He turned to Rebecca, said something about finishing up, and they moved down the aisle together. She touched his arm again, that easy, comfortable gesture I’d noticed at the diner.
I stood there holding my basket, fish sauce forgotten, heart pounding in a way it hadn’t in years.
I had a lunch date with Jack.
Now I just had to figure out what the hell I was going to say.
4
Jack
Rebecca had gone home an hour ago, and I was still thinking about seeing Maggie.
I stood at my apartment window, watching South Boston settle into evening. Streetlights flickered on one by one. A few kids played hockey on the frozen strip of pavement between parked cars, their shouts carrying through the glass. My breath fogged the window, and I wiped it away with my sleeve, trying to focus on something other than the way Maggie had looked at me in the grocery store.
Could we get coffee? Or lunch?
Simple words. The kind of thing anyone might say to an ex they’d run into by accident. Except it hadn’t felt simple. It had felt like something else entirely.
My apartment wasn’t much. One bedroom in a triple-decker that had seen better decades, radiators that clanked, neighbors who fought too loudly on weekends. But it was mine. Clean. Functional. Books stacked neatly on shelves, newspapers piled in chronological order on the coffee table, records alphabetized in the milk crates I’d used since college. Coltrane, Davis,Springsteen, everything organized the way I wished the rest of my life could be.
Control. That’s what this place represented. Everything in its proper spot.
Unlike my head, which had been chaos since yesterday morning.
I’d looked up at brunch, just a normal Saturday, eggs and coffee with Rebecca at the diner we liked, and there she was. Maggie. Sitting in a booth across the room with Diane, staring at me like I was a ghost she hadn’t expected to see.
It had been a little over three months since things ended between us, since I’d stopped calling and she’d stopped pretending she wanted me to. I’d thought I was over it. Over her.
Then our eyes met across that crowded diner, and I felt everything come rushing back. Every late-night conversation, every almost-moment, every time she’d let me get close before pushing me away again.
She’d given a little wave, awkward, almost embarrassed, and practically fled the restaurant before I could decide whether to go over and say hello. Classic Maggie. Always running.
But then today. The grocery store. And this time she hadn’t run.
I turned from the window and crossed to my desk, the floorboards creaking under my feet. The desk was covered in the usual chaos, notes for the housing authority story, a half-empty coffee cup, three pens that probably didn’t work, the detritus of a reporter’s life. But underneath all of it, I knew exactly what I was looking for.
The letter.
I dug through the papers until I found it. A single sheet of yellow legal paper, folded in thirds, my own handwriting visible through the thin paper. I’d written it in the fall, sitting at this same desk watching the leaves change outside and a bottle ofJameson keeping me company. I’d moved it twice since then. Once to the drawer, once to the trash can, and both times I’d retrieved it within an hour.
I unfolded it now and read words I already knew by heart.
Dear Maggie—
I’ve started this letter a dozen times. I keep hoping I won’t have to send it.
I love you. I’ve loved you since the night we argued about Hemingway and you called me a “tragically literal thinker.”
But I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep being the one who shows up while you decide whether I’m worth the risk.
I deserve someone who’s sure. Someone who chooses me.
You’re not that person.
—Jack
October 15th.That’s when I’d written it, and then I kept moving my own deadline, until I’d finally drawn a line and decided on Valentine’s Day as my deadline—if nothing changed by then, I was going to mail it and be done.
