girlfriend. That’s a surprise. Do you take insurance?” Maya didn’t actually know much about therapists and insurance, but she had heard her parents talking about it. Her mom had always said couples therapy was too expensive because they didn’t take insurance, but her dad had offered to pay anyway. It hadn’t worked.
“Maya!” Claire yelled. “God, you’re so annoying sometimes! You act like a little kid!”
“And you act like some know-it-all!” Maya yelled back. “You don’t know anything about my family, okay? So stay out of it!”
“I don’t know anything because you don’t tell me anything!” Claire cried. “You keep dropping all these little bread crumbs and you expect me to trace them back to you, but you don’t leave enough.”
Maya blinked. “That is a terrible metaphor.”
“Fine, how’s this? You shut me out because you don’t want me to find out too much about you. You think that if I know too much about your family, I’ll leave you.”
Maya started to laugh. “You are so terrible at this,” she said. “I’m sorry, how much have I told you about my dad? All of it. All of it!”
“What about your mom?” Claire said, and Maya looked away. “Exactly, My.”
“That’s private,” Maya said. “That’s about her, not me.”
“Bullshit. It’s about all of you. You just don’t realize it. And who cares if it’s private? I’m your girlfriend. You can tell me this stuff.”
Maya could feel herself careering down the hill, the wheels starting to come off the cart even as she continued to pick up speed. “Well, then, if you don’t think I tell you enough, then maybe I shouldn’t be your girlfriend anymore.”
Claire had been about to yell something back, but Maya’s words stopped her short. They stopped Maya short, too, for that matter. She hadn’t even known that that was something she was going to say.
“You want to break up with me?” Claire said, her voice suddenly low and quiet.
“Well, it sounds like you want to break up with me.” That wasn’t what it sounded like at all, not to Maya. Who was this stranger inside her who kept speaking on her behalf? Whoever she was, she was really fucking things up in a colossal way.
“Is this what you do?” Claire said, and now her voice was dangerous. “Just poke and poke and poke?” She stepped toward Maya, poking her in the shoulder. “Make yourself meaner and meaner until you make me break up with you because you don’t have the guts to break up with me?”
Maya had nothing to say to that. Instead, she just stared at Claire. Maya had learned this trick a long time ago, the art of staying quiet and letting the other person dig themselves into a hole. She had just never thought that she would use it on Claire.
“Are you seriously not even going to say anything?” Claire said. “We’re basically breaking up and you just go silent?”
Maya shrugged. Lauren would do that to her sometimes when they were fighting, her impassivity sending Maya through the roof.
“Oh my God,” Claire said, starting to laugh. “You’re such a fucking baby.” She took a step away, then circled back. “You know what? Never mind. You want to break up, you’re going to say it to me. I’m not saying it to you.”
It was a dare, Maya knew, and she was so mad and so frustrated and so furious at herself that she took the bait.
“I’m breaking up with you,” she said to Claire, then watched as Claire seemed to wither right in front of her eyes.
“Are you serious?” Claire whispered. “Goddamnit, Maya. Why do you have to burn down the house with everyone inside it?”
Maya had no idea what Claire was talking about. She was too busy trying to keep her mouth still, her eyes dry. She could cry once she was home, but there was no way she was going to fall apart in front of Claire.
She wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
“You know what?” Claire said. “Find your own ride home. I’m out.”
“Fine,” Maya said. Her house was only a couple of miles away. She would have somersaulted home on bare gravel before she got back into Claire’s car.
Claire laughed again, short and sharp and bitter, and then spun on her heel. Right before she turned the corner, she threw her empty coffee drink in the trash with such force that Maya half expected it to bounce right back out, but it stayed put.