39. Saturday （Actually）
CHAPTER 39
SATURDAY (ACTUALLY)
D aniel never responded to the calendar invite. He wasn’t sure he was going to show up until the moment he crossed the threshold of the Oak Ridge Gymnasium. There’d been significantly more decorating since he’d helped with the crepe paper days earlier. It looked like a Party City had been picked up by a tornado and dropped onto the middle of the basketball court.
But aside from the hundreds and hundreds of balloons and streamers and strings of fairy lights, the cavernous room was empty.
Maggie hadn’t come.
He hadn’t thought his heart could break any further without requiring actual medical attention, but he’d been wrong. The pounding ache filled his chest in a way that made it hard to breathe. It felt like there wasn’t room for anything else. Not even air.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been for Maggie McArthur to miss her own meeting.
“You came.”
He turned to see Maggie stepping out of the shadow of a silver and gold balloon arch that bumped up against the nearer of the basketball hoops. She was wearing a shiny slim-cut dress with thin straps covered in a black and white zebra print pattern with bubblegum pink accents and holding a matching bubblegum pink handbag. It was perfectly horrible. She looked beautiful. He wondered, briefly, whether she’d gotten her parents to mail her actual prom ensemble for the occasion.
He felt the tiniest little spark of something like hope.
“I came.” He was still standing just in front of the now-closed double doors, barely inside the room. The heavy wood at his back felt like a security blanket. He couldn’t make himself step any farther into the space.
“I didn’t know if you would.” The fingers on her empty hand were tapping out a nervous pattern against her thigh.
“Neither did I.”
“But here you are.”
Daniel didn’t know how to respond. Here he was.
“You look nice,” she offered.
Daniel was dressed for the social, too, in another Goodwill special: black suit pants, a cream jacket over a white shirt, and a black bowtie.
“Thanks.” The air between them felt thick, cluttered with everything they’d said to each other the last time they’d spoken. The small talk simply had nowhere to go.
“Look I—can we sit?” Maggie nodded in the direction of the round tables set up along the side walls of the gym, each covered in a black tablecloth and sprinkled with silver and gold confetti.
Daniel moved to the nearest one and took a seat. Maggie joined him.
“Thank you,” she began, sounding formal. “For coming.”
Daniel shifted, trying to get less uncomfortable on the awkward plastic folding chair, then gave up, leaned back, and crossed his arms. When Maggie didn’t continue, he prompted her. “This is your meeting, McArthur.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. Sorry. Here’s the thing.” Maggie picked up a glittering piece of confetti and began to trace lines with it across the tablecloth. He focused on the movement of her fingers as she spoke. “This will come as no surprise, but I don’t like to be bad at things. So, when I’m bad at something, I either become good at it, or I don’t do it.” She looked up to meet his eyes. “I am…bad at feelings. And simply not doing feelings was working out better than you might think, actually. Until recently. I’m also very direct. I don’t lie. Even—especially—to myself. That was going pretty well until recently, too.”
She let go of the confetti and began tap tap tapping the fingers of her right hand against the table. She took a breath. “I fucked up, Daniel. I was so, unbelievably, unfair to you. I took you so completely for granted. You kept leaning in, and I kept pulling away. But only ever halfway away. Because really, I wanted to keep you close.” The tear rolling down Maggie’s left cheek glinted in the glow of the fairy lights strung between the rafters. His hand itched to reach out and wipe it away, but he resisted. He had the oddest sensation that her skin might burn him.
She swiped at her face and kept talking. Her words came haltingly, but there was conviction in them. “You were right when you said I was running scared. And you were right, obviously you were right, that it wasn’t nothing. We weren’t nothing. I lied. To both of us, for a while. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, if I made you doubt yourself. Even if I broke things too badly to fix...” Daniel’s stupid heart immediately leaped at that hint of a glimmer of a possibility. “I really, really need you to know that it was something. It was a lot, actually. To me.”
It was a lot, actually.
The words seemed to echo, bouncing back and forth between the rafters in the empty gym.
“Anyway,” Maggie pushed on. “Not doing feelings seems not to be going so well for me anymore. So, I’m going to become good at feelings. I made an appointment with a therapist April recommended. And I’m, you know…” She gestured vaguely between them. “Communicating.”
He must have been quiet for a long time because when Maggie spoke again—just his name, nothing more—she sounded different. Unsure. Vulnerable. Like she had run out of all the nerve she’d worked up and was left with just regret and sadness.
“I…” He wanted to pull her up from the rickety chair and kiss her. He wanted to ask what she meant by if. If she broke things too badly to fix. But she was right. He always leaned in. He always went to her. If there was a limb, he was always the one stepping out onto it first. That had to stop. So, he stayed in his seat and said “Thank you” and tried to will Maggie to please, please risk something. For him.
It might have worked.
“One more thing,” Maggie said, “and then, I promise, you can go, and you’ll hardly even have to see me, if that’s what you want. Jordan’s taking over the day-to-day, so…” She trailed off. Then, seeming to gather up the remaining scraps of her bravery, she began again. “You said you wanted to renegotiate our deal. And if you still want to…” She reached for the bubblegum satin handbag she’d set on the table. Popping open the clasp, she pulled out her phone and tapped the screen a couple times. She seemed to be waiting for something to happen. After a clearly too-long pause, she tapped again, more aggressively. Again, she waited. Again, nothing happened.
“Jesus Christ, Becker,” she said, pushing back her chair and standing abruptly. “Whatever happens, please invest in a new sound system.”
Daniel made to stand, too, but Maggie gestured him back into his seat. “I’ll be right back.”
She turned and walked briskly to the far end of the gym, where, Daniel realized, the laptop connected to the sound system was emitting a faint glow. It was a bit of a trek, but after a long thirty seconds, she climbed the three steps up to the DJ set up, bent over the computer, and?—
The unmistakable opening chords of ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me” blared tinnily from the speakers. Maggie turned the volume down a few notches and began the awkwardly long walk back.
Finally, she was again sitting in front of him.
She reached back into the handbag, pulled out a book and set it firmly on the table between them. It was a well-loved copy of Murder on the Orient Express . The copy he’d lent her.
“I’ll trade you,” she said, one hand still on the paperback. She had to half yell to be heard over the song’s suggestion that they could go dancing, they could go walking, as long as they’re together.
Daniel looked at his book, and then at Maggie. Her green eyes were wide and dark. He’d never seen her expression so open.
He leaned forward and set his elbows on the table.
“What do you want for it?”
She took a deep breath, like she was about to jump into an icy lake.
“You. I want you, Daniel Becker.”
It was exactly what he’d been needing her to do. She’d stepped way out on a limb. Put all her cards on the table. Gone all in. He was too much a riot of emotions to keep his metaphors straight.
“No deal,” he said.
Instantly, the hope in Maggie’s eyes morphed into resignation. The lake was just as cold as she’d expected.
Daniel realized almost as quickly that he had miscalculated.
He reached out to grab her hand before she could pull away. She inhaled sharply at the touch, attention transfixed by the single point of contact.
“No. I have a counter.” Maggie looked up, and he saw something like possibility in face. “For that trade, I want you, too.”
She stood, abruptly, and he lamented the loss of her warmth as her fingers slipped from his. He pushed to his own feet so quickly that his plastic chair toppled over with a thud.
“You’ve got yourself a deal, Daniel Becker.” Maggie held out a hand. Daniel took it and, sidestepping the table, pulled her into him. God, he’d missed this—the press of her long body against his own, the shampoo scent of her inescapable curls, the way she teased her breath across his lips before she kissed him like both a threat and a promise.
“Look who caught feelings,” Daniel said, his voice a low rumble against her ear.
“I think they caught me.”
And then Maggie kissed him with all the feelings she had.