Chapter 7 Maggie
Maggie
“I’m going to pass out.”
Diane lay flat on her back on her bed, sucking in her stomach while she wrestled with the zipper of her Jordache jeans. She had a pair of pliers in one hand, a trick we’d both learned for getting that last half-inch of zipper up, and her face was turning red with the effort.
“Almost... got it...” The pliers gripped the zipper tab, she yanked, and the zipper finally surrendered with a metallic shriek. She lay there for a moment, breathing shallowly, the denim so tight it might as well have been painted on.
“Okay. I’m good. I just can’t sit down for the rest of the day. Or eat. Or breathe deeply.”
I laughed from the doorway of her room, still in my robe, coffee mug warming my hands.
Diane’s room was a chaos of clothes and makeup and the general debris of someone who lived at full volume—posters of Duran Duran and Don Johnson on the walls, a vanity covered in enough cosmetics to stock a small drugstore, and shoes scattered across the floor like they’d been flung there by a small tornado.
Her boom box sat on the dresser, Robert Smith’s mournful voice drifting out as The Cure played “Close to Me”—Diane’s taste ran darker than the pop that dominated the radio, all Depeche Mode and Echo and the Bunnymen and The Smiths.
She sat up carefully, keeping her spine rigid, and reached for the banana clip on her nightstand.
Her hair was already teased to impressive heights, stiff with Aqua Net, and she gathered it into the clip fluffing out the curls.
Then came the makeup. Blue eyeshadow swept dramatically toward her brows, hot pink blush, lips lined darker than the fuchsia lipstick she filled them with.
“You’re staring,” she said, catching my eye in the vanity mirror.
“Just thinking.”
“Dangerous habit.” She uncapped her mascara and leaned close to the mirror, mouth falling open in that universal mascara-application expression. “What about?”
I couldn’t tell her the truth, that I was trying to remember why we’d drifted apart in the original timeline.
We’d been so close in these years, sharing everything from clothes to secrets to the last of the ice cream at 2 AM.
But somewhere along the way, we’d stopped calling.
Stopped making time. I’d been maid of honor at her wedding, whenever that happened, and then.
.. what? Christmas cards? Occasional emails that got shorter every year?
The details wouldn’t come. Like so many things about my future, they slipped away when I tried to grasp them.
I’d tried to remember events, stocks, other things that would have been fun to bet on, make money to put in my nest egg, but the details kept slipping away, no matter how hard I tried to hold onto them.
“Earth to Maggie.” Diane was watching me in the mirror, mascara wand paused mid-stroke. “You okay? You’ve been weird all week.”
“I’m fine. Just... adjusting.”
“To what?”
To being twenty-three again. To having a second chance at everything I screwed up the first time. To knowing that I have less than two weeks to convince Jack I’m worth the risk.
“New year, new me,” I said instead, which was ridiculous because it was February, but Diane just snorted and went back to her mascara.
I tried again, this time to remember who won the Stanley Cup this year.
The knowledge was there for a moment, a flash of something, a team name on the tip of my tongue, and then it whipped away like a flag in a high wind.
Gone. The magic, or whatever it was, didn’t want me knowing things I could profit from.
Apparently that extended to sports betting.
“So.” Diane capped her mascara and reached for the blush. “Any word from Mystery Man?”
“Mystery Man?”
“The one who’s had you mooning around for days. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” She caught my expression and grinned. “Ha! I knew it. Spill.”
“There’s nothing to spill.”
“Maggie, you are a terrible liar. Is it someone from work? That cute guy in the mail room? Oh God, please don’t tell me it’s Harold. I know some women go for the older distinguished type, but the man smells like an ashtray.”
“It’s not Harold.” I hesitated, then figured there was no point in hiding it. “It’s Jack.”
Diane’s hand froze, blush brush hovering over her cheekbone. “Jack. As in Jack Cavanaugh. As in the Jack you saw at the diner with his girlfriend.”
“That’s the one.”
“The one you were on and off with for over year until he finally stopped calling.”
“You don’t have to summarize.”
She set down the brush and swiveled on her vanity stool to face me fully. “Honey. What are you doing?”
“I don’t know.” It was the most honest thing I’d said all morning. “I just... I think I made a mistake. With him. And I want to fix it.”
Diane studied me for a long moment, her expression shifting from skepticism to something softer. “You really liked him, didn’t you? I mean, really liked him. Not just the hot-and-cold thing you do with every guy.”
“I really liked him.”
“Then why did you push him away?”
The answer was too complicated to explain—the mother who left, the father who crumbled, the years of therapy I’d had in a life that no longer existed. So I just shrugged and said, “I was scared.”
Diane nodded slowly. “Well, at least you’re finally admitting it.”
She turned back to her mirror, picking up the blush brush again.
“Just... be careful, okay? I don’t want to see you get hurt. Or hurt him again. He seemed like a good one.”
“He is.”
“Then don’t screw it up this time.”
Sound advice. I just hoped I could follow it.
Later, getting dressed, I tried to picture Emma’s face and felt something cold slide through me.
The details were softer than they’d been yesterday.
I could still see her. The dark hair, that crooked grin she’d gotten from Sarah, but the specifics were smudging, like a photograph left in a wallet too long.
What color were her eyes? Brown. I was almost sure they were brown.
They had to be brown. I’d looked into those eyes a thousand times.
I shook it off and reached for the horrible pantyhose. If I stayed, I was going to start the trend of no longer wearing hose. Take that little plastic egg.
By 9 AM the pantyhose were already driving me insane.
I’d chosen a dress today that was electric purple with a dropped waist and dolman sleeves, the kind of color that practically vibrated under the fluorescent office lights. Bright and confident in theory, tropical bird in the wrong habitat in practice.
After watching Diane’s full production, I’d opted for something simpler. Mascara, a little blush, a neutral lip. The kind of face I’d worn in 2014.
Apparently, that was a mistake.
By mid-morning, Patricia had asked if I was feeling okay.
Elaine from editorial wanted to know if I was coming down with something.
Dennis the mail room kid told me I looked “tired.” And Harold—Harold, who smoked at his desk and had coffee stains on his tie—actually suggested I might want to “put on some color.”
I’d forgotten that bare-faced in 1987 meant sick. By lunch, I’d retreated to the bathroom and applied more blush and lipstick just to stop the comments.
Just before lunch, Richard appeared at my desk.
I looked up, startled. Richard was Editorial Director. Patricia’s boss’s boss, the man who’d mentored me through my entire career in the timeline I’d left behind. In 2014, he’d just promoted me to take his place. Here, in 1987, I was barely a blip on his radar. Or so I’d thought.
“Shaw, right?” He was in his early forties, already silver-haired and distinguished, the kind of man who wore his authority comfortably, like a well-tailored jacket. “Margaret Shaw?”
“Maggie.” I stood, smoothing my eye-watering dress. “Yes, sir.”
“Patricia tells me you have good instincts. She says you flagged the Morrison manuscript last week, the one about the fishing village?”
I had a vague memory of that, something in the writing that had felt different, more alive than the usual submissions. “It stood out.”
“It did indeed. We’re acquiring it.” He smiled, the kind of smile that made you feel like you’d been chosen for something. “I like to keep an eye on assistants with good instincts. Which is why I wanted to talk to you about an opportunity.”
My stomach tightened. I knew what was coming.
“There’s a conference in New York next week. Industry networking, some panels on market trends. Patricia was going to send Elaine, but she’s come down with something, and I thought perhaps you’d like to go instead.”
New York. The conference that had been, in my original timeline, a turning point in my career. I’d met people there who’d shaped my entire trajectory. I’d also been gone for three days, days when I needed to be fighting for my relationship instead of networking my way up the ladder.
“That’s very generous,” I said carefully. “When exactly?”
“You’d leave Friday, back Monday. All expenses paid, of course.”
Friday through Monday. February 8th through the 11th. Right in the middle of the time I had to prove to Jack that I’d changed.
The old Maggie would have said yes without hesitation. Career first. Always career first. Relationships could wait; opportunities couldn’t.
“I’m going to have to decline,” I heard myself say. “I have a... personal commitment that week that I can’t reschedule.”
Richard’s eyebrows rose slightly. He wasn’t used to assistants turning down career opportunities. “Are you sure? This could be valuable for your future here.”
“I’m sure. But I really appreciate you thinking of me.”
He studied me for a moment, then nodded. “Another time, then. Keep up the good work, Shaw.”
He walked away as I sank back into my chair, heart pounding. I’d just turned down the conference that had helped launch my career. For a man. For a chance at something that might not even work out.
This is either the smartest thing I’ve ever done or the stupidest.
I wouldn’t know which until Valentine’s Day.