Chapter 1. Maggie #2
“Definitely.” Isabel headed toward her door, then turned. “Oh, and my grandmother did claim she read Eleanor Roosevelt’s tarot cards, but she never let the truth get in the way of a good story, so who knows?”
Maggie laughed.
Isabel pointed to Maggie’s sneakers lying on her doormat. “You run?”
“Used to. It’s been a while. There are some great trails around here, though. I have a map you can borrow.”
“Why don’t you show me?” Isabel said. “Maybe tomorrow after class?”
A laugh echoed from somewhere on the other side of the quad.
The dining hall bell rang and drowned out the buzz of cicadas in the nearby bushes.
The yellow lamps flicked on across campus as they did every evening at five p.m. The world around Maggie was as familiar as ever, and yet before her stood an enchanting woman asking her to go for a run tomorrow.
“I’d love to,” Maggie said.
Maggie hadn’t gone running in well over a year, but the next afternoon she led Isabel to her favorite trail along the back of the campus, exhausting herself by sprinting faster than normal in an effort to make a good impression.
At the top of the trail, they sat on the rocky cliffs of a waterfall and chatted with two students who were on field study for their earth science class.
“The kids seem nice here,” Isabel said as they walked back down the mountain. “I’ve never taught high school.”
Maggie loved her students, a quirky and gifted cohort, and felt like a proud parent when she talked about them.
Grove was her first teaching job out of graduate school, but she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to leave the historic stone buildings and sprawling green campus.
“They’re great,” she said. “Smart. They’ll test you the first week, though, so don’t be afraid to push back. ”
“Good to know,” Isabel said, laughing. Then, more seriously, “Are you out to them?”
Well, that didn’t take long. People were more likely to be surprised when Maggie told them she was gay than to figure it out on their own.
Then again, most of the women she’d been in relationships with, including Sarah, regarded themselves as straight, so perhaps that played a part.
She wondered what Isabel detected that gave it away, and glanced down at her outfit—running shorts and an old Grove T-shirt—as though it might reveal something.
“It’s not what you look like.” Isabel laughed. “It’s… the way you look at me.”
“How do I—”
Isabel fixed her dark, heavy-lidded eyes on Maggie.
“Oh.” Maggie felt her face redden and tried to hide it by adjusting the brim of her hat.
The sun filtered through the canopy of eastern hemlocks surrounding them on the trail.
“Anyway,” Maggie said. “I am. Out, I mean. I teach a seminar on contemporary queer literature in the upper school.”
“And to think I had you pegged as an Austen or Woolf girl.”
“Well, I dabbled in college.” Maggie laughed. “But, really, don’t worry about it. Everyone’s cool here.”
“I wasn’t worried. Just curious.”
They walked on until, suddenly, Isabel grabbed Maggie’s arm and pulled her to a crouch.
“Shh,” she whispered. She placed one hand on Maggie’s sweaty back and, with the other, pointed through the trees and around the bend to a deer and two fawns drinking from the moss-covered edge of a stream.
The closeness of Isabel’s breath and the heady scent of her sweat made Maggie feel like she was on the brink of something new, something she wasn’t entirely sure how to name.
They watched until a branch beneath Maggie’s foot snapped, and the three creatures sprinted across the water without making a sound.
“They’re like ghosts,” Maggie said.
Isabel stood and reached for her hand, pulling her up.
For the rest of the summer, Maggie and Isabel ran together every morning, shared most meals, and drank whiskey on the communal porch at night, their thighs touching beneath the flannel throw they’d share when the temperature dropped after sunset.
Isabel helped Maggie restore the wood-burning stove in the cabin, and Maggie acted out the part of Eleanor Roosevelt, mid-Atlantic accent and all, whenever Isabel staged a reading from her play.
They made each other laugh and never seemed to run out of things to talk about.
Still, it felt safer to keep some distance.
Maggie’s crushes before had been consumed with urgency and angst. What unfolded with Isabel was different.
There was a steadiness that almost confused her.
Her first instinct wasn’t to rip off Isabel’s clothes, have sex, and then leave—she wanted something more, which scared her.
She sensed the attraction was mutual, but her heart felt like an easy target, and she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to get involved with another person from the school, especially with the chair position opening.
One rainy morning in August, she and Isabel went for a run to celebrate Maggie’s thirty-fourth birthday. After, Maggie was home changing out of her wet clothes when there was a knock at her door. She opened it to find Isabel holding a chocolate cupcake with a candle and reached for the plate.
“Wait, wait.” Isabel pulled a lighter from her back pocket and lit the candle. “Make a wish!”
Maggie met Isabel’s golden-brown eyes, and thought You as she blew out the flame.
Isabel stepped into the apartment and stood close enough that Maggie recognized that something between them had shifted.
“What was your wish?” Isabel asked quietly.
Before Maggie could answer, they were kissing.
Isabel’s lips tasted like salt from the run.
As they stumbled toward the bedroom, Isabel undressed her, kissing her all over, and then Maggie did the same to Isabel, revealing her long body, her hair dark and full.
They lay on the bed together, skin on skin, and suddenly Maggie felt like she might cry.
They stayed there for a long moment, lips hovering, eyes open, until Isabel took her chin, closed her eyes, and kissed her again—softly, then fully.
They spent that night, and every night after, together.
Every night, that is, until last Friday, when Maggie went to Boston.
Sarah had heard from a mutual friend that Maggie would be in the city and texted her a last-minute invitation to stop by for a glass of wine before the reading.
Maggie hadn’t spoken to Sarah in almost a year by then, but she made the decision, which she regretted immediately, to accept.
She told herself it was a chance for closure, and she’d meant it.
A few days after Boston, on the evening before Maggie was leaving to spend Thanksgiving with her family in Port Haven, she brought a bottle of wine to Isabel’s.
Isabel had planned to stay on campus to work on her play throughout the break, but she was now considering heading to Connecticut for the weekend to visit friends.
Maggie searched Isabel’s drawers for a shirt to borrow for Thanksgiving dinner. If they couldn’t be together, Maggie wanted to wear something that smelled like her.
Isabel lay on the bed, a teacup of wine resting on her stomach, her head propped on a pillow.
“How about this?” Maggie said, holding up a navy fisherman knit sweater.
“Sure,” Isabel said. “I’ll give it an extra spritz of my perfume.”
Maggie gave her a thumbs-up and sat on the bed.
“Is something wrong?” Isabel asked. “You seem off tonight. Or is it just that you’re going to miss me?”
“I am going to miss you,” Maggie said. Then: “But I also feel like you’re being, I don’t know, cagey.” She crossed her arms. She knew her distrust sprang from her own recent indiscretion, but she couldn’t stop herself. Her whole body buzzed with suspicion.
“Cagey?” Isabel sat up. “How am I being cagey?”
“ Just some friends in Connecticut?”
Isabel laughed. “You’re jealous!” She placed the teacup on the nightstand and tossed a pillow at Maggie.
“No I’m not.” She threw the pillow back, and Isabel caught it with one hand, tucking it behind her head as she lay back down.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” Isabel said. She reached for Maggie’s hand, pulling her closer until their foreheads pressed together. “I don’t even want to go to Connecticut.”
“Come with me, then,” Maggie heard herself say.
Isabel sat up again. “Really?”
No , Maggie thought. She wasn’t sure she was ready to introduce Isabel to her family just yet, but now that it was out there, what could she say but “Yes, really.”
“I don’t want to impose,” Isabel said. “Would your mom be okay having me there?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll call her in the morning.”