Chapter 14
Ever since escaping LA, Maggie had stopped expecting things to make sense. So when Mac texted the Ocean Beach chat weeks earlier suggesting a “Christmas in July” group theme for the Saturday beach day, she knew better than to question the instructions. Instead, she ordered a Christmas-themed bikini online, paying extra for two-day shipping. Maggie always loved a costume moment.
She hadn’t expected, however, that Mac had learned of the themed celebration from an Instagram post, encouraging holiday gear for all Ocean Beach residents and tourists alike.
“This is great footage for Maggie’s short,” Brenna said.
“I’m not making a short.” Maggie’s reminder fell on empty ears. The group’s focus consumed instead by the festive sight across the sand. Bathing suits were paired with red-and-white hats or reindeer antlers, and some even had stockings hung on the backs of beach chaises. Mac blended right in, his Christmas-tree-print tank top sharing in all the festive spirit—but none of the heatstroke potential—of the handful of (very) committed participants in full-fledged Santa Claus outfits. Beards and all. Maggie typed as their group planted chairs in a semicircle, facing the incoming waves:
Christmas in July gives holiday magic to the hot summer sun. Beach umbrellas double as mistletoe, white sand the first fall of snow. What gifts will these Santa Clauses leave below my beach chair? Beards optional, of course—tan line at your own risk.
Maggie chuckled to herself, before Quinn sent an elbow to her rib.
“See, look, she’s writing our script already,” Quinn teased. “I’m going to be a star.”
“Leave me alone,” Maggie groaned, plopping into her beach chair. “You guys make your own short film if you care so much.”
“We just want you to be happy,” Brenna said, softening. “And we know how much it always used to make you happy.” She squeezed Maggie’s hand from across the chair.
“And think of how happy we’d be, watching you win that thing,” Quinn said.
Maggie sighed. “You’re right. Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
As her friends scattered to dip their feet in the water or walk the shoreline, Maggie tried not to eavesdrop on Robyn and Mac, bickering back by the entrance steps. Were they still arguing about last night?
The Bamboo House party had been surprisingly fun. Through the night, she was grateful that conversation with Ty never steered back toward Kurt, that she never had to dance around the truth about her job’s crash ending. Instead, she let herself be charmed by his friends’ jokes and cocktail recipes, by Ty’s uncanny ability to quote verbatim lines from her favorite shows. It was easy. It was fun.
Yet all the while, Maggie couldn’t help but notice how Mac kept an eye on her throughout the room. It was so unexpected, she assumed she was fabricating it all in her head. She would look up and catch Mac staring, eyes drawn to hers across the kitchen like magnets.
So when Georgie’s injury sent them walking back down the road to the Serendipity House, Maggie strangely didn’t mind. She felt a bit guilty for cutting her conversation with Ty short, but she couldn’t pretend it wasn’t nice to stand so close to Mac again, even if it had taken their friend nearly chopping off his thumb to make it happen. Once Georgie had fallen asleep, Maggie suggested they head back to the party, back to Robyn, but Mac said he wasn’t ready yet. He didn’t want Georgie to wake up alone. Instead, they settled on the couch and turned on the TV. Fortuitously, the cable channel was playing a rerun of their beloved Cash Cab. The screen glowed like it had senior year.
A few hours later, Maggie woke up and realized she’d fallen asleep with her head resting easy and gently on his shoulder.
Mac’s knee pressed, hard and warm, against her own.
She tiptoed upstairs, all too aware of the goose bumps that had spread over her body.
His skin on hers again, in all the familiar places.
Now, under the rays of sun on the beach, Maggie remembered last night, and it made her flush. But Mac was with Robyn. She had to move on.
This was all too much. She needed an escape.
Rummaging in her beach bag, Maggie pulled out a worn paperback. Jane Austen’s Emma. Her favorite. It used to be her mother’s favorite, too, back when they shared favorite things.
When Maggie showed the first inkling of creative interest as a child, her parents were surprisingly supportive. They gave Barnes Noble gift cards and notebooks for birthdays. In fact, this Emma copy was once a Christmas present, taken on a family trip back when holidays were happy. Back when they still believed their daughter would follow their path down the road of corporate law and take over the family practice.
When Maggie dashed their NYU dreams and took out her own loans to transfer to the UCLA screenwriting program, the writing-themed gifts officially stopped coming. By the time she graduated and got a job in LA, most calls had stopped, too. They didn’t understand her, that much was clear. They couldn’t relate.
Through it all, Maggie dove deeper into her work, doing the best she could to prove her choice was worth it. But her parents had given up, they’d changed the channel.
They had stopped watching a long time ago.
How could they possibly have seen her shriveling away?
Thinking about her old job still made Maggie compulsively check her phone. Even though she hadn’t worked for Kurt in over a month, she was finding it hard to shake that feeling of always being on the clock, of making sure she hadn’t missed a call or text with some new urgent assignment. It was trickier than she’d expected to detach from all of his strings. Especially when she blinked and considered those most recent texts from him that she had deleted. When would he finally leave her alone?
So, when Maggie heard Liz’s sudden shouts from down by the water, she was washed with relief. Liz sounded panicked, but at least it was something else to think about.
She found Liz at the edge of the ocean, soaking wet, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Maggie hadn’t even realized that Liz had made it to the beach. She’d been quiet since her and Cam’s ferry arrived, mentioned staying back at the house to finish some work. Something must have happened since. “What’s wrong?” Maggie asked.
“My—My—ring,” Liz stammered, between suffocating sobs.
Maggie’s stomach sank. “It’s not on your finger?”
Liz just shook her head back and forth, eyes pooling.
“When did you see it last? Retrace your steps.”
“I just wanted some air. I went for a swim. I wasn’t thinking.” She started pulling her fingers through the sand, looking wherever she could. “I knew I should have gotten it resized.”
“When do you remember wearing it last? Is there any chance it’s back at the house?” Maggie asked, while getting on her hands and knees to scour the sand, scavenging through the shells and seaweed.
“Do you think Cam will call off the engagement?” Liz’s voice was low, filled with fear.
“What? Never. Never,” Maggie said, looking right at her. “We’ll find it.”
“This is impossible,” Liz said, her lip quivering.
Maggie wanted to help, but finding a lost ring at the beach was like finding a needle in a haystack. If this were happening in one of Maggie’s screenplays, she’d write in one of those metal detector enthusiasts, a beachgoer with a comically large sun hat and a penchant for lost and shiny things. He’d find the ring in record time and offer cryptic yet heartwarming advice about love being found in the least expected places.
Yet after forty-five minutes of digging through the sand, checking the seaweed deposits with each wave, all underscored by Liz’s staccato sobs, Maggie knew this wasn’t anything like the movies. This was real life, and there were no quick fixes, no easy solves.
Liz must have arrived at the same conclusion, because she suddenly stopped her futile searching and hung her head in her hands. Soaking wet from vain attempts to search the waves. Shoulders heaving.
She’d given up.
There’d be no finding the ring now.
Maggie approached, tentatively placed a palm on her heartbroken friend’s shoulder, not knowing what else to do. “Want to go back to the house, maybe? Get out of the sun for a bit?”
Liz nodded, wordlessly agreeing.
The girls walked back to the house in slow steps, as Maggie remembered how it felt to be in lockstep with their past: playing dress-up after school in Liz’s basement when Maggie’s parents had to work late. Pulling all-nighters to finish AP US History essays after spending an entire weekend rewatching old movies, re-creating costumes from their favorite scenes. Writing and rewriting text messages to Cam when he and Liz had just started dating. Maggie held her BlackBerry when Liz was too nervous to type. They’d celebrate with Friday night milkshakes and Buffalo Blasts in the Colony Diner’s parking lot, counting suburban stars. High schoolers who felt like their friendships, their love, their adventures were the only true things in the world.
She wanted to be there to solve Liz’s problems now.
At the Serendipity House, Liz practically collapsed onto the couch. But when Maggie moved to head upstairs, thinking Liz wouldn’t want her company any longer, her friend perked up.
“Stay for a bit?” Liz asked.
Maggie sat back down, but not before grabbing two beers for them.
“Cam is going to hate me,” Liz said after a sip.
“That’s impossible and you know it.”
“It’s his mom’s old ring—”
“Even better. There’s no world where Roseanne Peters doesn’t have insurance on her jewelry.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Liz sighed, falling even farther onto the couch’s cushion, head on a pillow. “It’s like…it feels like my heart is collapsing in on itself or something. It’s hard to breathe.”
Maggie wanted to comfort her. Like in the before times. She inhaled and hoped for the best.
“Sometimes when I get upset, I think about this time from sixth grade,” she said. “You probably don’t even remember it. It was that day over the summer, I think it was June, when I decided it was a bright idea to cut my own bangs.”
Liz groaned. “How could I ever forget?”
“I remember realizing how dumb I looked with bangs pretty instantly, and I just couldn’t stop crying. Like full body, wretched, soap-opera-actress sobs.”
“I remember that, too.”
“So, you probably remember what happened next,” Maggie said, giving Liz a gentle nudge.
Liz smiled, ever so slightly. “I cut my bangs, too.”
“Your mom couldn’t believe it when she came home that night, but she made us a batch of her famous chocolate chip cookies and told us to stay calm. And then the next morning, she went to the store and bought us those matching headbands.”
“We wore them all year,” Liz remembered. “God, I haven’t thought about that in forever.”
“Whenever I start to panic-sob like that again, I think about our bangs. And how it was awful, but it was also sort of funny, in retrospect. But most importantly, it didn’t last forever. Those bangs grew out.” Maggie took Liz’s hand and squeezed. “I know it feels awful now. But Cam loves you more than any ring. More than every ring combined. He’ll forgive you.”
Liz squeezed back. “I really hope so.”
Then the coffee table buzzed, an alert from Liz’s phone. One glance at the screen caused her frown to resurface in full force.
“You know Cam will understand,” Maggie said, gently. “But is there maybe something else going on? If there’s something I can help with, anything at all, Liz, just say the word.”
Liz chewed the inside of her cheek, deliberating for a moment before exhaling. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“I promise.”
“Because I haven’t even told Cam yet.”
Maggie’s temperature climbed. She wanted to be someone Liz could count on again. Desperately. “Cross my heart and hope to die. You can trust me.”
Liz took a deep breath in. “I applied for this international fashion program. God, it feels good to say that aloud.”
“Liz! That’s amazing,” Maggie said.
“But I heard that some people have started to hear back already. Now I can’t stop refreshing my inbox, hoping it’s an update. But I haven’t gotten anything yet.”
“I’m sure your acceptance is coming next. They’d be absurd not to take you.”
“It would be amazing,” Liz said quietly.
“So why haven’t you told Cam?”
“Well, the program would start in the fall,” Liz said. “And it’s all the way in Italy. Milan.”
It was like Maggie could physically watch as the other shoe crash-landed before her. The burden of secrets, of massive potential change. She was surprised that losing the engagement ring hadn’t sent Liz into a full-fledged panic attack. Maggie would probably still be crying, but Liz had always been the tougher of the two of them.
“I’m trying to stay calm,” Liz continued now, her voice speeding up. “It was easier when I could focus on my application, throw myself into the work, but now I’m sick with guilt over not telling Cam, and the anxiety of waiting for my results, and the fear of how much I really want it, and what it means that I haven’t told Cam in the first place, and what we’d do about the wedding planning, and my chin keeps breaking out, and the program is super competitive—”
“Which is why you’ll get in. And when you do, you’ll figure everything out after that. I’m so excited for you, Liz.”
Liz let herself exhale for a moment. “You think it’s okay that I applied?”
“I’d be upset if you hadn’t. And I think Cam would be, too.”
“But what if I don’t get in?”
“You will. Just promise you’ll bring me home some dried pasta. Or at the very least, send a postcard.”
Liz closed her eyes. She spoke with her eyelashes still pressed tight to her skin. “It’s scary, to think about leaving. Leaving Cam, all this. Even just for a year,” she said. “How did you do it? When you moved to LA?”
Maggie paused for a moment before answering. “I just knew it was something I’d never forgive myself for if I didn’t at least try. Some dreams are worth the risk.”
“Were yours?” Liz asked, opening her eyes, her voice free of judgment. There was only curiosity.
“I think so,” Maggie said, because now she wasn’t so sure.
Liz shifted so she was looking squarely at Maggie. “What happened out there, Mags? Why are you really back home?”
“I just changed my mind about it all,” Maggie said, a half-truth.
Liz stared at her, her brow raised. That was the wrong answer. “Bullshit.”
“It’s not,” Maggie said, feeling her cheeks growing red. “I got tired of the low pay and living so far away—”
“You’ve always been a terrible liar—”
“I’m not lying.”
“Fine, then hiding something real. God, I should have known. You’re just as selfish as you’ve always been.”
“I just spent the afternoon helping you!”
“And I just told you my biggest secret and you’re still lying to my face! Trying to make it seem like everything is perfect instead of just being honest. Being real.” Liz’s voice was high, words spinning fast. “And now you’re back like nothing ever happened, no apologies, flirting with Mac—”
“Oh my god, everything always comes back to Mac with you. Come on, Liz, what about us? Our friendship?”
“You really want to go there? Friendship works two ways, Maggie. Especially after a funeral. Thanks for your condolences, by the way. I’ve been doing fine.” She stood to go upstairs, to retreat to her room, wiping the tears that had formed in her eyes.
Maggie felt the world fall out from under her. “Liz, please, stay, I can explain. Let me start over—”
“You know, she may have been proud of you for following your dreams, but she sure was disappointed by how you treated us to get there.”
Liz stormed up the stairs, slamming her and Cam’s bedroom door behind her.
Maggie sat still, stung senseless.
In her mind, she remembered all the drafted messages she’d written and then deleted when she’d heard the news. All the times she went to call but choked, phone heavy in her numb hands. She’d even booked a flight from LAX to JFK, a red-eye landing the morning of the funeral.
But Kurt had needed her to work that Sunday. Like every Sunday back then. Every Saturday, too. They were in prep on his next movie and needed to redo the budget if they got a green light. His agent had sent in a new book for his consideration to adapt that was “going to territories,” which meant moving fast, and she needed to speed-read and write up coverage for him by that night if he wanted to attach. Plus, his mother’s birthday was coming up—where was the list of present ideas? The dinner reservations she’d made in advance? Didn’t Maggie want this? Didn’t Maggie care? Couldn’t he trust her to deliver? It didn’t matter. There were no days off, not even for a bereavement.
Maggie canceled her flights like a coward. She went to send flowers, but then Kurt filled up her schedule, screamed if she’d delay, and by the time Maggie remembered, it felt like it was too late.
Everything was too late.
There were too many things to say, too much to apologize for, too much distance to repair. In the end, she had decided on a text message, but the gesture was so insignificant that she might as well have sent nothing.
How could she have done that? Why had she thought that was okay?
Maggie had thought a lot of terrible things were okay when she worked for Kurt.
He’d had a way of sending her moral code through a funhouse mirror.
She’d just smile, desperate. Scared and submissive.
Now she let out a sob, opened her phone.
Woe is the writer who cannot use her words. Here’s a suggested phrase to get you started. Repeat after me: I’mSorryI’mSorryI’mSorryI’mSorryI’mSorryI’mSorry
Suddenly, another set of footsteps ran down the stairs.
It was Robyn, giant pink suitcase in hand.
“What’s going on? Is everything okay?” Maggie asked, wiping her cheeks quickly, so as not to expose how recently they’d been covered in tears.
Robyn turned to look at her. “Nothing is okay here.”
“But where are you going?”
Robyn’s mascara was running, her eyes empty. Maggie hadn’t thought it was possible for her to look so weak, so vulnerable. So heartbroken. “To be with people who actually think I matter,” she said with a sniffle so pitiful it made Maggie want to split in two.
With that, Robyn stormed away.