Serendipity

Chapter 17

Was this what it meant to be young? The night was warm, but Maggie’s arms were covered in goose bumps. The summer evening was making her every pore open up, alive. The air was sweet, the sky shining with stars. Maggie walking next to Mac, in the easy rhythm of a nursery rhyme.

Robyn was gone. For now, at least. Maggie tried to separate her current pace with Mac from whatever breakup battle had sent Robyn packing. She felt bad, of course, if Mac was hurting, but she knew Robyn was the wrong fit for him. Did that mean Maggie was right? Did this change everything? Or was this simply Mac in rebound mode?

Still, there was a familiarity to the electricity that pulsed in the space between their shoulders, the energy hinting at something more. They had been here before. Mac’s car, the prom dance floor. The Serendipity House as teenagers, a weekend in Ocean Beach. The buzz of seeing a friend look at you like something more for the first time.

There was hunger in the space between them, and suddenly Maggie was starving.

As the group walked to town, she and Mac fell to the back. Their arms loose and swaying, fingertips grazing, out of the sight of curious friends. This, with Mac. Again. It was everything she had hoped might happen when she returned to New York.

Ty’s face from last night blipped like a flashback in Maggie’s brain, but Mac was who she’d been desperate to test out those first days home. To see what might have happened if she’d never left. To see if he was the happy ending to her love story.

Liz’s warning followed, her words echoing through Maggie’s ears. Liz’s hurt-stricken face. Did it always come back to Mac?

Was that such a bad thing? It had worked out for Liz and Cam.

Should it work out for Maggie and Mac, too?

The hum from Matthew’s Seafood House called to Maggie. The waterfront bar had been a favorite of their after-prom weekend, and day trips to Fire Island later that summer. Before college move-ins closed in on them, Maggie and their friends would spend full Saturdays in Ocean Beach. They’d grab sandwiches from the My Hero shop in town, throw them into travel coolers, and take the earliest morning ferry. They’d spend hours tanning on beach towels or swimming in the sea. When the sky turned pink, they’d stealthily sip cocktails at Matthew’s, after the bouncer barely blinked at their fake IDs. They’d take the last ferry home with fresh sunburns and sweet memories. Maggie would fall asleep on the ride home, her head on Mac’s shoulder.

It felt like a spell, a friend-group potion, to be back there with all of them again. This time, Quinn and PJ beelined for the bar, while Brenna, Liz, and Cam went straight to the dance floor. Georgie had to work, despite his Friday misadventures, left alone with his laptop and his bandaged thumb. When Maggie offered to stay behind, Mac looked at her with those curious green eyes. Eyes that seemed to compel her: Come with me.

And so she did.

He stopped her as they walked inside. “My knee’s feeling sore, actually,” he said, voice loud to challenge the music’s volume. “Want to sit outside instead?”

Maggie nodded, feeling a blush creep up her neck.

He looked relieved. “Awesome, I’ll get us some drinks. Grab a table?” She nodded again, but this time Mac flashed a smile. “Be right back,” he said, before turning toward the bar.

She weaved her way outside to a two-seater facing the bay. A dozen boats were tied to the dock, cast in the moonlit glow of the Fire Island night sky. Settling down, she tapped her fingers on the glass tabletop, noticed they were shaking. She opened her Notes app:

Butterflies, I think it’s happening again. I feel reckless and young, like all those summer movies foretold. My heart wants to throb. He and I, we’ve danced this routine once before. I think I still remember the moves.

She felt her stomach tighten a bit.

But why can’t I remember how it felt when we first turned off the music?

Maggie sighed, and then she startled. Her phone was still on airplane mode.

After her fight with Liz, Maggie had spent the afternoon hidden upstairs, writing. She filled her phone with mistakes she’d made, the apologies she’d never said to Liz, for abandoning her at NYU so rashly, for not flying home immediately when she’d heard about her mom. For letting so much charged silence spread like weeds between them. She’d written it all while on airplane mode. No wi-fi, no service, the best way for Maggie to throw herself into her words.

Now she hovered over the settings, but she didn’t feel ready to reconnect, to reawaken her phone to any missed texts or calls. For tonight, she didn’t want to be accessible.

She only wanted to be here.

“Writing a poem about me?” Mac said with a smirk, placing an ice-cold gin and lemonade on the table.

“Like the good old days.” Maggie smiled, tucking her phone away. “Thanks for the drink.”

“Thanks for letting me skip out on the dance floor.” He bounced his knee up and down in the chair next to hers. He was forever the athlete who couldn’t sit still.

“I’m sorry again, about your knee,” Maggie said. “That must have been terrible.”

“I got through it.”

“Still. I wish I’d known. That you’d told me about it sooner.”

“You weren’t here. What could you have done?”

“Well, I’m here now.”

“I can see that. How’s it feel being home?”

“Like I’m an overgrown middle schooler?”

Mac laughed. “Be serious.”

“Like I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

“We’ve missed you, M. I missed you,” he said, voice lower. “It feels right to have you home.”

“I’m starting to agree with that.”

Mac looked at Maggie and it was like he was staring into her soul. He had seen her through it all. Through the drama of growing up, through the drifting away of her parents. He’d been a classmate, a teammate, a best friend. Before they started dating and turned from schoolmates into something more, Mac had always been there. And now he was sitting an inch away from her, under the Fire Island stars, staring at her like she was the brightest one of all.

Mac leaned in. Maggie leaned closer.

She tilted her head, inhaled, and with a shortness of breath, she shortened the space between their noses. Was this happening again?

Should she let it? Why not?

Then she heard a cough.

“Maggie?”

She turned around.

It was Ty.

His face fell. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you two…”

“It’s fine,” Maggie said, her tone probably too curt, too tight, but she was caught off guard as she watched a blush take over Ty’s face. Guilt panged as she watched him stand there silently, staring at her. She could feel Mac’s annoyance vibrating off his skin. “What’s up?”

“Um, sorry.” Ty recalibrated. “I just wanted to congratulate you, on the new Kurt Robinson project.”

Maggie deflated. “Oh, Ty—”

“Just saw the Deadline announcement, sounds like it’s going to be his next big hit.” Ty’s voice was earnest. “Congrats.”

“Oh.” Maggie frowned. “There’s nothing to congratulate me for. I didn’t work on it,” she started, knowing she needed to confess about her firing, that she wasn’t part of Kurt’s team anymore.

“Oh, really?” Ty’s eyebrows were crooked. “I figured you had, because it said the movie takes place on Fire Island. Why else would you be here?”

Maggie felt nauseated as a lump grew in her throat. Ty’s words were like bullets, but he didn’t even realize he’d pulled the trigger.

She felt like she could faint.

“I have to go,” she said, running off the Matthew’s deck and onto the street before the scene could explode in front of her. She heard Ty calling after her, but it didn’t matter. She needed to get out of there, to find a quiet spot.

Falling onto a vacant park bench, Maggie turned her phone off airplane mode.

Three missed calls from Kurt. A voicemail she couldn’t bring herself to listen to.

What did he want from her? What could he possibly want? It had been a month since she’d walked out of his office, humiliated and defeated and alone. Was he simply bragging about some new script sale, like Ty said? Why? She’d told him she would honor her NDA, like she had any choice in the matter. She’d returned her parking pass, turned in her company phone, shredded any scripts she had left over at home. She had driven miles and miles away. Couldn’t he just leave her alone?

But then Ty had said Fire Island.

Maggie knew what this meant.

She started to cry hot, angry tears. The kind she never usually let herself feel. The past month, the past six years catching up to her. She felt like gravity had left her. Her center beginning to fall.

She was resting her forehead in her hands when she heard his voice.

“Mags, are you okay?”

It was Mac. He had followed her. He took her in his arms. She couldn’t help it, she eased into him. Her brain couldn’t think, her mind in shambles; she just wanted someplace solid. Something familiar when everything else was crumbling. Any respite from the recollection of all that had ruptured in LA.

Maggie rested her head on Mac’s shoulder.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, his brow creased.

“Do we have to?”

“Of course not,” Mac said. “But for what it’s worth, whatever it is, whatever’s happening that’s got you so upset…I know you’ll get through this. You can do anything. You’re perfect, Maggie. You always have been.”

Maggie turned her head, looked up at Mac. There he was, with those kind eyes. The arms that had always cheered her up, the hands that had high-fived her, applauded her, held her for a year, those arms were wrapped around her body again, tight and close. Limbs touching limbs. It was like a blanket, the safest, warmest, oldest blanket in the pile. It smelled like home, and Maggie wanted to stay inside his embrace forever.

She didn’t want to be alone. She pulled his body closer, leaned right up against him, and kissed him. He kissed her back, breathed her in, then rested his forehead against hers.

“I’ve wanted to do that since you came home,” Mac whispered.

Maggie swallowed. “Me, too.” It was the truth.

He kissed her again, his teeth on her lips, his hands squeezing her waist. Pent-up pressure, bodies closing in. But this time, it felt too sudden. Too much at once. Something missing while moving too quick. A piece that was missing, that had perhaps always been missing. A calculation that didn’t fit.

The math was wrong: He was drunk. She was drunk.

He was rebounding. She was lost.

They were friends. Better as friends.

The sudden clarity hit Maggie like lightning. Bright and terrible all at once.

She pulled away, trying to put space between them. Trying to close Pandora’s box.

“I love you, M,” Mac said instead.

Maggie’s heart broke. This wasn’t right. None of it felt right.

She saw a flash of Robyn, eyes pooling, suitcase packed.

She heard a spiral of Liz’s words, echoing in her brain.

This was all too familiar. Maggie had done it again, ruined things.

Hadshe just been messing with Mac’s head?

And for what?

Her mind flooded with all the other memories she’d (willfully? Wistfully?) forgotten since moving home. That she’d somehow subconsciously locked away.

The magic of a new relationship had carried them through the spring and summer. There was something inherently intoxicating about holding a hand you’d known forever, about stealing a kiss in familiar places, looking at an old friend in a fresh way. With graduation around the corner, it had seemed like their entire grade had coupled up. Mac and Maggie had gladly answered the siren call.

But when they were alone in his basement, behaving the way they thought they ought to, Maggie had to admit it felt quiet. No fireworks, all tension gone. No heat, at least not in her heart. The anticipation, the mystery, the romance had been caught up in the longing. Once they had each other, the wanting was replaced with the reality and so much began to extinguish.

NYU brought distance that Maggie never minded. She’d reunite with Mac every other month or so, homecomings during the holidays. But she knew it didn’t feel right. It didn’t look like a plot from a movie, didn’t sound like a love song. It wasn’t anything like Liz and Cam’s relationship, and Maggie hated what that meant.

So when she transferred to UCLA, she blamed long distance for their inevitable breakup. She told Liz that was why she and Mac couldn’t last. It was too far, too bleak a statistic to even attempt.

Maggie blamed long distance because that was easier than the truth: she and Mac just didn’t fit in that way. Not like Cam and Liz fit. Not like the ever afters in the stories. Maggie didn’t want to hurt Mac’s feelings, or Liz’s feelings, either. Liz, who had been so excited by the news, who had always wanted to be sisters.

Cam was Liz’s forever.

But Maggie and Mac were only meant to last a moment.

How could she have forgotten all over again?

Maggie was practically professional at blacking out the pain, at blocking out the harder memories. At hiding away everything that didn’t go according to her master plan. It’s what had made her a great assistant to Kurt, the trait that had let her persist through all his infuriating demands.

Now she shook her head. Such naivete, focusing again on the idea of Mac, and not the actuality of being with him, of holding him, of being held by him, that she’d once known all too well.

Now she remembered, but it was of course too late.

She’d led him here, she’d led him on, she’d come home and couldn’t get him out of her brain. Liz was right.

Everything Maggie did was wrong.

“I can’t do this. I’m so sorry, Mac.” Maggie stepped away.

“Wait, M, stop.”

“What is wrong with me?” Her eyes were welling. “Why can’t I do anything right?”

“Maggie, what are you talking about?” Mac tried to get closer, to erase the space between them, but she put her arms out. She needed to keep him away. She didn’t deserve him, she didn’t deserve anything.

“I’m so sorry.” She turned around, tears rising, and saw that Liz was standing right next to her.

Liz. Maggie couldn’t handle her right now.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, before pivoting and racing away. Her flip-flops could barely keep up, her feet speeding back to the house. She tried to outrace it but she couldn’t.

Liz’s disappointment had been on full display.

Had Maggie thought she could erase the past simply by moving home?

Her world was crashing down all the same.