6. Saturday
CHAPTER 6
SATURDAY
M aggie had insisted that she could go shopping by herself, and Teddy had agreed that she absolutely could but remained unconvinced that she should or, more importantly, that she actually would. She’d suggested that he just order the towels and bedding for her online, but he was adamant that she’d end up leaving the boxes in Blue Harbor’s mail room when they arrived and keep sleeping on the couch for the rest of the summer. So, in the end, they left Parton to make his usual camp rounds and drove together to a white corrugated metal warehouse so far out in the country that, as far as the eye could see, it was just trees and churches (one Baptist, one Methodist, one Pentecostal). A yellowing lightbox sign by the door with mismatched red and black letters touted Blue Ridge Bargains as the place “where you get more for less.” Maggie had missed this kind of janky country gem. There was just something about the thrill of the chase and the triumph of the deal. She may not love to shop, but she did love to win.
Inside, everything was price-marked with colored stickers. Aisles and aisles of chandeliers and giant wall clocks and robot vacuums and decorative faux stone copies of the ten commandments spread out beneath a double-height ceiling crisscrossed by strings of rainbow pennant bunting. It was truly a one stop shop.
Maggie managed to find towels, sheets, pillows, a duvet, and an inoffensive blue and white striped duvet cover with matching pillowcases for under $50. She felt like she had a runner’s high.
Teddy headed back to Charlotte three dollars lighter, the proud owner of an apron printed to make its wearer look like a grizzly bear that is, itself, wearing an apron.
That evening, Maggie arrived at the Oak Ridge gymnasium for the first Social of the summer on the last of the three school buses her aunt had hired for the evening. (Maggie also had an entire stack of invoices sitting on the rug in her aunt’s office under a post-it labeled “transportation???” one of which was probably for tonight, and probably needed to be paid, but that was a problem for tomorrow-Maggie.)
Tonight-Maggie was dressed to impress for the 80s theme, wearing a pink Blue Harbor sweatshirt she’d bought at the camp Trading Post two hours earlier and promptly taken a pair of scissors to, cropping off the bottom elastic and cutting a wide neck so that it hung off one shoulder, Flashdance style. She’d layered that over a black sports bra, some of her black running tights, and her running shoes, and topped the look off with leg warmers she’d made out of white crew socks she’d rescued from one of the Donate bags now carpeting the living room. Her hair was living its best life pulled up into a frizzy side ponytail with a neon yellow scrunchie she’d borrowed from her head swimming counselor.
Earlier that afternoon, as she was leaving her first staff meeting with all the Blue Harbor activity heads, Maggie’s phone had buzzed with a text from Daniel Becker. He’d already texted her once on Thursday and once on Friday to make sure that Parton was on the mend, so she unlocked her phone ready to send him the video she’d taken —just for evidence purposes— of the enormous mutt scarfing down breakfast. But, this time, that wasn’t what Becker wanted.
Daniel: Please note that the dress code for the evening will be strictly enforced as to all parties .
Maggie had, frankly, not thought much about what she was going to wear to the Social, figuring she was exempted from dressing up by her extremely advanced age. The one suitcase she’d brought with her from Brussels hadn’t exactly been well-stocked with neon or acid washed denim. At her business school in London, fancy dress had been a competitive sport, but she’d hung up her assorted animal ear headbands years ago. She’d forgotten, until Becker had texted, that her initiation into costuming as a competitive sport had been during her years as a camper at Blue Harbor.
Looked like she was coming out of retirement.
In the Oak Ridge gym, hot pink, teal, and silver metallic streamers stretched between the rafters and brightly-colored geometric pieces of poster board hung from the beams. The lights were low, and an LED disco ball suspended in the middle of the room sent blue and pink light spinning indiscriminately across the floor, the walls, the people. “Dancing in the Dark” blasted out over tinny speakers at a volume that was basically just bragging about how far they were from any neighbors.
Maggie picked her way over to one of the thick wooden posts that supported the high ceiling, and leaned against it, surveying the crowd. Campers were hovering in groups on the edges of the central basketball court, no one having yet dared to be the first out on the dance floor. At the far end of the gym, two Oak Ridge counselors who’d been tasked with DJing were bent over a decrepit laptop set on a folding table covered in a glittery black cloth. Across from where she stood was an equally glittery refreshment table featuring an enormous plastic fishbowl of crimson bug juice surrounded by neat stacks of paper cups. That wouldn’t last long. The room was already uncomfortably warm, the day’s humidity compounded by the heat of so many bodies packed together. The ceiling fans whirring away didn’t seem to be having any effect. She gave those neatly stacked cups ten minutes tops.
Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie spotted Daniel Becker in the middle of some sort of complicated handshake with one of his campers. He had on running shoes and white tube socks with double yellow stripes that hit mid-calf. Then there was a lot of tanned leg, notably short teal nylon shorts, and a tucked-in white tee begging so loudly to be untucked that it was honestly indecent. At least he’d thrown a (truly spectacular) purple, yellow, and teal color-blocked windbreaker over it. For the sake of the children. His usually mussed hair was gelled up to a height not reached since John Hughes last yelled “cut!” The entire look was somehow, simultaneously, an elaborate a joke and entirely unselfconscious. Possibly no human on earth was better suited to running a summer camp than this man.
Which was fine. It made perfect sense, actually. Because he did run a summer camp. He had been running one for years.
And, yet, she found it deeply, inexplicably irritating.
* * *
Daniel hadn’t seen Maggie come in with the rush of Blue Harbor campers. He’d texted her earlier without much thought, and then promptly overthought it for the rest of the afternoon. He wanted to get Maggie McArthur, Fancy Business Consultant, out of her pantsuit—her metaphorical pantsuit—so that he could find out what was underneath. Metaphorically. Because if Camper Maggie was still there, maybe she wouldn’t be so quick to sell Blue Harbor to the highest bidder. Maybe she would remember what made it so special, what made it a place worth the trouble of preserving. He knew one night of spandex and synthesizers and sweaty, smiling faces didn’t have that kind of power. But if he could just get her to have fun, to unbutton her metaphorical blazer, or at least cuff a sleeve, that would be a start. For Miss Peggy’s sake.
Definitely for no other reason.
Vacating the dance floor after a boisterous rendition of the electric slide that had finally gotten almost everyone grapevining, he spotted Maggie leaning up against a column near the gym entrance. She looked like she’d walked right off the set of a jazzercise video. She was playing along. He blew out a deep breath, smiled broadly, and wove his way over to her through a tangle of tweens.
“Sick threads,” he half-yelled into her ear over the chorus of “Don’t Stop Believin’.” She turned to him, eyebrows raised, and gave him a once-over, skimming her eyes upward from his feet. He knew it was for show, but something could be both funny and hot. Sarah Silverman, for example. Not that Sarah Silverman was a thing ?—
“Eight out of ten,” Maggie said, blessedly interrupting the thought spiral.
“Only eight?”
“Points were deducted for lack of a mullet.”
Daniel brought a hand up to his gel-crunchy coif. “That seems somewhat unreasonable, all things considered.”
“I don’t make the rules.” Maggie shrugged, innocently imitating the kind of person who didn’t make the rules. Daniel was beginning to suspect that Maggie almost always made the rules.
“Well. I’ll have to start my preparation for next year immediately.”
Maggie met his easy gaze. “See that you do.”
There was something about the way she said it…a hint of steel behind her smiling eyes. Daniel honest to god almost shivered in the stuffy Oak Ridge Gym. He couldn’t quite take a full breath.
Come to think of it, he could use some air. A walk around the gym might burn off some of his suddenly edgy energy. “I’m going to take a lap outside,” he said, keeping his regular smile firmly in place. “I’m on mischief prevention duty tonight.”
“I would have pegged you as pro mischief,” she said.
“You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.”
Maggie gave him a look he couldn’t quite read. “You make a terrible villain, Becker. Me, on the other hand? I wouldn’t mind a few minutes of quiet.”
Well, that was unexpectedly inconvenient.
Daniel led the way out the large double doors into the relief of the crisp night. Safety lamps bathed the wide staircase in a harsh white light, so he continued down to the open ground beyond its reach. When he turned right, Maggie turned with him.
“What’s next week’s Social, again?” she asked, as if she hadn’t just almost convinced Daniel to spend the coming year growing out a mullet because she told him to.
“Barn dance,” he said, focusing on the uneven ground ahead as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
“Then I’ll be taking a trip to the Hendersonville Goodwill,” she said, in the tone he associated with Maggie McArthur, Fancy Business Consultant. It was, somehow, charming, that she had accepted finding secondhand cowboy boots as a critical Part Of The Job. It might even count as progress.
“Can you square dance?” Daniel asked, stepping over a nearly invisible tree root.
“Daniel Becker, I’m a Carolina girl. We learned the Virginia Reel in 5 th grade P.E.” Maggie stepped easily over the same root.
“You learned the Virginia Reel in P.E.?” he repeated, incredulous.
“Didn’t you?”
“L.A. public schools skip that unit. I learned from the great Miss Peggy Sullivan herself, right here in the Oak Ridge gym.”
“I would have paid money to see that,” Maggie said, before they lapsed into a not uncomfortable silence. The Oak Ridge speaker system didn’t have much in the way of bass, but the muffled chorus of “I Think We’re Alone Now” still drifted out of the gym’s open windows as they walked.
“So, how’s it going, taking over Blue Harbor?” Becker asked, after a moment.
“I’m not—it’s just for this summer.”
“I have some idea of what you walked into. I’d been working on talking Miss Peggy into thinking about considering possibly letting me help get Blue Harbor’s books organized. And digitized.”
“That sounds like Aunt Peg,” she said, warmth and old exasperation lacing her words.
“Anyway, offer stands. Or, it transfers, I guess. From Miss Peggy to you.”
“I have an M.B.A., Becker.”
“Neat. I have a B.A. in Comparative Literature.”
Maggie glanced back to make sure he could see when she made a face, and, just as she did, her foot snagged on a root. Daniel somehow managed to catch her arm as she fell, but since she’d already lost her footing, all he accomplished was reversing the direction in which she went crashing to the ground. Instead of falling away from him, she fell toward him. On top of him, in fact.
For the second time that night, Maggie McArthur had knocked the wind out of him. At least he’d landed on a patch of dirt mostly clear of rocks and roots. He lay for a moment, catching his breath, listening to the immortal poetry of Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” drifting out of the gym. His shoulder was beginning to throb, but nothing else felt too badly banged up.
“You okay?” Maggie asked. She shifted slightly so that she was straddling his hips, then braced her hands against his chest and pushed herself up so that she was half sitting on him, half kneeling over him.
“Having a B.A. in Comp Lit?” Daniel asked on a wheeze as Maggie loomed, side ponytail silhouetted by the moonlight. “Bad employment prospects, but I had a full ride.”
She was quiet for a moment, and then her laughter cracked the silence. It wasn’t the kind of laugh he’d expected from her. It wasn’t slyly knowing and tightly controlled. It was bright and wild. It was, and he meant this in the best way, a cackle.
And as she cackled, she settled into his body. He could feel the residual tension from the shock of the impact seeping away. Her thighs, bracketing his torso, softened against him as she let more of her weight rest across his hips.
Then, to his abject horror, he became aware—excruciatingly, agonizingly, exquisitely aware—that one particular part of his own body, just slightly below his hips, was doing the precise opposite of softening.
Oh god.
Maybe if he lay perfectly still and focused very hard—very intently —on something horrific until Maggie got off—got up —she wouldn’t notice. It was pretty dark, after all. No harm, no foul.
Unfortunately, Maggie chose that moment to lean ever-so-slightly back. And then she froze. Daniel almost whimpered at the contact. Valiantly, he stayed quiet. She caught his gaze, and for several long seconds he stared at her, paralyzed. Should he apologize? Make a joke? Move across the country and change his name?
Maggie’s lips parted like she was about to say something, but she seemed to think better of it. Instead, eyes glinting inscrutably, she shifted forward onto her knees, stood, and stepped aside to brush the dirt from her leggings.
Daniel remained on the ground, the moonlight unhelpfully highlighting the shine of the nylon stretched across what was absolutely, unmistakably an erection.
Because his was not a merciful god, the earth did not choose that moment to open up and swallow him whole. So, when Maggie held out a hand, he let her pull him to his feet, and when she said, “Let’s go, Becker. I think I hear ‘Footloose,’” they went.