21. Maggie
TWENTY-ONE
MAGGIE
I’m still 50/50 about whether or not I want to do anything today. Would I have picked Duke as the guy to help me conquer the nightmares of my past relationship? Definitely not.
First the ice cream theory and then how I’m the most gullible person on earth.
But I might as well do something before heading back and being interrogated by Hope on why I’m so crabby. She was never a fan of Zander, and I should’ve taken that as a red flag from the beginning. If only I could go back and change time…
“Okay, so it says we need to build a sand castle using only the things we find on the beach,” I say, reading from the app. We walk down the boardwalk stairs and onto the soft sand. I take off my sandals and enjoy the feel of the sand beneath my feet.
I’ve heard people say that the beach has healing properties, but I didn’t believe them until now. Something about the sun, the ocean breeze, and the scenery have already lifted my spirits.
I scan the beach, wondering how we’ll be able to make anything just using our hands. That’s not really something I want to do either. I try to keep my nails short so I don’t have to constantly trim them or worry about snags. With how short they are right now, they won’t be the best for digging.
“Where do you want to start?” Duke asks.
“Maybe over by the pier?” I say, pointing to the boardwalk that extends several hundred feet into the ocean. “Then maybe we won’t bake in this heat.”
We walk over and decide to start back enough that the waves won’t wreck our masterpiece. Or what might be a master fail.
At least there’s some shade from the blazing sun.
“What is with all of these items being about art?” I say, reflecting on our tasks so far. We had to sing and then decorate cookies. And now creating a castle.
“I don’t know. Maybe the mayor is trying to find the next Artist-in-Residence for our town.”
I laugh and shake my head. “Yeah, that definitely won’t be me.”
“Me either, but it’s kind of fun to try out. What kind of castle do you think we should build? Disney? European?”
“Didn’t Disney use one of the German castles to base the one at the park?”
Duke shrugs. “To be honest, I’m not sure. I’ve never been.”
“A traveler like you and you haven’t visited there before?” I don’t know why I’m so shocked. This guy has been talking about traveling and seeing the world since I met him, but he’s good at making it seem like he’d already seen a lot.
Duke shakes his head. “No, never.”
“Did you travel much while you were in college?” I ask. There’s a mental warning that I’m delving too much into the personal aspects of Duke’s life when I should be pushing him away. The guy had to put up with my sad tale and I’m curious.
“Day trips here and there. But it costs money to go places and I didn’t think my car would get me there and back. So I’ve just been dreaming of the fun places I’ll visit in the future.”
“And if you win the five thousand dollars and whatever your company gives you?”
“I’ll book a cruise or a vacation somewhere. Get out of town for a bit.”
Duke reaches down and pulls out a broken piece of a sand shovel. “This might help us get the sand moving a bit easier.”
He stabs the shovel into the sand and pulls it out a few times, trying to loosen the ground.
“Okay, are we thinking of layers and intricate designs?” I ask, taking some of the sand into my hands.
Duke’s eyebrows raise and he says, “This coming from the woman who says she’s not good at art? Unless we find some kind of mold to get things going, I’m thinking a one-level might be the best.”
He starts piling up a bunch of sand and I’m afraid my eye will twitch itself out of the socket if I don’t do something to change it.
“It might be good to have a plan, don’t you think?” I suggest. I’m trying to avert my gaze from the chaos happening before me, but I can’t pull my eyes away.
“What if we build our own sandcastles and then find someone to judge them?” Duke asks with a grin.
“That isn’t part of the task.”
“As long as we have a picture, I’m sure it will be okay,” he says, waiting for my response.
My knee-jerk reaction is to say that we have to follow the task to the letter for it to count. Sure, I was always a rule follower growing up, probably why I went into accounting because the rules don’t vary. And the family connection.
I have to take a deep breath and think this through. Will there be any big punishments if we don’t do it exactly how it’s written in the app? No. I won’t get into trouble and I won’t lose out on anything. This is for fun, right? Fun things can be stretched and bent to increase the excitement.
Now I sound like I’m an ad for a senior pain cream or something.
“Okay, deal,” I finally say. Something sparks life in me and I’m now excited to do this. My brain acts like an etch-a-sketch, drawing out what I should do to create a sandcastle.
Duke goes back to digging. I stand and walk over the sand, searching for anything that might help me with the task. I see a family playing in the water with their young son and wonder if they’ve got any buckets or small molds of sea creatures.
As I approach, I can see a small round pail and a matching shovel sitting next to one of the chairs. They aren’t using it at the moment, so I call out to ask if I can borrow it for a moment. The woman looks skeptical, but I point to where Duke is building what looks more like a volcano than an actual castle.
“We’re doing a competition and I would be grateful if I could use your bucket for a few minutes.”
“Sure, as long as we get it back before we leave.”
I grin, thanking her as I wave goodbye and head back over to where Duke is set up in the shade.
“Where did you get that?” Duke asks, looking at my bucket and shovel.
“From the family back there. They said I could use it for a few minutes.”
Duke frowns. “That’s cheating.”
Raising an eyebrow, I say, “Cheating, how? I found them along the beach. I asked for permission to use them. I don’t see any cheating happening in this case.”
“Found along the beach,” Duke says, sitting back onto the sand and staring up at me. I avoid looking at him for long and take my position about two feet away so I’ll have enough room to work on my castle.
“I did find it on the beach. You’re the one who was trying to get me to bend the rules and now you’re not even bending?” I say, adding some edge to my words. My biggest pet peeve is someone establishing the “rules” and then changing them once they don’t fit what will benefit them the most. Zander always did that, something I didn’t notice until after we’d broken up.
Duke nods and says, “True, true. Okay, well, I’m going to kick your butt at this.”
“I don’t know, it looks like you need some baking soda and vinegar with your structure right now,” I say, remembering a science experiment we did back in elementary school. The best way to create a volcano.
With a squint, Duke glances down at his mound of sand. “Yeah, it does look like it’s ready to spew lava and ash. Maybe I can invent a new kind of castle.”
We get to work on our creations, chatting here and there as we focus on the building process.
“You never said why you don’t leave this place,” I say, my question popping up in my mind again.
“It’s a long story. Mostly my family needs me. There aren’t a lot of things they can fall back on if the store doesn’t do well, and every time I’ve tried to leave, something catastrophic happens.”
That sounds ominous. “Catastrophic how?” I venture.
“Someone broke an arm, or a pipe burst in the shop. It was both amazing and hard to be away for school. Those days I always felt guilty that I’d left my parents and brothers back here to slog away while I was there.”
There’s a vulnerability to Duke that I hadn’t noticed before. The guy is genuine and kind, despite selling timeshares. Maybe I shouldn’t just automatically judge a person by his profession, like Hope suggested.
I stand to look for a few shells to adorn my main walkway and put them all into place. “I think I’m finished,” I say, pointing to the castle. I was able to make a couple of sections of it, although one of the towers is starting to collapse. “Let me return the bucket and I’ll see if they’re willing to judge our castles.”
The little boy of the family practically ran over and looked like he was about to stomp down the castles before the dad caught up and pulled him into his arms. “Sorry about that,” the guy says.
“Which one do you like, Reggie?” the mom asks the little boy.
“That one,” he says, pointing to Duke’s. There’s an inner spark of anger I have to tamp down. Duke did a decent job of sculpting things with just his hands.
“I pick the one with the cobblestone path,” the woman says, pointing to mine.
Duke and I glance over at the man trying to hold his squirming toddler and he says, “I like them both. They’re definitely unique, which I think is a great thing.”
“You’re the tie breaker,” Duke says.
“I honestly can’t choose. You can end in a tie.” The man smiles at the two of us before letting his boy down. Before we can even react, the boy stomps down my castle, leaving only a small section still intact.
“Sorry about that,” the man says, wrangling his kid again.
“We need a picture of our sandcastle,” Duke says, grinning at me. “Would you mind taking one for us?” The woman took the phone from his outstretched hand and we knelt down next to Duke’s volcano.
We’re awfully close for this, and I find my breath hitching and my nerves zapping with all sorts of energy. Why can’t I just forget about the guy and move on? Probably because we’re together too much. That’s what this is. We need to finish this scavenger hunt soon or else I don’t know how much I’ll be able to protect my heart.
“There you go,” the woman says, handing the phone back.
We say thank you and the family walks toward the boardwalk.
I sit down on the sand, staring out into the ocean. It’s such a beautiful scene before me and I’m surprised I haven’t taken the time to fully enjoy this landscape before now. Probably because I was throwing myself into work, knowing that I had to have a drive to get myself out of bed in the morning, especially when I was struggling with the loss of my past relationship.
“Do I win by default?” Duke asks, nudging me with his shoulder.
“Sadly, I think you do. We never put anything in the rules about the chance of a castle collapse.”
Duke chuckles. “Look at you abiding by a non-rule. Congratulations.”
I shove him in the shoulder and he ends up on the sand.
“Congratulations to you that your castle didn’t get crushed by a two-year-old.”
He lets out a deep laugh, causing me to admire his silhouette. “Someone is a little touchy about losing her sandcastle to a toddler.”
I sigh. “A picture would’ve been nice. It was the best I’d ever created.”
“Then make it better the next time.”
I groan. “I don’t know if I can recreate something like that.”
Duke turns and starts working with the sand, molding it into a tower.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Starting the foundation for your next castle. What are you thinking? Maybe a watch tower here and a courtyard there?” The guy is totally serious.
“Anything?” Why am I so hesitant?
He nods. “Describe it to me and we’ll make it happen.”
Since when is there a guy who’ll sit and help me construct a sandcastle when he should be at work? That sounds totally wrong in the normal societal terms, but it’s refreshing to not have to be all about work all the time. That’s all I’ve ever known and it’s been wearing on me.
“How about a tower and then a box?” I say, trying to be considerate of his time. The poor guy tracked me down in my depressed state and has kept his word to cheer me up.
He shakes his head. “Nope. You hunted down shells for your last castle. We’re not making this one subpar.”
“What about work?”
“It will still be there whether we go now or in fifteen minutes. Tell me your thoughts.”
Twenty-two minutes later, we’ve got a castle even better than the last.
“Thank you,” I say, trying to hold back the emotions surging. This whole situation feels surreal.
“No worries,” he says, pulling out his phone. “We’d better take a picture before it gets stomped on.”
I lean in and our heads nearly touch. He adjusts his weight so he’s leaning on his hand right behind my back and we’re even closer. If I turn just an inch, there’s a possibility we’d be kissing. Instead of acting on that new fantasy, I freeze, and my smile shows it.
“Say ‘armadillo’ for this one,” he says, and I can’t hold in the laugh.
“Armadillo? We aren’t even close to where those live. How did you come up with that?”
He shrugs, giving me a lopsided grin. “No idea. Sometimes I just have to let my brain loose and see where it takes me.”
We don’t move, the two of us leaning into each other. Reality is setting in, knowing I need to get back to the shop and give Hope a break, but I don’t want to be the one to move away.
“I told you about my dating life. What about yours?” I ask, needing to figure out that certain puzzle piece.
That must’ve been the wrong thing to say, because he sits all the way up and I’m missing him being so close.
“It’s not great.” He taps his phone a few times and says, “Okay, I’ve just posted the picture to the app. Are you ready for another task?”
It’s then that I check my watch, realizing how long we’d actually been out here. “I should probably get back to the shop.”
Duke nods and stands. “Sounds good. Are you feeling any better?”
I stand and give him a quick nod with a small smile. “I think so. Thank you.” Instead of a normal handshake, which would’ve been the less awkward option, I lean in and wrap my arms around Duke’s middle. He’s stiff at first and then relaxes a bit, making me not want to contemplate my entire awkward existence.
His arms wrap around me, and of all the things that could’ve happened today, this one was not on the list of possibilities. Am I mad about it? Definitely not.
This has to be the most healing thing ever as his hands rub small circles on my back.
“I’ll walk you back. It’s time I branch out and add a few nuts to my scoop of ice cream.”
I chuckle, still not believing that I actually told him all about my theory what seems like forever ago now. And the fact that he keeps remembering the little things makes my heart swoon a bit every time.
I shouldn’t be liking this guy at all, but it’s too late for that. He’s different from anyone in my past and yet, there’s so much to him, so much of him that wants to travel and explore the world.
We walk along the boardwalk, and I decide that I can’t stop touching Duke. I slip my hand next to his elbow and he juts it out, just like they do in the old-timey romance movies. I might not know much about most pop culture, but I have watched the classic romances.
By the time we make it to the shop, I’m surprised to see a line of people inside. Hope must see me through the window and waves for me to head in.
“Thanks for this morning. I need to go rescue my cousin.” I hurry into the shop, wondering if I should’ve just come back instead of agreeing to do the hunt task after I’d been sulking for too long.
And with that, I’m able to focus on work: filling orders, typing in prices and doing my best to keep a smile on my face for the customers. But all the while, my brain is next door, wondering what Duke is doing.