“In three months?”
“It can happen fast. When you finally see what you’re about to lose.”
I wanted to believe her. God, I wanted to believe her.
The food came, chowder thick with clams and potatoes, fish and chips golden and crisp, and we kept talking while we ate. She told me about the manuscripts she was reading, the Morrison novel that had caught Richard’s eye. About turning down a conference in New York.
“That sounds like an opportunity,” I said.
“It was.” She dipped a piece of bread into her chowder, not quite meeting my eyes. “But I had something more important this week.”
She didn’t elaborate.
We talked about books after that—whether Hemingway was overrated (she thought yes, I thought it was complicated), what we’d read lately, what we wanted to read next. She’d just finishedBelovedand couldn’t stop talking about it, her hands moving as she described Toni Morrison’s prose like it was a physical thing she could touch.
“You should read it,” she said. “It’ll break your heart, but in a good way. The kind of breaking that puts you back together differently.”
“That sounds painful.”
“The best books are.”
I ordered another beer. She ordered coffee. Sal refilled our waters without asking and left the check on the table, but neither of us reached for it. The restaurant had emptied out around us, the college kids gone, the couple at the bar paying their tab. Even Huey Lewis had given way to something slower, softer—Phil Collins, maybe, or Peter Gabriel.
When we finally did pay—I grabbed the check before she could argue, and she let me without the usual fight—it was nearly ten o’clock. The night outside was cold and clear, stars visible between the buildings, our breath making clouds as we walked.
“Where are you parked?” I asked.
“Around the corner, I think. Maybe the next block?” She laughed, embarrassed. “I kind of just abandoned the car wherever I could find a spot.”
We found her Honda Civic three blocks away, wedged between a delivery van and a Buick that looked like it hadn’t been moved since the Carter administration. The streetlight overhead buzzed and flickered, casting orange shadows across her face as she dug in her purse for her keys.
“I had a good time,” she said, looking up at me.
“Me too.”
We stood there, close enough that I could smell her perfume. Scoundrel, that spicy, dangerous scent she always wore, the one that had driven me crazy for a year.
Her face was tilted up toward mine, lips slightly parted, and everything in me wanted to close the distance between us.
I wanted to kiss her. The urge was almost overwhelming, a physical pull that made my hands ache to reach for her.
But this was Maggie. The woman who’d spent a year running from anything real. If I kissed her now, moved too fast, gave her an excuse to bolt?—
“Goodnight, Maggie.” I stepped back
Something flickered across her face, disappointment, maybe, or understanding. Or both. “Goodnight, Jack.”
She unlocked her car, that familiar fumbling with the key that I remembered from a dozen other goodbyes, and slid into the driver’s seat. The engine turned over on the second try, and she gave me a small wave through the window before pulling out of the spot with the concentration of someone who didn’t quite trust their own navigation.
I watched until her taillights disappeared around the corner, then stood there for a while longer, hands shoved in my pockets, cold seeping through my jacket.
Three months ago, I’d been certain she would never change. Now I wasn’t sure. I’d watched her start to deflect tonight, watched the old Maggie surface for just a moment, and then I’d watched her stop herself. The old Maggie would never have caught herself mid-sentence. Would never have admitted she was doing the very thing I’d spent a year watching her do.
I started walking toward the T station, the cold biting at my ears but my chest warm with something that felt dangerously like hope.
I was starting to think I might not need the letter after all.
8
