10. Maggie
TEN
maggie
Naturally, the kids noticed there were now eleven dollars in the swear jar.
It hadn’t occurred to me that they would have questions about who exactly had cursed that much in the past weekend…or that it would give them a fun game to play. I heard more bad words from my students in that day than I’d heard from kindergarteners in my whole life.
It also hadn’t occurred to me that maybe incentivizing the swearing was a bad thing.
But…at least the classroom was getting a guinea pig.
All I was thinking about leaving that day was the guinea pig—certainly not the sparkly green gel pen I’d found wedged under the leg of Rosie Sullivan’s desk, the gel pen I knew had landed there while I was doing things in this classroom that were way, way worse than swearing.
On Monday morning, I’d come in and thoroughly sterilized everything, mortified at what I’d done… but it was too late.
It was done.
Twice now, and I wanted it to happen again, even though it absolutely could not happen again.
I was very much looking forward to a hot bath, a book to get my mind off Garrison Nash, and maybe candlelit takeout at home, but I found Delia aggressively waving at me through the office window when I walked by to get to the front door.
I paused, popping my head in; there was nobody else in there with her, and she didn’t hesitate to use that to her advantage.
She pointed at the chair across from her, normally reserved for parents whose kids had gotten in trouble.
I reluctantly sat down.
“Dish,” she said. “Right now.”
She clasped her hands on the desk, watching me.
I sighed. “I really shouldn’t,” I said. “Not here.”
She tilted her head forward and raised her eyebrows. “Uh-huh…so something happened after the fall festival.”
“Something happened after the fall festival, yes.”
She made this—well, to be honest, this utterly ungodly shriek. I snapped my head around to make sure no one was watching, that Mrs. Petersen wasn’t creeping around and waiting to bring down the hammer of judgment.
“Can you please chill?” I asked in a harsh whisper. “I really can’t have these conversations here.”
“So we’re getting drinks tonight, right?” she asked.
“It’s a Monday—”
“And you’re an adult who can make her own choices, like going out on a Monday,” she interrupted. “Come on…I am dying for something interesting to happen around here and this is so much better than reality TV.”
“I don’t know if I should be offended that you just compared me to reality TV,” I muttered.
“You shouldn’t be! You’re like…not the villain we love to hate, you’re the good girl we’re all rooting for.
” She paused. “In all honesty, Maggie—I just desperately need to get out of the house. I spend every night with my grandma and I love her to bits, I do, but she’s much more Law Delia was too, and I had no idea what was going on with her.
“Okay,” I said.
She blinked. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I picked up my bag. “But not Rick’s.”
“Obviously not Rick’s.” She frowned. “How about Summit she told me about the grandmother she lived with, how she’d only come to Juniper Falls because said grandmother needed help around the house and Delia had been evicted from her place in New York and had nowhere else to go.
She shared…but she was just being patient.
“Okay,” I said, picking up a slice of bread and spreading some cheese on it. “I feel like I’ve given you more than enough of the gossip on my side…so I only think it’s fair that you share first.”
Delia rolled her eyes. “Please. As if I have anything going on that compares.”
The wine had me flushed and feisty. I snorted. “Delia, I cannot believe that someone this obsessed with other people’s sex lives doesn’t have anything going on for herself.”
“Ooh…so you’re calling it a sex life now,” she said. “That means you did it more than once. How many times—”
“Give me something,” I said. “Come on. Don’t you have a bad ex too? Someone you’re into?”
Delia bit her lip, glancing away. “Okay…fine. But you cannot tell a soul.”
“Who am I going to tell?” I laughed. “I don’t know anyone.”
“You might.”
I peered at her. “So he’s someone I might know…” I said. “Or she—not judging—”
Delia looked down at her glass, her finger gliding around the room. “He’s a dad at the school,” she said. “But I didn’t know that when I took him home and he fucked my brains out last Christmas.”
I actually spit my wine out into my glass, finding myself grateful for the red shirt—then I had this horrible thought.
“It’s not Nash, right?” I blurted out.
“Oh my god, no Maggie, I’m not a monster,” she said. “It’s—you know Dylan Boone? Second grade, he’s kind of—”
“A troublemaker,” I finished for her. “Yeah, Mrs. Petersen won’t ever stop talking about him in staff meetings.”
“Well, I fucked his dad last winter, I was drunk, and now every time I see him in the office I feel like a clown—because he hasn’t said a single word about it.” She picked up her wine and finished it, then groaned. “I guess it was so bad he wants to forget.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” I said.
She cackled. “Gee, what a vote of confidence.”
“Or he’s just…being responsible and doesn’t want to complicate things for his kid,” I said. I took a sip of my own wine. “God forbid a parent try to keep things professional.”
Delia reached across the table and prodded me. “And here I thought you didn’t want to talk about yourself tonight.”
“I’m not!” I protested. “I’m talking about responsible parenting.”
“Uh huh.” Delia refilled both our glasses. We were on our second bottle now…I was going to feel horrible tomorrow morning. “So responsible parenting is also why there were eleven dollars in your swear jar?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but she was absolutely onto me.
“After the fall festival,” she added pleasantly. “Which you attended. And so did Nash.”
“You’re drawing an awful lot of conclusions.”
“Mmhm, and I figured they mostly sounded like oh fuck, Nash, please, fuck yeah, fuck me in the—”
“Stop!” I said, both mortified and laughing hysterically. “I don’t…I wasn’t the one who was cursing, okay?”
Her jaw dropped. “Maggie—I was joking. You had sex in your classroom?!”
“Keep your voice down!”
“The only people here are tourists,” she said, gesturing to the restaurant. She was right—I didn’t see a single face I recognized. “Plus…I get to be loud about this, okay? You are a legend.”
“I’m really not.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” She snorted, shaking her head. “Okay. And then…you’re saying he was the irresponsible parents?”
“Well, yeah,” I shrugged. “He asked me out to dinner.”
“Oh, how awful,” she deadpanned. “I’m guessing you said…”
“I said no, of course,” I said. “I mean—I’m his daughter’s teacher and I just got out of a five-year relationship. It wouldn’t be fair to Nell or Bryce—”
“Aw, fuck Bryce,” she said. “Everything you’ve told me about the man suggests he’s trash.”
“He wasn’t trash!” I said. “Not the whole time.”
“But he doesn’t matter anyway,” she said. “Bryce isn’t really an issue here, right? It’s Nash who’s the issue…and you’re a for sure no on him, right?”
Well. I didn’t quite know.
But I said, “For sure, no.”
“So you need a distraction, yes?”
I scoffed. “I mean…no, I’ll be fine, I don’t constantly need a man—”
“What about him?”
I followed Delia’s gaze over to the bar, where there was a cute guy sitting with his friend. They were both sitting with their backs to the bar—leaning against it, talking, glancing over every so often.
I blushed and stared at my glass.
“Delia!”
“They’ve been giving us eyes for like almost an hour,” she said. “Tourists. Almost definitely. We could flirt a little, maybe you distract yourself with one of them and I get some too…”
“You’re actually disgusting.”
“I’m a genius,” she said.
She raised her hand higher—
“Don’t do it!” I warned her.
She did it.
She waved at the guys.
Why?
I stared at my wine glass as the two men pushed off the bar and walked toward our table. The wine was excellent. The decor was lovely. I was going to kill Delia Jones.
“Hi,” the taller one was saying. “Sorry to interrupt—we weren’t sure if you were waiting for people or—”
“Just us,” Delia said warmly. “Sit down. I’m Delia.”
“Jake.” He pulled out the chair beside her. His friend took the one beside me. “This is Connor.”
Connor was dark-haired, nice-faced. He was interested, I thought. Maybe? I really didn’t know, I hadn’t dated in five years, and before that I hadn’t really dated either, so—
“This is Maggie,” Delia said, gesturing at me. “You two just passing through or new in town?”
Jake smiled. “Here from Boston for a little frat reunion, actually—doing some fishing down at the lake, hiking around the falls…getting drunk.”
“You picked the right weekend for it,” Delia said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Foliage is peak right now.”
“It’s incredible,” Jake agreed. “We were up here last fall too but this is something else.” He looked around Summit & Vine appreciatively. “This place is great. Someone at the inn told us to try Rick’s next — you know it?”
“Rick’s is the best bar in town,” Delia said.
“It’s very local,” I said carefully.
“What’s the difference?” Connor asked, looking at me with that easy uncomplicated interest.
“Rick’s is—“ I paused. “It’s a dive. In a good way. Very Juniper Falls.”
“We should all go,” Delia said. “After this.”
I looked at her.
She looked back at me with an expression that could only be described as weaponized innocence.
“I have to teach tomorrow,” I said. “Kindergarten. Early.”
“That’s too bad,” Connor said, and he looked like he actually meant it, which was flattering in a completely low-stakes way. “We’re here through Sunday though.”
“Friday,” Delia said immediately, looking at Jake. “We were thinking of coming back here Friday if you wanted to meet up.”
Jake glanced at Connor. Connor glanced at me.
“Friday works,” he said.
I opened my mouth to say something sensible. Connor had a perfectly nice face. He wanted nothing complicated from me. He was leaving Sunday.
I said no for good reasons, I thought. Real reasons. That I still believe in.
“Friday works,” I said.
He smiled and pulled out his phone. I gave him my number as if I wanted anything to do with anyone but Garrison Nash, who was absolutely off-limits.
“One more round first though?” Jake asked, already flagging down the waiter.
“Obviously,” Delia said.
We stayed another forty minutes. Connor was easy to talk to — he asked questions and actually listened to the answers, which put him ahead of approximately half the men I’d encountered in my life.
He taught high school history in Boston.
He thought kindergarten sounded terrifying.
I told him about Owen Tate’s frog, which I was pretty sure now lived in the Juniper Hills Elementary bathroom, and he laughed.
It was nice.
Nice again.
At ten I put on my coat and meant it. School was real and Tuesday was tomorrow and I had already consumed enough pinot to make circle time feel ambitious.
“We’re going to Rick’s,” Delia said, standing, wrapping herself back into her wool thing effortlessly. “You sure you won’t come? Just one.”
I looked at her.
She looked back at me.
“I’m sure,” I said.
Then she hugged me—quick, warm, smelling like expensive perfume—and murmured in my ear: “Friday. Connor. Very normal. Very uncomplicated.”
“Goodnight, Delia,” I said.
She sailed out with Jake and Connor in her wake, all three of them disappearing into the October night in the direction of Rick’s Bar, while I stood on the sidewalk outside Summit & Vine for a moment.
The air was cold and smelled like woodsmoke.
The maples were dark shapes against the sky. Two blocks away, Rick’s light was on.
It was always on.
I turned and walked home.