Track 27 Riptide
Track 27
Riptide
Maggie
Maggie sat frozen on the couch, scared to move even a muscle for fear that she would wake Beatrix. She had comforted her crying birth mother as best she could, stroking her hair until she eventually drifted off. Now her mind bounced around in that way one’s mind does at 3 a.m., on an indirect route from the insanity of rocking her birth mother to sleep all the way to what she did and didn’t say to Kimberly Kahn when Kimberly falsely accused her of copying in the seventh grade.
She knew she had promised to think deep thoughts regarding her future on this outrageous trip, to journey inward as well as east to the Long Island shoreline. But it had been too much of a roller coaster ride thus far to allow much time for introspection. Maggie did not like roller coasters. Maggie was happiest on a carousel.
Next, her mind ran to college and her senior year when she had wandered into the student health center and asked to make an appointment with a therapist. After a few sessions, she and the old male shrink she was assigned to, whom she doubted could crack her code, got to the bottom of the weird sense of impermanence she had felt since her parents had told her she was adopted. At least that was how the old (and possibly genius) shrink had labeled the thin layer of anxiety that cloaked her like the fine mist of patchouli her mother would spritz over her head every morning.
“Your parents should have explained that you were adopted before you ever thought differently,” he had said.
Probably true, but attributing anything negative to her parents now that they had passed only added to her feeling of instability. The idea that Jason wanted to make permanent what had become the longest and most loyal relationship of her life felt like the best way to restore balance.
She questioned why she had hesitated. Of course she should marry Jason. She would tell him the minute she stepped off the plane.
And that’s where she was on her “journey” when Dylan walked into her grandfather’s house holding two cups of coffee.
Maggie put one finger to her lips before motioning to Bea asleep next to her on the couch. Dylan smiled.
“Here,” she whispered, handing her a mug.
She took a sip and smiled back at Dylan.
“Want to bring this one down to Matt, and I’ll stay here with Bea?” Dylan suggested.
Maggie’s legs were starting to cramp, and though she didn’t want to risk waking Bea, she wasn’t sure how much longer she could last in her current position. She took Dylan up on the offer and carefully eased herself off the couch and out the door.
···
Maggie was thinking of all that had gone on since she arrived as she walked down the beach in the moonlight with the two coffee cups, looking for Matt. When she eventually spotted him in the distance, her heart shook in her chest. The sensation was unusual for her. “You’re just tired,” she said to herself out loud.
“Coffee,” Maggie whispered, gently nudging Matt awake in the sand.
He shot up. She laughed and apologized for startling him.
Brushing his hand through his hair and wiping speckles of sand off his cheeks, he got himself together.
Maggie sat down and handed him his cup.
“Any news?” Matt asked.
“None. Renee left to find Jake, and Dylan suggested I switch with her.”
Matt smirked and shook his head. “Of course she did. She thinks we make a cute couple.”
“So, I guess we are fooling everyone.”
“I told her the truth about us. Don’t worry, she’s a vault,” he added. “How’s Bea?”
“She fell asleep, probably to save herself from thinking. I slept for, like, a month after my mother died—just as a respite from reality—not that anyone’s dead.”
“Let’s not go there. I’m so sorry for your loss—your losses. I can’t even imagine.”
“I try and imagine that they are together somewhere. They were the best, both of them.” She smiled. “I guess it’s why I never looked for my birth parents. I felt so blessed to have the ones I did.”
“And now? This seems like a big effort; I mean, you could have waited till Bea was back in Ohio, no?”
“Once I found out who she was, and then learned that she was going abroad for the year, I didn’t want to wait.”
“But you could have called her or emailed—even FaceTimed—just saying.”
She felt foolish. She knew that her coming here was more of a stall tactic to delay responding to Jason’s proposal than she cared to admit.
She toyed with telling Matt the truth, saying how badly she wanted a family and explaining that when Jason proposed, her mind had gone right to that—to Jason’s family—and it gave her pause. Realizing that somewhere out there was a family of her own who could possibly fill that void and give her more clarity in making the biggest decision of her life, she’d had to act.
Instead, she just shrugged and took another sip of coffee. Stalling again, she took in her surroundings.
“The moon is so bright,” she remarked. “It almost looks like it’s inviting us into the ocean.” She motioned to a narrow path between the waves where the water seemed motionless.
“That’s a riptide. They’re very misleading, and dangerous,” he said.
Her mind went right to Veronica wandering in and drowning. She wished she hadn’t pointed it out. Ugh, she had gone there again.
“Sorry,” she added.
“It’s OK. I’ve been staring at it all night,” he said, slowly rotating his head in a circular motion before stretching it from one side to the other.
Maggie instinctually reached over and massaged his neck with one hand.
He leaned in and smiled. “Thank you, that feels so good.”
She put down her cup and wiggled behind him to use both hands. He pushed back into her, his muscles pining for the pressure of her touch. His arms felt strong, muscular. She pushed from her head the image of him wrapping them around her. The thin space between his back and her torso suddenly felt charged—almost electric. The moonlight caught her mood ring. It was lavender—the color of her eyes. She didn’t need to look it up—she knew it meant excited.
Before, when she was feeling things that she shouldn’t about Matt, she chalked it up to their playacting, but now that they were alone, it unnerved her. This guy stirred things in her that she’d never quite felt before. Things she’d read about, or heard about, but never really believed to be true. She stopped, rubbed her hand as if it were cramping, and slid back next to him.
A line from the song “Riptide” ran through her head.
She’s been living on the highest shelf.
Is that what she had been doing? Living up high, where nothing could break her?
From nowhere (or everywhere) she began to cry.
“What is it?” Matt asked with a pained expression.
“Nothing. I’m OK. Just so tired.”
“It’s a lot,” he said, patting his leg, offering for her to rest her head on it.
There was no doubt that their fake coupling had blurred all sorts of lines. She put her coffee cup down in the sand and silently accepted his invitation. He rested his hand gently on her back, rubbing it as one would a baby, or a puppy. A Zen-like feeling inexplicably flooded her body, which, given the awful circumstances and the fact that she didn’t typically crave physical comfort, felt miraculous. Her lids grew heavy and she closed her eyes.
She woke an hour later, prone, in Matt’s arms. He was now sound asleep again. She marveled at how well she fit on his chest, her head tucked perfectly into his neck, their bodies rising and falling and rising and falling in sync, seemingly orchestrated by the tide. She imagined what it would feel like to kiss him. She wished she could kiss him. Just once. Just to know.
She felt completely at ease until the guilt of her thoughts squashed that emotion. Then she felt completely ill at ease.
Again, the lyrics to “Riptide” ran through her head.
She had been living on the highest shelf.
The sun began to rise, adding the dreadful feeling to her woes that finding Veronica Silver was a lost cause.
She wiggled out from under Matt’s arms, slipped away, and headed back to her grandfather’s house.