Love in Maine

by Connie Falconeri

  “Hey! That is so not true. Tell him, Sharon. I’m a good worker, right?”

  Sharon watched the verbal sparring and put her hands up, palms out. “I’m not getting into any sibling rivalry. Maddie’s a great waitress. That’s just a fact.”

  “Okay, okay.” Jimmy shook Sharon’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Have fun on your date tonight.”

  “Thanks. I think we will.”

  Maddie took his elbow and steered Jimmy back toward the front of the diner. “Thanks for checking on me.” She squeezed his hand.

  Jimmy paused and turned to face her. “It was just a silly bet, Maddie. You don’t need to turn it into some big thing.”

  For some reason the mention of “some big thing” threw her into a slew of memories about Freud and Epictetus and Hank. And kissing. She shook her head.

  “It’s not a thing. I’m having a really great summer. You were right; you might as well rub my nose in it. I needed to work like this. I’m good at it.”

  Jimmy stared at her, assessing her. “Okay. But don’t—”

  “Stop.” Maddie laughed. “I’m fine. I promise I’ll call if I get hit by a bus or something, I’m not going to chew my own arm off to prove a point.”

  He smiled then, and she stood up on her toes and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m really glad you found me. Give a big hug to Mom and Dad for me.”

  “Will do. Bye, Sis.”

  She rolled her eyes at the despised nickname and held the door open for him to leave. He got into the chauffeur-driven black Jaguar, and she couldn’t see the slightest hint of him behind the blacked-out window tinting once he shut the door.

  When the car pulled away, she happened to look across the street, only to see one pissed-off Henry Gilbertson sitting in his truck, staring at her. He shook his head once, started the engine, checked his rearview mirror, and pulled onto Main Street . . . without looking at her again.

  She shut the door to the diner and flipped the deadbolt. She turned the “Closed” sign to face out and let the horizontal blinds drop the length of the door with a satisfying metal clatter.

  Good, she thought, let Hank think I’ve got some sugar daddy who swoops in to visit; he already thinks I’m a tramp anyway.

  “I’ll babysit anytime you want,” Maddie offered when she sat back down. “Why don’t you and Gerry go away for the whole weekend?” Anything to keep me away from the Gilbertsons, Maddie thought desperately.

  Sharon looked at Maddie. “You okay?”

  “Why does everyone keep asking me that?!” Maddie was too loud and too mad for it to sound offhand. “I mean, probably not. But yes, I’m fine.”

  Sharon reached across the table, their chore finished. “Come on. Let’s go back to my house and have a glass of wine. I’ll give you that manicure and pedicure this afternoon before I get all dolled up for tonight.”

  “Thanks, Sharon. That sounds perfect.”

  The two of them took off their short, black, pocketed aprons, tossed them into the industrial laundry container, and let themselves out the back. The heavy metal door locked automatically behind them.

  CHAPTER 8

  The house was dark when Hank finally pulled into the driveway. He’d driven on back roads for a couple of hours to erase the vision of Maddie straightening that bastard’s tie with that dreamy, faraway look in her eyes. Hank could see from across the street that she felt relieved to be back in his arms. Why wouldn’t she? He looked rich enough. And, if Hank was honest, he looked like the type of guy who would probably make an effort to talk to her after spending one of the best times he could remember wrapped in her arms.

  So she’d been slumming it all along, just like he’d suspected. Hank tried to thicken his defenses. She was obviously using him and her job at the diner and the middle-class town of Blake and her whole summer vacation to do some sort of sociology project for her final year at Brown. He could just imagine her thesis title: “How I Spent My Summer Observing the Little People.”

  Janet’s car was gone, and he figured the two women had taken his advice and gone for a girls’ night out. They wouldn’t be home for at least another hour. He took his chances on getting some leftovers out of the fridge in his mother’s kitchen.

  The small light over the stove was on, and the purple shadows of the outdoors were enough for Hank to walk in and open the fridge without turning the overhead light on. He pulled out a soda, popped the top, and took a big pull. He rummaged around in the fridge and pulled out a drumstick and a glass bowl of his mother’s famous coleslaw. He kicked the fridge shut with his foot and left the house.

  Two hours later he heard a rumbling engine—definitely not his mother’s small, Japanese compact and definitely not that other guy’s chauffeur-driven Jaguar from this afternoon—and then the singing strains of Maddie’s voice.

  “I had a great time. I mean it, if you want to have fun again tomorrow night or next weekend, just let me know.”

  A man’s deep grateful voice replied in syllables Hank couldn’t make out. He couldn’t see the car without craning his neck out his bedroom window, and there were depths to which he would not stoop. That was one of them.

  She laughed into the night. “I’d love that, too. Have a great rest of the weekend.”

  She slammed the door of the guy’s car and called out, “Bye! Thanks for the ride!” Maddie was probably watching the new man in her life pull out of the driveway, savoring every last glimpse of the latest bastard to come through her revolving bed.

  Hank knew he was being an idiot. Nothing made sense anymore, especially when he thought about Madison Post. He was scraping his nails against the bristled texture of his scalp when a fist pounded on his apartment door.

  “Who is it?” he asked as he pulled the door open.

  She slammed the flats of her hands into his chest. He was surprised by the force of her, and stumbled back a step.

  “What the hell is your problem?!” she cried. She shoved him again, further into the room. “You never kissed a girl and just acted like a normal human being after?” She pushed him again, but he caught her wrists this time. Maddie tried to pull her hands free then realized the futility of the effort.

  “Stop hitting me,” Hank said softly.

  Her lip started to shake and she tried to pull her hands again. She needed them to cover her face. “Don’t talk to me in that soft voice, you bastard.” The fight was draining out of her.

  “How do you want me to talk to you, Maddie?” He hated himself, knowing that she’d been with those two other guys today, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. When he felt the pounding beat of her pulse, where his thumbs were resting against her wrists, it pounded into him as well. “How do those other guys talk to you?”

  “There are no other guys. How many times do you need to hear it? That was my brother at the diner today. And that was Gerry MacKenzie dropping me off just now after I babysat for his daughters.” His grip loosened as he realized the extent of his paranoia, and Maddie quickly pulled her hands from his grasp.

  Hank stayed quiet, then finally started to register her wacky appearance. Maddie had glitter all over her face and stickers on her ears, and her hair was wrapped in about fourteen rainbow dreadlock things. He couldn’t help smiling.

  “Don’t you dare laugh at me! The MacKenzie girls gave me a makeover.”

  “Hey, come on. So I got a little freaked out and gave you some space for a few days—” Hank reached out to touch her upper arm.

  She wheeled away from him. “You couldn’t even say hi to me in passing? I mean, it’s just so juvenile! We didn’t even have sex—”

  “Whoa! What?!” Hank was incredulous. “Of course we did.”

  “Well, I mean, not technically.”

  It wasn’t helping matters that she looked like she was about sixteen and some kind of naughty Pippi Longstocking after a night in a mosh pit. “I don’t know what technical manual you’re working from,” Hank said, “but in a court of law I would definitely be perjur
ing myself if I said I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Hank pointed at Maddie as he said the last two words.

  “Ugh.” She sighed. “Quit trying to derail me. This isn’t about penetration or whatever—”

  “Ouch,” Hank said.

  “Just cut it out. It’s about you being a total horse’s ass and freaking out because . . . because . . .”

  “When you figure it out, let me know.” He leaned back against the kitchen counter.

  “Because you made me so happy. I think that’s what it was. And you got all—” she scrambled her fingers around her skull like a crazy person “—messed up in the head because you thought I was going to melt into your arms or slobber all over your perfectly ordered life or something.”

  She looked around his apartment while he processed what she was saying. Maddie was totally fired up. “Seriously.” She gestured around the immaculate space. “Just look at this place. Are your spices alphabetized?” Her chest was pounding, and her brow was sweating. She tried to put her hair behind her ear, but the wraparound string thing made it too unwieldy to stay put. She took a deep, frustrated breath into his silence.

  “Okay.” She shrugged, holding her shoulders up for a few seconds, then letting them drop. “I guess I’ve had my say.” She turned to go and then turned back. “One more thing—”

  He smiled at her. “Yes?”

  “Just to be perfectly clear, me freaking out right now is not me freaking out about you giving me the best sexual experience of my life, and me having these unrealistically high expectations that it will always be like that, or that you will always be the one to do that for me, or any of that crap. Me freaking out right now is about you freaking out after all that other stuff happened. Got that?”

  “Yeah, I got it. Freaking blah-blah best sex blah-blah freaking blah-blah.”

  “Oh my god. You really are a Neanderthal. We are going to have to talk about our feelings at some point, aren’t we?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Hank said.

  Maddie stared at him, then shook her head in disbelief. “Well, I guess that settles that. No feelings. Is that it?”

  “Yeah. That’s pretty much it.” He didn’t look smug or sad or anything. He just looked like he was telling her the truth.

  “Okay. Maybe an uncomplicated hello every once in a while?”

  He smiled, and she thought she might survive, because it was a good smile, not a pacifying one like he’d been giving her earlier. “Sure. I can handle an uncomplicated hello every once in a while.”

  “Well, that’s progress. Bye, Hank.”

  “Bye, Maddie.”

  She let herself out and trotted down the stairs, feeling unburdened and relieved for the first time all week. It wasn’t a glorious reunion but at least it was détente.

  She opened the back door and let herself in, turning to lock it behind her. She slid the chain for good measure, just in case the boogeyman over the garage got any funny ideas about coming over to pay a midnight call.

  She flipped the light on in the kitchen and saw a slip of paper on the farm table.

  Dear Maddie (and Hank if you happen to see this),

  I switched out my shift for the weekend and decided to go visit

  my sister in Albany. Please call me on my cell phone

  if you need to reach me. I will be back late Sunday night.

  xx Janet

  Maddie stared at the note then read the postscript:

  PS I made a batch of my famous coleslaw for you to try.

  Maddie, suddenly ravenous, pulled open the fridge. She could actually picture where the now-missing coleslaw bowl had been sitting. Did she care enough to go back up to Hank’s and demand that he return it? She felt like an idiot.

  She shut the refrigerator door, turned off the overhead light, and walked heavily through the living room. She picked up her good friend, Ken Follett, on the way, and plodded up to her bedroom to spend the night in bed with a good book.

  The curtains and blinds in her room had stayed firmly shut since she’d gotten back from their canoe trip on Sunday night. No more prurient peeping escapades for either of them. Maddie put the book on her bedside table and walked into her bathroom. She turned on the light over the sink and had to cover her mouth to silence her cry of shock. She looked like a wreck. Her hair was going in seventeen different directions. The wraparound string things were jutting out at odd angles that made her look like she might be receiving alien transmissions right there through her scalp. Her ears had rainbow-colored star stickers all over them. And her face.

  Maddie’s face had been covered in about four pounds of sparkly liquid blush that had solidified into a waxen sheen.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said aloud. If Hank thought she was wacky before, he probably thought she was certifiable now. She smiled at her reflection, shook her head, and began the lengthy process of de-princessing herself.

  Saturday morning, Maddie decided to go for a long run. She also needed to find a gym or other workout place where she could row. She’d amassed a stunning fortune: nearly five hundred dollars. Phil stopped making her split her tips after the first week—a deprivation that had probably been one more of his trials by fire, Maddie suspected—and it had made a considerable difference in her take-home pay, so she could afford to join a gym, finally. She also needed to go to the library and use the Internet—or, gasp!, a real book—to begin her preliminary research for her senior thesis.

  She finished eating a bagel and a cup of coffee, then tied on her favorite sneakers. Hank’s truck was gone; she’d heard him head out a few minutes before, to go back into the murky depths for another shift. Or to get away from her, more likely.

  Maddie headed up the hill in the opposite direction of I-95, which Hank had taken her on the previous weekend. The street narrowed within a few minutes, as she got farther out of town, and gradually began to wind into a beautiful rural expanse. After about twenty minutes, she decided to head down a single paved lane that wended its way through the dappled trees. The morning was cool and refreshing, and the heat her body was generating gave her a feeling of deep satisfaction. She didn’t need Hank and his stupid lips on her body. She didn’t need anyone. That was the whole point of this summer, wasn’t it? Freedom. Independence.

  She kept running, enjoying an easy, consistent pace. If she kept her wits about her, she could probably do ten miles. She followed the road until it came to a dead end that split off into three directions. The driveways were unpaved and unmarked, but there were three mailboxes indicating that three different people lived farther along. Maddie jogged in place, looking up at the canopy of trees, deciding she’d be a fool to trespass on someone’s property, and was about to start heading back out the way she came when a black SUV nearly crushed her as it came barreling out of the center driveway.

  She leapt away from the middle of the road and tripped on a tree root, falling gracelessly on the ground, near the edge of the pavement where it met the woods.

  A young guy, maybe late teens, early twenties, Maddie thought, slammed on the breaks and whipped the front door open.

  “Holy shit! Are you okay? Oh my god, my mother is going to kill me if I hurt you in her car. Seriously! Can you talk? Say something!”

  “Denny?”

  “Madison?!”

  They both started laughing. Dennis Fullerton was her roommate’s ex-boyfriend from their freshman year at Brown.

  “Holy crap. You scared the shit out of me. What are you even doing here?” He sounded so relieved he was sort of half-laughing/half-talking and rubbing his forehead. “I honestly thought I’d killed you, and I was going to have to bury you in a shallow grave or something.”

  Maddie brushed off the palms of her hands where they’d gotten a bit scratched from trying to break her fall. “I think I tripped. You certainly didn’t hit me.”

  “Oh, thank god!” He looked at his watch. “I’m late. As usual. Want a ride somewhere? It’s the least I can do after giving you a
near-brush with vehicular manslaughter.”

  “Nah, you go ahead. I just started running a little while ago.”

  He smiled with a knowing smirk. “Meaning you’ve already gone ten, or you’re aiming to go ten?”

  “You got me. I’m aiming to go ten. But now I’ve lost my rhythm. I’ll ride back with you, I guess. Can you drop me in Blake?”

  “Sure, hop in.”

  They got in the car, and Denny drove like a little old lady, sitting up extra straight and clutching the steering wheel.

  “Relax,” Maddie said, pushing his upper arm casually. “I’m alive, remember?”

  His shoulders settled a bit, but he didn’t lean back altogether. “I think I’m pretty freaked out. I’ve got that acidy residual adrenaline thing going on right now.” He turned to face her. “You sure you’re okay? I don’t want Zander to beat the crap out of me if I’ve hurt you.”

  She looked out the window. “Would you give it a rest about Zander? We broke up ages ago.”

  “That’s not what he thinks. He said you were taking a break over the summer but that you were still totally together for senior year. And since you’re running down his driveway, he might appear to be right.”

  “Whatever,” Maddie replied. The thought of Zander Dalgliesh put her in a foul mood. “What did you say?” she asked suddenly.

  “What do you mean? I said you don’t have a very strong case for wanting to be broken up if you’re traipsing all over Maine after him.”

  “I am not traipsing anywhere.” Maddie was about to kick somebody’s ass, more like it. If Jimmy had made her go to Blake, Maine, out of some misguided attempt to get her back together with Zander, she was going to scream. “What the hell are you doing here is the better question?”

  “A bunch of us rented that big rambling place that leads down to the water back there, and we’re painting houses and buying kegs and just, you know, having our last summer of freedom. We’re having a big party tonight, you should come.”

  “I think I’ll pass.”