I held them out, and when he wrapped his fingers with mine, I felt it—the feeling of home rushing through me. A building with walls wasn’t a home. Home was the place where the warmest kinds of love lived between two people. Brooks was home to me.

It took everything for me to not cry.

“You know that moment when you discover a new song? You think, no big deal, you’ve heard a lot of new songs, and this one’s gonna be like all the rest, but when the introduction hits your ears and it rockets through you, you feel it in your bones. Then when it hits the chorus, you know. You just know. You know that song is going to change you forever. You’ll never be able to remember your life without those rhythms, those lyrics, those chords. When the song ends, you race to replay it, and each time you hear it, it’s better than you remembered. How is that possible? How could the same words mean more and more each time? You play it over and over again until it’s ingrained in you, until it races through your body, becoming the flow that makes your heart beat.”

My hands trembled in his, and his trembled in mine. We moved in closer, and he rested his forehead against mine.

“Maggie May, you’re my favorite song.”

I couldn’t fight the tears, and he couldn’t fight his, as our faces rested against one another. “I’m so torn right now, Maggie. A part of me wants to go to Los Angeles and chase the dream, but another part of me knows you are the dream. You’re it. So tell me what you want. Tell me you want me. I’ll stay. I swear, I’ll stay.”

I stepped back from him, dropping his hands.

His dream was in Los Angeles.

Mama was right.

I was no kind of life for him.

I wasn’t his dream. I was his waking nightmare.

“Tell me to stay, and I’ll stay,” he begged. “Tell me to go, and I’ll go, but don’t keep me here in limbo, Maggie May. Don’t let me leave, not knowing. Don’t make me swim in unknown waters, because I’m certain the unknown is where I’ll drown.”

Go.

He read the words on my board, and I saw the switch in his eyes. He seemed shocked by my response. Hurt. Broken. The look of despair in his eyes stunned me. I rushed over to him and started trying to pull him into a hug.

“Stop, Maggie. It’s fine.”

No. It wasn’t. He was hurting because of me. He was breaking, because I’d broken him. Please. I need you to understand. Please.

I held up my hand.

Five minutes.

That’s all I needed. Five more minutes.

He sighed and nodded. “Okay. Five minutes.”

I pulled him into a hug and forced him to hold me.

He choked out a cough. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair. We were happy.”

I held him tighter and looked up at him. Our lips grazed against one another, and we kissed. We kissed softly first, and then harder. We kissed with our hopes and our apologies all at once. It amazed me how in the past, five minutes had felt like forever, but in that moment, five minutes was a blur.

“Maggie May,” Brooks whispered, his voice cracking. “How did you do that? How did you break my heart and fix it all at once, with just one kiss?”

I felt it, too. Whenever our lips found each other, the kisses hurt and healed. We were thunderstorms and sunlight all at once. How did we do that to one another? Why did we do it? And how were we ever supposed to truly say goodbye?

He touched the anchor necklace I hadn’t taken off in years before he let me go and stepped backward. “I can’t stay here…I gotta go. I gotta let you go.” Within seconds he walked out of my bedroom and out of my life.

After he left, Cheryl came and sat beside me on my bed. “Why did you do that, Maggie? Why did you let him go?”

I leaned against my sister and rested my head on her shoulder, unsure how to answer. It felt wrong in my chest, letting him walk away, but he had to go after his dreams without me. When you loved someone, you let them fly away, even if you weren’t on the same flight.

“It’s not fair,” she said. “Because the way he looks at you, and the way you look at him—that’s my dream. That’s what I want someday.”

I parted my lips to speak, but nothing came out. I gave Cheryl a sloppy smile, and she gave me a frown.

“I figured out what kind of activist I want to be,” my sister told me, taking my hand into hers. “I want to fight for you, for people like you. I want to fight for those who don’t have a voice, but are screaming to be heard.”

Calvin and the guys were asked to stay out in Los Angeles for a few more days. They’d been offered a recording deal with Rave Records, and I could almost feel their excitement all the way from the west coast.

Brooks called me to share the news. “I know we aren’t supposed to be talking…but…we did it, Magnet.” His voice was so low. “We did it. We got a deal. In a few weeks, it will be official, and we’ll be signing with Rave. You did this for us. You made this happen.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks. I’d never wanted anything more than I wanted this amazing thing to happen for them. Those boys deserved it. They deserved everything that came to them.

“I love you, Maggie,” he whispered before hanging up.

It was the last time I heard from him. Calvin called to tell the family the producer wanted them to get in the studio to record some samples while they worked on the contracts, and before I knew it, days became weeks, and weeks became months. Their lives started moving on the fast track, and I was frozen still. When September came, the band was invited to be an opening act for The Present Yesterdays on their world tour.

It seemed that in a blink of an eye, their lives were completely changed.

I tried my best to stop missing him. I read my books, I took my baths, and I listened to the iPod he’d left behind. I played his guitar, too. It turned out missing someone never became easier, it just became quieter. You learned to live with the longing pain inside you. You mourned the moments you’d shared and allowed yourself to hurt sometimes, too.

There were so many times I opened my phone and stared at his number, so many times I almost dialed him to check in. I told myself I’d only call once, just to hear his voice, but I never built up the courage to move forward. I knew deep down if I called once, I wouldn’t be able to go without calling him each day to hear his voice again.

Most days I hardly left my room, afraid of running into Mama.