Page 45 of The Ring
Miriam?
Wait, I think I got it—I’m pretty sure it’s Mary.
“Mary,” I say, feeling confident.
“It’s Maya, arsehole.”
I wasn’t actually that far off, just two letters wrong—technically, just one wrong and one misplaced. I’ve had occasions where I was completely off-base.
She leaves my room, slamming the door on her way out. I follow her, thinking maybe I can still save this.
“Wait,” I call after her, but she ignores me.
I try to think of something to say in order to stop her before she walks out of the flat, but every line I come up with sounds fake—probably because they are. But I doubt she would stay if I told her the truth, so a fake line it is.
“Maya,” I say her name just as we’re a few steps from the door. She turns to look at me. “You’re right. I didn’t remember your name, but it’s because your beauty distracted me when you told it to me.”
I feel bad the moment I say it—calling a woman who isn’t Cornelia beautiful feels wrong.
She sees right through my bullshit, as that only seems to make her angrier.
“Fuck you,” she yells at me, yanking the front door open. She storms out and slams it so hard behind her I’m pretty sure half of the building heard it.
“It’s a good thing you don’t offer a satisfaction warranty,” West quips, strolling out of the hallway in nothing but blue boxers. He looks like he just came to the living room in search of something.
“Shut up,” I mutter, throwing myself onto the couch.
“Two in one week. Maybe you need some medical help down there?” His amber eyes flick towards my trousers.
I roll my eyes. “That’s not my problem.”
I’d have preferred if he’d just grabbed whatever he came looking for and left, but he drops onto the white couch across from me. “So what happened?”
I sit up straighter to look at him. “I might have called her by another name.”
He bursts out laughing, and I shoot him a glare.
“Sorry,” he chokes up between laughs. “But you have to admit, it’s really funny.”
I point to the door. “I don’t think she found it funny.”
“Of course she didn’t,” he says, still grinning. “You need to know thecontextto find it funny.”
My patience is running thin. “What context?”
“That after months of bringing one random girl after another to hook up with in order to replace Cornelia, yoursubconscious is finally telling you that it’s no longer working.”
He’s wrong. I never tried to replace Cornelia. I’ve always known it’s impossible. She’s like the Taj Mahal, the Sagrada Familia, or the Petronas Towers—a masterpiece, one of a kind, irreplaceable.
What he also doesn’t know is that my subconscious has had me saying Cornelia’s name in moments it shouldn’t since the first few weeks after we broke up. The thing back then was that the slips were spread out, so he didn’t notice.
He probably thought the other times a girl ended up fleeing my room were because of my back tattoo—girls don’t tend to appreciate you having another girl’s name inked on your back, which, in fact, has happened to me. But it hasn’t occurred as often as the name slips.
“It’s not that,” I tell him, running my hand through my hair. “It’s just that not knowing what happened between Nate and Cornelia is driving me insane. For all I know, they could be a couple now or something, and I wouldn’t even know.”
What a terrifying thought.
West sighs. “If it’ll get you out of your misery and stop girls from almost breaking the door, she turned him down.”
