Chapter 18
MAGGIE
Lightning raced across the sky in terrifying, beautiful forks that seemed so close from up in Ryan’s apartment that it felt like I could reach out and touch them. I stared, transfixed, at the storm that had arrived with almost no warning.
Early this evening, clouds had started rolling in, but they hadn’t looked particularly threatening. Ryan had gotten home, we’d eaten and packed, and then a loud boom of thunder had practically rattled the windows and the skies had opened.
Through the glass, I watched the rain coming down in sheets being carried sideways by driving wind. I could barely make out the city below, the twinkling lights so blurry that it was almost like the streets had been submerged.
Ryan stood near the window just a few panes away from me with his phone pressed to his ear and his lips pursed in frustration as he listened to whatever the person on the other end was saying. Finally, he spoke, his words interspersed with more comments from the other person.
“No, I understand.” A pause. “That’s fine. Yes, I know. Thanks.”
When he hung up, I finally turned away from the terrifying beauty of the storm and looked at him, not missing the tension lining in his features and the irritation flickering in those eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Our flight has been canceled on account of… that.” He motioned toward the windows and sighed. “We’re going to have to take the train.”
“The train?” I tried to hold back my grin, but I couldn’t. “Are you serious?”
He frowned. “Yes?”
Excitement sped through me like a bullet, my heart fluttering as a soft laugh escaped me. “Yeah. Yes. Let’s do it. Let’s take the train. Are you coming? What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”
Ryan’s head slowly tilted as he watched me, that dark hair falling across his forehead and his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “Uh, Maggie? Are you okay? Is your brain, like, glitching or something?”
“Nope.” I wrapped my jacket tighter around myself and strode to the door, picking up my bag and sliding the strap over my shoulder even though he hadn’t moved an inch. “This is just fantastic, that’s all. We’re taking the train.”
“Yeah, okay,” he muttered, his head shaking and his eyebrows riding high as he followed me, grabbed his own bag, and opened the door. “After you, oh weird one.”
I laughed, genuinely thrilled about this development. “I’m not weird. I’m excited. Aren’t you?”
“About taking the train? No.”
He locked up behind us, still casting worried glances my way every so often. A driver picked us up downstairs and deposited us as close as he could get to the terminal, but the rain had turned the sidewalks into shallow rivers, and by the time we got inside, I was soaked from the knees down.
While it was definitely cold and uncomfortable, nothing could detract from my wonder as I stared at the massive, cathedral-like glass roof covering the main hall of Penn Station.
Ryan marched ahead like he didn’t even notice it while I stumbled along after him, almost tripping over my own feet a few times as we made our way down the concourse.
“This is incredible,” I murmured when he finally stood still, signaling that we’d reached the spot where we would wait for our train. “Just magnificent, don’t you think? Did you know that this used to be a post office? They even reused the steel trusses from what used to be the sorting room.”
When I glanced over at him, he was staring at me with a slightly pinched, definitely concerned expression on his face. “I did know that, actually. What I don’t know is why you’re so excited about it.”
I backed toward a seat and sat down, glancing up at rain splashing against the enormous windows.
All around us, people seemed to know exactly what they were doing.
They rushed back and forth, striding with deliberate purpose and phones pressed to their ears or occupying their attention in their hands.
It seemed impossible, but it honestly looked like not one other person in here was even slightly awed by where we were. When Ryan dropped into the seat beside mine, I looked back at him, feeling my cheeks warm as I held his gaze.
“I’ve never been on a train,” I admitted. “My parents never even allowed me to take the subway.”
He stared back at me, his jaw slackening until he looked completely horrified. “Never?”
“Never.” I sighed and leaned back against the bench, my eyes drawn up to the massive skylight again when more lightning raced overhead.
“I’ve always wanted to go on one. Actually, scratch that.
I’ve always wanted to be able to use trains like everyone else, but my parents said it was too dangerous. ”
“It’s the subway, Maggie. Not a war zone. Why didn’t you just do it anyway? In my experience, you don’t really let your parents stop you from doing what you want.”
I looked out at the modern glass walls existing right beside old-school industrial strength, the modern art right next to original concrete and steel columns. It was fascinating, breathtaking, and so damn sad to be seeing it in person for the first time at twenty-six that I almost started crying.
“Actually, I’ve always let my parents stop me.
From everything,” I admitted quietly. “All my life, I’ve been the perfect Pembroke princess, even when it’s never felt like that’s who I am.
I’ve done everything they’ve asked and I did it without question or complaint because that’s just how things are, but marriage?
It was asking too much, Ryan. It was the one thing I couldn’t give. I tried, but…”
When I trailed off, he held my gaze for a long moment before he gave me a surprisingly soft smile.
“Well, then I suppose it’s a good thing you’ve got me here to be your guide.
The train was like my second home when I was in college.
Obviously, we couldn’t afford plane tickets back and forth between here and Chicago, and I couldn’t afford taxis to get around the city either, so I practically lived on trains. ”
“That sounds amazing,” I said, bumping my shoulder playfully against his. “I’m so jealous right now.”
He chuckled. “Oh, yeah. There’s nothing quite as worthy of your envy as being broke. It’s so sexy.”
“Hey, you got to do whatever you wanted. How many trains did you take a day?”
“At least two. Sometimes more.”
My eyes widened. “Keep rubbing it in, why don’t you?”
“Yeah, it was pretty great, actually.” For the first time since we’d walked in here, he lifted his gaze toward the terminal and let it drift from one side to the other, a grin I hadn’t expected spreading on his lips.
“You should take the subway sometime soon, too. There’s something about the anonymity of them that’s just amazing.
No one knows who you are, and frankly, no one cares.
Everyone’s got their own stuff going on and they’re only focused on getting to where they’re going. ”
“That sounds like an experience I need to have right about now.”
“You wouldn’t regret it.” He finally glanced back at me.
“The weird thing about it is that at the time, I hated it. Don’t get me wrong, the anonymity was still great, but the fact that it was one of the only means of transport we could actually afford?
That sucked. We went from private jets and personal drivers to buses and subways. It felt like a pretty big drop.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“I don’t think you’d want to, but at the same time, we all had this odd new freedom. For the first few months after my dad’s arrest, we were obviously under the microscope of public scrutiny, but after that, the news cycle moved on and we could just be.”
“Until the microscope came back?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, something like that. It sort of came in waves for a long time, but in between, there was this sense of peace. I mean, we had to fight for everything we had and we worked our butts off just to get by, but the people who became our friends liked us despite our last name, not because of it. We didn’t have calendars filled with galas and dinners.
I spent more than a few nights just drinking beer with my roommate and absolutely no one cared.
No one called to remind me I had to be somewhere. ”
For a few minutes as I listened to him, the weight of my own troubles disappeared. Ryan also didn’t speak like it was hurting him to tell me all this stuff. Instead, there was a note of disbelief entwined with exhilaration in his voice, like looking back, he’d realized it hadn’t been all bad.
“Your life must be very different now,” I said when he fell silent after telling me another story about him and his roommate.
“You’re back to having drivers and tailors.
You were on the guest list for my wedding and I’ve seen some news coverage of you guys recently.
Obviously, I don’t know the details, but I know your brothers married Egyptian heiresses and that you guys are constantly seen living it up with the Westwoods. ”
“Yeah.” Ryan stared at the wall opposite us, his jaw tightening for a beat before he looked back at me. “It’s great. It just doesn’t feel natural.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he stood and motioned toward a train that had pulled in while we’d been talking. “That’s us. Let’s go. I booked us two private sleeping rooms.”
I nodded like I knew exactly what he was talking about, even though I hadn’t known that was something one could do on a train.
Ryan waved me ahead of him and we boarded.
There was no elegant conductor in uniform personally escorting me to my room, nor was there a mysterious European man to drink wine and discuss art with, but the train still turned out to be everything I’d hoped.
Ryan walked me to my room, hovering at the door with his laptop when I walked in. “I’m right next door if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” I said, too busy inspecting my tiny but thrilling sleeping quarters to realize I was about to be in here alone for hours.
He lingered for another minute before he disappeared into his own room, presumably to get some work done, and as I sat there, I felt weirdly warm thinking about him now that he wasn’t around to see me do it.
I couldn’t help myself, though. There was just something different about him. I’d spent my entire life around men like Ryan. Men who could walk into any room like they owned it and who knew which designer to wear and who to avoid, which club to belong to, which deal to close, and how to close it.
Ryan knew all those things too, but he didn’t behave like those other men. Mostly, he didn’t make me feel like I was being assessed and he certainly didn’t seem to care if I was behaving the way a Pembroke woman was supposed to. I liked that.
For the next twenty minutes, I mentally rehashed the time we’d spent together and how novel it was that he made me feel like I could just be myself around him, but eventually, I got bored and walked out into the narrow corridor, wandering around until I found a little lounge car.
It was pretty empty, so I took a seat near the window and stared out at the dark landscape, wondering what stories these tables would be able to tell. I bet they’ve really seen some things.
Lost in thought, I almost didn’t notice it was my phone that buzzed a few times on the table, but when I finally glanced down, I saw several new message notifications on the screen. All of them from Daniel.
My stomach sank, but I picked up my phone and clicked into the thread, knowing the time had come.
Daniel: We need to talk about this eventually.
Daniel: I’m not trying to put pressure on you. I promise. But this limbo is messing with me, Maggie. I need your help getting some clarity.
Daniel: I’m not mad at you.
Guilt wound through me like a living organism as I gripped the phone in my hand and stood up, suddenly longing for the privacy of my own car.
I’d spent so much time thinking about what I wanted that I’d barely thought about what he might be going through.
Daniel hadn’t asked for this either. He hadn’t chosen me and I doubt he’d had any more say in the wedding than I had, but I’d left him standing at an altar with half the country’s high society watching.
Back in my room, I tried typing a few replies, but none seemed good enough, so I deleted them all and eventually put the phone down on the bed. I turned back to the windows, watching the countryside roll by in a dark, rainy blur as the guilt consumed me.
It got even worse when Ryan popped his head in, laptop in hand, and gave me a crooked, almost sheepish smile. “It turns out I didn’t like the idea of you being alone on a strange train.”
“Come on in.” Touched by his thoughtfulness, I hid a smile behind my hair and thought about how much time I’d spent feeling alone. Most of my life actually. But with Ryan?
Huh. I never feel alone when he’s around.
Strangely, he was the only person I’d ever met who always made me feel like I belonged wherever I was with him.
It was such a refreshing thing to notice that for a second, I just stared at him.
I’d always felt like the odd piece of the puzzle, but not when I was with him.
He simply made space for me to be who I was without looking around to see whether I was embarrassing him or scolding me for not being perfectly put together all the time.
My guilt hadn’t disappeared, but with Ryan around, it suddenly felt a lot lighter. Like maybe I was allowed to exist for something other than making everyone else happy all the time.