2. Maddie
CHAPTER 2
MADDIE
“ I have amazing news!” Tess said happily as Maddie came in the door of the small house the two of them shared.
“You look excited,” Maddie observed.
“I am!” Tess agreed, bouncing up and down on her toes.
“Can I take a shower first?” Maddie laughed. She’d just come from the beach and was still in her lifeguard suit. It was getting cold underneath the tracksuit she always wore over it when her shift was over, and she had been thinking of a nice hot shower ever since she’d left work.
“This won’t take long,” Tess promised. “I’ve been anxious to tell you all day.”
“Okay, okay,” Maddie agreed with a smile — Tess’s energy was infectious. “What’s the big news?”
“Damian wants us to live together!”
“Oh, wow.” Maddie’s eyes widened. “That’s big.”
“I know, right? I had no idea it was coming so soon!”
To tell the truth, Maddie hadn’t expected it either. Tess and Damian had only been dating for six months, and while they made a fairly cute couple, the move seemed rushed to Maddie. She didn’t want to rain on her friend’s parade, but she couldn’t help wondering whether Tess had really thought this through.
Between the two of them, Tess had always been the flighty, impulsive one. And sometimes that was great. It had been Tess’s idea for the two of them to move to San Diego after college. It had been Tess who had suggested renting this house — they hadn’t even looked at any other places. They had been out for a walk one day and had seen the place with a for-rent sign, and Tess had been immediately in love. She’d insisted on walking in for a look, and they had submitted their application later that day.
Maddie wasn’t like that. Her approach to life was much more cautious. Maybe that was why she hadn’t been on a date in over a year. She’d been asked, but it had always seemed like such a big step to take with someone she didn’t even know. It was an idea that Tess laughed at, reminding her that going out on one date was no commitment at all and that she might as well give it a try, but the longer Maddie went without dating, the more difficult a hurdle it began to feel like.
“So when are you going to move in with him?” she asked.
“As soon as possible,” Tess said. “Now that we’ve decided to do it, neither one of us wants to wait.”
Maddie had to smile. That was classic Tess. “I think this calls for some champagne,” she said. “Do we still have that bottle?”
“I think so.” Tess went to the fridge and pulled it out. “I knew there would be a good occasion to open this soon. I had a sixth sense about it.”
“You and your sixth senses,” Maddie laughed, getting down a couple of glasses. “I’m going to miss having you as a roommate, Tess! We’ve been living together since we were teenagers!” The two of them had been assigned to one another freshman year, and they had never looked back.
“I know,” Tess groaned. “You’re like one of my sisters at this point, we’ve lived together so long. Whose clothes am I going to borrow? Not Damian’s!”
“You may have to start doing laundry more regularly.”
“Gross. Maybe I can get Damian to do that for me.”
“You probably can. He adores you.”
“Well, it’s not as if it’s going to be right away,” Tess said, sipping her champagne. “Us being separated, I mean.”
“What are you talking about? You just said you and Damian wanted to move in together as soon as possible. I assumed you were talking about doing it this week or something. That sounds like you.”
“Oh, yeah, I mean he’s going to start moving his things in tomorrow,” Tess said. “But we already talked about it, and we don’t want to kick you out right away or anything. You can take as much time as you need to find a new place.”
Maddie set her glass down slowly. “Oh,” she said, realizing that she had misunderstood. “You’re talking about him moving in here.”
“Well, yeah,” Tess said.
Then she seemed to catch up to Maddie’s train of thought. “Oh, no,” she said. “You thought I meant I was moving out.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. I just figured the two of you would want a place of your own.”
“No, I should have said that right from the start,” Tess said. “I’m sorry, Maddie. I didn’t mean to be misleading. It’s just… you know how much I love this place. I always have.”
“I know,” Maddie said. “You were the one who fell in love with this house back when we first found it. It never meant as much to me as it did to you.”
What neither of them was saying was that Tess paid the lion’s share of the rent on the house. It had been part of their agreement when they had decided to rent the place, because they had both been aware of the fact that Maddie simply couldn’t afford a place like this and still continue to contribute to her savings account. The thought that Tess was leaving had definitely been financially scary, and Maddie had known in the back of her mind that she would have to consider leaving, but she hadn’t started to thinking about that yet.
She was thinking about it now, though. It was so like Tess to get so excited about her big news that she’d forget the fact that it wouldn’t be exciting news for Maddie. Tess wasn’t unkind, but she could be a little thoughtless sometimes.
Maddie wasn’t angry, of course. She understood. Tess was just excited about what lay ahead for her, and Maddie felt excited on her behalf. But that didn’t change the fact that this was going to be difficult for her to cope with. Where was she going to go now? What was she going to do?
Tess was watching her. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I wasn’t thinking. There really is no hurry for you to move out. Take as long as you’d like to figure it out. It’s not as if Damian is going to need your room. In fact, if you just want to go on living with us for a while, that would probably be okay. I can talk to him. We could all be roommates!”
“Don’t be silly.” Maddie gave her friend a warm smile. “I appreciate you letting me stay until I get it figured out, Tess, but we aren’t kids anymore. We’ll be thirty in a few years. You and Damian are taking a big step, and I want you to be able to do that without your college roommate living in the next room.”
“It is a big step, isn’t it?” Tess giggled, her good humor restored.
“So big,” Maddie assured her. “You’re going to be taking your relationship to a whole new level. I’m really happy for you.”
“Are you sure? I know this is a lot to ask of you. I probably should have talked to you about it first. Or differently. I don’t know.”
“Stop,” Maddie said, picking up her glass of champagne again. “We’re celebrating, okay? We always knew that you and I weren’t going to live together for the rest of our lives. This will be a good opportunity for me to strike out on my own and try to figure out what I’m doing next. It was about time for me to do that anyway.”
“I just feel bad,” Tess said. “I mean, this is a big deal for me, but I feel bad that you have to change your life because of it.”
“Just promise me that I can be maid of honor in your wedding,” Maddie teased.
Tess laughed. “Nobody is getting married!”
“Yet. What do you think comes next after you move in together?”
“Do you think we’re rushing things? We’ve only been dating for six months, after all.”
“I definitely think you’re rushing things. But you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t,” Maddie told her friend. “You’re not one to wait when you’ve seen something you want. You never have been. I’m happy for you, Tess, really. This is going to be great.”
“I’ll help you look for a new place,” Tess said.
“Don’t worry about that right now. I’m sure something will present itself. I have a way of landing on my feet.”
That much, at least, was the truth. When the hits had come Maddie’s way — and there had been plenty of hits over the years — she had always found a way to rise to the occasion.
Her biggest supporter in life had been her father. He’d been there for her every day when she was younger and chasing the dream of becoming a professional dancer. He had been the one to drive her to all her dance lessons, and he had been in the front row at every recital. He had filmed her performances and watched them with her afterward, discussing the performances, telling her which parts he liked the best and listening as she critiqued her own performances.
His death, caused by a sudden heart attack, had been the most difficult trial of Maddie’s young life. She had been fourteen years old at the time, and it had rocked her whole world. But she had recovered, promising herself that she would do what he would want to see her do with her life. He had always stressed the importance of a good education, so she had applied herself and had gotten into a good college. And he had supported her dream of dancing, so she had continued to pursue that as well.
And then Maddie had faced the second ordeal of her life — at the age of twenty-one, she had suffered a torn Achilles tendon.
It had meant the end of her career. Although the injury was long since healed, her strength and mobility would never be what they had been before the injury. She could dance for fun now — and she did — but she would never be a professional ballerina, as she had once hoped.
She had grieved the loss — and then she had adjusted her dream. Now her hope was to open up a dance school of her own, to bring the joy of dance to the next generation. But as of now, there was no hope of that happening. She didn’t have anywhere near the kind of money it would take to make something like that happen. And the fact that she was going to have to find a new place to live, somewhere she would have to pay the rent on all by herself, was going to put her dream that much further out of reach.
But she’d meant what she had said to Tess. She would get through this and find a way to land on her feet.
“I’ll start looking for a new apartment tomorrow,” she told her friend, with an unpleasant twinge of realization. This house had been Tess’s fantasy, not hers, but Maddie had definitely gotten used to it. It was small, but it was modern and had been recently renovated, and it was only a few blocks from the beach, which meant that Maddie could walk to work. She’d have to find a place that was similarly close to the beach, since her car was an old clunker and she didn’t want to have to worry about buying a new one. She couldn’t afford to depend on it too heavily.
“You don’t have to start looking right away,” Tess assured her. “There’s plenty of time for that.”
“No, it’s all right.” Maddie wanted to begin the search, if she was honest. Now that she knew what lay ahead, there was no sense in putting it off. It would be awful to linger around this house, watching Tess move on with her life and knowing that she herself hadn’t done so yet.
Maddie had felt as if she was lagging behind her friend for years. When they had left college, they had been in the same place in their lives — looking for jobs, going out on casual dates on Friday and Saturday nights. They had both worked as bartenders for a few years, and it had felt like their lives were on the same track. But then, all of a sudden, Tess had landed a job as an office manager at a law firm and had started pulling down a much larger salary, one that had allowed her to pay the rent on this house. Maddie had considered getting an office job, but after a few of her applications had yielded no results, she had given up. She didn’t want to work in an office anyway, and to do so would have felt like giving up on her dream of opening a ballet studio.
But that didn’t make it any easier to see Tess doing so much better than she was. Moving forward in her life, while Maddie felt as if she was stuck in place and might never move forward.
Leaving the house she had shared with Tess would be a change. She wasn’t sure if she was ready for it.
But maybe it was a step she needed to take.