One Night in Boston

by Allie Boniface

  “I don‘t think so.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t think so? He either did or he didn’t. And if he did, tomorrow I’ll finish what I didn’t today.”

  “I didn’t ask him to stay,” she began again, trying to sort it out. “But I didn’t tell him to leave, either.”

  Dillon’s voice broke. “I didn’t know he was still here. I swear to God, I didn’t. But why didn’t you—why didn’t you say something? Do something?” He fell silent and picked at a loose thread in her comforter.

  “Why didn’t I do something?” she seethed, fresh tears starting. “Why didn’t you? If you weren’t so stoned, you would have heard him come back down the hall. Why did you go to bed? Why did you bring him inside in the first place? Why are you friends with a jerk like that?”

  Why?

  Why?

  Why?

  Staring at her sheets, she fired the word at Dillon over and over again, until he turned gray and stormed from the room. On his way out, he slammed her door so hard that the next day, her stepfather had to replace both the hinges. Maggie didn’t care. She hated Dillon. She resented him. Most of all, she blamed him. And at the same time, she loved him and wanted him to say it would all be okay. She wanted to crawl inside his embrace. She wanted him to comfort her. Only it was too late now, because she could barely wrap her own arms around herself without feeling all the ways that Sam had changed her.

  Down the hall, she heard Dillon vomit and felt glad.

  *

  Maggie stared into Eden’s bathroom mirror in dismay. She was out of practice dressing up, playing Cinderella, or caring about the way she looked in a gown. She barely knew what feminine looked like or felt like anymore, she’d dressed in jeans for so long. Casual clothes were safe. They didn’t invite problems, be it a nylon run or a passing comment from a construction worker. But this? She didn’t know what to do with this, a dress that was supposed to cling and sway and—

  Knuckles rapped on the other side of the bathroom door. “You okay in there?”

  Maggie took one more look at herself and yanked at the knob. “I guess.”

  “Wow.” Neve’s face lit up. “You look—”

  “Amazing,” Eden said from the bedroom, where Maggie could see she’d wiggled herself into a skin-tight navy blue sheath. “Love the dress, Mags. Great color.”

  She sighed. “Thanks. I think.”

  Eden reached into a bag on her dresser. “Here.” She held out a wand and a tube of something.

  “What’s that?”

  “Makeup. You should wear some.”

  “Really?”

  “You need some color tonight. No offense.”

  Maggie narrowed her eyes, doubtful, but she took the mascara and lip gloss anyway. She hadn’t worn a lick of anything on her face since college. She never saw the point when all it did was run or crease or fall off before the day was through. She didn’t really see the use in covering anything up, either. What you saw was what you got. She’d once known a woman who set her alarm clock an hour before her husband got up in the morning, just so she could have her face arranged when he saw her each day. Maggie always wondered about the moment he finally caught her in nothing but skin. Would he recognize her? Would he still know the woman he’d married? Or would he prefer the mask instead?

  Eden’s earlier words rang inside her head. You look like hell.

  Maggie imagined she probably did. She’d always worn her emotions, from grief to angst to triumph, square in the middle of her face. She tried to take an objective look in the mirror. Tonight, it appeared as though she stood on the edge of a precipice, terrified by the thought of the fall but ready to take the leap if she had to. Bags darkened her eyes, and she had to struggle to find a smile.

  Eden’s right. She wasn’t sure the two tiny tubes in her hands could work a miracle, but she figured it was worth a shot.

  Funny, she thought a few moments later, that squinting one eye shut to apply mascara could bring her straight back to the days of fraternity parties and Ladies’ Night bar hopping. She frowned. Maybe you weren’t ever as removed from the past as you liked to think.

  “Maggie!” Neve materialized behind her again, brown eyes wide.

  “What? It’s too much, isn’t it? I knew it.” She screwed the wand back into its base. “Here. Hand me a tissue. I’ll get rid of some of it.”

  “Like hell you will.” Neve slapped a hand over her mouth as soon as the words came out. “Sorry. Didn’t mean that. But you’re a knockout. The guys won’t be able to stay away from you.”

  “I’m not going to the ball to pick up a guy.”

  “Although it wouldn’t kill you,” Eden called from the living room. “You’ve been single for far too long.”

  “Tonight’s not about my love life.”

  Eden ran a hand through her long blonde locks. “Darlin’, every night should be about your love life.”

  “God, you never change.” Maggie searched for her shoes.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Eden’s expression soured. “What’s wrong with having a little fun? Life goes on, you know. Just because you stopped having a social life, wouldn’t give any guy the time of day after what happened in Las Vegas—” Her mouth snapped shut before she finished the sentence. She marched to the kitchen and began running water over their empty wine glasses.

  Neve stood in the middle of the apartment with her mouth hanging open. Confusion knitted her brows together. “What is she talking about? What happened in Vegas?”

  Maggie sighed. “Don’t ask.”

  The water stopped. “You haven’t told her, have you?” Eden said. “Your best friend in that pip-squeak town, and you haven’t even told her.”

  “Told me what?”

  Maggie dropped her eyes. Don’t bring it up, she thought. I can’t stand another memory. Not tonight. Not about him.

  But it was too late.

  *

  “It was a mistake.”

  Oppressive Nevada sunlight anchored twenty year-old Maggie Doyle to the ground. It pressed down on the back of her neck. It pierced her scalp. It sliced her vision into puzzle pieces of white. She swallowed to keep herself from taking back the words and stared past his shoulders. Her jaw twitched, and she ran her tongue over the tip of her teeth in an effort to keep the tears at bay.

  How could shoulders do that, anyway? How could you look at something that was just bone and muscle and skin, meaningless apart from the pulse that beat underneath it, and feel breathless at the thought of never touching it again? Would his wrist have the same effect on her? His crooked nose? Maggie wrenched her gaze away from his shoulders and the broad chest below them, away from his face and the pained, confused expression. She focused instead on a battered Chevy pick-up parked beneath the sign that read “Mystic Motel—Lowest Rates on the Strip.”

  “What did you say?”

  She repeated the words without looking at him. She paused, then added a sentence or two more to fill the emptiness. Some small part of her hoped that he’d take her by the arms, shake her, tell her she was wrong. But he didn’t.

  “That’s what you want?”

  “It’s best for both of us. We’re too young.” And I’m too broken.

  *

  “He would have stayed with you forever, you know,” Eden said, as Maggie trailed off. “I’ve never seen a guy so pathetically in love.”

  Maggie shrugged as her story wound to its pitiful end. There was little more to say. She’d walked away first, closing her eyes against his goodbye, and that was that. The day was gone, the night a memory, and ten years had somehow slipped by since.

  “It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t give him what he wanted.”

  “You mean children?” Neve asked, breathless. She perched on the edge of the loveseat.

  “He didn’t care about that,” Eden said.

  “Of course he did. Or he would have, after awhile. Everyone does. Besides, his father never would have approved. Marrying someone who can’t
have kids—” It wasn’t an option, she finished silently.

  It didn’t matter how much they’d loved each other. The vows they made in the middle of the night couldn’t chase away the thought that Maggie Doyle would never be good enough, not for someone like him. She’d meant to tell him the truth—about her operation, about her family, about the scars in her soul—when they first started dating. She’d wanted to. But days slipped away and turned into a year. Then two. And how could you bring up a secret like that after months and months of falling in love? After endless nights of skin against skin, of watching the sun trade places with the moon and thinking you knew everything about the person who lay next to you? How could you just say, Oh, by the way, I’m missing half my insides, and if you were planning on having children with me, well, sorry, but it won’t ever happen?

  No, better to let him go, to let him think she’d changed her mind, than reveal the real reason she couldn’t spend forever waking up beside him.

  Maggie reached for her shoes and grabbed her purse. It seems like all I’ve done the last few years is say goodbye to the things I want to hold on to. Well, not this time. I’m not losing the house or Doyle Designs. Not after everything else. She had no time left for memories. No time for regrets, careful plans or perfect wording. Right now, she needed to go to the ball. She needed to find Dillon. She needed to convince him to loan her the money and then get it to the bank as fast as she could. Everything else, memories included, would have to be shoved to the far recesses of her mind, where they belonged if you couldn’t do anything with them, anyway.

  Maggie pulled on her designer heels and reached the door before either of the others. “Come on. Let’s find Dillon and get this over with.”

  7:00 p.m.

  Jack stuck one finger inside his collar and yanked. Bowties always strangled him.

  “Here you go.” The cabbie eased around Hotel Victoria’s circular drive and lined up behind two limousines.

  “Thanks.” He handed the man a generous tip and stepped out into pouring rain. What a night for the ball. Hunched over, trying to avoid the rain and getting soaked anyway, Jack hurried to the front door. Light poured out from the grand entranceway where women in long gowns tiptoed next to their tuxedoed dates. He could hear the band warming up.

  “Good evening, Mr. Major.” Three women, all bottle blondes, overly made up, and trying to pretend they weren’t pushing forty, gushed over Jack as he approached the ticket table in the lobby. One of them he recognized from a charity event last winter.

  “Hi, Nina. Drake with you tonight?”

  The woman sitting in the middle, revealing a good two inches of overly tanned cleavage, flicked her hand toward the ballroom. “Somewhere inside. Probably talking horse racing.” Her eyes moved over his shoulder and back. “Where’s Paige?”

  “Working late.” He resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair. “Have a ticket for me?”

  “Of course.” She pulled out a piece of parchment and tore it in half. The bottom went to Jack; the top she tossed into a glittery ball on the table beside her. “For door prizes later,” she explained, lacing her fingers underneath her chin. Her eyes moved across his torso and dropped to his crotch.

  Jack felt his stomach turn and wondered if the bar beer had caught up with him already. “Thanks.” He stuck the ticket stub into his pocket and entered the ballroom.

  The Hotel Victoria, one of Boston’s newest establishments, catered to the city’s elite, and its owners had spared no expense with its design and construction. Three stories high, the place featured two large ballrooms on its main floor and six other, smaller rooms upstairs. Besides hosting corporate parties and charity events, it also boasted an impressive selection of wedding packages. The basic one started somewhere around seventy-five dollars a plate, and the “Ultimate” topped out at a cool two hundred and fifty. The only reason I know that, Jack thought as he looked around, is because Paige brought home their brochure a few months ago. Thank God the wait for the room she wanted was over a year. With her biological clock ticking loudly, she’d made it clear that she had no intention of waiting that long to tie the knot.

  Still, as Jack stepped through the huge double doors, he had to admit that the place was impressive, with its gilt crown molding and crystal chandeliers. Velvet curtains broke the enormous space into subtle, intimate corners, and he spied an atrium in the back filled with fruit trees and flowers. Tables draped in cream and burgundy framed the hardwood dance floor, and though a few couples sat scattered at them, most of the early guests had drifted in the direction of the two bars across the room. Jack joined them.

  “Double bourbon on the rocks, please.”

  “Eight-fifty.” The bartender slid the glass across the bar, filled with too much ice for Jack’s taste.

  “Jack Major?”

  He turned at the familiar voice and was relieved to see Sherry and Tom Clinton at a table nearby. Good friends from his early days at Bullieston, Tom had started there as an ad executive but moved on to open his own company. And Sherry’s a pro bono attorney, if I remember right.

  “Good to see you.” Tom raised his glass. “What’s it been, a year?”

  “Has it?” Jack eased his way into a chair. “Too long, then.” He glanced at Sherry’s empty glass. “Need another? What are you drinking tonight? Wine?”

  “Just water.” She blushed and patted something under the table, which Jack realized a second later was her very pregnant belly.

  “Oh, geez, I had no idea. I’m sorry.” He felt like an idiot. “Well, congratulations.”

  “Thanks.” Tom grinned. “Another seven weeks and I’ll be a father.”

  The enormity of that thought, and the notion that he and Paige would probably follow suit in a year or so, caused a spasm of unexpected nerves inside Jack’s chest. Fatherhood was part of the master plan, yes. But was he ready for it?

  “I hear congratulations are in order for you too,” Sherry said. “When’s the big day?”

  Christ, I really should have checked with Paige so I could answer that question without sounding like a fool. “October fifteenth.”

  Jack scanned the crowd as the band started up, counting the people he knew and making a list of the ones he really wanted to talk to. He caught sight of his father over in the far corner, with ten or twelve paunchy, pasty-faced men jammed at a table meant for eight. Doug Major held a drink in one hand and an unlit cigar in the other as he chattered with his country club buddies. Typical. Jack’s shoulders hunched up around his ears. He supposed he should go over and say hello. Maybe mention something about the memorial Taz wanted to plan. He knew Paige would want him to make the rounds anyway, do a little networking and show his face around the room.

  Instead, he fiddled with a piece of bread, finished his bourbon and polished off two glasses of water. He listened to Tom and Sherry debate baby names. He let the hand on his watch count off twenty minutes. Finally, Jack gave in to guilt and his sense of duty. Taking the long way around the ballroom, he worked his way over to his father’s table, stopping every few feet to shake hands, laugh about the weather, or accept congratulations on his upcoming wedding. By the time he reached his father’s corner of the room, he was exhausted and out of sorts.

  “Jack!” Doug Major scraped back his chair and stood, an even six feet and two hundred and twenty-five pounds—all of it muscle, thanks to daily tennis matches and personal training sessions. His skin glowed with the even orange of the tanning bed and his teeth shone an artificial white. His hair plugs, barely noticeable in the dim light, filled in the wide white vee of forehead Jack had looked at for as long as he could remember.

  Guess everyone deals with loss in different ways. To look at his father, you would think the guy had won the lottery five years ago, rather than lost his wife to cancer. If you asked him about Mom, he’d probably come up with some glib comment about surviving the storm and coming out stronger on the other side. Then he’d go home and climb so far into a bottle that he
wouldn’t find the other side of morning until sometime next week.

  Jack tried to resist the urge to judge his father. He knew that his own method of coping, of cultivating the perfect life with the perfect wife, just represented a different avenue of escape. Taz traveled to third world countries. Will partied. Aaron got married and took on the biggest mortgage and SUV he could find. The busier we all stay, and the more we avoid the house and Dad and each other, the easier it is to forget what we lost. Pathetic, Jack knew, but the only way the Major men knew how to deal with conflict was to stay the hell away from it.

  Jack’s father raised his highball and took his son by the shoulder. His eyes, already bloodshot, matched his rosy cheeks.

  “Good to see you, son. Paige coming?”

  “Later on.” He made his way around the table, shaking hands with each of his father’s drinking buddies. “Frank, good to see you. Alex, Ellis.”

  “When’s the wedding?” Max Friar, president of one of the largest banks in the city, lit a cigar and puffed.

  “October.” Doug answered before Jack had a chance to. “And not soon enough, am I right, son?”

  Jack smiled. “That’s certainly what my fiancée would say.”

  Frank Sullivan, owner of several real estate agencies in and around the city, guffawed. “Not you, though, huh? Getting cold feet? Changing your mind? Not looking forward to the old ball and chain dragging you down?”

  A waitress stopped by, and Jack ordered another drink along with the rest of the table. Wouldn’t be strong enough, not even close, but it might take the edge off of the next ten minutes.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said as he forced a laugh. “Sure, I can’t wait to get married. Paige is a wonderful woman. I’m lucky to have her. In fact—”

  “My son always did know how to pick them,” his father interrupted. “That woman is smart as a whip, let me tell you. And good-looking—” He whistled in appreciation. “She’ll give me some damn attractive grandchildren.”