Chapter 31 The Tears
THE TEARS
MAGGIE
There had been many times that I walked into The Comfy Cushion crying over a boy, but the fact that this might be my last made me cry even harder.
Even after Zeke received orders to leave Korea, we probably wouldn’t be moving back to this area.
I didn’t know much about the military or how they decided where we would go, but it seemed unlikely that we would come right back to where we stared.
Although what had Celeste told me her mom used to say?
Something about life coming full circle or some shit. Maybe ours would, too.
Still, it was with a heavy heart that I spied my best friend and soul sister behind the counter of her beloved diner.
She stood with her profile to me, talking to Jesse on the grill line while she filled the napkin dispensers at the counter.
Her frizzy brown hair sat in a tangled knot atop her head that I immediately wanted to brush out and plait.
How the hell could I handle an international move without my best friend?
Jesse noticed me first, doing that weird head nod that all guys did rather than communicate in a way that anybody else could understand. Celeste turned and immediately rushed over.
“Maggie, honey, what’s wrong?” She pulled out a chair for me at the closest table and gently pushed me into it.
The tears returned, leaking out of the corners of my eyes like a broken faucet.
I couldn’t tell her about Spencer and I didn’t want to admit out loud how vile Diana had become.
Doing so would only make it that much more real.
Plus, if this would be my last time seeing Celeste for a while, I didn’t want to spend my remaining little time whining about my egg donor.
“I got married,” I whispered. Even with all the sadness in my heart, I couldn’t stop the smile that broke across my face at any mention of Zeke.
Celeste’s mouth formed the perfect O in disbelief. “Excuse me, you did what, now?”
I hiccupped out a laugh as the tears came faster. “It’s true. I’m now Mrs. Maggie Hayes.”
She slowly sank into the chair across from me. “I knew you liked him, but doesn’t that seem a bit drastic? You only just met the guy last week, Maggie.”
Nodding, I grabbed her hands, twining our fingers together on the table. Her nails still held the chipped polish from my last manicure attempt. I had to repress another laugh. Celeste probably didn’t even notice her nails had polish on them.
“I really like him, Cee,” I whispered. “There’s something special about him, I can feel it.”
Her response solidified why she was my best friend and would remain so until the end of time. “I like him, too. Hayes is a good man.”
I shot her a grateful, watery smile. “That’s not the big news I have to share,” I admitted.
Celeste chuckled. “Well it’s too soon for you to be pregnant!”
My best friend joking about babies didn’t hurt the way my mother’s accusations did. Celeste would never hold a pregnancy against me, the same way I never held her pregnancy against her.
“He has orders to Korea. We leave tomorrow,” I explained sadly.
Her shoulders drooped and her hands left mine as she drew them back into her lap. “You’re leaving?” she whimpered.
I felt like I slapped a homeless person. Her voice sounded so small and fragile, which only made me cry harder.
“Yeah. But we can video chat every day! I won’t have any friends over there, and I don’t know about getting a job anymore, so…it’ll be exactly as it is right now.” I laughed halfheartedly, though there was nothing funny about it.
“Except you’ll be in a different time zone,” reasoned Celeste. “And we don’t know when I’ll ever see you in person again.”
My bottom lip quivered. I didn’t want to bust out the full on sobs, but I couldn’t exactly stop it if she kept saying things like that.
“You’ll see me again,” I promised. “It’s not like you could ever get rid of me.”
Celeste cocked her head to the side as she considered me and the situation at hand. “Do you love him?” she asked.
That got the tears to quit. Where the hell had that come from?
“Cee, we’re still in the ‘infatuation’ stage and things don’t happen overnight.”
“Just marriages,” she deadpanned. It was so reminiscent of Wesley that I nearly turned around to look for him.
I sighed. There was no way to explain this where she wouldn’t think I sounded crazy. Although as far as I knew, Celeste didn’t have any special pull with the local looney bin. “He got orders to Korea and neither one of us were ready for this to be over before it really began.”
A knowing smirk crossed her face. “Perfectly logical.”
“I mean it!” I argued, rolling my eyes.
“I mean it, too.”
“Celeste!”
“Mrs. Hayes!”
Hearing that made me blush. I didn’t want to examine the way my heart fluttered at my new name. “We had no choice,” I insisted.
Celeste’s smirk grew wider. “You could’ve dated long distance.”
“But then we’d never see each other!”
“An utter travesty.”
I sighed. “I can’t talk to you if you can’t take this seriously.”
She let out a dramatic sigh, mocking mine. “I can’t talk to you if you can’t admit the truth.”
Stubbornly, I clamped my mouth shut and refused to say another word. She grinned at me like the Chesire Cat finding Alice in another conundrum. After several minutes where I wouldn’t budge, Celeste sighed for real.
“Maggie, I don’t know why you’re so afraid of falling in love, but listen to me when I say that it doesn’t take a genius to recognize there’s something between you and Hayes.
Maybe you’re just not ready to call it like everybody sees it, but I promise you, that’s what this is.
You love him. And he loves you, too, so it’s not like you’re doing this alone. ”
“He doesn’t love me.” I rolled my eyes again at her ridiculous speculations. “We just don’t want to be away from each other.”
Celeste nodded thoughtfully for a moment before standing to go back to work.
“Kind of like how Wes and I never wanted to be away from each other, hmm?” Her green eyes dulled, as they always did whenever she mentioned her ex, but her words had the desired effect.
They were the only couple I had ever seen who were well and truly in love. Nobody could deny it.
That didn’t mean Zeke and I were the same. No, it couldn’t be love. Not even close.
Could it?