Chapter 11
Maggie read the words and instantly wished she hadn’t. Minutes ago, she’d promised to give anything a fair try. Where would she draw the line?
The past month in New York had been filled with the fast and furious settling of a new routine. The job search had been surprisingly fortuitous, the first of the ups in her first week back. A listing for a temporary bookseller position in Brooklyn quickly turned into a five-day-a-week commute to Cobble Hill, where she opened the indie store and spent the shift shelving books, or her favorite, chatting with customers and making recommendations. It was quieter than her previous jobs had been, and a part of her already was beginning to miss the chaos of the film industry. But for now, it was peaceful. She could write on the subway, essays or journal entries, the occasional poem. No screenwriting or prose; she wasn’t ready for that yet. But still. Maggie would ride the F train from Bryant Park to Bergen Street station eager for the bookstore’s magic.
Sometimes after a shift, she would wander up and down Smith Street and listen to the way strangers’ laughter danced off the concrete. It reminded her of Los Feliz, her home in LA, where the streets held mostly two- or three-story buildings, coffee shops, and family-owned restaurants. Nights in South Brooklyn had a similar ease.
But soon the lows of this new life followed. Maggie tried her best. She attended the Monday night trivia games, participated in the group chat’s “selfie Friday” tradition, where everybody texted a photo at some point during their Friday with plans for the upcoming days off.
Just this past Tuesday, Maggie had spent the Fourth of July listening to the East River fireworks from her apartment’s balcony (if one could call a fire escape a balcony; outdoor space was an area where LA certainly had NY beat). She’d started the night with the East Meadow friends, celebrating on Robyn’s parents’ penthouse roof, but Liz wouldn’t look Maggie in the eyes, and Mac strangely left any room or conversation she entered, their June reunion on the Ocean Beach dock clearly forgotten. It was getting to feel a bit masochistic, putting herself directly in the path of pain. By the time the sky darkened, she took herself home.
She tried to stay true to her pledge to PJ. She wanted to keep an eye on Mac and Cam, she wanted to repair things with Liz, but it was all much easier said than done. Alone on the F train, though, Maggie found her peace. She didn’t have to confront her confusing feelings for Mac, or her twisting guilt over her past mistakes with Liz.
Alone on the F train, she didn’t have to rehearse all those procrastinated phone calls to her parents, who she still hadn’t seen since moving home. They’d been on back-to-back business trips and were now in Italy with friends. Reuniting with their daughter was a low bullet point on their to-do list, it seemed. Maggie had only been back to her parents’ house in order to drop off the Ford Escape, unable to afford Manhattan’s parking fees. With an emptiness, she emailed her parents that the keys were back in the old hiding spot and called a taxi to the train station.
Alone on the F train, she didn’t have to read the texts from Kurt, or the emails ominously forwarding her a copy of her signed NDA, all of which she’d routinely delete and ignore. She didn’t address the sinking feeling that something bad was around the corner. Instead, she pushed it away, to the side, any direction that wasn’t front and center.
Alone on the F train, she didn’t even have to keep her focus on the road or reroute for LA traffic. Instead, she could close her eyes. Let the subway rock her worries. Let her brain dig deep, really dream, about where and who she wanted to be. She was beginning to feel comfortable charting new plans. Less on edge. Less raw. The need to run had left her pores; promise lay waiting in its wake.
One month home and she was ready to begin.
Now, as the Fire Island ferry pulled into port on a hot and humid Friday afternoon, Maggie decided to make the most of the weekend. She would smile her way through the inevitable interactions with Mac and Liz once they were all stuck in the same rental house. She’d be there for her friends, whether they wanted her or not. Maggie wrote a quick message of hope on her phone.
The air smells fresh. A sea-salt-covered chance. July in Ocean Beach: I promise, anything you throw at me, I’ll give a fair and honest try. Let’s see what stories you have in store.
Yet when Brenna and Quinn called Maggie’s name from over where they’d raced ahead off the dock and toward the town square’s bulletin board, she cursed her earlier promise.
Chance, as fate would have it, came in the form of a flyer.
THE FIRE ISLAND FILM FESTIVAL IS BACK!
Submit your short films by July 30th for consideration to compete. Finalists will be announced August 3rd. All accepted films will be screened at the Ocean Beach Village Community House on Sunday, August 13th. We hope to see you there!
It felt like a trap. Maggie’s stomach flipped. Brenna and Quinn, however, were ecstatic.
“Maggie! How perfect is this?” Brenna said.
“What are the chances it’s the same weekend as our August rental?” Quinn marveled.
“And the day after Liz and Cam’s party.”
“It’s a sign. Your moon is in rising this month, yeah?”
Brenna nodded vehemently. “You have to enter. I bet you’ll blow the competition out of the water. The salt water, that is! Get it?” She laughed at her own dad joke.
Of all the ups and downs the past month had brought, the hardest low had come in the form of movies. Glancing at the marquee for the Cobble Hill Cinemas still filled her with a sense of shame, and she feigned headaches during Brenna and Quinn’s weekly movie nights. Movies, television, they mocked her in a foreign, uncomfortable way.
A reminder of a career she’d never have. A talent she’d miscalculated.
Competing in a short film festival, making another project? It felt like one part hope, nine parts chaos. She wanted to say yes, to try this out, too, but whenever she thought about opening the Final Draft screenwriting tool on her computer, she froze.
She’d close her eyes and see Kurt’s face. She’d be consumed by the fear, the disgrace.
The Fire Island Film Festival was tempting, but her wounds were still too fresh.
She couldn’t open herself to that chance of failure again.
“Sorry, guys, I don’t think I’m up for it,” she began, but she quickly realized Brenna and Quinn were no longer looking at her.
Instead, they were looking to the right of her ear, above her shoulder.
Maggie was hit by that familiar scent.
“Maggie Monroe. Was hoping I’d run into you today.”
She turned to face Ty. “Lucky you, we’re trapped on an island.” He was grinning.
Ty had texted her a few times in the past month. Links to movie reviews or funny tweets comparing New York and LA. Still, she never joined that Slack group. One had to still work in the industry in order to join the industry Slack, she reasoned. Regardless, if Maggie was going to chart a new course, she didn’t want any unnecessary reminders of the past.
Even if those reminders did look undeniably good in a Yankees hat.
He gestured toward the flyer. “You’re signing up, aren’t you?”
“I’m not so sure—” Maggie started with a sigh, only to be cut off by Brenna’s voice.
“We’re in the process of convincing her to do exactly that,” Brenna said, her hand outstretched. “Brenna, Maggie’s friend from high school.”
“Ty, Maggie’s friend from LA.” Ty’s introduction followed. “And future winner of the Fire Island Film Festival.”
“Friend is a stretch,” Maggie said with a smirk. Of course Ty was entering. Of course Ty had something prepared to submit. It was probably moving and beautifully shot and gut-punching with a message about saving the elephants or ending human trafficking. Something important. If Maggie could scrounge together a short film with such short notice and a nonexistent budget, she’d be lucky if there was one good line of dialogue. One laugh.
She was rusty, but even when she’d been in her so-called prime, her projects were popcorn compared to the stories Ty produced. She tried not to feel insecure about the subject matter of her scripts and shorts, but they always lived in the realm of romance. Of happily ever afters. Of falling and flying in the least expected situations for love. Meet-cutes and getaways, set in a place exactly like this. Maggie swallowed the irony. These second chances, these handsome men, frustratingly reappearing at every turn. It was something she would write.
She needed to snap out of it. To tell Ty the truth about Kurt, which she had still (reluctantly) evaded. To remind Brenna and Quinn that her moviemaking days were over.
Yet before Maggie could find her voice, she saw Quinn extending her hand to shake Ty’s. This time, it wasn’t for an introduction.
It was accepting a dare.
“You’re on,” Quinn said.
“We’re going to win this thing,” Brenna followed.
“Challenge accepted,” Ty said.
Maggie rolled her eyes. They couldn’t be serious. “Wow, can’t wait to see what you put together, Quinn.”
“Well, if you guys want any pointers, we’re staying at the Bamboo House. Happy to help out an old friend.” Ty smiled his signature smile, knocked his shoulder against Maggie’s. Goose bumps ran down her back as she watched him rejoin his group of friends, who had arranged their luggage onto wagons by the dock and were headed in the direction of their rental.
Once he’d rounded the corner and disappeared down the street, Brenna and Quinn erupted in giggles. “Please tell me you two hooked up in LA,” Quinn said.
“Just colleagues. Barely even work friends. But no, I’m not making a short. Sorry to disappoint you on two counts,” Maggie said. “Time for food. My stomach is growling so loud, it might just learn how to talk.” She hoisted her tote bag onto her shoulder and led the charge down Bay Walk.
Well, it was more of a stroll than a charge. Everything seemed to take on more of a relaxed quality once on the island. Collars loosened, sleeves rolled up, hair free to blow in the wind. They passed the Scoops ice-cream store, Kline’s gift shop with colorful Fire Island T-shirts in the window, the Ocean Beach Village Community House.
It felt warm, walking with Brenna and Quinn again, even though it also made Maggie deeply aware of what was missing: Liz, the fourth puzzle piece to complete their girl group of yore. The friends passed a boutique called A Summer Place and wandered inside. It was a store Liz would have insisted on venturing into. “This looks like something Liz would make,” Brenna said, holding up a dress and reading Maggie’s mind.
“Nah, too basic,” Quinn said. “Liz’s designs all have a certain spark.”
“Or sparkle.” Maggie laughed. “Remember in gym class in sixth grade, when she made us those uniforms for the badminton championship?”
“I’m not sure if you can count diamond-studded headbands as a uniform,” Brenna said.
This was one of their friend group’s favorite stories, the tale of how Liz and Maggie brought their team to badminton victory. All friend groups had their calling cards, stories told and retold so often that everyone had identical phrases memorized. When Liz tightened her headband, it was all over from there! Liz and Maggie had joined forces with Quinn and Brenna by the end of the fifth grade, paving the way for allyship through middle school and beyond. A true love match of its own kind, the way young girls cling to the people who make them feel protected even when their bodies are in the hellfire pit of pubescent change. Awkward noses and ears and haircuts, Abercrombie clothes they were constantly getting too tall for—Maggie’s memories of those days glowed with nostalgia.
She missed it. She missed Liz, the simplicity of their friendship. Now everything felt convoluted, like whatever was going on with Liz and Cam. She wished she could get through to Liz long enough to help broach it.
But first, lunch.
Maggie, Quinn, and Brenna wound back toward the ferry dock to eat on Island Mermaid’s outdoor deck, their favorite lunch spot, which was decorated with blue and red umbrellas. They ordered a round of seafood appetizers to share—steamers, crab cakes, mussels, clams on the half shell, fried calamari. When on Fire Island, Maggie thought, lean in. And thank god for summer Fridays, which had allowed them all to get here so early.
The sun shone down as a couple at the next table over couldn’t keep their hands off each other, an empty rosé bottle next to their finished plates. Maggie couldn’t exactly blame them. Ocean Beach was a romantic setting. There was something sentimental about it, something that made your heart overpower your brain, leaning toward love over logic. She had been feeling it since they’d stepped off the ferry. An appreciation, an urge, for the lovelier things.
As Brenna and Quinn fell into a mussels-versus-clams debate, Maggie pulled out her phone.
Is it just the way the sun shines down on these sandy streets…or is a part of me hoping, dare I type this, to fall face-first in love? My soul is itching. It wants something more. I never intended to be the girl next door on the movie screen. No, I wanted to be The Girl. The star, the lead. But then plans changed and life got busy, and my heart took second string. We’re reshuffling priorities this summer though, it seems. Might it be time to let my heart soar?
She rolled her eyes. What prospect of love was there, anyway? Mac was taken, not to mention uninterested. Did dating apps work on Fire Island? All of this felt out of sync for Maggie, like riding a very old, should-have-been-recycled-a-decade-ago bicycle. She hadn’t had a serious boyfriend since Mac. There had been suitors, surely. The drunken make-out sessions at UCLA. Crowded dance floors with strobe lights, hands on her hips and Avicii in her ears. Casual ways to blow off steam.
There hadn’t been much room in her calendar for anything more serious than that.
In LA, Maggie was focused. She hadn’t moved cross-country for the wellness shots or vegan options or to hike Runyon on Sunday mornings or to date a future movie star (though she wouldn’t have complained if the latter fell in her lap). That’s why long distance was never a possibility.
Maggie had moved to LA to work.
She had spent her teenage years feeling like she needed to prove herself. Like she needed to shine as brightly, scream as loudly as humanly possible to get an iota of attention. She’d ace her report cards and her parents would barely register the success. So she’d fail a test just to compare their reaction. She didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved when the response was the same as it was for her wins: silence. Maggie kept pushing; she’d follow the rules one night, break curfew the next, just to see if anyone was paying attention. Nobody ever was.
When she got to NYU, she still felt restless, like she was following the path her parents had forced her on. They’d pay for NYU, but only if Maggie was prelaw. That was always the catch. They never understood her love of writing or her interest in film. They thought she was being reckless, childish. What were the job prospects? Making ten dollars per hour as a production assistant on set or pushing a literal mail cart at a talent agency upon graduation? Getting lunches and coffees for bosses for the next ten years? Why not just work as an usher at the theater in town forever, if she was going to throw away any real hope of career longevity? Of homeownership? Didn’t Maggie want what they had?
By the end of that first semester at NYU, Maggie knew her answer. It was scary, but no. She needed more, something different. A change. Was that so selfish? Was she so ungrateful to follow this new rhythm that had started to soundtrack her heart? Maggie wasn’t sure.
All she knew was that once she had the idea of transferring to UCLA, it was as if there was no other option.
She had to move. For an intoxicating career. For work that pushed her. To grow.
But also, to prove to her parents, to prove to everyone that she had something special in her. She had a spark. She was going to Make It Big. She loved her high school friends, but deep down, she also needed to see if there was something out there for her beyond the borders of their youth. A new story, an unexpected plotline, meant only for her. Was that selfish? To want to see what else life had to offer?
Maggie didn’t wait around for an answer.
Even when she was a film student in LA, studying the canon and learning how to Save the Cat, writing screenplays for final projects and pulling all-nighters editing short films, Maggie was always committed to her task. Days and nights, weekends and holidays, she was studying. She was writing. She was working.
She knew it was ironic, considering that love stories were the sorts of projects that had called her out to LA in the first place. Those were the scripts she’d work on in her free time. Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner movies kept her up late into the night. She would fall in love right alongside Sally and Annie and Kathleen whenever she could. In Maggie’s postcollege world, she wasn’t blind to the swath of new cute coworkers—like Ty, for instance, who she now remembered all the mailroom girls having crushes on—but her evenings were exclusively for networking. For meeting and dreaming with fellow industry hopefuls over dollar oysters, all they could afford.
For a long while, Maggie loved it. The focus, the adrenaline, the scrappiness. She was talented, but she was also driven, and she loved how satisfying it felt to work this hard and be this disciplined. It was no different, she assumed, than those early grinding years of medical or law school, any commitment where hustle was a symptom, a sacrifice. It was worth it for the finish line.
But now that was gone. And it was like her brain was still trying to compensate for a vacuum of energy, of attention and desire. Seven years later, and what did she have to show for it? All those sacrifices, all those blinders, all those missed plans and ignored relationships.
For what?
When the friends had finished eating, they heard the next ferry’s engine as it floated into the dock. Maggie walked with Brenna and Quinn to the terminal, watching as the next batch of weekenders descended, including the rest of the Serendipity House.
Georgie and PJ were the first ones off, a case of Bud Light in each hand. Maggie’s heart involuntarily jumped at the sight that followed: Mac and Robyn and Robyn’s comically oversize sun hat drooping across her head. Mac’s hair shone and a part of Maggie couldn’t help but wonder if she was staring at yet another regret. Was the best happy ending something she’d already passed on?
“You made it!” Brenna waved.
“Where are Liz and Cam?” Quinn asked, the first to notice their absence.
“They’re going to come tomorrow morning,” Mac said with a shrug. “Cam said something came up.”
“I bet wedding dress shopping ran late. It’s so beautiful, being a bride.” Robyn beamed, and Maggie’s mind annoyingly imagined what Robyn and Mac would look like at an altar, hand in hand. Would things with Mac always have to feel this hard?
“I’m surprised to see you ladies here already,” Robyn continued. “I would have thought you’d be out dress hunting with Liz. I guess she’s more of a solo shopper, though.”
Her words cut through Maggie. It was surreal that Liz was planning something as monumental as her wedding and Maggie had nothing to do with it.
Was she really dress shopping alone?
Maggie hated that she didn’t know the answer.
“I’ve always wondered about the practicality of wedding dress shopping,” Georgie said as the friends started walking toward the Serendipity House, dragging the wagon filled with their weekend luggage behind them. “It makes for great sequences in movies, but can it be that simple in real life? Or even that enjoyable? Take Wedding Singer, for instance.”
“Or 27 Dresses,” Maggie added, determined to focus on the conversation, and not on how Mac and Robyn had somehow already splintered from the group so Robyn could take a call.
“And don’t forget the Carrie closet scene in the Sex and the City movie,” Brenna piped in.
“Objection,” Quinn said. “That’s just a regular fashion montage. Not wedding specific.”
“Overruled,” Maggie teased. “Same energy applies.”
“Is it as fun in real life, do you think?” Brenna asked.
Maggie paused. “We wouldn’t know, I guess. Never been before.” The ache of Liz’s absence started to rise through her again.
Luckily, her phone pinged with a distraction.
Ty: Hey hey. If we hypothetically had a party tonight, would you hypothetically want to come over? Your whole house is welcome.
Ty:But no taking video footage for your short. I know, you’ll think all my friends look like movie stars. (Myself included, naturally.)
Maggie’s heart sped up ever so slightly. Wasn’t this what she’d been waiting for? A dare, a diversion. A new plotline for the evening. A way to keep her mind off everything else.
“What do you guys say about mixing up the locale tonight?” she asked her friends. “We just got invited to a pregame at the Bamboo House.”
Georgie’s eyes instantly lit up at the prospect and Maggie knew how to reply.