One afternoon after school...
Maybe asked if I wanted to take a walk.
Normally...
I wouldn't have hesitated.
But one of the guys was staying late after rehearsal to work on a couple of new songs.
I remember standing there...
looking from Maybe...
to the auditorium.
"I'll catch you tomorrow."
She smiled.
"Okay."
She never asked me to choose.
She simply assumed there would be another walk.
She made it sound like tomorrow would always be there.
Then she turned...
and started down the hallway.
I watched her disappear around the corner.
Then I turned...
The next day we were sitting on her porch.
Maybe talked.
I listened.
Or at least I tried to.
After a while she stopped.
"You're awfully quiet tonight."
I looked down at my hands.
She waited.
Finally I shrugged.
"I don't know. I just feel different"
She nodded.
I don't think she believed me.
Truth was...
I didn't believe me either.
I wasn't tired.
I wasn't upset.
I wasn't even unhappy.
My mind was just somewhere else.
Songs.
Stages.
Rehearsals.
Standing ovations.
The life I thought I wanted.
I was sitting beside Maybe.
Holding the hand I'd once thought I'd never let go of.
But I wasn't really there.
There was an old belief that seemed to drift through every group of
young musicians.
Nobody ever actually said it.
It simply hung in the air.
If you were serious about music...
girls and music didn't mix.
The funny thing is...
I don't think any of those guys really believed that.
If I'd told them I was thinking about breaking up with Maybe...
they probably would've told me I was out of my mind.
The problem wasn't what they believed.
It was what I quietly convinced myself they believed.
I never asked.
And somehow...
I answered a question...
that nobody had ever asked me
I thought I was making one big decision.
Truth was...
I'd already made it.
One rehearsal...
became two.
One standing ovation...
became louder...
than one quiet evening on a porch.
One missed walk...
became another.
One conversation...
became shorter.
One small choice...
at a time.
Until...
there really wasn't a choice left.
Nobody wakes up one morning...
and decides to lose something they love.
Usually...
they lose it...
one ordinary day at a time.
I'd already been walking away...
long before I ever said goodbye.
The hardest part...
was that I didn't know I was walking away.
Or maybe...
I simply didn't want to admit it.
A few days later...
I asked Maybe if we could talk.
