Chapter 11 Maggie
Maggie
“Four days,” he said. “I’ll call every night.”
“I know.”
He kissed me, quick, very public-appropriate, nothing like the kiss by the Charles, and then he was walking down the jetway, turning once to wave, and then he was gone.
I stood there for longer than I should have, watching the plane taxi away from the gate. Four days, counting today, until he came back, the day before Valentine’s Day. The math kept running in my head, a countdown I couldn’t stop, every moment measured against an endpoint I was trying to rewrite.
The plane lifted off into the gray morning sky, and I turned and walked back through the terminal alone.
Something shifted as I walked. Not physical—nothing I could point to or measure—but a feeling, like a door closing softly behind me.
Jack was going to New York. He was going to talk about the job he’d been dreaming of his whole life, and whatever he decided in that building would rearrange the future like a hand sweeping pieces across a chessboard.
My future. His future. And somewhere in the city behind me, a woman named Rebecca was waking up to a life that had already changed because of me.
Jack had ended things with her—gently, honestly, the way he did everything, but the ending had started the moment I’d walked back into his life.
She’d handled it with more grace than I deserved.
I hope she’s worth it, she’d said. I still wasn’t sure I was.
I thought about Rebecca’s gallery opening.
About the career she was building, the life she was constructing piece by careful piece, now without the man she’d been quietly hoping might stay.
In another version of this story, the one where I’d never come back, where I’d stayed in 2014 with my corner office and my empty apartment, Rebecca might have been the one standing at this gate.
Might have been the one who Jack kissed goodbye.
She might have been the one he called every night from a hotel room in Manhattan.
They might have built something steady and good together, the kind of relationship that lasted because neither person asked too much of the other.
But I was here. And Rebecca was somewhere across the city, adjusting to a future she hadn’t chosen. And the door that had closed behind her was one I’d pushed shut.
I spent the day wandering. Not aimlessly, I had destinations, a private pilgrimage to places that lived only in my memory.
The bookstore on Newbury Street, the one with the creaky floors and the owner who recommended obscure French novels.
It would close in a few years, though I could no longer remember the exact date, driven out by rising rents.
The knowledge sat heavy as I browsed the shelves, running my fingers along spines that had maybe ten good years left.
The diner on Boylston, the one with the red vinyl booths and the pie case by the register.
In the future, it would be a Starbucks. Then the Starbucks would close and become something else, and that something else would close too, and eventually nobody would remember that there’d once been a place here where you could get coffee and eggs for two dollars and sit for hours without anyone asking you to leave.
I ordered coffee. Sat in a booth by the window watching people go about their day.
The record store was last. Nuggets, on Commonwealth Ave, cramped and cluttered and presided over by a guy with a ponytail who looked like he’d been there since 1972.
The cassette section was in the back, and I flipped through plastic cases until I found it.
The Joshua Tree. U2. I remembered loving this album, playing it until the tape wore thin, memorizing every word of “With or Without You.”
I bought it for $7.99. A piece of my time here to carry with me, however long I stayed.
I was on Newbury Street, walking back toward the T, when I saw her.
Rebecca.
She was coming out of a gallery with a portfolio case slung over her shoulder.
No smile this time, just the focused expression of someone moving through her day, rebuilding the architecture of a life that had shifted under her feet.
She looked good, though. Steady. The kind of woman who absorbed a blow and kept walking.
I should have kept going. Should have ducked into a doorway or suddenly become fascinated by a window display. Instead, I froze on the sidewalk, watching her adjust her scarf against the wind, and felt something cold settle in my chest.
She was beautiful. Not in an obvious way, not magazine-cover perfect, but in a way that mattered more.
Confident, comfortable in her own skin, the kind of woman who knew what she wanted and went after it.
Her dark hair was windblown yet she didn’t seem to care.
Her coat was practical, boots sensible, her whole presence suggesting someone who had better things to do than worry about appearances.
No wonder Jack had started dating her. No wonder he’d nearly moved on.
Rebecca glanced across the street, a casual sweep, the kind of look you give your surroundings when you’re waiting to cross, and spotted me.
Recognition. A flicker of something complicated. Then she lifted her chin slightly and crossed the street toward me.
Oh no. Oh no no no.
“Maggie.” She stopped in front of me, portfolio case bumping against her hip. Not a question. Just my name, spoken with the careful neutrality of someone who’d already decided how this conversation would go.
“Rebecca. Hi.” My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.
She studied me for a moment, the way a photographer studies a subject, not with hostility, but with a kind of professional assessment. Measuring. Deciding.
“He’s in New York,” she said. “I heard through a mutual friend. The Times.”
“Yeah. He left this morning.”
“Good for him.” She said it simply, and I couldn’t tell if she meant it or if the simplicity was its own kind of armor. “He’s been wanting that for a long time.”
An awkward silence bloomed between us. Two women on a Newbury Street sidewalk, the wind snapping at their coats, connected by a man who wasn’t there.
“I want you to know,” I said, the words tumbling out before I could second-guess them, “that I’m sorry. For how things happened. You didn’t deserve—”
“Don’t.” Rebecca held up a hand, not unkindly. “I appreciate the impulse, but please don’t apologize to me for being the person he chose. That’s worse than not apologizing at all.”
I closed my mouth.
“He was honest with me,” she said. “That night at dinner. He sat across from me and told me the truth, which is more than most men would do. I respect that about him. I respected it even while I was hating it.” A ghost of a smile.
“Three weeks. That’s all we had. Not enough time to build anything real, but enough to know what we might have built. And that’s the part that stings.”
“Rebecca—”
“I’m fine.” The smile solidified into something more definite.
“I am. I have a gallery showing next month, and a commission from a magazine, and a life that doesn’t depend on Jack choosing me.
I just—” She paused, adjusted the portfolio strap on her shoulder.
“I wanted to say something to you, and I wasn’t sure I’d get the chance. ”
I braced myself.
“Don’t waste it.” Her voice was quiet but firm.
“Whatever it cost to get here, whatever it cost him, whatever it cost me, don’t you dare waste it.
Be the person he thinks you are. Because he ended something good for the possibility of something better, and if you turn out to be just another version of the woman who kept pushing him away—”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to.
“I won’t,” I said. “I promise.”
“Good.” She stepped back. “I should go. I have a meeting with a curator.” She looked at me one more time, and I saw it clearly now, not anger, not even sadness, but the exhaustion of someone who’d processed a loss and come out the other side. “Good luck, Maggie.”
She walked away, portfolio case swinging against her hip, and I stood there on the sidewalk feeling the weight of a debt I could never repay. Not just to Rebecca, but to all the people whose lives were shifting and changing because I’d been selfish enough to want a second chance.
Don’t waste it.
I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Not after what it had cost.
The wind picked up as I pulled my coat tighter and headed for the T, the cassette tape heavy in my pocket, Rebecca’s words heavy in my chest.
Diane was getting ready when I got home, her hair in hot rollers, mascara wand in hand, but she stopped when she saw my face.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Jack left for New York.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I’m fine.”
She set down the mascara. Crossed her arms. Gave me the look that she’d perfected sometime around sophomore year of college, the one that said I see through your bullshit and I still love you.
“You’re not fine. You’re doing that thing where you pretend to be fine so no one worries about you.” She glanced at the clock. “Robbie can wait. Movies?”
“You don’t have to—”
“That new one with Steve Martin. Roxanne. I’ve been wanting to see it.”
I should have argued. Should have told her to go to Robbie’s, should have insisted I was capable of spending a Sunday afternoon alone without falling apart.
But the truth was, I didn’t want to be alone.
The truth was, the city felt too big without him in it, the countdown in my head was too loud, and I needed my best friend more than I needed to pretend I didn’t.
“Okay,” I said. “Let me change.”
The movie was exactly what I needed. Silly and sweet, Steve Martin with a prosthetic nose falling in love with Daryl Hannah, big romantic gestures and witty dialogue and the kind of happy ending that only exists in movies.
We ate popcorn, laughed at the jokes, did normal best friend things, and for two hours I forgot about timelines and countdowns and photographs that were fading in my pocket.