Nothing To Write Home About
1. Monday
CHAPTER 1
MONDAY
M aggie McArthur had certainly found worse ways to stave off jetlag. The bartender’s teeth tugged at her lower lip as Maggie backed her slowly against the far wall of the single-stall restroom, jealous of the cool tile pressing up against the other woman’s skin. She’d forgotten how muggy June could get in North Carolina. It was barely sunset, and the air was still heavy with the heat of the day. The tank top she’d changed into when she’d dropped her suitcase at the hotel was already damp and clingy. She couldn’t wait to get it off.
Maggie let out her most encouraging hum and felt a strong denim shorts-clad thigh slip between her own. The pressure was a relief, like the first sip of water after a hard run. And, just like the first sip, it wasn’t enough. Maggie leaned into — was it Jo? — as she obligingly shifted her leg slightly to the left. Maggie’s hum of pleasure was involuntary this time. A pleasant surprise. She’d been pretty sure that the past twenty-four hours had left her an exhausted husk, able to feel only the very specific kind of impotent irritation that international air travel could evoke.
It had started out alright. She’d arrived at brU with a single carry-on suitcase and a personal item precisely an hour and a half before her flight, which should have been just long enough to get through security with time to spare for her pre-flight checklist: bathroom, coffee, three granola bars, pack of gum. Unfortunately, her precision scheduling was foiled by a mechanical delay on her flight from Brussels to Frankfurt, which made her miss her connection to JFK. Staying overnight wasn’t an option, so she accepted a rebooking to Newark — horrifying — where she had been shunted onto a shuttle — worse — to take her to JFK. She’d been deposited in Queens just in time for a refreshing sprint across the concourse to catch her final flight to Greenville-Spartanburg. After a bumpy landing, she’d hailed a cab fully intending to zone out for the hour-and-a-half drive across the state line to Asheville, but she hadn’t been home in so long that she’d forgotten what a terrible idea it was to wear her UNC sweatshirt…anywhere. The driver, it turned out, had a lot of opinions about basketball.
When she’d finally checked into her hotel, she showered, changed, and then, because it was still only 6 p.m. local time and letting herself pass out would only fuck her sleep schedule more, she dragged herself out into the world to find the nearest distraction.
That distraction was, just now, rather skillfully kissing her way along Maggie’s jaw. She tried to refocus on the feeling of the bartender’s mouth, warm and wet, sucking at a spot just beneath her ear. The least Maggie owed her for her assistance resetting Maggie’s internal clock was her full attention. Maggie pushed a hand into the woman’s messy top knot, but that caused a lock of sun-bleached hair to come loose in a way that was, while objectively very sexy, subjectively tickling her collarbone. She moved to brush it away and was caught off-guard when — possibly Drew? — took the opportunity to push off the wall and flip their positions.
That was usually Maggie’s move.
She really preferred when it was her move.
She had been right, though, about the chill of the subway tile against her own bare shoulders. Glorious.
It also brought with it a flash of deja vu — another tile wall, another body pressed against hers. God had that only been a week ago? Two? Her life had been such a whirlwind since then that time itself seemed to have been swept away in the chaos.
Maggie hated chaos.
The bartender was scraping her teeth down Maggie’s neck. Maggie tried to let the familiar weight of another body ground her in the moment, to let the sensation of the tongue tracing a line from her clavicle to the tip of her shoulder wash over her.
Regrettably, Maggie wasn’t very good at just letting things wash over her, even at times when her entire life hadn’t just been unceremoniously upended. In the washing-over metaphor, Maggie preferred to be the wave. It was hardly her fault that things just worked out better when she was in charge. Take this very moment, for example. The week ahead was going to be enough of a comedy of errors. She didn’t need to wake up in the morning with a glaring hickey on a day thirty degrees too hot to justify a scarf. Maggie knew her strengths, and seamlessly blending foundation wasn’t one of them.
So Maggie flipped their positions back. The move lacked creativity, but this was a public restroom, and there were no other surfaces she was interested in touching. She reached for the bartender’s belt and paused for a moment, hands on the buckle, looking down into the other woman’s face. Her eyes were a mottled hazel, and her skin warmed by long days out in the sun. Maggie wondered, briefly, what she did when she wasn’t tending bar on a slow Monday night.
Maybe-Sam rolled her hips impatiently. Maggie didn’t take direction particularly well in any area of her life, and especially in this one, but she made an exception and moved to undo the metal buckle. Just this once.
She had the belt hanging loose when a phone began to chime. The sound was muffled, coming from inside the small backpack she’d hung on the wall hook while she’d waited for whatever-her-name-was to follow her into the single stall.
“Send it to voicemail.”
Maggie released the button on the jean shorts and took a step back. “It’s an alarm.”
“Snooze it.” The bartender was looking at Maggie with an expression that could only be described as rakish, even with the shrilly cheerful alarm providing the world’s worst mood music.
“I don’t snooze alarms.” And regardless, she was, suddenly and all at once, utterly exhausted. The alarm had apparently summoned back the heaviness she had managed to briefly banish from her limbs after thirty hours of travel.
“You don’t snooze alarms,” the bartender deadpanned.
“As a rule.” The tune echoed off the walls as Maggie pulled her clunky old phone, the one she used stateside, from her bag, making the sound almost unbearable. She’d used the alarm tone she always set, the one that most grated on her nerves, which she chose as an extra precaution against the temptation to hit snooze. She couldn’t stomach having to hear it twice.
When Maggie looked up, the other woman was eyeing her incredulously.
“It’s my bedtime,” Maggie offered.
The bartender, whose name Maggie supposed was no longer relevant, glanced at her sporty wristwatch as she re-buckled her belt. “It’s 8 o’clock.”
Maggie turned to the mirror, fluffed her curls, and grabbed a paper towel to wipe away the telltale chapstick smears along her jaw. “This was fun.”
The door closed behind her with a satisfying snick as she headed for the exit, digging for her wallet in the backpack she had slung over a single shoulder. She paused at the hostess stand and held out a ten to a dark-haired woman in all black who looked up from her phone with a bored expression. “Will you do me a favor and buy a beer for…” Fuck, now the bartender’s name was actually relevant.
The hostess glanced back at the still-unattended, and fortunately empty, bar. Maggie thought she saw her lips twitch in amusement as she took the cash. “Drew.”
“For Drew.”
Then Maggie headed out into the cooling night…where a mosquito promptly tried to make a meal of her and met its death on her forearm. She was back in North Carolina, alright.