Chapter 28 Now Diana
NOW: DIANA
“You’re still here,” Diana croaked. It was morning, early, she could tell by the soft blue light that filtered into the room.
But even though it was early, and even though they’d finished an entire bottle of wine, she was not surprised to find Maggie sitting upright against her headboard. She supposed some things didn’t change.
“I told you I am trying, I told you I wouldn’t leave. Not, at least, until we are done.”
Diana rolled over onto her back, nodding slightly. So they were doing it, they were really talking everything out. Last night they’d reached a point of emotional exhaustion, and yet, Diana knew they hadn’t even scratched the surface of everything.
But still, Diana felt like she’d gotten something out of last night.
She’d always known Maggie was as torn up about them as she was; if she hadn’t believed that, then she wouldn’t have been so hung up on what could have been for all this time.
It had been one of the reasons she’d grown to resent and hate Maggie so much, because Maggie was the one causing the pain, who had done and continued to do this to them.
Last night she’d had that confirmed, along with the fact that Maggie thought she’d chosen wrong and regretted it.
It wasn't a resolution by any means, just more pieces to the puzzle.
“Alright, coffee?” Diana said finally.
“Coffee. But can we drink it in here?” Maggie asked, and Diana turned her head to look up at the woman she hadn’t had in her bed but had wanted for decades.
“It’s just been a while since,” Maggie shrugged sheepishly, “since I’ve been in your bed.
” The unsaid part of that statement was that it hadn’t been decades since they’d shared a bed, but Diana got the sentiment.
This was her bed, and Maggie had missed being in her bed.
After all, it was Diana’s bed that had been their refuge for years back when they were in high school. Back when they first fell in love.
“Damn Mags, you come to my house, demand we talk, and now demand that I bring you coffee and serve it to you in bed?” Diana said teasingly and warmed slightly because it felt nice.
Diana had learned after all their time together to hold onto the things that felt nice as much as possible, because they were fleeting. She hoped that was about to change.
“I—fuck that’s not—” Maggie said, but Diana cut her off.
“I am just messing with you, stay here, I am afraid that if I let you leave I’ll come back to an empty bed anyway.” The last bit of her words came out more serious than Diana had intended, but she also knew there was a big part of her that believed them.
Fifteen minutes later, they were both in bed with hot coffees like an old married couple. Like they had woken up hundreds of times and spent Saturday mornings just like this. The thought both warmed and broke Diana.
“So,” Diana began, and she could feel Maggie’s smile without having to look at her.
“So,” Maggie said.
“Keep going,” Diana said a little more seriously, this time intentionally so. They still had so much more to say.
“Do you still hate me?” Maggie asked quietly.
Diana took a deep breath. “Yes and no. Not really, which makes it all that more agonizing” she said finally, not looking at Maggie. Because she didn’t and that pissed her off more.
They were quiet for a while until Maggie said, “Do you think that’ll ever change?”
“I don’t know,” Diana said honestly again, because if they couldn’t be honest at this point with each other, what was even the point.
“Is there any reason to try then, if all you’re going to do is hate me anyway?” Maggie asked, and Diana could feel the embers of her anger being stoked.
“I hate you, Maggie, because I don’t actually, but I wish I did. Instead, I love you so goddamn much, even after everything,” Diana said, this time turning to face Maggie, who regarded her and then nodded.
“Lauren does always remind me that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but apathy,” Maggie murmured.
“Your therapist?” Diana guessed.
“Yes, they’re really great, I think you’d like them,” Maggie replied, taking another long sip of her coffee.
“Well they got you here, so I like them already,” Diana said, nudging Maggie playfully with her shoulder before taking her own sip.
It was a strange marker of old relationships, Diana thought, one where you know the other person so well that you can hold contempt and love for them and be both spiteful and playful.
“So is that what they say about me, about us, about all of this?” Diana asked.
“Lauren has been very illuminating.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me.”
“Lauren only says it when I talk about how much you hate me and how much I hate myself. We aren’t apathetic, so there’s still hope.”
“Still hope,” Diana repeated and then hated the way her stomach somersaulted.
“I hope so, I mean, I hope she’s right,” Maggie said. “I have hope. I just, we need to figure shit out. I mean I know you can’t just forgive me, nor can I just forgive myself.”
Diana took in Maggie’s words, nodding slightly. “And I don’t know what to do with that. Like if tomorrow we start trying, like you’re here now, ready to try after all this time, does that mean everything that’s happened is what? Forgiven? Forgotten? I mean Mags, it was so much fucking time.”
“I know, Dee, I know. I know okay? But I also, I mean after everything, look at where I ended up.” Diana turned once more to survey Maggie.
“Why did you come back to Maplewood? Maybe that is a good place to start. Did you come back simply because it’s home?”
There was a thoughtful silence that settled over them before Maggie said, “Yes, I came back because Maplewood is my home.”
Diana nodded. Of course Maggie had come back to her home, even if her father was dead and her shitty mother was still shitty. “So you’d rather come back to a family that treated you like sh—”
“I came back to you,” Maggie said, and Diana studied her face, noting the earnestness there, and she once again internally admonished herself for her belly swooping. “I came back to Maplewood, the last place I was home before, well before everything, was with you, Dee, you have to know that.”
Diana hadn’t been sure, and it was another crack in the wall of resentment she’d built around all things her and Maggie.
“Look, like I said, I know you can’t just forgive me, I know, okay? I can’t much forgive myself, though Lauren says I should try. And like I said last night, truthfully, I would do everything almost the exact same way because of Maya.”
That was different. “Almost the exact same way?”
“I mean, I don’t know Dee, because it doesn’t change anything, but I think you know, sometimes I torture myself with how things might have been different, I don’t know. Lauren says to focus on what I can control, the now.”
“Ah well, if Lauren says,” Diana said playfully.
“We’ve talked about other stuff, that’s also been illuminating.”
Diana made a hand gesture to urge Maggie on.
“Well, we talked about your relationship with Jay a bit. Well, after the night I came over and…” Maggie gestured in the air with her hand as if painting a picture of everything that had happened that night.
“And what did she say?” Diana asked, now genuinely curious. This wasn’t exactly where she wanted to start, but Jay had always been a bit of a specter in their relationship.
“So she introduced me to polyamory, which I thought was just like swingers and threesomes, but Lauren has been very…educational.” Diana gave Maggie a oh really?
look while she sipped her coffee. “Yes, she gave me a book and some web articles, I haven’t really looked into it as a whole, I mean it hasn’t all been applicable to my life, but I did dig into the idea of a ‘comet’ formation, or basically two people who rarely see each other but their bond is deep and genuine. Like you and Jay.”
Diana rested her head back on the headboard. She had known that poly was likely involved but she had never had the need to look up how she and Jay felt about each other or operated. They simply were. She was, though, happy to know that it had a name. It added a different layer of validity to it.
“So, basically, the love can be romantic and non-sexual, or both, or however the two people decide.” Diana could hear the question in Maggie’s statement.
“Jay and I haven’t had a sexual relationship for a long time, not since college, when I was, well…
” She didn’t finish the sentence, but they both knew she had been about to say heartbroken and sad.
“She and Michaela were already a thing, as you know, when I got there, and we remained friendly. We tried a couple times, and it was fine, but in the end, Michaela had boundaries Jay wasn’t going to cross and honestly, I love them together so much that I wanted to respect that for Jay.
Besides, I knew it was likely that whoever I dated next would be like you and loathe Jay anyway. ”
“I didn’t loathe her, I envied her, I was threatened by her, I guess I still am.”
“Even though I have been chasing you for decades?”
Maggie took another sip of her coffee and then her face scrunched up in thought before she said, “I mean, Jay has been out since what? College? She met her girlfriend, fell in love, and just lived. She never really hid in the way that I have for so long, and I guess a part of me kinda resented her for that. Especially because I knew she would have never done what I did to you.”
Diana felt her eyes fill with tears. No, Jay wouldn’t have done what Maggie did. But Diana had never thought of it like that, she didn’t spend time comparing the two women she loved, they were different, her love for them was different.
“You know what’s crazy? One day my kid just came home from school, and over dinner with me and her father talked about how she’d learned about different sexual orientations in health class.
And that she had learned about pansexuality, and that she realized then that’s what she was, pansexual.
Just like that over dinner, not even sixteen years old. ”
“Yeah well, Lily has been telling everyone she’s ‘gay as hell, now gay as fuck’ since middle school.
” Diana laughed at the memory of the many townspeoples’ faces whenever they told Lily she was going to grow up to be a princess and find her prince charming and that was her response. Diana hadn’t even minded the swearing.
“Amazing, right? These kids today, it’s like they know who they are and they have no shame saying it, amazing.
I sat there at the table, me and Damien, both dumbfounded that she just breezily told us she wasn’t straight, she didn’t even have a fear there would be repercussions from us as her parents.
” After a pause Maggie said, “That, I think, is what I am most proud of as her mother.”
Diana smiled at that, because she felt the same way about her little lesbian, who she knew wasn’t so little anymore, and who she suspected had definitely shown Maya and Mary McAvoy’s daughter, Hanna, how grown she was. But that was a conversation for another time.
“But in that moment? I resented the fact that she could so bravely tell me, that she would have no problem holding another girl’s hand, that she never would have made the decision I made.
” Maggie’s voice broke on her last words and Diana set aside her mug of what little remained of her coffee on the night stand before turning to embrace Maggie.
Maggie took two steadying breaths and then pulled away, not completely out of Diana’s arms, but enough that she could finish her coffee, clear her throat and then continue.
“That’s the big thing in all of this Dee.
I am ashamed. I am so ashamed not only because of what I did to you, to us, to me, but I am ashamed for Maya to find out.
What will she think of me? She can’t even comprehend why I have done what I’ve done.
And worse, I am afraid she will see my mistake as a mistake, as the wrong choice, as if she is a mistake, the wrong choice. ”
Diana took Maggie’s empty mug from her hand and leaned over to set it on the nightstand behind her, then she gathered Maggie in her arms. She was pleasantly surprised when Maggie seemed to gather her up as well.
“I just need to work on that before I tell her, okay?” Maggie said between sobs. “I know we have so much, I just, I’m so fucking sorry and I’m so fucking ashamed Dee, I really am.”
They held each other like that, whispering words of reassurance and apologies.
Diana could feel her wall of resentment continuing to erode away.
She knew none of this made everything magically okay, but then she realized they’d both suffered, no matter whose fault it was, and she was so fucking tired of suffering, of wanting Maggie to suffer, and then hating herself for wanting Maggie to suffer, thus adding to her suffering.
There was still one thing she needed to know, something she had wanted to know for so many years, but had been afraid to ask, lest the answer make her really hate Maggie.
But now, in this moment, she knew she was ready to finally ask.
Not moving an inch away from the woman she loved, wanting to keep the embrace, she needed it for strength.
“Mags, what happened, back in high school?”