32. Wednesday
CHAPTER 32
WEDNESDAY
I t was Wednesday before Maggie managed to find fifteen minutes during which both she and Jordan were free. Becker had an early meeting, so he’d skipped their morning run, which meant Maggie had some extra time before breakfast. Jordan was an early riser, and, Maggie knew, liked to go play around with the bouldering routes up at the climbing wall while no one else was there. So Maggie ambushed them. But she brought coffee.
“Mx. Jordan Johnson, just the head of mountaineering I was looking for.”
Jordan finished reattaching a red, amoeba-shaped hold to the bouldering wall and turned just as Maggie crested the small hill leading up to the climbing area. “Ms. McArthur. With coffee. To what do I owe the pleasures?” They leaned a little more heavily than usual on their Carolina vowels.
Maggie handed over one of the mugs she’d carried so carefully up from the cottage and got right to business. Jordan taught geometry and pre-calculus at an Asheville boarding school during the year, which, as teaching jobs went, likely paid relatively well. Maggie thought she’d be able to match the benefits but probably not the salary. Not to mention that becoming a camp director was a pretty sharp left turn, career-wise. Then again, the position did come with a bouldering wall.
Jordan was capable, reliable, and, most importantly, loved Blue Harbor, so Maggie had come prepared to give them the hard sell. What she had not come prepared for was to be sold hard in return.
Maggie did the standard run-down of the Camp Director’s responsibilities and why she thought Jordan would be a fantastic fit. Then she described her vision for the future of Blue Harbor and the new Events Coordinator that she was looking to hire. When she finished, Jordan stayed quiet for a long moment, leaning up against the rock wall and idly tossing another loose handhold into the air. Then they caught it decisively and said, “I’ll do it if you stay on to handle the renovation and events.”
“Oh I—You don’t have to give me an answer right now.”
Jordan crossed their arms and pinned Maggie with a confident stare. “That’s my answer.”
“I already have a job.” Why did she have to keep reminding people of this lately?
“So do I,” Jordan said with a gotcha smile. “Look. You want me as Camp Director because I love Blue Harbor. And because—I’m paraphrasing here—I’m amazing. But if you want to keep Blue Harbor more or less as it is, then the person who really needs to love it is the person in charge of changing it. And that’s not the Camp Director. I don’t want to spend all my time fighting a coworker who cares more about the profit than the people.”
Maggie took a sip of her now lukewarm coffee. “You make a compelling argument.” They really did. Maggie was never going to be as approachable as Aunt Peg or as charming as Daniel Becker, but, working alongside Jordan, focusing on the business side, she could probably make herself pretty useful.
“Think about it,” they said.
“Hey, that’s my line.”
Maggie would think about it, though. She could feel the idea sinking its claws into her. Abandoning consulting after a decade and moving across an ocean to become the director of a rural North Carolina summer camp was more than a sharp left turn for her career. It was a Thelma & Louise . But it already sounded slightly less absurd than when her mother had suggested, admittedly, the exact same thing a few days earlier.
Could she? Did she…want to? Maggie couldn’t remember the last time she’d really stopped to think about what she wanted. Whether, over time, it might have changed.
“Alright.” She held out her hand. “Let’s talk in a week.”
And they shook on it.