, show me the picture you took of me that day,” he demanded, finally turning to look at me.
“Chris, I—”
“Where is it?” he interrupted. “Show me that picture, Maia.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
He looked at me in a way he never had before. It wasn’t that his expression was blank, but more like his face was stripped of all emotion. Beyond that was something more sullen, bittersweet: He was hurting. No, I was hurting him. It was only a matter of time.
“You already know why,” I said, and I could feel my eyes burning, filling with tears, because this was it. It was over. It had finally caught up with me. “Don’t you?”
“I know, but I—I don’t . . . understand,” he said, his speech choppy and broken.
“I wish I could explain it to you; it’s just so hard—”
“Well, try!” he said, raising his voice.
“It made me feel closer to her,” I said, trying. Really trying. “Like she wasn’t really gone.”
“More,” he said, shaking his head. “I need more.”
“I liked that you thought I was special, okay?” I knew I had no right to be yelling at him right now, but if I didn’t yell, I was convinced I would melt onto the floor in a puddle of my own self-loathing and never be able to put myself back together. “I liked that you thought I had these amazing talents and dreams and—”
“So you lied?” he yelled back. “You lied to me this whole time, Maia!”
“But I—”
“But nothing!” he interrupted. “How am I ever supposed to trust you again?” He came closer, watching me, waiting for an actual answer to his question. The thing was, I didn’t have one.
“I don’t know,” I finally said, taking a step closer to him.
“Great,” he scoffed, looking around at all of Mallory’s photos.
I reached out to try to touch him, but he twisted away from me.
I’ve heard that the sheer amount of snow that lands on a person trapped in an avalanche can create confusion—you don’t always know which way is up. Sometimes the victims are found suffocated and dead, having dug the wrong way.
It must’ve been the disorientation that made me say, “Fine. You can hate me and never trust me again if you want, but don’t pretend you don’t have secrets too.”
“What are you talking about?” he snapped. “I’ve been totally honest with you—more honest with you than I’ve ever been with anyone in my entire life.”
“I knew, Chris. I knew almost from the very beginning.”
“Knew what?”
“Knew. About you. I spied on you. Just like a perfect little photographer would. Just like Mallory would have done. I knew. I saw you.”
He shook his head. “I don’t—I don’t believe you.” He was trying to hide it, but I could see this sheen cast over his eyes, water filling the corners.
“I’m just saying, how do you think I felt when day after day, as I’m falling for you—hard, I might add—I knew you weren’t telling me the truth?”
“This cannot be real,” he whispered, looking at me in a way that sent chills up my spine, like we were strangers, like there was nothing between us. That was when I remembered that I’d forgotten to tell him the most important part: how I trusted him anyway.
“So all those days when we were running around together searching for the perfect shots, all those conversations, everything we shared—that was, what, a lie?” His voice was small now, quiet, and I knew that was worse than the yelling.
“No. No, that wasn’t a—”
“And that night when I told you. Everything you said. How you were so understanding. And you said that—you said that nothing changed—were you just laughing at me on the inside?”
“No, I wasn’t!”
“That night meant everything to me,” he said, his voice trembling, “and it was all a lie.”
“How I feel is not a lie, Chris,” I said, my voice thickening with my own tears about to spill over. “I’m sorry, okay? Wait, just let me try to explain. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
Too late, Mallory whispered in my ear.