Chapter 6 Jack
Jack
Usually the newsroom was a good distraction.
The Globe’s city desk was chaos on a good day with phones ringing, typewriters clattering, reporters shouting across the room about sources and deadlines and whether anyone had seen the file on the zoning board corruption.
The noise and energy had always been a refuge for me, a place where I could lose myself in someone else’s story and forget about my own.
Not today.
I sat at my desk, the housing authority documents spread in front of me, and couldn’t focus on a single word.
My notes blurred together. The numbers stopped making sense.
Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind drifted back to lunch, to Maggie sitting across from me in that booth, saying words I’d never expected to hear.
I’m not running this time, Jack.
Ed appeared at my elbow, a cup of coffee in each hand. He set one on my desk and settled into the chair across from me, studying my face with the attention he usually reserved for sources who were about to crack.
“You look like hell,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Thompson’s getting cold feet again. Called twice this afternoon. I told him you’d reach out tomorrow.”
“Fine.”
Ed sipped his coffee, watching me over the rim.
“You want to tell me what’s going on, or should I keep pretending I don’t notice you’ve been staring at the same page for forty-five minutes?”
I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, that constant low buzz that you stopped hearing after a while until suddenly you couldn’t hear anything else.
Cigarette smoke drifted from somewhere behind me—probably Harrison at the sports desk, who went through two packs a day and had the cough to prove it.
“I had lunch with Maggie,” I said.
Ed’s eyebrows rose. “I thought you were done with that.”
“I thought I was too.”
“And?”
I didn’t know how to answer. What was I supposed to say?
That she’d apologized—really apologized, without deflecting, without making it a joke?
That she’d admitted she was scared, that she’d pushed me away because letting me in felt too dangerous?
That she’d asked for another chance and I had no idea what to do with that?
“She’s different,” I said finally. “Or she seems different. I don’t know.”
Ed was quiet for a moment. “You’ve got dinner with Rebecca tonight, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You going to tell her?”
I looked down at the documents on my desk, the evidence of corruption and graft that should have been the most important thing in my life right now. “I don’t know what I’d even say.”
Ed stood, clapping me on the shoulder. “Figure it out. Before someone gets hurt.”
He walked away, leaving me with cold coffee and a pile of work.
The restaurant Rebecca picked was nice. A new Italian place on Hanover Street, red-checked tablecloths and candles in Chianti bottles, the kind of place that was trying hard to be romantic without being obvious about it.
Rebecca looked beautiful. She always did, but tonight she’d made an effort, wearing a deep green dress that brought out the warm tones in her dark hair, small gold earrings that caught the candlelight when she turned her head.
Her camera bag was absent for once, left behind in favor of a small clutch that sat on the table beside her wine glass.
“So I finally got the go-ahead on the Chinatown project,” she was saying, her face animated with the enthusiasm she got when talking about her work.
“Three months of documentation, full access to the community center. I’m thinking black and white, you know? There’s something about the textures there—the signs, the markets, the older generation’s faces—that would get lost in color.”
“That sounds great.” I heard myself say the words, watched myself nod in the right places, but my mind was somewhere else. A different restaurant. A different woman. Green eyes with gold flecks, saying I woke up.
“I’m hoping to get some of the elders to sit for portraits. There’s this woman, Mrs. Wu, who’s been running the same noodle shop for forty years. Her hands alone could tell a whole story.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Rebecca stopped. Set down her wine glass. Studied me with the same attention she brought to her photographs, the look that said she was seeing more than you wanted her to see.
“You’re somewhere else tonight.”
I blinked, pulled back to the present by the directness of her tone.
“Sorry. Work stuff. The housing authority story is getting complicated.”
She didn’t push. That was the thing about Rebecca, she never pushed. When I needed space, she gave it. When I didn’t want to talk about something, she let it go. It was restful, being with her. Easy. No drama, no games, no exhausting emotional negotiations.
It was also, I realized as I sat there watching candlelight flicker across her patient face, a little boring.
I hated myself for thinking that. Rebecca was good. She was kind, and she deserved better than a man who was sitting across from her at a nice restaurant thinking about someone else.
The waiter came by, refilled our water glasses, asked if we wanted to hear about the dessert specials.
Rebecca smiled and said maybe later, and I watched her handle the interaction with the same easy grace she brought to everything.
No friction, no complications, just smooth competence that never demanded anything difficult from anyone.
When had I started finding that unsatisfying?
“Jack.” Rebecca’s voice was gentle. “Whatever’s going on, you can tell me. I’m not going to fall apart.”
I looked at her, really looked, for the first time all evening. She deserved honesty, deserved better than being someone’s safe harbor while they sorted out their feelings for someone else.
“There’s something I need to say,” I started. “And I don’t know how to say it without sounding like an ass.”
Her expression shifted, something knowing settling into her features. She’d seen this coming. Maybe not tonight, but she’d seen it.
“It’s Maggie, isn’t it? The woman from Andy’s.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Rebecca was observant, it was what made her a good photographer. She noticed things other people missed.
“Yes.”
“The one before me.”
“Yes.”
She was quiet for a moment, turning the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. The restaurant noise swelled around us, other couples laughing, forks clinking against plates, Dean Martin crooning from hidden speakers about amore. We sat in our own small bubble of silence.
“I’ve never cheated,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that to you. But I can’t sit here pretending everything’s fine when it’s not. There’s unfinished... I don’t even know the right word. History. Business. Something between us that never got resolved.”
“And you need to resolve it.”
“I think I do. Yeah.”
Rebecca nodded slowly. She didn’t cry. Didn’t raise her voice. Didn’t ask me to explain myself or beg me to reconsider. She just sat there, processing, with the calm dignity that had drawn me to her in the first place.
“I appreciate you telling me,” she said finally. “Most men would have just... let it drag on. Pretended.”
“That’s not who I want to be.”
“I know.” She gave me a small smile, tinged with sadness but not bitterness. “That’s one of the things I liked about you.”
She gathered her things. The clutch, the wrap she’d draped over her chair, the dignity I’d just handed back to her and stood. I started to stand too, but she waved me off.
“Stay. Finish your dinner.” She paused, looking down at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
“I hope she’s worth it. I hope whatever’s unfinished becomes something real. Because we could have had something lasting, you and me. It might not have been fireworks, but it would have been good.”
She leaned down and kissed my cheek—brief, final—and then she was walking away, weaving between tables toward the door. The bell chimed as she left, and the cold air rushed in for just a moment before the door swung shut again.
I sat there alone at a table for two, surrounded by happy couples, and wondered if I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life.
Rebecca was right. We could have been good together. Stable. Content. The kind of relationship that lasted because neither person asked too much of the other, where comfort replaced passion and that was supposed to be okay.
But I’d never been able to settle for okay. Even when I told myself I should. Even when okay was clearly the smarter choice.
The waiter appeared, glancing at Rebecca’s empty chair with professional discretion. “Will the lady be returning?”
“No. Just the check, please.”
He nodded and disappeared. I pulled out my wallet and tried to feel something other than the hollow uncertainty that had taken up residence in my chest.
What if Maggie hadn’t changed?
What if the apology, the vulnerability, the I woke up, what if it was all just another version of the same pattern?
She’d seemed different before, too. In the early days, when she’d laugh at my jokes and lean into my touch and look at me like I was everything she wanted.
And then she’d pulled away. Every single time, she’d pulled away.
I’d just thrown away a good woman on the chance that Maggie might finally be ready to stop running.
If I was wrong, if she reverted to form, if she pushed me away again, then I’d have nothing. No Rebecca, no Maggie, just the letter in my desk drawer and the knowledge that I’d been a fool twice over.
The waiter brought the check. I paid in cash, overtipping because it felt like the least I could do, and walked out into the evening.
The street was quiet, the dinner rush winding down, a few couples hurrying past with their collars turned up against the wind. I stood on the sidewalk and breathed in the sharp, clean air until my lungs ached with it.
Valentine’s Day was ten days away.
That was the deadline I’d given myself before, back when I’d written the letter. Time to decide whether Maggie was worth the risk or whether I needed to mail that goodbye and move on.
The parameters had changed, but the deadline still made sense.
I’d give her those ten days to prove she meant what she said. To show me that “I’m not running” was more than just words, that something had actually shifted, that the woman I’d talked to at lunch was the real Maggie and not just another mask she’d eventually drop.
But I wasn’t going to chase her. Not this time.
If Maggie wanted another chance, she was going to have to fight for it. She was going to have to show up, without me making it easy. She was going to have to prove that she could stay.
And if she couldn’t, if she disappeared again, pulled away again, let fear win again, then at least I’d know. At least I wouldn’t spend another year wondering what if.
I turned up my collar and started walking home, the cold biting at my ears, the city lights blurring in the dark.
One way or another, I’d have my answer.