Chapter 58
MAGGIE
The motel room's been clean for two days now but Sloane never went back. She hasn't brought it up and neither have I.
It's been five beautiful, passionate nights and five blissful mornings of her in my kitchen making only marginally better coffee and scrolling the sanctuary's Instagram, muttering about engagement rates.
Five evenings of her on the porch with a book or her phone, planning posts, asking me which video of Dolly is cuter when they look exactly the same to me.
The house has changed shape around her. There are two coffee cups in the sink now, and her face cream's on my bathroom shelf.
I came in yesterday and she'd done the dishes, badly, and put them away in all the wrong places. It made me so happy.
I've let it become normal but normal has an end date and I've been bracing myself for the pain to come. It's the only sensible thing to do. You enjoy something with a deadline by keeping the deadline in view, not by forgetting it exists.
I'm lying in bed with the lamp off and the window open, listening to the crickets, and I can't make my brain settle.
The mattress shifts and Sloane slides in beside me. "What's the matter?" she asks.
"Nothing," I say. "I'm fine."
"Maggie." She turns to me and strokes my cheek. "You've been quiet all evening."
I stare at the ceiling. "Eighteen days, that's what's left. And then you go back, and this is a thing that happened one summer. I'm trying to get my head around it."
Her hand goes still. "You think this ends when my sentence does."
"I think we should be honest about what this is."
"And what is it?"
I turn my head to look at her, then wish I hadn't.
She's so beautiful it's hard to focus on what I need to say.
"I'm not going to pretend this isn't important to me.
I have feelings for you. But you live in LA, in a world with helicopters and celebrities.
Duster's going to be a story you tell at some point.
The summer you did community service and slept with the woman who ran the sanctuary.
" I say it as lightly as I can. "That's not a criticism. It's just true."
She sits up. "Listen to yourself. You can't tell me how I feel or what I want."
"I'm being realistic."
"You keep using that word like it settles the argument. It's a word people use when they want to sound grown up about something they're scared of. You're scared, Maggie. So am I. Don't dress it up." Sloane takes my hand. "I don't want this to end and it doesn't have to end."
I sit up too. "But Sloane, the geography alone is a challenge. It's four hours to LA and you won't be driving for the foreseeable future. And my life is here, with fifty animals that need me twice a day, every day, and a mother whose back is going. I can't leave. Ever."
"You don't have to. I can come here," she says. "Stay with you for weeks on end while we see how this goes."
"You and I both know you'll never end up here. Even if you tried, you'd get bored and frustrated and you'd resent me for it."
"You don't actually know that," she says quietly. "I'm not Reese."
I look away from her. "Reese has nothing to do with this. That was a long time ago."
Sloane shifts closer and drapes her arm over my waist. "It's the same fear. I don't know what Reese wanted, but I know what I want." She smiles. "I want you."
"Sloane —"
"Listen to me. I've spent enough time here to know what it's like in Duster.
Hell, I've seen the worst of it. I know it's a boring little town and I know what it's like to work outside when it's a hundred and four.
I'm not romanticising it. I'm telling you that I have done all of it and I still want to be here. "
"Because you've been here on borrowed time. Everything's brighter when you know it ends."
"Maybe. Or maybe I've been more myself here than I've ever been anywhere else." Her hand slips under my T-shirt and skims my stomach. "I'm begging you," she says, "to stop deciding what I want and be open to something long-term. That's all. Can you please do that?"
Her hand on my stomach is warm, her body is pressed along mine, and I feel her breath against my shoulder.
Every argument I've lined up gets quieter when she's near.
There's a part of me that wants what she's asking for so badly it scares me and I don't know if she's right about Reese or if I'm wrong about her.
I don't know what will happen but what I know is that she's here now, asking me to be brave.
"I can try," I whisper.
Sloane exhales deeply and rests her forehead against mine.
"That's all I'm asking." She cups my face and kisses me, slow and unhurried, like she's making a promise she doesn't quite have the right to make yet.
Her thumb moves along my jaw and her other hand finds the back of my neck and stays there.
I feel her relax against me by degrees — her shoulders, her chest, her breath.
I sigh as I sink into her caress. My body has made its own decision, and I don't have the strength to keep wanting her and resisting her at the same time. My leg slides between hers and she moans softly against my lips. If this ends up costing me everything, so be it.