Chapter 10
“Trust me. This honestly happens all the time.”
PJ’s voice was earnest. She’d believed his every word.
As soon as Maggie woke up, she wanted to talk to PJ. To apologize for the mixed signals, to hope they could go back to becoming friends. And considering how this weekend had unfolded so far with Liz and Mac, Maggie knew she needed all the friends she could get.
It was early afternoon when she finally had a moment alone with him. Georgie was set up, once again working downstairs while the rest of the group finished packing after the morning’s beach trip.
Maggie knocked on the bedroom door. “Can we talk?”
PJ took off his headphones when he saw her. “Sure, come in.”
“Listen, about last night—”
“We really don’t have to do this,” he interrupted. “All’s good.”
“You’re such a great guy, and it’s been so great getting to know you—”
PJ groaned, but he was laughing through it, too. “You don’t know how many times I’ve been told this. I really don’t want to be told this.”
“Cuz it’s true.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Really. I’m just…I’m adjusting to being back home. It’s all a bit more complicated than I thought it would be. I’m sorry.”
“Trust me. I get it,” PJ said.
“You do?”
“It’s Mac, isn’t it?”
Maggie’s stomach did a jumping jack. She rested her head against the bunk bed’s post. “No? Maybe? I don’t even know anymore. He’s with Robyn now, though, so it doesn’t really matter.”
Mac had spent the rest of the night ignoring her, pretending she didn’t even exist. And then he’d left this morning without so much as a goodbye. Not just to her but to anyone. If she needed a signal that Mac had moved on, she’d gotten it in the form of an empty rental bedroom. Luggage gone, a discarded MM’s wrapper in the garbage.
“Maybe you can help me with something, then,” PJ said. “While you figure things out.”
“Yeah?” Maggie asked. “What’s up?”
“Can you keep an eye on Cam and Mac with me? In the city when we get back, and the next beach weekends, too?”
Maggie’s brow creased. “Why, what’s wrong?”
“It’s hard to explain,” PJ said, “but I’ve spent so much time with these guys. I used to see Mac at Deloitte more, but we’ve been on separate cases so we’re not even in the same building. But I can tell there’s just something off these days, and I’d feel better knowing someone else was looking out. Especially if you still care about him, too.”
Maggie couldn’t deny a kernel of truth in PJ’s words. She had noticed it with Liz and Cam on Friday. And while Maggie clearly had her opinions about Robyn’s influence on Mac, she had never spent time with any of his previous girlfriends. Mac could have changed a hundred ways since the last time they’d spent uninterrupted time together. Yet if PJ, their most recent addition, sensed that something was wrong, then maybe Maggie should be worried.
She didn’t need to be dating Mac to look out for him, to have his best interests at heart. She didn’t need to be best friends with Liz and Cam to want them to have a perfect engagement, a happily ever after, a fairy-tale life. Maggie could repay them for the friendship they gave her in high school, reconcile the years she knew she could have, should have been better at staying in touch. She was back in New York for some reason.
Romance or not, she wanted to help.
“Will do,” she said, nodding. PJ smiled in relief. “So, we’re cool?”
“As a cucumber.” He grinned.
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Jeez, no wonder you’re not getting girls, with those lines.”
PJ burst out laughing. “Tough, but fair.”
“Twenty minutes till the ferry!” Brenna’s voice rang through the house. Moments later, the friends loaded their duffels and suitcases back onto the rickety red wagon and headed to the Ocean Beach dock.
The town was crowded with reluctant travelers. No one enjoyed leaving the beach on a Sunday afternoon. Georgie handed out ferry tickets as Cam loaded the bulkier bags into the suitcase-check section on the ferry’s lower level. By the time the friends weaved their way onto the boat and upstairs to the open-air deck, most of the aqua-blue rows were occupied by families and pets who’d arrived early enough to secure seats together.
Somehow, Liz found a row that fit almost their entire group. Space for almost everyone.
Everyone except for Maggie, who had been standing at the back of their line.
“You guys take this row, no problem,” Maggie said, swallowing the burn. “I think I see a free seat in the back.” She ignored Brenna’s pout and scanned the crowd, looking for a patch of blue to call her own. The majority of seats had been taken already. When the singular space revealed itself at last, she sashayed down the aisle like in a round of musical chairs, pushing away the embarrassment of Liz’s slight. Maggie exhaled onto the bench, ready to settle into the ride. Alone. She opened her phone.
A weekend wrapping up means reality crashes back tomorrow. The procrastination of the beach no more. I’m nervous, I’ll admit it, to go back to a city where I’ll build routine anew. To look for a new job, a new purpose, a new plan. But a part of me can’t deny I’m excited, too.
Then Maggie’s typing was suddenly interrupted by a finger, tap-tapping her shoulder.
She turned around to see Ty, in sunglasses and a Yankees hat, sitting in the row right behind her. Maggie immediately wished she had paid closer attention to the faces surrounding the spare seat before making her frazzled selection, but Ty must have been facing the back of the ferry, talking to one of his friends. Maggie hadn’t had the opportunity to recognize his face and run.
“How was your weekend?” he asked.
“Fine,” Maggie said, still facing forward. She couldn’t believe she’d moved all the way to New York and still ended up next to Ty. It had been a few years since they’d connected, but Maggie had spent the majority of those first months of her career training to be an assistant under his tutelage.
He continued, “I always hate the ferry home. Wish we could stay forever.”
“Reality calls,” she said.
“Are you headed straight to the airport?”
Maggie paused here, raising her brows. She finally turned around to look at him. “What for?”
“To fly back to LA?”
“Oh.” Her heart dropped a little. “No, I’m living here now.”
“Wow.” Ty faltered. “I hadn’t pegged you as the type to leave so soon.”
“Well, this is my first weekend back.” She coughed, deflecting the feeling that she’d made some colossal mistake.
“You’ll like it here, don’t worry. I’ve been back for about two years myself. Got a job in documentaries, must’ve been shortly after you left the agency, now that I think about it,” Ty said. “My coproducer and I have made a ton of great stuff since. One’s even premiering at Tribeca next week. You know, the very prestigious film festival.” He cocked his head.
“I’m familiar with it,” Maggie said, rolling her eyes at his joke. He must have remembered how she could detail all the major film festivals and their recent winners before she’d even graduated. Still, when they first met, Ty would rib Maggie for her more commercial taste in film compared to his preferred highbrow documentary scene. “What’s your latest project about anyway? How all humans are inherently awful?”
Despite having asked about his doc’s content, Maggie really wanted to know if Ty had felt any embarrassment when he eventually moved home. If he’d felt like he’d fallen short on a prize, failed a test for which his friends all knew he’d spent years studying. Yet she anticipated what his answer would be. Ty was confident, convinced of his own actions, his surefire success. She was sure he regretted nothing.
Maggie tried to act like that, too. She wanted to be easy, to be extraordinary. To extrapolate the torpedo of impulsive energy often permeating her body and orchestrate it all with grace. If anyone called her effortless, she’d be honored. But she always feared she’d be humiliated, too, if they knew how much work went into acting like she had some sort of master plan. She loved feeling put together, but she hated how often that felt like a foolish version of pretending.
Regardless, Maggie knew that Ty definitely wouldn’t understand how it felt like the air was whooshing out of her now, like she was suddenly deflating. She listened as he rattled on about his slate, his projects, his collaborators, his dreams. It was all working out for him, a picture-perfect plan. Her heart seized with something that felt like a useless mixture of envy and regret.
And then Ty said something that made Maggie feel much, much worse.
“So, did Robinson move out here, too? I’m sure you guys are constantly on the go with his production schedule. What’s next on the slate? I assume you’re shooting something in New York, right? That’s why you’re here?”
Maggie tried to respond, to correct his conjecture, but words wouldn’t form in her throat.
“Fine, fine, I know he’s so strict about that NDA,” Ty continued, oblivious. Only worsening Maggie’s nausea. “But when you’re rich and famous, too, don’t forget I helped get you that job in the first place.”
She gave a winded, half-hearted laugh in reply. In truth, her tongue was stunned by the reminder. Ty had gotten her the Kurt job.
He had handed Maggie her misfortune on a silver platter.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty, of course; it wasn’t so obvious at the time. Not when Ty was on a desk in the motion picture literary department, working as an assistant to the department head, film agent Ava Hollander. Ava’s client list boasted some of the very best screenwriters and filmmakers the business offered. And when those masterminds needed new, tailor-made, agency-trained assistants, Ava Hollander was their first call.
That’s exactly the call that Kurt had made.
Maggie remembered how it had felt like the opportunity she had been waiting for her entire life. To go from the mailroom straight to assisting the wunderkind Kurt Robinson, “cinema’s next best filmmaker.” His directorial debut had smashed its opening weekend at the box office, won prizes at festivals. A dazzling romantic comedy with speculative fiction elements, based on his own original idea. It was like Her, Arrival, and Ordinary People had somehow had a baby with Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It was incredible. Maggie had been in her senior year at UCLA when it premiered, and she watched it six times in the following month, loving every frame.
She immediately knew that she wanted to make movies like Kurt’s. If she could learn from him, study his process, it would make everything—the move, the cross-country goodbyes, the heartbreak on her parents’ faces—worth it and more. She needed to work for him.
Maggie pinched herself and crossed her fingers and applied. Then she begged Ty to put in a good word for her with Ava. In the mailroom, she had jumped at the chance to cover Ty’s work whenever he needed help, whether he was renewing his license at the DMV or running late from a dentist appointment, or even interviewing for a new job, which was customary for agency assistants. Other times, Maggie would print Ava’s scripts, organize her mail, pick up her afternoon pistachio croissant when Ty couldn’t leave his desk.
At first, Maggie was hoping to put herself in the best position to take over his tenure on Ava’s desk, if and when Ty secured said new job. Ava was one of the most powerful agents in the business, always nominated for The Hollywood Reporter’s “movers and shakers” index. And somehow, mind-blowingly, she’d taken a liking to Maggie.
So when Ty agreed and told Ava how Maggie had put her horse in the race for the Kurt assistant job, Ava called the filmmaker herself with a glowing recommendation. Ty had grinned at Maggie as they heard Ava make the call, whispering, “You’re welcome.” They both couldn’t help but be in awe of how convincingly Ava could sell.
It had felt like all the pieces were falling into place at last. Maggie’s career finally getting started. An unprecedented rise, from mailroom to director’s assistant. She could skip years, get closer to on-set experience, to real writing experience. To making her own work, next.
She had no idea her professional life had been peaking just so that it could all come crumbling down.
“Well, I’ve got a decent group of entertainment friends out here,” Ty said now, pulling Maggie back to the ferry, where his voice was picking up volume to compete against the wind. “Non-scripted mostly, but some film folks, too. Give me your info, I’ll add you to our Slack group.”
Ty was naturally competitive, but he was often generous, too. He’d patiently taught her how to roll calls, even when the phone lines were blaring. He’d said he recognized a kindred spirit in Maggie, a skill, and he might as well use it to his advantage.
Was he doing that again now?
Maggie didn’t have time to decide. She’d do anything to prevent the conversation from lingering on the topic of her old boss. Grabbing Ty’s phone from his outstretched hand, she entered her details into his address book.
“So, more Ocean Beach weekends in your future?” he asked as she typed in her phone number.
“Yup. We have a share the weekend after July Fourth, I believe.” Maggie handed his phone back, their fingertips grazing ever so slightly.
“Us, too,” Ty said. “Perfect.” His smile was so genuine it almost caught Maggie off guard. A part of her pushed to confess the truth about Kurt. About what he’d put her through. About her failure. She didn’t feel right leaving the conversation with Ty thinking she still was on Kurt’s payroll.
Yet the other, smaller but more selfish part of her enjoyed being thought of as a success, still. In the grind. On a path. She looked at the spark Ty had in his eyes. Would he be acting so kind if he knew how badly Maggie had botched her shot?
How she’d fallen off her career ladder and broken every bone on her way to rock bottom?
She didn’t want to find out.
The ferry pulled into the Bay Shore dock just in time.
“Well, see you around,” Maggie said, grabbing her bags and bolting down the stairs. She didn’t look back to see if Ty even matched her exit with a wave. She couldn’t risk it. She didn’t exhale until she was safely on the David Bros. shuttle bus, the private transfer her friends had booked to drive the group back to the city. A one-way trip from Fire Island to Murray Hill.
Maggie rested her forehead against the window as the air filled with chatter, exchanges of “roses and thorns,” high and low memories from the trip. The radio played “Mr. Brightside” and she heard Brenna and Quinn start to sing.
Maggie tried to control her breathing, to drift off to a Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast as the shuttle picked up speed on the highway, but her phone soon pinged with incoming texts:
Ty:See you next month, Maggie Monroe. (PS—This is Ty.) (PPS—Join the Slack.)
Maggie felt her cheeks warm as the “Ocean Beach Buds” group thread chimed next, Mac’s name sliding onto her screen:
Mac:Hey guys sorry we had to dip out early, but this weekend was a blast. Robyn and I can’t wait for July.
Maggie groaned at the mention of Robyn. Reality crashing back, indeed. Mac last night, punctured by his rushed morning exit. What did all that mean for Maggie?
Then she saw a text that had arrived earlier, when she was on the ferry, distracted by Ty.
The most unexpected one yet.
KR:Maggie. Call me.
Maggie’s eyes blurred. Not him. No.
Kurt was in the past. Locked away, forgotten. New York was her future.
New York was the only path that mattered.
She felt the PTSD crawling up her throat and instantly deleted the text message, heart moving before her brain could stop her.
There would be none of that now.
Maggie opened her Notes app. It was time to rewire, to rewrite:
Goodbye, for now, Ocean Beach. Thank you for your sun-soaked distractions, even if they left a bit of a burn. I guess it’s time at last, for this next strange chapter of my reality to resume. New York, here we come. Settling into a new apartment, searching for a new job. Time to figure out how and where to fit in. I promise to tell you all about it when we’re back here in July. Try not to miss us too much.
Already, Maggie felt a little better. Life was all in the word choice, right?
Wedding Bells are soon to be Ringing!
Please join us in celebrating the engagement of
Cameron Peters and Elizabeth Grey
As we toast to the beginning of their happily ever after.
Saturday, August 12th
6:00 pm at Maguire’s Bayfront Restaurant
1 Bungalow Lane, Ocean Beach, NY 11770
*Please see enclosure for ferry schedules and travel details*
KR:Maggie, check your email.
KR:NDA. Remember that, from your very first day?
KR:You probably didn’t read it. (Maybe you should’ve gone to law school, like your parents said. Ha.)
KR:Pay close attention to Section 14.
KR:This is your last warning.