Chapter 38
THEN: MAGGIE
“You’re sure?” Damien asked, his big deep brown eyes searching. Maggie knew he was looking for a sign that she wasn’t fully on board. But the thing was, this felt like the best case scenario for her, it always had.
“Damien, I’m gay, you’re gay,” she said laughing, amazed at how easily she could say those words to him. She had only ever been able to share with Diana and Julia. She never thought there would be anyone else.
“Right so, I mean, but like, we’d still be married, we’d still have to pretend to be in love.”
“Well I do love you, so much,” Maggie said, and she meant it.
These past two years of hanging with Damien had been everything.
She’d never felt so light and so safe with anyone outside of Diana and Julia before.
And now, she had this man, who she knew she was safe with.
What more could she ever even dare to dream for?
“I know, and I love you too, but I mean, we aren’t in love, not that way.”
“Well, neither are my parents,” Maggie said dryly, and Damien’s laugh shook the twin bed they were currently snuggled up on. They often hung out like this, especially since Damien had a single.
“Fair point, fair point.” Damien stopped talking and then looked deep into Maggie.
That was the only way she could describe the way this man was able to look at her.
Right down to her core. She knew what he was thinking about and urging her to think about, too.
All the things they could be giving up, missing out on.
Things they’d never be able to fully give each other, or anyone else they met along the way.
The purgatory they were agreeing to live in, together.
Maggie nodded in understanding but truthfully, this still was her best-case scenario, and she knew it was Damien’s.
“Tell me about her? About Diana?”
Maggie felt the corners of her lips turn up. “Why, you already have heard me talk about her enough.”
“Yeah, but I have never been in love with someone who loved me back, and I just, I like hearing what it's like. I like hearing the way you talk about her, I like the look on your face when you do.”
Maggie’s heart sank. While she considered her situation with Diana to be somewhat torturous, tragic even, she realized that for Damien, she’d had something he’d only ever dreamed of.
And her heart hurt for her friend, the man she loved; her heart hurt for the possibility of him not getting that in life.
Because though it was short-lived, and Maggie had cut it way too short, she held on to those years of high school like a talisman in the dark.
Damien quietly lay beside her, his eyes on the ceiling above them as she went through her time with Diana when they were younger, and how much she thought they’d changed, based on the emails they sent back and forth.
Diana was getting ready to graduate and she had been dating that guy Gavin this whole time.
She had been vague about the details of their relationship, but Maggie knew if Mrs. Blake had it her way, the two of them would get married.
Maggie explained the dynamics for Damien, sharing that she knew Diana would agree to marry Gavin if she felt like she had to, because it would take the pressure off Julia and allow her to live a life with less scrutiny from their mother.
“But she isn’t like us, right? She likes both?” Damien said at one point during Maggie's ramblings.
“Yeah,” Maggie said, her throat going dry at the thought of Diana actually being into Gavin. But then she smiled as she often did when thinking of Diana and said, “Or as Diana would say, ‘all.’”
Damien laughed at that. “Lucky,” he said sadly.
Maggie thought it was a blessing for Diana, that she could love whomever she chose to, whomever she was attracted to.
Maggie wished she could love Damien the way she loved Diana.
She had tried countless times to will her heart to do it.
To will her body to crave him the way she feared it always would Diana.
Maggie knew that Damien had spent the majority of his life trying to do the same for not only her, but so many girls and women before her.
Damien had told her he’d liked boys since middle school, perhaps grade school if he thought about it.
It was his parents’ church that had told him it was wrong, and it was every boys’ locker room that had cemented that fact.
So he learned how to hide, how to pretend, how to gaze at boobs when his friends showed him pictures of hot singers and actresses.
He had taken to praying every night that he’d wake up and find any woman attractive.
But he hadn’t. That’s when he stopped believing in prayer apparently.
What kind of God would just leave him in his sin?
Damien often said he didn’t know what he believed in now.
He didn’t think anything was wrong with him anymore, but he also knew how his family had reacted when he’d tried to come out to them.
His grandparents, namely his grandfather, were in the camp that still believed the AIDS virus was God’s wrath for being gay.
But, as Damien pointed out, not only gay people contracted AIDS, and he didn’t magically get it one day as he was led to believe he would.
Lastly, Damien refused to believe there was a higher power that would give something like that to kids who hadn’t even gotten to know whether or not they were gay or whatever else.
He’d taken enough science in his major to know, diseases came from microorganisms, and not a bearded entity in the sky.
“You think you’ll always love her?” Damien asked once Maggie had finished.
“I mean, she’s the only true love I’ve ever had, and I feel like, yeah, a part of me will. A part of me feels like I had it then and only then, you know? I am not sure how I’d have it with someone else now.”
Damien was quiet for a long time before he said, “I mean we don’t have to, I mean–in secret, other people?”
Maggie considered this. The thing was, she didn’t care what Damien got up to, as long as he was safe and never put her at risk.
But she had always been a person who didn’t even think she liked sex and romance—until she met Diana.
It was like she was a lock only Diana had been able to fit.
She supposed down the road she could, but she knew she wouldn’t seek anyone else out as long as she remained fixated on Diana, and she had no idea when that would die out.
“Look, as long as you’re safe and you keep us safe, I don’t care. But it is unlikely for me. I don’t want anyone finding out, I don’t want you to lose out on your inheritance because of a mistake anyway. Besides, I think it's hard to move forward with someone new while I am still looking back.”
Damien nodded and then leaned over to plant a quick kiss on her forehead. “We do deserve to be happy Maggie, I know that, and I get that. I do. I don’t want to be found out either. So then, if we can’t have that, we will make the best of this, right?”
Maggie smiled and nodded. Then a thought occurred to her, one that felt awkward but also safe because of who she was talking to.
“There is one thing,” Maggie said, her mouth going somewhat dry.
“What? Anything, tell me.”
“I kinda, well, I have always wanted to be a mom,” Maggie said. And it was true, it felt selfish considering what they were discussing, but at the same time, she knew she would love her child way better than her parents ever did her.
“You mean like,” he made a wave of his hand between the two of them.
“Yeah I know, it’s kinda fucked but we could adopt or,” Maggie said, feeling her face go red and her mouth even dryer.
Maybe it was an absurd thing to bring up.
But if they were planning out their future, she wanted to be clear about things she wanted, things she had always envisioned for herself.
Things she still wanted to try to have because it was clear the other things she desperately wanted she couldn’t.
There was a long silence.
“Damien, seriously, I mean we can adopt, I mean, I’ve never and god it might be—”
“For you, I would do it, Maggie. For you, I would.” Damien said seriously, and his dark eyes found hers.
She couldn’t find a flicker of fear, disgust, pain, or trepidation.
“It might be awkward and it might be gross, I don’t know, but the truth is I love you, you are the closest thing to a real wife I will ever have.
And truthfully? I have always wanted kids, too.
” He smiled at her. “We will figure it out, and well, adoption is always an option, but we also have the tools for free, right? Let’s just see how things go. ”
Maggie smiled, feeling relieved but still on edge. Okay, she was really agreeing to this.
“So, after graduation?” Maggie asked, holding out her hand so her fingertips brushed Damien’s chest.
“After graduation, let’s get married.” And he took her hand and shook it before they both lost it in a fit of nervous laughter.