Chapter 21
Maggie
Maggie stomped barefoot down the hall, her hair still damp, Gwen’s scent clinging stubbornly to her skin like evidence. She hated that she wanted to scrub it off and bottle it at the same time.
She took a moment to compose herself. She felt all of her old defenses rising.
Last night had been a lot of things, but this morning had been only one.
This morning had been the slow realization that she still unequivocally loved Gwen, the chemistry of two people still desperately tied to one another.
A mistake. Nothing more than nostalgia. The words tasted like ash.
She’d seen the flicker in Gwen’s eyes, the hurt she’d landed.
It should have satisfied her, should have built the wall back up, but instead it hollowed her out.
By the time she keyed into the suite, she had her face set in a mask — nonchalant, casual, nothing-to-see-here. But the second the door swung open, she knew something was off.
Not morning-after hangover giggles. Not even the sluggish silence of too much tequila. The energy inside was taut, electric, like the air right before a summer storm.
At the dining table, Izzy and Kiera sat close — too close — hands tangled under the table, both looking like they’d swallowed a secret and were about to burst.
Pete and Danica were hunched together on the couch, a laptop balanced precariously between them. Danica’s perfect bun had collapsed sideways, and Pete’s jaw was tight enough to cut glass. Was Danica… crying?
Maggie blinked, hurrying to Danica. “What’s wrong?”
Four sets of eyes swung her way at once.
Danica sniffled. “Our venue. It’s gone. Double-booked. They gave the date to another couple.”
Pete groaned, dragging her hands down her face. “Six weeks before our wedding.”
Maggie’s stomach pitched. She thought about the logistics immediately — flight refunds, hotel refunds, travel plans already paid for, vendor deposits that would be a nightmare to recover.
The ripple effect of it all pressed in on her chest, the kind of adult chaos that couldn’t be fixed with a laugh.
It was money, time, expectation — an avalanche of headaches disguised as one flat sentence.
“Fuck,” she said, wrapping an arm around Danica’s shoulders. “Do you need listening or problem-solving?”
“Just comfort for now,” Danica said, burrowing her face into Maggie’s shoulder. Pete caught Maggie’s eye and looked so miserable that Maggie reached out to set a hand on her shoulder, too.
The suite stilled for a moment, and Maggie was selfishly grateful to be holding two of her friends while her own heart was aching as well.
Her gaze drifted to Izzy and Kiera, who were glowing with a dangerous kind of glee. Definitely not the mood of the moment. “Why do you two look like you just committed a felony?”
Kiera went crimson, lips twitching. Izzy leaned back, smug as a cat. “Nothing.”
Pete’s head snapped up. “Wait, that does not answer the question.”
Danica sniffled and let Maggie keep an arm around her shoulder as she glanced toward Izzy and Kiera.
“Now’s not the time,” Kiera whisper-scolded Izzy.
“You set a date,” Danica announced, all of her bad mood thrown off like a blanket. “You picked a date for your wedding?”
They both nodded, positively beaming.
A flurry of excited yelling erupted from the couch and then all five of them were on their feet, hugging and yelling and gushing over the emerald-cut sparkle on Kiera’s finger.
“When?” Pete asked, hugging Izzy so fiercely her feet were lifting off the ground.
“Last night.” Kiera glanced toward Izzy.
“Immediately after Kiera went down on me,” Izzy announced.
Kiera yelped, smacking her arm. “Oh my god, Izzy. You cannot tell people that part.”
“I think it adds important context,” Izzy said serenely.
“No, what’s the date you chose?” Danica said, shaking her head.
The group erupted — shrieks, cackles, embarrassed and amused giggles until the tension broke like a dam.
Izzy and Kiera pulled up their phone calendars and pointed to a July date nearly two years in the future.
Everyone was teasing and laughing and celebrating, and Maggie felt it bubbling up inside her too, the absurdity of it all — the lost venue, her own mess with Gwen, and now this. She doubled over, wheezing.
And before she could stop herself, she blurted, “And I had sex with my ex-wife last night.”
The laughter screeched to a halt.
Pete froze, mouth open. Danica’s hand moved to her chest like she was reaching for pearls to clutch. Kiera blinked rapidly. Izzy’s eyebrows looked as though they might raise right into her hairline.
“What?” Maggie demanded, defensive now. “Don’t look at me like that.”
But instead of shock, Pete just gave a low whistle. “I think that means you three owe me ten dollars each.”
Danica pressed her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose. “Pete…”
Izzy shook her head. “No way, last night was my bet. I won.”
Maggie frowned. “Wait. What are we betting on?”
“When you and Gwen were going to get over your own egos and just admit that you’re too in love to separate,” Kiera explained, holding up her hands like Maggie was holding a weapon. “I didn’t bet, but we were all pretty confident.”
“How did you know we were separated?” Maggie asked, her voice rising in confusion.
Izzy leaned forward. “Of course we knew. Why do you think we pushed so hard for Gwen to come on this trip?”
Maggie held a hand to her chest. Heat surged inside her — anger, humiliation, betrayal, grief, longing, and something sharper she didn’t want to name.
It crashed in waves, hot and disorienting.
Part of her wanted to scream, part of her wanted to laugh at the absurdity, and part of her wanted to crumple into tears.
“You… meddled? For me?” Despite all of the turmoil, there was still a part of her filled with genuine delight to know that her friends had set up a Meddling Maggie-level scheme.
“Gwen thinks the sun shines out of your ass, babe,” Pete said, all elegance.
Danica rolled her eyes. “And we knew you were still in love with her. So yes, we meddled.” She lifted her chin, soft but firm. “We want you happy, Mags. And because Gwen is more than her job, whether she sees it yet or not. We weren’t going to sit by and watch you two let it die without a fight.”
Izzy crossed her arms, blunt as ever. “You think we didn’t notice? The way you look at each other? The way you clearly still love each other? Come on. You’ve both been miserable for months, and you’re too stubborn to admit it. Somebody had to push.”
“So, does the sex mean you’re back together?” Kiera asked, a gentle hand on Maggie’s arm.
Maggie shook her head. “I mean, I thought maybe. But you don’t get it. Gwen always chooses work. Always. I’m just the thing she squeezes in around deadlines. And I won’t do it anymore.”
Danica looked sympathetic, but Izzy was already crossing her arms, looking ready to play devil’s advocate.
The suite door opened, and Gwen stepped inside.
Her hair was damp from a shower, her shirt crisp, her phone clutched loosely in one hand. She looked impossibly composed, as if the night before hadn’t happened at all.
The air thickened. Everyone froze.
Maggie crossed her arms, pulse hammering. “They know about us,” she said to Gwen. “They’ve all known.”
Gwen’s gaze softened but stayed steady. “Oh.”
The silence that followed was unbearable — everyone holding their breath, Gwen’s eyes locked on hers, Maggie vibrating with fury and shame.
And then, a knock at the door.
“Room service,” a cheerful voice called. Gwen stepped to open the door.
Three attendants wheeled in carts laden with silver domes and enough carbs to quell a riot.
The smell hit first — maple syrup, butter, coffee strong enough to file down teeth.
The attendants did a practiced ballet around the island, setting down plates: pancakes the size of steering wheels, an architectural stack of waffles, a glistening mound of bacon, an omelet that looked like it had ambitions beyond breakfast.
“Bless you and your tiny cloches,” Pete told the nearest server, deadly serious.
Danica was already organizing like a field marshal. “Plates first. Then proteins. Syrup last. Coffee… oh my god, that’s real cream. Hand it over.” She hugged the stainless carafe to her chest.
Izzy constructed a mimosa pyramid with the single-minded focus of a person who had not yet suffered consequences.
Kiera slid the pyramid a crucial inch back from the edge. “We would like to keep the deposit.”
“Deposit is a social construct,” Izzy said, topping her glass.
Maggie looked around the room, at everyone’s desperation to tame the tension in the air. She grabbed a plate and started with pancakes. The ritual of it worked like a reset button: butter, syrup, a reckless scoop of berries. Her hands finally had something to do besides shake.
Pete tried to swipe Danica’s bacon with the subtlety of a raccoon. Danica smacked her knuckles without looking. “Get your own.”
“I was just testing the crispness for your safety,” Pete lied, already chewing.
“Uh-huh,” Danica said, guarding the bacon like crown jewels.
The group’s noise rose and fell in waves.
Someone found hot sauce, someone else found jam.
Pete attempted to explain the idea behind “tooth butter” or “butter so thick that when you bite into it, you can see your teeth marks.” Danica moved through them like a benevolent hurricane, refilling coffee, preventing small disasters, issuing tiny, efficient kisses to Pete’s shoulder as she passed.
Gwen stayed at the periphery, at the counter by the sink, taking orders. “Black? Cream? Sugar?” She poured without spilling, without asking for thanks.
Maggie didn’t look at her. Not directly. She let Gwen exist in the blur of the room — competent hands, quiet voice, the familiar rhythm of her moving through domestic chaos as if it were a puzzle she could solve with steadiness alone.
“Who ordered eggs?” Gwen asked, and three hands shot up at once.
“They’re vegan,” Izzy said, mouth full.
“Absolutely not,” Danica said, pushing the vegan omelet toward Izzy. “Boundaries.”
Pete popped a grape into her mouth and spoke around it. “Vegan eggs are like the weirdest breakfast suggestion.”
“You’re a breakfast suggestion,” Izzy shot back.
For ten breaths, it almost felt like the morning could be ordinary. Plates slid, napkins unfolded, syrup stayed, mercifully, in its lane. Even the ache in Maggie’s chest settled under the weight of butter and routine.
Then the first plate was empty and the second was possible, and the chatter drifted toward the unsolvable: wedding venues.
It started as a joke and then turned into a brainstorm the way all their best ideas did — loud, over-caffeinated, half-sincere.
“Will it be too difficult to find somewhere else in Bulgaria?” Maggie asked, sipping her coffee.
“I mean, I could fly out there and try to figure it out, but this venue was already like pulling teeth. I’m sure there’s something in Sofia we could find,” Pete began.
Danica’s shoulders dropped. “I don’t want you to have to plan the whole thing. Maybe we should just elope.”
“You could get married by Elvis,” Maggie suggested, glancing out the window.
Pete looked excited by the idea, but Danica shook her head. “My parents would kill me.”
“What about planning something Stateside? Hotel refunds should still be available, and I’m sure most people could get flight credits, if not full refunds,” Gwen said, infuriatingly realistic. “You could do something in Denver to keep the planning easier.”
“Let’s have a joint wedding,” Izzy said with a grin, and Pete high-fived her as Danica and Kiera rolled their eyes.
“What about Telluride?” Kiera suggested. “Aspens, mountains, snow in the winter. Really take it back to the beginning.”
“I mean, I’m sure Aunt Jade has other properties in her empire,” Maggie said, reaching for another slice of bacon. “She’s probably sitting on three wedding venues and a haunted monastery.”
That got a ripple of laughter, but Kiera’s eyes lit. “Wait. Aunt Jade has a lake house in Michigan. Wouldn’t it be hilariously full circle if you two actually got married at another of Aunt Jade’s properties?”
Danica hesitated, but Maggie saw it — the gleam in her eye. The wheels were already turning.
The chatter spun into happy chaos. Izzy argued for cornfields with the conviction of a person who had never met a bug.
Kiera stole a hotel pen and began sketching a lakeside arbor on a napkin, labeling it with arrows like a crime scene diagram.
Danica pretended to be noncommittal, which was how Maggie knew she was already planning the power grid for the tent.
The table buzzed with warmth again, laughter spilling over like champagne.
Pete raised her fork, pointing it like a gavel. “We could hire a Prince impersonator for Michigan. Bring a little Vegas magic to the Midwest.”
Izzy practically spit out her coffee. “Yes. Elvis for vows, Prince for reception. Iconic.”
Danica groaned. “We’re not having a theme wedding based on Vegas impersonators.”
“Fine,” Pete said. “But we’re getting a fog machine.”
Kiera rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Only if we also rent bug zappers the size of small planets. Have you met Michigan mosquitoes?”
Maggie chimed in, smirking. “I’ll bring citronella candles. Maybe Aunt Jade has those tiki torches.”
Izzy tapped her chin. “Lakefront wedding plus cornfield reception after-party. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong,” Danica said primly, but her lips twitched.
The banter spiraled — Pete insisting she’d rather wrestle a bear than battle mosquitoes, Izzy pitching a corn tuxedo for the officiant, Kiera countering with a lakeside lantern release.
The food dwindled, coffee refilled endlessly, and laughter layered over the lingering tension like plaster on cracked walls.
Maggie laughed at the right moments, stole bites from Izzy’s plate, and raised her glass to the ridiculous Michigan plan.
She pitched in — “string lights across the dock, picture it” — and ignored the way her voice thinned when it carried across to Gwen.
On the surface, it felt easy, just like them.
But under the syrup and chatter, her chest tightened. She caught Gwen’s gaze across the table — steady, waiting, hopeful — and she looked away, a bitter taste in her mouth battling against the sweetness of pancakes.
Because she knew the truth. No matter what anyone else believed, Gwen would never choose her.