Chapter 4
Jack
Rebecca had gone home an hour ago, and I was still thinking about seeing Maggie.
I stood at my apartment window, watching South Boston settle into evening.
Streetlights flickered on one by one. A few kids played hockey on the frozen strip of pavement between parked cars, their shouts carrying through the glass.
My breath fogged the window, and I wiped it away with my sleeve, trying to focus on something other than the way Maggie had looked at me in the grocery store.
Could we get coffee? Or lunch?
Simple words. The kind of thing anyone might say to an ex they’d run into by accident. Except it hadn’t felt simple. It had felt like something else entirely.
My apartment wasn’t much. One bedroom in a triple-decker that had seen better decades, radiators that clanked, neighbors who fought too loudly on weekends.
But it was mine. Clean. Functional. Books stacked neatly on shelves, newspapers piled in chronological order on the coffee table, records alphabetized in the milk crates I’d used since college.
Coltrane, Davis, Springsteen, everything organized the way I wished the rest of my life could be.
Control. That’s what this place represented. Everything in its proper spot.
Unlike my head, which had been chaos since yesterday morning.
I’d looked up at brunch, just a normal Saturday, eggs and coffee with Rebecca at the diner we liked, and there she was. Maggie. Sitting in a booth across the room with Diane, staring at me like I was a ghost she hadn’t expected to see.
It had been a little over three months since things ended between us, since I’d stopped calling and she’d stopped pretending she wanted me to. I’d thought I was over it. Over her.
Then our eyes met across that crowded diner, and I felt everything come rushing back. Every late-night conversation, every almost-moment, every time she’d let me get close before pushing me away again.
She’d given a little wave, awkward, almost embarrassed, and practically fled the restaurant before I could decide whether to go over and say hello. Classic Maggie. Always running.
But then today. The grocery store. And this time she hadn’t run.
I turned from the window and crossed to my desk, the floorboards creaking under my feet.
The desk was covered in the usual chaos, notes for the housing authority story, a half-empty coffee cup, three pens that probably didn’t work, the detritus of a reporter’s life.
But underneath all of it, I knew exactly what I was looking for.
The letter.
I dug through the papers until I found it.
A single sheet of yellow legal paper, folded in thirds, my own handwriting visible through the thin paper.
I’d written it in the fall, sitting at this same desk watching the leaves change outside and a bottle of Jameson keeping me company.
I’d moved it twice since then. Once to the drawer, once to the trash can, and both times I’d retrieved it within an hour.
I unfolded it now and read words I already knew by heart.
Dear Maggie—
I’ve started this letter a dozen times. I keep hoping I won’t have to send it.
I love you. I’ve loved you since the night we argued about Hemingway and you called me a “tragically literal thinker.”
But I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep being the one who shows up while you decide whether I’m worth the risk.
I deserve someone who’s sure. Someone who chooses me.
You’re not that person.
—Jack
October 15th. That’s when I’d written it, and then I kept moving my own deadline, until I’d finally drawn a line and decided on Valentine’s Day as my deadline—if nothing changed by then, I was going to mail it and be done.
And then I’d met Rebecca at some New Year’s party given by a mutual friend.
She was a photographer at the Globe, dark hair and easy smile and a camera bag always slung over her shoulder.
We’d been seeing each other for a little over three weeks.
She was kind, uncomplicated, showed up when she said she would, and didn’t make me feel like I was constantly auditioning for a role I’d never win.
We’d never argued. Not once. Not about where to eat or what movie to see or any of the thousand small negotiations that made up a relationship. Rebecca stated her preferences clearly, listened to mine, and we figured it out. Simple.
Not like my parents.
I’d grown up with their fights as background noise.
The slammed doors and raised voices, the icy silences that could last for weeks.
My mother crying in the kitchen when she thought no one could hear.
My father disappearing into the garage with a bottle.
They’d married young, passionate, certain they were meant for each other, and spent thirty years proving how wrong they’d been.
Danny’s death had broken them completely. Whatever love remained got buried under grief and blame and the kind of hatred that only people who once loved each other can feel.
I didn’t want that. Didn’t want passion that burned everything down.
Rebecca was safe, calm. She was everything Maggie had never been.
So why had I said yes to lunch tomorrow?
I set the letter down and rubbed my eyes. For a moment, just a moment, something strange flickered through my mind.
Valentine’s Day. Rosetti’s. The restaurant where we’d had our first real date.
Maggie sitting across from me, candlelight catching the gold flecks in her green eyes, telling me she needed space.
And I was nodding. Not fighting her. Not trying to convince her to stay.
Because I’d already decided, hadn’t I? Already written the letter. Already given up.
She ended things. But I’d already ended them first. We just hadn’t known we were running in the same direction.
I shook my head, and the image dissolved. Crazy. I was going crazy, seeing things that hadn’t happened yet, memories of events that hadn’t yet come to pass.
But the feeling lingered. The strange certainty that I’d glimpsed something true.
I folded the letter and slid it back under the papers on my desk. Not the trash. Not yet. But not where I’d have to look at it, either.
Maggie had seemed different today. That was the thing I kept coming back to, the detail I couldn’t explain away. Not the Maggie who deflected every serious conversation with a joke. Not the woman who canceled plans and dodged phone calls and kept one foot perpetually out the door.
This Maggie had held my gaze. Asked for what she wanted. Stood there in the fish sauce aisle and said there are things I should have said a long time ago like she actually meant to say them.
Noon tomorrow. Mike’s on Dorchester Ave.
I’d find out soon enough if something had really changed, or if I was just seeing what I wanted to see.