by Gage Grayson
And yes, she’s right here. Again. She’s taken a seat on the stool right next to mine.
I’d like to say that I’ve never been happier to see her, but I can’t feel anything close to happiness seeing her face right now. She was able to hold back her tears in the honeymoon suite, but she’s definitely been crying since then, and it makes me feel like my heart is being ripped in fucking half.
“Maddie,” I get out, but I stop there since I’m about to fucking break down myself.
Maddie sees this, and she registers it. She’s looking right at me, and the best I can say about her face is that there’s no anger—but that’s upset by the heaping portions of dejection and resignation inscribed all over her expression.
I did this to her. Fuck.
“Maddie,” I continue, determined to try again. I try my best to breathe slowly, gathering the words together.
“I’m listening.” Maddie’s signaling her change of approach from earlier, but she’s also telling me to just get the fuck on with it already.
“We never signed a marriage license. It’s not official, it’s not even unofficial at this point. She made it very clear that I’m not good enough for her, that my family’s not good enough for her. She moved out all her stuff and broke some of mine.”
“Why?”
“Because I come from a different social stratum, most likely. Some of her family, or friends, or some combination of those probably wore her down with complaints about me, and she happened to see the light—that all my success can’t wipe away my poor-ass origins—either during or after the ceremony.”
Maddie’s eyes are full of interest in what I’m saying, but I can see the weight of disappointment make itself clear at the word ceremony.
“We did have a wedding, Maddie.” I try to make things clearer. “She left immediately afterward, very definitively. Or so I thought.”
“Are you still in love with her?”
“I absolutely was not by the time I got to Hawaii. Even though this was supposed to be our honeymoon.”
“That seems like a fast change of heart...”
“That’s because I never was. I realize that now. It would’ve sounded crazy to me just a couple weeks ago, but that marriage would’ve been a disaster. There’s no way I’m going back, even if she’s serious about wanting that. Audra leaving was the second-best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“What’s the first best?”
The bartender plops both drinks down, one in front of each of us. He doesn’t ask who has which drink, and I can’t tell the difference since my original plan was to drink them both.
“Maddie,” I start, somewhat gravely, causing the bartender to walk away quickly, “I don’t matter. I’m realizing that. At least, I’m not thinking about what I want, or what’s gonna happen to me. I’m thinking about you.”
“Why?” Maddie’s voice is cracking. Oh, please don’t cry. She takes a sip of the frozen cocktail and seems to be able to stop from breaking down.
“Because this was the best week of my life. I know I’ve said it, but I can’t stress that enough. That’s because of you. I know this situation is shitty, and... I just want you to be happy. Even if you need to forget about me, even if you never want to see me again. Just for the sake of the world, for the sake of you, Maddie, I need you to be happy. I need you to be Maddie.”
Maddie takes the cocktail napkin out from under her drink and wipes away the single tear rolling down her cheek. But now she’s smiling, and the sight fills me with warm cheerfulness.
“Don’t worry, Eth. You don’t quite have the power to take that away from the world.”
“You have no idea how glad that makes me.” I really fucking mean it.
“Well, Ethan...I’ve had an okay time myself, truth be told.”
“Okay.” I decide to just let this moment play out.
“I’m going home soon, but even after I do, it’s just a quick ride on the Acela down to Penn Station.”
That warm cheerfulness starts to evolve into pure euphoria, and I feel like I might float off my stool into the atmosphere like an unbound helium balloon, but I stay convincingly cool and calm.
“You can come visit me anytime, and I’ll show you the best time of your life.” Fuck, not too cool or calm, I suppose.
Maddie chuckles softly, but it’s the most welcome sound I can imagine right now.
“Why don’t we start with lunch and go from there?”
“I know the perfect place,” I respond quickly, trying to balance this cavalcade of shifting expectations on my part.
“Well, that sounds…perfect.”
Ethan
There are plenty of places in the neighborhood where I work—and, if all goes as planned, soon to be my home neighborhood where I live—to bring a date.
This isn’t one of them. But this also isn’t a date, I don’t think.
I don’t know how to define it, but it feels like a major life event that doesn’t really need to have a name.
It’s just me meeting Maddie—meeting her at my favorite spot to get coffee and maybe a sandwich. Because my life isn’t a date-friendly sushi place on Stone Street or something. My life is getting a cup of coffee right here on Broadway, and that’s what I want to share with Maddie.
As for now, I’m still by myself, as I’ve been probably every time I’ve come here. It’s just me at a table with a paper coffee cup and my big-ass phone plugged in to the outlet behind my chair.
I’m also usually not here on fucking Saturday either, and the crowd is decidedly more touristy than usual, with small bands of Midwesterners and German tour groups nervously looking at brochures for the Liberty Island ferries.
Most of the tables are still empty, which is the way I like it. It’s been a long fucking week since getting back, especially living a forty-minute ride up the 1 train line, in the same place, the same bedroom where Audra was sending my possessions out the window not too long ago.
It’s been hard to sleep right there. I’m glad I won’t be living through any more of those days anytime soon and that Audra stopped texting and calling again.
Imagine if I ever actually ended up signing that marriage license. Christ.
Between one and two, that was our decided meeting time. It’s just past one now, and I don’t know what train Maddie’s on. If she did take the Acela, it probably shouldn’t get held up too much.
I know better than to try to give her advice on the fastest way to get downtown from Penn. She’ll decide she wants to walk for all I fucking know.
I’m usually not the person waiting, which is one reason that this doesn’t seem like a date, and I’m considering actually checking my phone—another first.
I do check to see if there are any calls or texts, and there aren’t. I knew that already since the volume’s jacked all the way up. Plus, any call or text from Maddie would come with its own ringtone: “Sleepwalk” by Santo and Johnny.
The iconic, excessively Hawaiian-sounding slide guitar melody will sure sound nice ringing out in the middle of this cafe, but the sight of Maddie walking in from the crowded sidewalk would be even better.
I don’t know why it’s starting to feel like a foolish fantasy that either of those things could happen, seeing as how it’s still barely past one, but I’m still compelled to open my phone’s browser and got to amtrak.com to look at the Acela schedule and the regular Northeast Corridor schedule. There are trains getting in pretty much hourly, but it means pretty much nothing.
There are more fucking crowds forming. Big, naive families with pungent, foil-wrapped sandwiches and bottles of water filling up more tables than I would ever see taken on a weekday morning, ferry ticket sellers taking a break with big energy drink cans, couples on vacation together, possibly their honeymoon…
This shit is getting me out of sorts. By the time one-thirty rolls around, which feels like some definitive halfway point, I have too much of this dumb, nervous energy to keep sitting. I get up for a coffee
refill, which may not be the best idea in light of the line forming to get into the single restroom.
Gladly channeling some energy by standing up and moving, I take the longest I may have ever taken to let the coffee fill my cup gradually from the dispenser, to choose a sweetener, to pick up the skim milk carton, look at it, to decide to go with half and half, no, whole milk, to stir it like I’m in the kitchen at fucking Del Posto or something, trying to painstakingly mingle a ragù to life without rushing it—all taking what probably amounts to not more than five or ten more minutes before I have no choice but to go back to my seat while it’s still open.
One forty-five. I’m not used to worrying about the time, or much else for that matter. I’m back at my little table, trying to act relaxed and casual.
Not that I give a shit what anyone here thinks. That’s mostly so I’m not an overbearingly anxious wreck when Maddie arrives.
If she arrives? Not a thought worth fucking tormenting myself over right now.
By two, the weirdly maddening lunch crowd starts thinning out. It’s also two, though. Time to send a quick text.
Just one.
Hey, which train are you on? I can send a car to pick you up.
I regret hitting send almost immediately. If I’m worried about being overbearing, that may not be a good place to start.
Then again, it’s not crazy to ask for some kind of update.
Two-fifteen. I’m well into my next cup of coffee. My text was delivered but not answered.
Maybe she’s on the subway. She must be.
I watch the crowds outside. It’s going to be weird to see Maddie here, in the concrete wilderness, thousands of miles from the idyllic paradise I associate with her. It’ll surely be weird for her to see me here as well.
I watch the waves of tourists ebb and flow outside. I wish she didn’t have to fight these fucking crowds.
Two-thirty. It’s like I’m on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and I only have one lifeline left: a fucking phone call.
I unplug my phone from the wall, look at my stupid text to Maddie one more time, and emphatically hit the button to dial her number.
Her phone rings, meaning she’s not in the subway. It rings some more.
And then I hear Maddie’s voice, not saying hello, but asking me to kindly leave a message.
Fucking voicemail. I hang up. This is not as flamboyant a message as throwing lamps and shit out my window, but to me, the message is just as clear: time to give up.
I unplug the charger from the wall and start getting ready to finally leave, when I hear the dulcet slide guitar tones of Santo and Johnny ring divinely through my phone’s speaker.
The charger just drops from my hand to the floor, and I see a new text message on my phone screen with the name Madeline displayed above it boldly.
Ethan
So after all that, I probably shouldn’t fucking leave you hanging.
It’s five years later, and I’m suddenly looking at Madeline, facing her at the end of the hallway.
But you might be wondering what the hell that text message actually said, and if we ever got back together.
The answer to the second question is no, we didn’t. In fact, this is the first I’m seeing her since that day in Hawaii, at the bar on the beach.
The answer to the first question is that, from what I can remember, she said that she had a great time, then she doubled down a bit and used the word amazing to describe it, but she said as fun as it was, she didn’t want to continue, to expand past a vacation fling.
She ended the message with the word Aloha.
God, she looks fucking amazing right now. Even better than all my memories—and my dreams.
Okay, I’ll admit that I remember the whole fucking message really fucking well, even though I made the decision to delete it immediately for the sake of moving on as quickly as possible.
Did it work? What the hell do you think? Seriously, because over the course of the past half-decade, I’ve gone in and out of thinking about it and seeming to not think about it.
But when I do think about it, it’s still more intense than I’d like. And right now, with Madeline occupying a prime space in my vision, center-fucking stage, I don’t have a choice but to really think about it—and then some.
So after Maddie informs me of the investigation, what do I say?
“Am I being arrested?”
I know damn well I’m not. I think it’s a joke, even though I usually have a good handle on whether I’m joking or not. You know, like most healthy people.
“No,” she answers, dead serious. And now she’s walking toward me. Good God.
“That’s not even close to being in my purview,” Maddie’s voice continues, getting closer as her heels clack down the hallway. “But I suspect you know that.”
Maddie stops ten feet away from me, her face betraying that she realizes my joke. I guess it was a joke.
I feel myself catching on fucking fire as Maddie starts walking toward me again. My mouth is going fucking arid, and my heart is lifting off in tempo in a way it hasn’t in years. Five years, to be exact.
I almost want to ask her to stop, that I wasn’t prepared for this, but I don’t fucking dare.
This hallway doesn’t get too much natural light, but what little there is catches the full brilliance of that emerald hue that I’ve forced myself to forget about.
“I figured as much,” I reply hoarsely.
Every single person in the office besides me has taken it upon themselves to hide. I’m sure some people made a beeline for the elevator, but most everyone else is certainly huddled on the other side of their closed office doors, listening to every word of this exchange, trying to analyze every nuance in real time.
I wonder what they thought of that last sentence and how I said it. That’s pretty fucking funny to think about, but what I’m enjoying thinking about even more right now is how Maddie made everyone run in fear with just her presence and a few simple words.
That is really fucking sexy.
God, she looks good.
“I have a good deal more to explain about it, but to give you a couple important nuggets to start with, I’ve been chosen to head the investigation, and while I’m loath to take up much of your time, I’m going to need your help.”
There’s a reason that Maddie needed to call me Mr. Barrett. There’s no way she would be heading this investigation if anybody at the SEC knew about our history, brief as it was.
I suppose she didn’t feel it was even worth bringing up—that she feels so little about it that it wouldn’t be a conflict at all.
There’s a lot more I’m thinking about, though. Like how five years can go by so fucking fast. Or how feelings that seem like they should’ve faded completely are now arising again in dizzyingly vivid and sharp definition.
I look at Maddie, who’s now silent yet stoic, looking for any signs of what she’s going through. I see none—it could be everything, it could very easily be nothing.
I can’t believe she’s here, though. Literally.
I’ve heard that one way you can tell if you’re dreaming or not is to look at your hand. If you see the normal number of fingers, at their usual lengths, then you are in the waking world. I take a furtive glance at my outstretched left hand—it looks on the level.
Which means she’s really fucking here, and she really looks this good.
“Are you okay, Mr. Barrett?” Madeline’s eyes dart quickly down to my left hand, indicating that she noticed my look.
“Oh yeah, I was just checking something. So is this gonna take long?” I’m trying not to give any outward indications about our past, or at least how I feel about it.
“Long?” There’s a sparkle in Maddie’s eye. It sends a flicker of heat straight through my chest, and I need to concentrate on not falling backward—as if I’m being pummeled by a swift wind.
“I have a few minutes now. If you need longer, like a half hour, I may have some open time for an appo
int—”
Maddie lets out a judicious laugh, but it’s still enough that the old sensation of being entranced by a riveting siren song comes flooding back.
“I apologize for laughing, Mr. Barrett.”
“You can call me Ethan.”
“Okay, Eth...an. This is not a matter we can settle over lunch. We’re just at the very beginning stages of this investigation. We are going to need your cooperation over the course of the next few weeks, maybe longer. You are going to have to work with me during that time.”
“Wow. That’s going to be a big time commitment on my part. I guess I better start rearranging my schedule.”
I get the beginnings of that helium-balloon feeling, like when Maddie first suggested she could visit New York all those years ago. Except this time, it’s weighted down by the fact this is all part of an insider fucking trading investigation.
“I suggest you start now, Mr. Barrett. You don’t have a choice in the matter.”
Maddie’s austere expression betrays the faintest hint of a smirk.
Brooklyn Big-O
A Second Chance Romance
By Gage Grayson
Copyright 2018 by Third Base Press
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental. This work intended for adults only.
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Ethan
Walking west along Saint Mark’s Place, deep into the East Village, I think about how much things have changed—and how quickly.