25. Tuesday
CHAPTER 25
TUESDAY
I n hindsight, Maggie should have seen it coming. But she was naively surprised at 8 p.m. on Tuesday evening when Daniel Becker showed up at her door with a container of homemade chicken noodle soup. Parton didn’t even tip her off before Becker rang the doorbell. The dog had, at some point, stopped barking when Becker came over, like he wasn’t a regular visitor, like he somehow belonged there. So much for canine loyalty.
When Maggie opened the door, Parton rushed out, wagging his tail and demanding ear scratches. Daniel crouched, obligingly, setting the soup container on the porch out of the way.
“Hey,” he said, looking up at Maggie, and sounding unusually reserved.
“Hey.”
He stood and held out the soup. “I, uh, brought soup?” The hesitancy in his tone was echoed by the uncertainty in his warm eyes.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the tupperware.
“It’s…I made it. It’s good, though. I promise.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” She sounded tired, even to her own ears.
“It’s my bubbe’s recipe.”
There was an awkward beat where Maggie knew she was supposed to invite him in.
She didn’t.
She might be dangerously contagious for all he knew.
But then he smiled this devastatingly hesitant smile that made his eyes crinkle at the edges when he asked how she was feeling. And, simultaneously, but completely coincidentally, her stomach lurched (obviously a symptom of the nausea she was barely holding at bay). She stepped back and held the door open for him to pass.
The only explanation was that she briefly blacked out and some long-dormant Southern hospitality kicked in. Because she didn’t want him there. She absolutely didn’t. But he was already in her living room. It was too late.
She closed the door behind Parton, who’d followed Becker back inside, and stood there in the entryway, inanely, holding a container of still warm soup.
“Here, let me…” Becker trailed off as he took the tupperware back from her and went to stash it in the refrigerator.
“Thanks.” She still didn’t move. Should she sneeze or something? Fake a coughing fit? Had she stepped through a portal into a Disney Channel Original Movie?
Jesus, get it together, Margaret. She could pretend to have the stomach flu like a normal person. She vaguely remembered a professor saying that it was best to keep your lies as close as possible to the truth. Though she was pretty sure he’d been talking about PR around potential corporate takeovers.
“So,” Daniel said, leaning against the refrigerator. He looked at Maggie expectantly. When she didn’t respond, he prompted, “How are you feeling?”
“Oh. Right.” He had asked her that already. “Fine. I mean, ok. Not great. Fine.” Very convincing. Someone get her an agent. This woman was destined for the stage.
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
They stood there, Maggie still hovering by the door, Daniel in the kitchen, just looking at each other. Something was off with Becker. Was he…upset with her? For being sick? That seemed unlike him.
“Is it a summer cold? Or maybe allergies?”
“I don’t know. A stomach bug maybe.”
Daniel grunted an acknowledgement. But when she met his gaze, he looked so sad. And hurt, somehow. Like he was a puppy someone had kicked. She couldn’t take it.
“Is something wrong?” She tried, she really did, not to sound accusatory.
“You’re lying,” he said, evenly. “You’re terrible at it.”
“I’m…I really don’t feel well.” Especially right then. She actually thought she might throw up.
“Did I — was it something I did? On Friday morning you bailed pretty quickly but I figured that was just… kind of your thing.”
Oh. Oh no. Maggie had been so (in her defense, understandably!) caught up in her own mess that she hadn’t even considered…Thursday night had been— let’s go with intense. And then she’d more or less fled his cabin and immediately embarked on a poorly-executed campaign to avoid him. She was avoiding him for a completely unrelated reason. (Ok, fine, mostly for an unrelated reason.) But to him they’d had objectively incredible sex after which she’d slept over and then kind of freaked out. He had drawn a perfectly reasonable line between events A and B.
That’s why he was here, with homemade chicken soup, looking like a puppy someone had kicked. Maggie was the someone. And she’d hurt him so carelessly she hadn’t even noticed. Well fuck. See, this is why she didn’t do…whatever this was.
“Ok. I get it.”
Daniel’s words snapped Maggie back to the present, where she hadn’t actually responded.
“Wait—” He brushed past her on his way to the door.
“No, it’s fine. I shouldn’t have come over.”
He had a hand on the doorknob now. He was leaving. And she should be glad. She should want him to leave. Let him hate her and move on. Because that would be easier. Simpler. A clean break. Except, in that moment, it didn’t feel like it would be any of those things at all.
“Please wait, I?—”
He paused, but he didn’t turn.
“Look I—I’m pregnant.”
He did turn then.
“That’s why I haven’t been feeling well. I just found out Saturday.”
He stared at her, mouth slightly open like he had a million things to say, and he couldn’t figure out where to start. Or maybe like there was nothing to say at all, but he felt like he had to say something . So she answered the obvious question. “It’s not yours. I mean, I’m pretty sure. Timing-wise. But either way, I’m getting an abortion. So, it’s under control. I just—it wasn’t anything you did. I see why you thought—But I’ve just been…distracted.”
Daniel was quiet for a long, long time. It was probably, in reality, a perfectly reasonable amount of time, considering the amount of information he was taking in, and the emotional whiplash he was almost certainly experiencing. But to Maggie, it felt like decades. It was excruciating. And not in the fun way.
When he finally spoke, it was haltingly. As if he was choosing his words carefully. “I’m sorry, I—I’m having a little trouble gauging the correct response here. You…sound like you know what you want, so…I’m glad that’s what you’re doing. I’m sorry that—that you’re in this situation, I guess. It must be…a lot.”
Maggie released a breath. If he’d waited any longer to say something, she probably would have passed out from lack of oxygen. And this evening really didn’t need any additional drama.
“It’s bullshit. As you are well aware, I take precautions. Several, actually.”
“You don’t have to justify?—”
She didn’t. But she was, she realized, furious. She was furious that this had happened to her. And if he was going to know, then she wanted him to be furious for her. Because she had been so, so goddamn careful.
And then, to her absolute horror, she was crying. Out of nowhere. Fucking hormones. Fierce tears cut hot rivers down her cheeks and wracking sobs shook her to her core. And then Daniel was there, arms around her, solid and steady, and she buried her face in one of his stupid perfect cotton t-shirts and cried.
Later, after Maggie had cried herself dehydrated, after Daniel had gotten her a glass of water and sat them both down on the couch, after Parton had laid his head in her lap, she sniffed with as much dignity as it was possible to muster and pushed herself upright from where she had curled into Daniel’s shoulder. Then she said, in the most nonchalant tone she could muster while still a little bit hoarse from crying, “Anyway, I don’t really want to talk about it, if you don’t mind, so, you should probably go.” Before he could respond, she added, “But you could maybe leave the soup? Soup sounds good, actually. I’ve been pretty nauseous.”
She felt his eyes on her, but she stayed focused on where she was scratching Parton’s head. He looked away, and said, in a tone almost as effortfully casual as hers, “Actually, how do you feel about Dashiell Hammet?”
“Is this another literature thing?”
“No. Well, actually, yes, he was a writer—he did a lot of hard-boiled detective—” He cut himself off, and seemed to reset. “The point is, I was just going to go home and watch a movie—The Thin Man—and, I was thinking—maybe you want to watch, too?”
And, damn him, she really fucking did.
She should have said no and sent him home. She shouldn’t have wanted more of the comfort of his presence, shouldn’t have even found his presence comforting. She was letting herself get too used to Daniel Becker. In just a few weeks, Maggie was going back to her real job, her real life, such as it was. She was leaving. And if she didn’t watch out, she would have no one to blame but herself when, this time, the leaving really hurt. A responsible person would have said no.
But Maggie said yes.