36. Wednesday
CHAPTER 36
WEDNESDAY
T omorrow began like Daniel’s mornings had for weeks now, except that the day dawned cloudier than usual for early August, and Maggie seemed almost suspiciously cheerful. Her smile was bright, and there was an extra bounce in her step as she sprinted up Whippoorwill Hill.
Was she happy that the summer session was coming to an end, that she could get back to the life in London she talked about so rarely but seemed so tethered to the idea of? He had a sudden vision of Maggie striding past buildings older than the United States, clutching a to-go coffee, and half-yelling into her cellphone to be heard over traffic, a sea of black taxis all driving on the wrong side of the street. Yes, he was very nice , she said, rolling her eyes in response to her mother’s questioning (he was pretty sure her mother had liked him) but it wasn’t the sort of thing you keep up long distance .
Maggie won their race handily, and on the jog back to the trailhead, Daniel considered begging off coffee and heading back to Oak Ridge. He wanted, uncharacteristically, to be alone.
In the end, he followed Maggie back to the cottage. He was fine. There was no reason he shouldn’t be. This was casual, it had always been casual. Maggie was leaving soon. And she seemed happy. And he was fine.
As soon as they crossed the threshold, Maggie spun him around, pressed his back into the door and kissed him fiercely. He kissed her back, of course, because he loved the taste of her and the way it mixed with the tang of sweat after a hard run, and because he was fine. He could feel her smiling against his lips.
Daniel had never before had trouble sharing in a friend’s happiness, and he wasn’t sure what to do with the now undeniable fact that Maggie’s joy felt like rejection.
She pulled away, grinning. “I have news.”
“News?” he repeated, bracing.
“I’m staying.”
Daniel’s brain must have misfired because he had definitely heard her, but he couldn’t quite process the words. “You’re…what?”
“I’m taking the Events Coordinator position.” She stepped away, and moved to the kitchen, busying herself with the business of brewing coffee. Daniel didn’t follow. He felt rooted to the ground.
“You asked me what I wanted, and I…didn’t know.” She was talking to the cabinets now, pulling down the coffee, measuring it out into the filter. “Three months ago, a career change—I wouldn’t have entertained it. I don’t think anyone else would have suggested it, either.” She raised her voice to be heard over the faucet as she filled the plastic reservoir. “But suddenly a lot of people were suggesting it.” She closed the lid, plugged in the machine, and flipped the switch. “You asked me what I wanted and…” She turned to face him. “Now I know.”
It took a lot for Maggie to admit to uncertainty. About anything. And here she was, volunteering that she hadn’t known something as fundamental as what she, herself, wanted.
Telling him that she was staying. Here. With him.
There would be more races, more coffee, maybe another chance to see what she could do with a necktie.
She was staying.
His thoughts were so frenzied he couldn’t think of anything to say at all. So, instead, he crossed the room in three strides, and he kissed her. Because now he really was fine. He was, maybe, even better than fine. Maggie was staying. She wanted to stay. And she wanted him.
When they broke for air, her expression had turned hungry. “So, I guess we can keep doing this.” She kissed him again, brief and full of promise, before sliding her hand into his and slipping out from where he’d had her pinned against the counter to pull him toward the shower.
He didn’t follow. Letting her get as far away as their two arms would allow before his weight tugged her back to him like a yoyo.
“Doing…this?” He could only repeat it.
“This,” she said, and kissed him again. She seemed to think he was teasing.
He wasn’t teasing. But what was he doing?
“I can’t.” He knew it was true as soon as he heard himself say it.
Maggie dropped his hand. “You can’t what?”
“I can’t keep doing this. Whatever ‘this’ is. If you’re staying. I can’t do it.”
Maggie took a step away, expression suddenly wary. “Why not?”
“Because,” Daniel took a breath and forced himself to meet her eyes. “I like you.”
“You caught feelings.” She said it with something close to disdain. Daniel felt the hope he’d been holding on to slip away.
“I didn’t ‘catch feelings.’ They’re not a disease.”
“Medical science is constantly evolving.”
He ran a hand over his face. “Jesus, Maggie, I like you. I don’t have syphilis.”
“Too bad. Some antibiotics would clear that right up.” She pushed past him to the kitchen like she urgently needed a mug of the freshly brewed coffee. She couldn’t look at him.
“Can you stop for one minute and listen?” She paused, but kept her back to him. “I like you. I like you a lot, actually. And I think you like me, too.”
“We had a deal, Becker. This was supposed to be casual. You knew that. You agreed to that.”
That wasn’t a no. “I’m not saying you defrauded me. I’m saying I want to…renegotiate.”
She turned around. “Well, I don’t.”
They stared at one another for what felt like an age. Maggie’s face was blank, but he could see hurt behind her green eyes.
Daniel was suddenly furious. If she didn’t want him, that was one thing. But to pretend that she was, somehow, above the concept of feelings. That the fact that he wasn’t was a form of weakness. Fuck that.
“Fine,” he said too calmly.
“Fine?”
“You’re scared.”
“I am not.”
“You’re scared of taking a risk.”
“Taking a risk ? I am burning down the career I’ve spent the past ten years building to stay here in the woods to run a summer camp. That is a risk. A real one. With consequences. You are not a risk, Becker. You’re just some guy I’ve known for two months who happens to be a pretty good fuck.”
Bullseye. In two sentences Maggie had slipped an arrow between his ribs and right into his beating heart. You had to admire the efficiency.
“Just some guy.” Not even friends. Maybe they never had been.
“Daniel, we’re not…” The betrayal on his face must have sapped away some of her anger. She spoke more quietly now. “This is nothing.”
That might be, strictly speaking, accurate. But it wasn’t actually true. They’d never talked about it. Not since that first night. They’d never said it was something. But it certainly wasn’t nothing.
“Tell yourself whatever you need to, but refusing to acknowledge this dumb fucking thing we’ve been doing all summer doesn’t make it disappear.” He was, all at once, exhausted. Hollowed out. He turned to head for the front door.
“Well,” Maggie’s tone was subarctic. “if I’m a coward in denial, it sounds like you really dodged a bullet, Becker.”
It felt like exactly the opposite, like he’d taken a bullet to the already open wound in his chest. “Maybe I did.”
He left before he bled out onto the cottage floor. Before he said anything else that he couldn’t take back. Because, in spite of everything, whatever was left of his stupid heart still believed that there would be a day when he would want to know Maggie again.
The door slammed behind him as he stepped out onto the porch. It was barely 7:30 a.m. Blue Harbor was still sleeping. Birds chirped in the trees all around him. It was shockingly peaceful, after all the carnage. Almost unbearably so.
Daniel made his way back to his truck on autopilot. What had he done? Jesus. He tried to figure out how they’d gotten there, playing the conversation over and over, in snippets, in chunks, until all he could hear was Maggie’s voice quietly saying, “This is nothing.”
Daniel was on his third episode of Diners, Drive Ins, & Dives and his second jar of pickles when Drew cut him off. She unceremoniously snatched the kosher dills out of his hand and replaced them with a Nalgene bottle. He looked at her with what he hoped was an expression of deep betrayal, but all she said was, “Between the sodium content and the crying, you need to hydrate. You can have them back in a minute.”
The end of the summer was hectic, and he’d managed to distract himself for most of the day with paperwork and camper departure logistics and the surprising amount of crepe paper that needed to be hung in the gym for Saturday’s final social, which was Prom themed. He’d drawn the line at making an appearance at dinner. He was exhausted, and, while he usually loved mealtimes, he didn’t think he could take it. So, instead, he’d hopped in his truck and driven to Drew’s, where he promptly made a nest on her lumpy old roadside-find couch. One look at his face and she’d gotten someone to cover her shift, then headed to the side of her studio garage apartment that legally qualified as the kitchen. She had, apparently, actually gone ahead and stocked her chronically empty shelves with a lifetime supply of his favorite brand of pickles. She began to lay them out neatly in groupings according to variety all along the counter. Her certainty that this was where he’d end up was a little demoralizing, but he did appreciate the gesture.
Satisfied with Daniel’s fluid intake, Drew flopped back onto the couch with an insouciant athletic grace.
“So do you want to tell me what happened?” she asked, kicking her feet up onto the coffee table.
He didn’t particularly want to tell her, but he did want her to know, and, since LiveJournal had long ago transitioned from middle school angst forum to Russian-owned social media conglomerate, he could only think of one way to accomplish that. So he told her.
When he finished, she handed him back the jar of pickles and said, “I want you to know that, because I realize this is partly my fault, I am refraining from saying I told you so.”
“I think the pickles said it for you,” Daniel pointed out as he crunched on a fresh dill.
“Don’t chew with your mouth open.” She twisted to punch him gently on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Danny.”
“For what?”
“For saying what you wanted. Not just going with the flow. Was there maybe a better way to phrase a thing or two? No one’s perfect. And you were blindsided. Hashtag Team Daniel.”
“I don’t think there are teams.”
“There are always teams. Now eat your pickles.” She reached across him for the remote and unmuted the TV. “We’re drowning your sorrows in Flavortown.”
An hour or so later, Guy Fieri was “checking out an empanada empire” somewhere in Texas when Drew’s doorbell rang.
Daniel fished between the cushions for the remote to mute the TV. “Did you order food?”
“In a sense,” she said, heading for the door.
“Privet!” Chuck boomed from the exterior staircase.
“Hey there.” And that was Jake.
Drew stepped aside and the men entered, carrying enough Chuck Wagon bags and to-go containers to sustain the four of them for at least a week should a zombie apocalypse begin that very evening.
Daniel glanced at Drew, who shrugged and shut the door behind everyone. Chuck and Jake busied themselves laying out some sort of barbecue buffet on the kitchen counter.
“What did you tell them?” Daniel mouthed.
“I didn’t tell them anything!” Drew very much did not mouth back. “Jake texted me to say they were heading over.”
“The whole world knows,” Chuck said over his shoulder as he artfully arranged a stack of cornbread next to a Tupperware full of collard greens.
“I was real sorry to hear, Becker. We were rooting for you,” Jake said with a sympathetic smile in Daniel’s direction.
“I am still rooting. Maggie, she is a tough nut to crack, but I think you should not give up just yet. When Jake first met Chuck?—”
Jake cleared his throat and, reaching for one of the paper bags he’d carried in, produced what appeared to be a handle of vodka.
“Ah yes,” Chuck said, neatly distracted from his anecdote. “Now is a time to talk. Now is a time to drink.” Glancing at the row of jars lining the counter, he added, “Good. You have enough pickles.”
* * *
Maggie started feeling nauseous almost immediately after Daniel walked out the door. Her hands and feet were icy even though it was already eighty degrees, as if her body were in fight or flight mode trying to protect her vital organs.
She spent the next hour more or less where he’d left her, staring into space. There was so much that needed to happen and she couldn’t bring herself to do any of it. She needed to wrap up the summer session. She needed to get things moving full steam ahead on planning and construction. She needed to not think about Daniel Becker and the things he’d said and the things she’d said back and the look on his face like she’d grown an extra arm and then punched him with it.
She somehow managed to make it to and through her meeting with Jordan to officially agree to their terms and hire them on as next season’s Camp Director. Then she went for a drive. She blasted her early 2000’s playlist and scream-sang along, but she kept remembering Daniel’s stupid thoughtful car snacks and his stupid perfectly-timed audiobooks and the tin of mints he’d quietly handed her after every time they’d had to pull over so that she could throw up on the side of the road, and the thoughts buzzed around her head too loudly for even Meredith Brooks and Natalie Imbruglia and *NSync to drown out. So she gave up and called Teddy instead. At least she could get some work done.
That night, Maggie hardly slept at all. At some point she got so desperate to end the constant whir of her brain that she went to curl up on the couch with Parton, hoping his steady snoring would help her drift off. She finally fell asleep just as the sun was coming up.