She threw the sweatshirt into the suitcase, then pulled it back out again. This was Vegas in September. Why would she need a sweatshirt held together by sentimentality?
Her phone buzzed. A text from Danica.
Danica
How many pairs of shoes are too many pairs of shoes to pack?
Maggie hesitated. She’d told herself it would be easier to be honest, to finally say what she should’ve said weeks ago: that she and Gwen were separated, figuring out divorce. That it wasn’t some temporary funk she could be talked out of. But even as her thumb hovered over the reply, her pulse quickened and her stomach turned over in knots.
Just say it, she told herself. Say it and let it be real. Stop dragging it around like a ghost.
With the kind of impulsiveness that had defined much ofher twenties — and, evidently, still plagued her thirties — she hitCallinstead of replying.
She could do this. She could rip off the Band-Aid. She could just be honest with her friends. Hell, if Danica told Pete, Maggie wouldn’t have to worry about telling Kiera or Izzy, since Pete would inevitably relay the information at warp speed.
“Maggie,” Danica answered, her voice already fizzy with excitement. She sounded mid-bachelorette-planning-mode, which, knowing Danica, she absolutely was.
“Hey, babe. Good news, there is no limit to the shoes. They should have their own suitcase, honestly,” Maggie joked.
Danica exhaled in what sounded a lot like relief. “Okay, I’ve made a spreadsheet for outfits, but the shoes were really throwing me. I figured texting my stylist was the only answer.”
Classic Danica. Maggie smiled. She heard a few hushed words between Danica and someone else, but she cleared her throat and soldiered on. “Listen, I wanted to tell you?—”
“Oh, wait, Pete wants me to put you on speaker. Say hi.” Danica laughed. Of course she was laughing. She was engaged, carefree, and about to go to a bachelorette party with her best friends.
“Hi, Mags,” came Pete’s voice, followed by the distinctclink clink clinkof a cocktail shaker. “We’re taste-testing a second round of grapefruit margs, for science. We need to make sure they’re strong enough at the wedding to make Gwyneth dance and weak enough that no one loses a tooth.”
“Seriously,” Danica chimed in, practically bouncing through the phone. “I can’t believe she said yes. Gwen never comes on our trips. It’s such a treat to get to know her better and watch how adorable you two are together.”
“I’ve already made a playlist that includes her guilty pleasures,” Pete added. “And Kiera printed custom temporarytattoos with our faces on them. We’re going full chaos. Gwyneth’s not ready.”
Danica laughed. “But I am. I’m so ready. I swear if she doesn’t end up in a hot tub or a karaoke booth at some point, we’ve failed. This is going to be epic.”
Well,fuck.
Maggie opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“Yeah,” she said instead, her voice barely keeping pace with the thud of her heartbeat. “It should be… so, so fun. Listen?—”
“We were just saying how it’ll be even better than Telluride or San Diego because Gwyneth’s coming. Now we don’t have to worry about you being the fifth wheel,” Pete said, slurping what Maggie could only assume was said grapefruit margarita.
Danica laughed. “And maybe this time Gwen will actually let loose. Who knows, right?”
She stared at the ceiling, trying to will her pulse back to normal. She really had meant to tell Danica the truth. Shewasgoing to tell her. But then Pete had started raving about margaritas and Gwen dancing and tattoos with their faces on them, and suddenly Maggie felt like a piñata being asked to hold her own bat.
If they were this excited about Gwen coming, how could she ruin it? How could she deflate their joy with her messy reality — the silence in their house, the absence of Gwen on endless work trips, the separate beds, the half-hearted therapy sessions that ended in more questions than answers?
Now she definitely couldn’t tell them. Not without feeling like she was setting off a glitter bomb of disappointment. She could already hear Pete’s “Wait, what?” and see Danica’s face fall in confusion. It wasn’t that they’d be mad, not really. They’d just be… sad, which was so much worse. Then the questions would start. And suddenly their happy, blissful weekend would be about her, and they’d have those pitying looks. Maggie didn’t want to be the one to bring sadness to a weekend meant for fun.
So, once again, she swallowed it. She laughed along. She said, “Totally,” shortly after, blamed a fictional child-related emergency, and dropped her phone face down on the bed.
She wished she could call her mom. Her mom would laugh until she cried at the mess Maggie was in, then scoop up the chaos and help Maggie through it, like she always did.
The worst part of grief wasn’t regret. It was just wishing she could hear her mom laugh one more time.
She blinked back tears, still staring at the ceiling, her eyes tracing the beams she and Gwen had designed together. She didn’t believe in God, necessarily, or any kind of religion, but she did feel a bit of comfort imagining her mom watching over her somehow. “What do I do?” she whispered in some kind of prayer, closing her eyes. She stayed like that for a long time, waiting for some kind of sign.
A warmth flooded her body, and she was briefly comforted and in awe before realizing that no, something wasvery, very warm and smelling like… wait. She opened her eyes to see Rosie standing over her, eyes wide as burnt popcorn spilled from a bowl all over Maggie’s legs.
