“Maggie!” Kathleen gives me that look as if I should know she’s on my team, but seriously, it would be easier to believe in their altruism if they weren’t getting a free trip out of my agony.
Haley doesn’t know when to shut up and keeps talking. “Sam’s wife was an ER doctor. She worked crazy shifts, like forty-eight hours. One night she took something to stay awake for her work, and it turned out to be deadly.”
My mouth is agape. “I just met this guy, Haley. Why on earth would he fear for the life of me, someone who’s practically a complete stranger? Well, other than being the person his sister is heavily invested in financially. Her company’s advance did pay for a lot of gelato, if I’m honest.”
She shakes her head. I’d like to shake her scrawny neck at the moment.
“You made people think I wasn’t mentally balanced, Haley, and that I needed to be handled for this trip,” I say. “That’s why he thought I was trying to hurt myself during the fire. That I didn’t move because of . . . Okay, yes, I’m depressed. I have been depressed. My life doesn’t look anything like it was supposed to and God has abandoned me. The church picked Jake because that’s what God really thinks. That women are just chattel and only a man’s happiness is important.”
“You don’t really believe that, Maggie. That’s blasphemy.”
“Maybe it is, but if it’s not true, I need to see some proof. Where are Jake’s consequences? He has none. The church acts as if everything he did was righteous and true.”
“The church is simply people, Maggie. Flawed and sometimes just plain wrong when they make their own rules. You can’t be angry at Sam. He’s got such a good heart,” Haley says. “When he saw your shell-shocked face getting on the ship, something snapped in him. He said he worried you were struggling like his wife did, trying to be everything to everyone.”
Do I really need the humiliation of knowing that Sam’s only interest in me was to relieve the unimaginable guilt of his wife being gone? I may not know the details, but I’m wise enough to pick up on the obvious. Sam’s wife is gone. He couldn’t stop that, but he’s got some kind of altruistic theory that he can stop me from my downward spiral.
“People think I’m a victim.”
“You’ve been sitting on a sofa for two months!” Haley sounds like my judge and juror all rolled into one. And for the first time, I wonder if our friendship will survive this. She sounds remarkably like my mother, and I get it, you can’t help someone who won’t help themselves. The futility of it is maddening.
It’s worse that Sam showed any interest in me at all. It would have been better if I had taken his nasty comment at face value and never spoken to him again. Instead, I allowed my heart to leap at the sight of him and imagine myself with a man who was different. But he’s no different. He had an alternative agenda just like Jake, wanting to relieve his own guilt by ensuring I’m not ready to jump ship.
“I appreciate your honesty, Haley. I’m sure it was very difficult for you to share my innermost issues with my new publisher and her brother.”
“Maggie . . .”
“I get it, okay? I’ll be alone forever. I’m too weird for anyone to love me, and Sam is no different. Happy?”
“Why would you want to deny your best friend if you’re not into him?”
If I had a pint of gelato at the moment, I would literally shove it into Haley’s face. “It doesn’t matter who he wants. This is a cruise ship, and we’re not in a rom-com movie. We’re here to have fun and get my career back up and running.” Well, we were here for that, until I learned that perhaps my friends were more concerned over my mental state than my career after my self-imposed sabbatical. Nothing like your friends thinking you may be nuts. That’s when you must start taking those thoughts seriously—like maybe you are headed for the straitjacket.
Even as I say the words to Haley, the romantic in me isn’t dead yet. I wish I could crush that part of me with a hard reality check, but Sam’s kiss makes that impossible. I can’t stop thinking about the way he looked into my eyes, as if we’d known each other for centuries and crossed through time to get back to one another. It’s ridiculous. I know it with every brain cell in my head. Maybe it is euphoria and not happiness. But I want someone who makes me feel the way he makes me feel and is all mine. Not someone I have to share with Haley or any other woman. I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life than compromise again.
“See,” Haley says like a temperamental little sister. “She’s totally not into him, which means he’s free game. I’ll be in touch with him after this cruise is over. I’m working closely with his sister.” Haley leans in toward us. “She thinks I’d be perfect for him. Just the type of woman to help him move forward after the loss of his wife.”
“Like the potluck brigade in my grandmother’s bridge groups. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those casseroles are laden with love potion number nine. But you be you, Haley. I won’t get in your way.”
I feel a certain sense of ownership over Sam, and if this wasn’t so unlike Haley, I’d tell her to settle down and focus on being my publicist. The inexplicable crush Haley seems to have on my publisher’s brother confounds me. That, coupled with the magnetic chemistry I’ve felt for this man who said intelligent women can’t be happy, has me thinking I may not be out of my gelato-induced stupor just yet.
“This spa date was a good idea, Kathleen,” I say, changing the subject. “I wonder if I do that seaweed wrap if it will take some cellulite with it.”
“Where were you all afternoon?” Haley asks, her eyes narrowed, and I realize our short truce is exactly that. Short.
“Working on my PowerPoint for Tuesday’s speech. It’s all finished and I’m ready to rock my talk. I think it’s a good thing I had that false alarm so I could really be prepared. I mean, I get that it wasn’t great for the cruise ship and we’re lucky they didn’t send us directly back to port, but overall it gave me time to focus on what’s important. There’s no reason I can’t convince the university that this was just a time to refresh and prove my resilience theories. That should help the grant coming through, and if that happens, I’m applying for that fellowship at NYU.”
“Chill. I just asked where you were.”
My nervous speech continues. “I’m relaying information already in my head. I don’t know what I was so nervous about.”
“No, before you were working on your speech. Where were you after you and Sam left the pool area?” Haley seems suspicious. “Where did you go?”
I pretend to be lost in the spa menu. “Are you girls doing a facial? Massage? This Zen chakra balancing massage with grounding aromatherapy sounds amazing. That would be good before my speech Tuesday, don’t you think? Speaking of which, we need to go check out the new venue. It’s supposed to be much bigger.”
“That Zen thingie sounds like a marketing ploy to charge more money for the same service.” Kathleen tosses the menu aside. “I’m having a basic facial. I love when they do the extractions.”
“You would,” I tell her. “Are you always a glutton for pain? Even in the spa? This is about relaxation. Tranquility. Calm. Not someone stabbing your face with an evil device of Satan.”
“You stayed with Sam!” Haley accuses, pointing her finger at me.
I swallow the lump in my throat. I shouldn’t feel like “the other woman,” but that’s exactly how I feel.
“Just for a few minutes,” I say. “He wanted to offer me a place to work. He thought his suite would be—”
“His suite?”
“What is with you and Sam?” Kathleen asks her. “Haley, he’s not for you. What part of him kissing Maggie did you miss? I mean, I know you believe in the fairy tale like she does, but when Prince Charming is kissing your best friend, it’s a sign. And not a good one. Let it go, girl.”
“You’re not psychic, Kathleen. You don’t know everything. Maggie told us that kiss meant nothing. It was about her amped-up emotions after the fire scare. She can’t be over Jake ye
t, no matter what she says. Sam is only worried about her from a professional standpoint.”
“Sure he is, Haley. You keep telling yourself that. I know when people are concerned about me, they’re constantly making out with me.”
“No, no. It was just a little kiss. Chaste,” I clarify.
“I know this much,” Kathleen says, as if I’m not sitting right here and able to speak for myself. “You’re pushing this Sam thing and it’s not working for you. He’s taking off from the pool with Maggie while you’re lounging in a bikini. That’s what we in the Christian realm call a sign, and if you’re willing to lose your best friend over some guy who is not into you, I guess we don’t know you as well as we thought.”
Haley, oblivious as ever, goes on. “Jules told me Sam is a Christian, he’s mourned for years now, and he says he doesn’t want a relationship, but he’s solid in his career. She said—”
“You’ve just rattled off a list. Love doesn’t work like that, and Sam isn’t going to give you the safety you crave because he’s a good businessman. You’re doing your own business. Yes, it’s scary, but you don’t need a man to rescue you. Forget your daddy issues for a minute and look around.”
“Maggie is the doctor, Kathleen,” Haley says. “If I want relationship advice, I’ll go to an expert.”
Kathleen shrugs, flips her blonde hair over her shapely shoulder, and leans back in her sleek armchair. “Suit yourself.” She says this with divine calmness—her prophetess voice that lets us both know we’ll never change her mind with facts. “I’ll pray for you to find wisdom.”
I groan, and just then my cell phone begins to trill.
“Who brought their cell to the spa?” Haley asks while both of them stare at me. “First you can’t be bothered to work for two months, and now you’re bringing your cell phone to a spa. Who are you, Maggie Maguire?”
I venture a look at my phone and see Jake’s photo on the screen. I hide the picture against my chest. “At the moment? I have no idea, but I’m just going to take this outside.”
“Really? Come on, our appointments are coming up,” Haley says. “You had two full months to answer phone calls.”
Really. “I’ll be right back.”
I hate that my stomach still flips when I see Jake’s picture, and I chalk it up to nervousness—anxiety over his reason for calling. Nothing is how I saw it two months ago. I abhor that as a woman of science, I cannot grasp the truth that this man never loved me and that his presence in my life brings me nothing but pain. Some tiny part of me doesn’t want to believe Jake is the man the university is portraying him to be. It’s that hope that makes me answer the phone. One could argue it’s that hope that’s luring me back into a false reality.
All the evidence points to Jake Stone being a manipulative, vile human being who lied to me every time he opened his mouth. But it’s a matter of pride. I have a hard time believing I was that blind to his deception. It’s more about my data-collecting skills than his actual personality flaws. If my people radar is that poor, no wonder I’ve questioned my occupation for two months.
I answer the phone with a last vestige of hope that the university has misinterpreted some innocent action. “Hello?”
“Maggie, finally. We need to talk. I want you to listen to me very carefully.”
His ordering me about makes my stomach clench. Normally I’d do anything to avoid that tone in his voice, and my prior self would wait for further instructions. I would jump at his command. But something is different.
This time I hear his thin, spineless voice, and it doesn’t bring that sweet, exhilarating flip of my heart. Instead, it reminds me of Sam’s hot vocals . . . his words spoken softly into my ear . . . and the electric spark that shot through my entire being when I was locked in his arms, with the warm breeze spraying me with droplets from the Gulf of Mexico. And while Sam is right—that’s not happiness, it’s euphoria—I don’t want to settle for less than euphoria, and what Jake brings me is nothing like that. It’s a fear that tightens my muscles and is familiar to me. It’s what I feel whenever I have a conversation with my mother. How could I have missed the obvious Freudian issue within myself?
Maybe Sam is only a mirage, a temporary image of a Coast Guard ship passing by my broken-down skiff—a brief, romantic buoy to get me over Jake and remind me that I don’t ever want to feel that way again. I’ll never settle for a man who makes me feel anything less than magic. Sam taught me that there is so much more to life and love than a flashing, short-lived beacon like Jake. That must be Sam’s purpose, and I can’t read any more into it than that. Or maybe it’s to show me that when a man is interested in you, even a woman like Haley Adams—everyone’s ideal—isn’t a temptation. Or so I thought. The truth is, I know what’s possible now, and I’m worthy of love.
“Maggie?” Jake says, this time in a gentler, manipulative tone. “I’m sorry about the way this went down.”
“What?” I answer curtly.
“The university is trying to railroad us. I need you to go to Dr. Fleece’s office and explain to them that—”
“The tanzanite blue of the ocean is mesmerizing,” I say in my best far-off voice. The Gulf of Mexico may not be an ocean, but for once I’ll let Jake figure out my cryptic half-truths. It’s his turn to guess what’s going on in my mind.
“What are you talking about?” Jake asks gruffly.
My voice is still dreamy. “I’m on a luxury cruise about to get a seaweed wrap. I’ll need one for that bikini tomorrow on the beach. So you see, Jake, whatever is of concern to you right now? It’s not a concern for me. I’m over it.”
“Maggie, are you listening to me? We’re in trouble, and not the kind of trouble your credentials can get you out of. The kind of trouble where the government comes and asks questions and confiscates your computers and data. Are you willing to share that with the world?”
Dang, he’s good. Knows how to push every one of my buttons.
“I’m not in trouble,” I say lightheartedly. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m sure I’ll be able to prove it through the university’s security system.”
“Dr. Fleece doesn’t know that at all. In fact—”
“I’m technically still on sabbatical, and since I haven’t been on campus, you’ll be hard-pressed to pin this one on me, Jake. I’m afraid you’ll have to handle that issue yourself.”
“Listen, I don’t know who that yahoo was in that picture you sent me, but I know you’re not with someone already, Maggie. How long did it take you to get a boyfriend in college? I’m supposed to believe that you’ve moved on in two months? Where would you meet someone?”
“It’s really none of your business, is it?”
“You can quit paying this guy to pretend for you—I’m not buying it. You’d have to leave the lab or your apartment to meet someone. You can let this ditzy-blonde act go because I know you don’t do a thing without analyzing it on a spreadsheet.”
“That’s not true, actually. That was the old me. Online dating is amazing for a woman like me. I look good on paper. New York Times bestselling author, viral TED Talk giver, university professor—I could go on, but you get the gist. I’m a hot commodity out here in the dating world. I should have tried it sooner. Much sooner. And it turns out, this guy actually has a job. Very successful venture capitalist. Do you know what that is, Jake? It’s a guy with money.”
“Maggie, I know you’re not unprofessional enough to ruin my livelihood over petty jealousy. I fell in love—”
“I can assure you, I’m over all that. You two are perfect for each other.” The moral equivalent of two alley cats.
“I made you, Maggie. Don’t forget that. You were too afraid to make a speech before I came along, remember? You dressed like a bad librarian and mumbled every word. Without me—”
“Actually, I remember having a setback after you appeared. You had nothing to do with the TED Talk. Or that amazing contract I signed with my publisher. If Sam taught me anything,
it’s that working for love is too much . . . work.”
“How can you toss aside what we had?” Jake growls, as if he’s going to lead with his seductive side. When I say nothing, he goes full desperado. “We were going to be married. Now you’re going to leave me in the dust because your career shot off like a bullet? I could only play second fiddle to you for so long, Maggie. I know it’s antiquated, but I couldn’t handle you making more money than me. It takes a special kind of man to do that, and it wasn’t me. I tried. I really tried, but you had no mercy on me. You never let me forget that you were the one with the doctorate.”
If I weren’t a Christian woman, I’d tell him to prepare himself. At this rate, his flying Rapunzel wife is going to be making more money than him. He’ll be trading cigarettes in the pokey.
I stop my obsessive thoughts there. I still don’t know that I have a job, so humility is probably my friend.
“It’s not enough for you to beat me career-wise. You have to destroy me personally too? I never saw it in you to be so cruel, Maggie. I can’t imagine what our pastor would have to say about this.”
“Your pastor. I haven’t been to that church in eons.”
I press the off button and shut out Jake’s tired, empty whining. Then, with renewed confidence, I block his number. He can’t manipulate me or shape the truth if he can’t reach me. The new—er—old Maggie is back.
My obsessive thoughts sail to Sam. I relive the low, deep vibration of his voice, which resonated within my soul. Charming, romantic movies will never be quite as satisfying, and the knowledge that he was only trying to save me from myself creates a dull ache in the pit of my stomach.
Even if I have to watch Sam walk down the aisle with my beloved friend Haley—and why wouldn’t he want to?—I’ll never again settle for a man who doesn’t bring my spirit to life. Life is too short.
19
A lack of confidence while seeking approval from others will never lead to happiness. Happy people instinctively own the responsibility for their own happiness.
The Theory of Happily Ever After Page 20