“Jack? What the hell are you doing?” The music changed from deafening to merely loud. “Thought you were supposed to be at the Deveau Ball tonight.”
“I am.”
“You’re calling me from there? What, did they run out of shrimp? Need someone to go to the store for another keg?”
Jack cut through the bullshit small talk. He didn’t have time. “Listen, I need a favor. A big one.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“I need to borrow your Lincoln.”
“Now?” Jack heard rustling and the sound of a window creaking open. “Half the streets in the city are flooded.”
“That’s why I need it.”
“Hey, no problem. That beast can get through anything. Remember when I took it up Mount Washington last summer? Jesus, I thought it was going to—”
“How soon can you be here?” Jack interrupted the story he’d heard three times.
“Hey, everything all right? You’re not sick or something, are you?”
“Nope. Just need to borrow your truck.”
“You gonna tell me why?”
Jack pulled off his bowtie once and for all and shoved the damn thing inside his pocket. Something like hope and possibility began to glimmer inside his chest. “How much time do you have?”
*
He chose to stand outside, braving the wind, rather than wait in the foyer and chance Paige hunting him down. Jack blew on his chilled hands, grateful that the rain had finally stopped. Every few minutes, the door behind him opened, and guests hustled to their waiting cars or hurried to taxis. For the most part, he kept his eyes averted. Twenty minutes had passed since he’d hung up with Stef. Shouldn’t be much longer now.
And then what? the voice inside him challenged. What exactly do you have planned? He knew Maggie was headed south, back to her home in Rhode Island. She wasn’t going to hang around Boston one minute longer than she had to. That’s what she does, remember? She runs. As fast as she can. Well, this time he wouldn’t let her. This time wasn’t going to be like Vegas. He’d learned his lesson.
Thank God he’d watched her jump into that blue Honda Accord and memorized the license plate before she drove away. He hadn’t gotten the name of the town she called home, but he was hoping he wouldn’t have to get much outside Boston before he caught her, anyway. He’d follow the main streets and do his best to find her before she made it to the interstate.
Ten minutes later, Stefan’s black Lincoln Navigator, with a scuffed front fender and the muffler hanging low, swung around the circle. Jack’s best friend grinned from behind the wheel, and he flashed a peace sign as he slid to a stop. Jack smiled when he saw what Stefan wore: a pair of baggy black jeans, a blue oxford shirt, and a wrinkled Red Sox tie beneath a well-worn leather jacket.
“Here you go.” He deposited the keys into Jack’s hand and gave his friend a hearty pound on the back. “Can’t believe Maggie’s back in town.” He paused. “How does she look?”
“The same. Better.” Jack didn’t trust himself to talk about it.
“Well, good luck, man. You’ve got a full tank of gas, so she’ll go a ways. Keep an eye on the gauges; sometimes she likes to heat up in this weather.”
Jack nodded, not really hearing. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
Stefan eyed a group of women huddled inside the foyer. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep myself occupied, take a cab home. Just call me tomorrow and let me know how you make out.” He whistled. “Jesus, Maggie Doyle, huh? Never would have thought it.”
“You and me both.”
Before Jack could say another word, Stefan had slipped inside and made his way to a redhead standing alone by the coat check.
Jack crossed to the Navigator and climbed into the driver’s seat. He checked the mirrors, moved the seat up an inch, and popped it into Drive. On impulse, he tuned the radio until he found a station playing classic rock. The disc jockey announced they were in for twelve straight hours of it: Aerosmith and Def Leppard, with the occasional Springsteen thrown in. Jack grinned. It was, he thought, the kind of station Maggie would have listened to. He pointed the vehicle south, toward the state line.
Adjusting the SUV’s headlights from bright to dim, he kept a safe distance from the other cars on the road. Despite the nasty conditions, despite the taillights up ahead that signaled a traffic entanglement, something in Jack’s blood jumped. She was out there. Close by. All he had to do was find her. He took a deep breath. If he tried hard enough, he could still smell Maggie’s perfume, something light, like flowers. He could still feel her hair in his fingers, still taste her mouth on his. God, if he had to drive through pelting rain all night, he meant to hold her and tell her all the things he’d never said.
The Navigator fishtailed a little, and Jack jerked the steering wheel back to center. A steady beeping broke into the rock music, and a recorded voice spewed out a weather report. His fingers tightened around the wheel as he listened.
“…a travel advisory has been issued for the entire city of Boston and its surrounding areas, into northern Rhode Island. Many low-lying areas are flooded, and several streets in the greater Boston area are being shut down until they can be cleared for safe travel. Drivers should remain off the roads if at all possible for the next two to four hours…”
Stay off the roads? Forget it. Jack continued to drive. He’d build himself a goddamned ark if he had to, just to stay afloat and catch up with her. He glanced at his watch. How far had Maggie gotten in forty minutes? How long would it take him to find her? The vehicle rolled along, splashing through puddles but gripping the road with no problem. He thanked whatever God was up there that Stefan owned this brute of an SUV, unlike most of the yuppies in the city who zipped to work and home in two-seater sports cars.
A steady stream of music resumed on the radio, and he tapped both thumbs in time to the Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” A sudden flash of memory hurtled him back to the summer after graduation. He’d been packing his bags for England, still stunned from what had happened out in Vegas, and the radio in his dorm room had been playing some sort of twenty-four hour tribute to the band. Funny how back then, every stupid song could remind him of her. Even the Stones. Especially the Stones.
Jack’s cell phone buzzed inside his breast pocket. Startled, he almost veered onto the shoulder of the road. He slowed the vehicle to a crawl and let his voicemail pick up. With one hand on the wheel, he fumbled inside his pocket with the other. The phone vibrated once more, indicating a message, and then fell silent. He glanced at the screen and tossed it onto the seat beside him.
Two minutes later, it buzzed again, an angry mosquito demanding attention. The display screen lit up for the second time. Paige. Can’t she ever just let something be?
Of course not, he answered himself. That’s why she’s a dynamo in the courtroom. That’s why she’s number two or three on the city’s list of Most Successful Women under Forty. That’s why you agreed to marry her, remember? It had seemed to make sense at the time, the way she presented the argument for their marriage in a neat little case, all wrapped up with supporting evidence.
He massaged his forehead with one hand and let the voicemail pick up again. He’d deal with that mess later. Tomorrow. It was over, anyway. It had been for a long while. This time, she’d have to listen to what he wanted. She’d have no choice.
Jack stared up ahead, where the faint, steady glow of taillights appeared. God, he hoped he could find Maggie. He had no clear idea, of course, how he was going to accomplish that. But he’d figure it out. With her, somehow, it had always been simple. Put them together, anywhere at all, and the chips fell into place. When they fought, it was about small, silly things. And when they loved, well, it was like the proverbial earth moved under his feet. She’d tamed him. She’d changed him. She’d made him feel like he was taller, stronger, smarter, a better person, just by wrapping one small arm around him as they walked across campus. The minute he’d touched her back at the ball,
he’d fallen all over again, in a quiet undulation of memory and desire.
She’s the woman I love. The woman I’ve always loved.
Jack turned up the volume on the radio. How had this happened? How had one night, just a few hours, changed everything? Yesterday afternoon, he’d been an engaged man, halfway down the aisle with flowers and babies on the brain. And now? Now he’d made one of the most impulsive decisions of his life. Now he was single all over again. Yet his chest felt light for the first time he could remember. His jaw, so often clenched, loosened. Jack felt alive. Like he could touch the moon. Like he could run a mile in under a minute or swim the English Channel without stopping to take a breath.
All because he was chasing a memory down a highway at one o’clock in the morning.
*
The blue Accord crept forward at a snail’s pace as Maggie negotiated washed-out spots and police blockades. All the stoplights they passed blinked a steady yellow. The cars took turns at each intersection; traffic from the side streets wove into the main line and made it longer with every block. Officers with blank faces stood on the corners, waving them on. The radio, broadcasting mostly static, crackled with music and travel reports. After awhile, Maggie turned it off.
“Can I ask you something?”
The question startled her. She’d thought Neve was sleeping.
“Sure.”
The young woman turned in her seat, face yellow-white in the moonlight. “What really happened with you and Jack out in Las Vegas?”
Maggie cleared her throat. She should have guessed this question would pop up sooner or later. “It was like I said. He was going to England to study and I was two years behind in school. It didn’t make sense for us to stay together. So we broke up.” The lie sounded convincing, she thought. She’d practiced it enough in all the years since.
“I know. You said all that before. But there’s one thing I still don’t get.”
Maggie wasn’t sure she wanted this conversation to continue.
“You flew out there to celebrate his graduation.”
“And his winning a Rhodes scholarship.”
“Right. And you’d been dating for how long?”
“About a year and a half.” Actually, it was a year and seven months. And a few days. Not that I was counting, and not that I remember.
“So overnight, in the middle of this celebration, you just decided that you shouldn’t be together.”
“Pretty much.”
“But you loved him, right?”
Maggie squirmed. “I was twenty. What did I know? It was a college romance. When we talked about where things were going, we thought it was better to end it then. Before an ocean got between us and the whole thing ended six months later anyway.”
The tires jolted across uneven pavement, rattling her nerves.
“Eden said he would have stayed with you forever,” Neve said in a quiet voice.
“Yeah? Well, Eden’s a romantic. She believes in Prince Charming and happy-ever-after and all that crap.”
“You don’t?”
“I believe in reality. In calling it like it is.”
Neve didn’t speak for a minute. Maggie supposed she was turning things over her mind, in that slow, deliberate way she had. “He didn’t know about the cancer or your operation, did he?”
Maggie didn’t answer. No. He didn’t. It was the one thing she’d never told him. The one thing that made her the person she was, and she’d left it out of every conversation she and Jack ever had. On purpose. How could someone like that, a rich city guy descended from relatives on the Mayflower, match up with Maggie Doyle, a middle-class girl with no money and no family name and, worst of all, no way to pass one on?
“And that’s why you broke up with him? You didn’t think he’d understand?” Neve’s voice sounded pained. “Guys aren’t all that shallow, you know. If he really loved you, he would have understood. He would have—”
“It was more complicated than that,” Maggie interrupted. “It wasn’t something we could have talked about, or planned for. He wasn’t just my boyfriend. I couldn’t warn him about what he was getting himself into, two or three or five years down the road.” She paused. “Jack was my husband. For about twenty-four hours, anyway.”
*
“Which casino should we go to first?” Maggie twirled in the middle of the sidewalk, pointing first to Caesar’s Palace, then to the MGM Grand. “Maybe Mandalay Bay? Or the Venetian? Ooh, look, they have a show…” She stopped beneath an enormous neon sign and read it out loud. She wanted to take it all in, every last sight.
Jack wrapped his arms around her and swooped her up. “We’re only here for twenty-four hours, you know. You might have to pick and choose.”
She buried her head against his chest and nuzzled his neck with kisses. “I want to do everything.”
He laughed out loud. “I know you do.”
She slid to the ground and wound her fingers through his. “Let’s go to the Mirage. I want a fruity drink.” It had been a good idea after all, this trip out West. She wasn’t sure at first, but Jack seemed to like the idea, and Eden and Stefan hadn’t needed any urging at all.
Maggie had wanted something to distract her, to get her mind off the fact that Jack would be leaving in less than a month. She hadn’t been surprised at all that he’d been named a Rhodes Scholar. She knew he would make a terrific businessman someday, the way he planned. Just like his father.
A little butterfly of fear jiggled in Maggie’s stomach. She’d thought about it so many times, but she still hadn’t found a way to tell Jack about her operation. When they’d met in the spring after her recovery, she hadn’t thought she needed to. She didn’t think their relationship was headed down the road to forever. When she realized it was, when she woke up one morning and knew she’d gotten in over her head, the thought of confessing had terrified her. And in the last few months, when Jack looked at her, she saw in his gaze an earnestness that hadn’t been there before, a sobriety that scared the hell out of her.
He’s thinking about marriage…
She’d put the thought out of her head. She couldn’t bear it. She’d met Jack’s parents only once, but his father had made it clear from the start that he couldn’t wait to become a grandfather and pass on the family name. That, of course, was the one thing Maggie couldn’t do for Jack.
Which is why this trip has to be perfect, she thought. Just in case it’s the last time we’re together…
At the bar a little while later, the four friends raised their glasses.
“To graduation,” announced Jack.
“And friendship,” Eden added. She leaned over and planted a kiss on Maggie’s cheek.
“And love,” Maggie chimed in. With one hand on Jack’s knee, she clinked her daiquiri glass against the others. Whatever else happens, Jack Major, you will always be the greatest love of my life.
*
“I think I’m a little drunk.” Maggie leaned against Jack and squinted against the bright bar lights. Her head spun when she tried to stand up, and she wondered how many daiquiris she’d had.
He rubbed the top of her head and glanced at his watch. “It’s almost two,” he said. “Want to go back to the motel?”
“Where are Eden and Stefan?”
“Stef’s playing craps, and Eden’s playing a guy over by the roulette table.”
Maggie giggled. “I’m glad we came.”
He kissed her ear. “Me too.”
Exhaustion weighed down her limbs, but she didn’t want to leave, not yet. Time went by too quickly. She wanted to savor every moment of it, even this: a few quiet seconds on a bar stool next to the man she adored.
She looked outside, amazed at how bright the Strip remained even after midnight. Casinos, restaurants, souvenir shops and wedding chapels dotted both sides of the street. She sat up straight. A crazy idea struck her. Funny the things that almost made sense when you had too much to drink. “You know what would be funny?”
/> He cocked his head at her. “What?”
“If we got married out here.”
His expression changed. “What did you say?”
Maggie gestured outside. “There’s, like, fifteen wedding chapels in one square mile. Wouldn’t it be funny if we went back to New York and told everyone we’d gotten married out in Vegas?” It wouldn’t ever happen, and probably no one would believe them, but it would be fun to try and fool some of their friends back home. She laughed as she imagined the looks on their faces.
“Yeah,” Jack answered after a long minute. “That would be funny.”
*
Maggie woke suddenly, as if out of a bad dream. Her head ached, and she pulled the sheet over her face. Should’ve known better, she told herself. You can’t have more than two drinks without turning into a complete lush. She reached for the glass of water she remembered placing beside her bed.
Something felt wrong. Maggie sat up all the way and looked around the room. Small, with faded blue wallpaper and a crooked table in the corner, it was the only room they’d been able to find on such short notice. But that wasn’t it. She didn’t care what the motel looked like, or even what it smelled like, backed up to a twenty-four hour Chinese restaurant. She ran a hand over the bra and panties she still wore, the lavender lace ones Jack had bought her last Valentine’s Day. She stopped, raised her left hand to her face and stared.
What the hell is that? It looked like a wedding ring, slid firmly into place on her third finger, but it couldn’t be.
Wouldn’t it be funny if we went back to New York and told everyone we’d gotten married out in Vegas?
“Oh, shit.” Maggie clapped a hand over her mouth and glanced over at Jack, who still snored beside her. As quietly as she could, she slid out of bed and tiptoed to the bathroom. Closing the door behind her, she stared into the mirror and fought back tears.
We didn’t get married. Please tell me we didn’t. She stared at her hand until her eyes crossed and everything blurred.
One Night in Boston Page 18