He gave it to her anyway, skipping all pomp and circumstance.
She squealed and said yes and started telling the world, but Derek felt cheated out of a story with all the details he’d planned. Maybe it was unfair, he realized later, to have demanded the proposal to go his way. He tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but his hurt kept piling up and every increased command, every disagreement, pushed them further from each other.
It took a long time to unwind from someone’s life, but the only thing Derek truly missed was feeling known and understood. Or maybe it was only the illusion of being known and understood. After all, did Julie understand him at all?
He looked at Maeve, so young and beautiful and witty. She rolled with him, meeting his pop-culture references with even deeper cuts and they laughed a few times so loudly that the tables next to them asked to be moved. She hit their table once and the water wobbled and she often put her hand to cover her mouth while she talked with her mouth full, not pausing for a second—even while chomping on bread and pasta.
She didn’t once talk about Woodstock or murder, although, when he asked her about the five last things she’d watched on television, she’d groaned and pled the fifth. Occasionally, when she noticed his flirtation, she’d blush.
They ordered another glass of wine. Then a bottle to share.
“Did we just meet a few hours ago?” Maeve asked once while pouring herself more red. “That can’t be possible.”
It’s possible, he thought, it’s possible…just stay good. We need it to stay good.
Too often, it hadn’t. Too often laughter over meals dissolved into crushing doubt and chasing anxieties and miscommunications. Derek was bad at enjoying things in the moment without overthinking—but he didn’t want to do that to her. Somehow, he knew that he had to do better.
Over their entrees, talk meandered to the future.
Maeve shifted in her chair, uncomfortable for perhaps the first time since she’d locked eyes on him coming in for the, or rather his, blind date. His facial expressions were all over the place: from adoration and surprise to worry. He thought that the table directly in front of them recognized him; the wife kept sneaking glances and then whispering with her head lowered and he’d watch each person with the mounting suspicion that everyone was thinking about him.
Then as the paranoia grew, Maeve would say something or pull him back to the conversation, and Derek migrated back to her.
“I really am thankful,” he said, as their plates were carried away, the restaurant thinning out, the dinner rush over.
“For?” Maeve asked wiping her mouth with her napkin and then arranging her water glass and wine glass in front of her. The candle on the table reflected in her eyes and she waited, patiently, for an answer.
“My dad isn’t an easy man,” he said instead, answering indirectly.
“Nobody’s parents are easy, Derek, they’re human,” she said. “Your life becomes easier the moment you realize that, I think.”
He conceded that fact and resisted the sudden urge to reach across the table for her hand. It was instinctual—biological. He didn’t, though, because it was ridiculous. It wasn’t ridiculous to want her—sexual attraction was unstoppable—but it was ridiculous to think wanting her meant he could have her. It was ridiculous to assume she was thinking the same thing; dreaming of reaching for his hand, letting him into the pieces of her life he didn’t know about yet. This was a crush.
He had a crush on the girl from the Murder Club—who had daintily avoided the topic of murder all evening. He was impressed by her restraint at the very least.
“Do you play chess?” he asked her out of the blue and Maeve nodded, with a question in her expression.
“I do, yes,” she said. “And I was just thinking, I wonder when Derek is going to ask me if I play chess,” she laughed.
Derek hated his optimism.
It was unfair to ask anyone to promise they’d never leave him, but he also knew the trauma he suffered in life didn’t have to dictate his future. Shit, he’d been in therapy his whole life to try to work through that particular narrative. He couldn’t control other people’s choices and he couldn’t always protect them from harm; he also couldn’t protect himself from a broken heart.
It was a risk he had to take.
And even though he wanted to give himself permission to like the girl, something was holding him back. There was a little voice that buzzed in his ear like an old-fashioned version of a conscience. While he tried to stop daydreaming about making a move and kissing her, the voice said, “You don’t know this girl. She’s a murder club, girl, after all. Give it more than six hours, Derek.”
He wasn’t sure he could.
Chapter Eight
Maeve walked a line between keeping the murder thoughts and tangents at bay versus completely rewriting the story of her own existence. How could she be Maeve Montgomery and not be the girl who already loved this boy from afar? And how could she be herself and not have a death fact to go along with every comment or story he told? She didn’t feel like she was lying to him because he’d asked for this from her—she was merely following direct instructions to avoid mentioning his celebrity out of respect.
At some point, however, he’d have to learn that she was not naïve.
It was true she felt pressured to push the darker parts of her personality down and out of the way, but everything else she gave him was still pure Maeve. At first, when she sat down, she felt like she might cry. She prepared not to like him; she prepared to find him arrogant or absent, or maybe even broken. He had been through so much—how could he not be?
Derek didn’t seem broken, however.
He was playful and kind. He told stories of happier times and for a few fleeting seconds he mentioned his ex-fiance, and Maeve liked the way he hurried over the circumstances of their break-up as though Maeve would be jealous. She wasn’t.
She’d had boyfriends, for fuck’s sake she was twenty-five, and even ones more recent than Julie and Derek’s split, too. Not anything serious—seriousness eluded her.
Maeve knew she didn’t want to admit to Derek on the first date that she was a serial dater. Just dates though, usually, one, sometimes two, and then she’d lose interest because of some grotesque flaw she fixated upon. A wayward laugh at an awkward moment or the way someone ordered at a restaurant could end Maeve’s affections in an instant. Her vagina shriveled if he didn’t read or chewed with his mouth open.
Then there was the Millie factor—if Millie didn’t like the guy Maeve was dating, it was impossible to sway her opinions and she made Maeve’s life miserable. Millie was hard to please.
Maeve’s usual litmus test for men was to talk about murder and her old crush on Derek Shelton. She thought of all the times she’d mentioned him while with other men—the gold standard on which they’d all be held up to by comparison—listened and wondered what they’d gotten themselves into. “I bet your first crush was more reasonable than mine. You remember that kid who survived the serial killer? Then the dad went on trial for manslaughter of the guy?”
She almost burst out laughing in the middle of Derek’s story about a high school trip to Washington DC gone wrong, when one child was sent home for attempting to pee on every monument and memorial they visited.
The irony of her current situation was too big and too shocking. She realized she must be in shock, but despite the mind-numbing un-realness of it all, Maeve enjoyed herself and engaged with him in a way that felt entirely natural. She felt natural, at least.
Maybe she wasn’t letting him in on her private inner monologue, but she was being honest about her past and her likes and dislikes. She was comfortable teasing and flirting, and her heart rate had settled back into a normal rhythm. The wine, of course, loosened her, too, and might have been responsible for her confidence. But she saw the way Derek kept looking at her and she wanted to believe he was smitten.
The suddenness of it all, however, made her wonder if
maybe this was an act—a shtick—maybe he was hiding that since Julie, he, too, was a serial dater and this was the way he wooed women: Good food, good wine, and looking at her like she’s the only person in the entire world he wanted to be with in that moment.
He didn’t look at his phone or anyone else who walked through the door, or barely even to the waitress when she came to the table, he just kept looking at Maeve—and every time she noticed his eyes fully on hers, his attention absorbed on nothing else, she felt a tightness in the lower half of her body, like she was bracing for the moment when she’d just tell him what she wanted—which was what she’d always wanted—what her teenage fantasies had dreamt up in the pages of her diary.
Kissing him. Holding him. That was as far as she ever allowed herself to visualize.
But she was not alone. There were whole websites devoted to loving Derek Shelton.
In the world of true crime, he was an enigmatic hunk.
He stopped doing events, which made him mysterious, and he stopped talking to reporters, which made him angry but brave. No one knew what he was doing or where he went or whom he loved, and Maeve, along with everyone else, always wondered and hoped she’d find out whatever happened to him.
And what happened to him was that he fell into her lap.
A week ago, she had a bad date with a guy she’d met on an app. She knew it was bad after ten minutes and had to admit she didn’t want to stay for dinner. Maeve downed the drink, slapped a ten on the table for it and got up to shake his hand.
The man rolled his eyes and told her to sit down and he’d do better, but as Maeve laughed awkwardly, he took her hand and squeezed it a little. “Just sit back down,” he instructed through a clenched smile. He begged for a second chance through a jokey veneer. Maeve tugged her hand free and produced the pink mace from her pocket. She hated that she had to resort to violent protection so quickly but she was tired of dates that ended with her petitioning to get out of an unwanted embrace.
Maeve realized she’d left her mace on her nightstand, with the lamp turned on, in her hurry to make herself as beautiful as possible for the date. She used the makeup she reserved only for true special occasions—weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs—and delicately painted herself with a dewy look, fresh and bright.
Now, he wanted to play chess.
Maeve pulled her phone from her purse and realized she had a missed call from her sister—she ignored it and tucked it quickly back into the belly of her handbag. Nothing was going to distract her from being fully present with Derek. At some point, she was going to screw this up. She could only keep him interested for so long before she had to show him the things she loved that he would hate, and then she’d lose him. Like me for now, she thought, because someday he’d learn the truth.
When was it ever appropriate to blurt out, “I had an Olson Twins lunchbox filled with your picture cut out of magazines and newspapers”?
Never. It was never appropriate.
It had been nearly a decade since he’d been photographed and Maeve was dying with desire—he was scruffy, but styled, with dark, dark hair and those baby blue eyes. His jaw was defined and he had a single dimple, high on his right cheek that flashed when he smiled, which was often. As they trifled with each other, she felt her body physically demanding closeness to him. Like a magnet, they started to drift together. A finger here, a foot there.
These were the simple dances of a journey toward intimacy.
A serial dater knew this was different and this was special.
Doubts lingered because Maeve couldn’t fully understand why he was interested in her. Maybe he took a gamble she’d be pretty and she was, and so he turned on the charm? Maybe he took all his dates home? She wasn’t jealous by nature, but a piece of her needed to be the only person Derek was flirting with. Any other scenario diminished its specialness and Maeve hated the idea of being used.
“Well.” Derek picked up the check and paid without her noticing, completely sly, and she offered continued thanks for the meal, and the wine, and the dessert, and the wine. She added up the bill in her head and realized it must have been well over a hundred dollars and she blushed and dipped her head in practiced shame.
“You shouldn’t have to pay that,” Maeve countered.
Derek leaned across the table. He took his hand and put it on her forearm again. This time he didn’t draw it back when she noticed. She held her breath, her heart caught mid-beat in her chest. “Chivalry isn’t dead, Maeve,” he whispered.
And they both laughed, Maeve drawing her hands up to her mouth to hide the eventual snort she knew was coming. And when she snorted, Derek laughed louder and clapped his hands in admiration. She felt exhilarated by adrenaline and pure happiness.
“Let me leave the tip, at least,” Maeve said, finally, and she reached into her wallet and pulled out thirty dollars. She tossed it down on the table and Derek smiled.
“I already tipped,” he said. “Keep it. Pay next time.”
Maeve paused—she couldn’t wipe the damn smile off her face—the goofiness of it, the sheer idiotic teenage fondness for this boy, now not a boy at all, who sat across from her and just said he wanted there to be a next time.
But also those words seemed to imply that the night was coming to an end, and Maeve didn’t want that, either.
She reached out and opened the billfold and the bill was as she suspected. And written for the tip, he’d given their waitress an over fifty-percent gratuity. She smiled. He’d passed a test of sorts.
They’d both been aware then how long they’d lingered in the waitress’s section. All the other tables around them turned over or disappeared to other servers and they owed her every penny of that, and more.
It was a strange sort of longing then that Maeve had for Derek.
He’d tipped their server generously on his own, not because she’d nagged him or had to explain the importance of it. Somehow that single act translated into desire. She resisted every urge to stand up, sit down in the booth next to him and plant her lips on his. It wasn’t how she’d always pictured it—most of the time it was at her house, inexplicably, but probably because she lacked imagination.
“I’m leaving that, anyway,” Maeve answered, and dropped the extra thirty into the pile. “You ever been a server?” she asked, grabbing her purse and following his lead as they got up from the table and passed through the restaurant.
“Sure,” he said. “I think it should be mandatory job instruction.”
Derek walked in front of her and a crowd heading to their table ambled slowly past. He reached back and took her hand, directing Maeve to the side to let them slink by. It was a small gesture, but as their skin touched she could think of nothing else but him.
She thought of Millie’s missed phone call. Her sister wouldn’t believe her, but she’d also fail to be as impressed as she wanted her to be. Derek was touching her—holding her hand.
When the group passed, they continued. He didn’t let go.
Maeve held tight and felt on fire. With or without mace, she knew right then and there that she was going to follow Derek Shelton wherever he led her.
If it was a character flaw, she’d own it, but nothing else in the world mattered but him and the feeling of his skin on hers.
Neither of them were fit to drive, but they caught a car share ride through an app and the driver, a man in his forties with a Calculus is Fun bumper sticker, wordlessly followed the directions in his navigation, never even once looking in the backseat. Derek and Maeve held hands in the back of the car like kids. Occasionally his thumb slid up her thumb and Maeve wanted to just end the tension and say, “You can just fuck me now and get it over with.”
It was absurd.
After a ten minute drive through back roads and unlit neighborhoods, the Man who Loved Calculus pulled up to a metal gate hanging precariously next to a long and broken down line of fencing. The property behind the gate was dark, extending into blackness beyond where the car’s hea
dlights illuminated the expanse of nothingness.
“You two have a good night,” the driver said with a chipper tone that Maeve thought belied the nuances of this particular situation. She was, essentially, being taken via taxi to a darkened property without an address, in the late evening, with a stranger. Yet the guy who dropped them off only waved and reminded them to give him a five-star rating if they were satisfied.
Maeve couldn’t help but say a silent prayer that Derek Shelton wasn’t about to murder her.
Shit. That would be a twist.
Had she told anyone where she was?
She hadn’t.
There were, of course, conspiracies that Derek killed his sister and the babysitter, fooling his father, and the Woodstock Killer was still alive. He was an unlikely but not impossible age to murder. And the details of that night always seemed a bit too disjointed to make perfect sense. Maeve learned, through podcasts and her reading and her devotion to online web pages, that when a murder was solved its mystery vanished with an unsatisfying aplomb. Once the murderer was discovered, the puzzle was complete and everyone always said, “Well, yes, of course. That makes sense.”
She’d never considered Derek responsible, it was a bizarre conspiracy theory popular with a small spectrum of true crime followers, but she wouldn’t have been the first girl led astray and charmed by a sociopath.
As the taillights of Calculus Man disappeared, Derek climbed over the derelict gate and motioned for Maeve to follow. She resisted, but only for a second, before deciding to see what was on the other side of the darkness.
He used his phone as a flashlight, illuminating the way. Maeve followed behind and watched her feet—it was mostly grass: dry, and scratchy against her bare legs. She thought of her white shoes, practically unworn, and guessed she’d have to spend some time making them white again. However, she wasn’t annoyed as the stinging nettles and blackberries ran against her and marked her. Instead, she focused on the back of Derek’s head until they arrived at a clearing in the middle of the vastness of the property.
Forgotten Obsessions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 1) Page 6
