The Latecomers Fan Club

by Diane V. Mulligan

  “It’s okay to be scared,” she said.

  If only she knew all that he was scared of.

  Abby did go home later that night, and for several days she kept her distance. He was grateful for it. He couldn’t even think when she was around. It was like she bewitched him and made his mind stop working. The thing was that when they were alone together, it wasn’t so bad. They sat side by side on the couch watching TV or a movie, not really talking, just breathing the same air. And there was comfort in that. They made the most sense as a couple when it was just the two of them, alone, in private. They laughed at the same jokes, they scoffed at the same commercials. He complimented her cooking, and she complained about his slovenliness. They were like an old, boring, married couple.

  He hadn’t ever intended this thing with Abby to go beyond casual sex. Friends with benefits. Well, they were never really friends, but he hadn’t seen it as relationship, not in the beginning. And even after all this time, it still wasn’t love. It was just familiarity. Better the devil you know.

  Their relationship, if you could call it that, began in bed, a fact Nathaniel considered common and nonetheless inadvisable. Hook up first, sort out actual compatibility later. The dating method of the twenty-first century. They had both been drunk. Afterwards, Nathaniel felt a mixture of shame and manly self-satisfaction. His first one-night stand. It was a rite of passage.

  A few nights later, he was back at the Watering Hole, and at the end of the night, she was back in his bed. So not a one-night stand after all.

  For a few weeks it went on like that. Nathaniel would go to the bar in the evening (those were his grad school days, when he was writing his dissertation, most of which was composed on a bar stool), he’d knock back a few beers, Abby would finish her shift, and they’d end up back at his place. He never let her stay the night. A quick roll in the sheets, and then he’d shoo her out the door. Theirs was not, in his opinion, a committed relationship. This sort of arrangement was new to Nathaniel, but he slipped into it quite comfortably. The drinking helped.

  Nathaniel had never dated much. He wanted the sort of all-consuming love that he saw on the big screen or he wanted nothing at all. Unfortunately real girls didn’t live up to the perfection he sought. He had one serious girlfriend for a couple of years in college. When she broke up with him for being too “overbearing” and for “suffocating her,” he was so depressed he hardly got out of bed for weeks. Nearly ruined his GPA with that one bad semester. That experience had washed all sense of dreamy romance right out of him. The casual nature of his affair with Abby felt so safe by comparison. The problem was that Abby had never wanted to be his bed buddy. She made this clear one evening early on, as she was getting dressed after unsuccessfully lobbying to sleep over. She didn’t put up a fuss or anything like that. She did something worse: She invited him to attend a family party.

  “Ours isn’t really that kind of relationship,” he had said.

  “So what kind is it?” she asked.

  “You know.”

  “So basically you just want to have sex with me.” She sat down to put on her boots and Nathaniel saw her lip quiver. “It’s just that I thought I was making you happy.”

  He assured her that she was, but he didn’t move to put his arms around her, because in truth, he hated her a little at that moment.

  “And you want to keep doing this?” she had asked.

  He said he did. She was so eager to please and had so little confidence. Nathaniel realized the balance of power between them was tipped in his favor, and he even felt a little guilty about it.

  “Then why can’t I just stay here tonight?” she had said, her voice rising to a childish squeak.

  And the whole conversation had to start over again, with Nathaniel patiently explaining what it means to be someone’s lover as opposed to their significant other, and Abby nodding and crying and eventually, only when it was far later than Nathaniel wanted it to be, capitulating. She always gave in. She always concluded that she wanted what Nathaniel wanted. She just wanted to make him happy. They continued to see each other a few times a week, and every so often she would get the nerve to ask once again why they couldn’t be more than lovers. This went on for over a year.

  When his father died, everything changed. She showed up uninvited at the funeral, and when he took a leave of absence from school to help his mother and to get his emotions in order, Abby stood by him. She took care of him and talked him through his worst days. In her ability to comfort him and her willingness to listen to him, she was exactly what he needed. Out of gratitude, if not out of love, Nathaniel found himself letting Abby tell everyone that they were “together” now. Instead of just meeting up at the dive bar on his block, they went out on actual dates and got together with other friends. He met her family.

  Looking back, Nathaniel could hardly believe she had stuck with him through that rough patch. He drank way too much and developed problematic beer muscles. Nathaniel, always the bookish theater nerd, had never been in a fight in his life until that year when he found himself kicked out of bars, kicked out of parties, and once kicked in the jaw by a kid wearing steel-toed shoes.

  Not only did Abby stay with him, she defended him—to his mother, to her friends and his, and even to himself. Sometimes he felt cheered by her consolations and pep talks, and other times he felt ashamed. He was acting in ways that were indefensible, and any excuses she wanted to offer for his drunken debacles did nothing to change the fact that he had no idea what he was doing with his life.

  The longer Nathaniel stayed with Abby, the less frequently he went home—not because he’d rather be with her, but because every time he had to leave Worcester and his old friends to go back to his adult life, he was filled with dread. Going back to his apartment meant facing all of his failures, which was enough to make him want to drive into a ditch instead of taking the exit for his place.

  Once he made it inside his apartment, it was always okay. It wasn’t great, but it was his life, and he could make it through one day at a time. After a while he realized it was easier just to stay in Somerville and get lost in his routines than it was to go back and forth to Worcester with any regularity. Why put himself through those feelings of shame and disappointment if he didn’t have to?

  He hadn’t even planned to go to Zack’s New Year’s party, but then he ended up having to go out to Worcester anyway to help his mom with some trees that she was convinced were going to fall on the house in the next big snow storm. As long as he was driving all that way, he figured he might as well have a little fun.

  And then Maggie showed up. Seeing her that night at Zack’s, all he could think about was how much pain they could have spared one another if they’d just started dating back in high school. Okay, how much pain he could have spared them, because he knew Maggie would have leapt into his arms if he had only said the word. If they’d been together all these years, he could have saved her the misery of having married the wrong man, and she could have kept him from drowning in despair when his dad died. They would have pushed each other to follow through on their artistic goals. Everything would have been different. Of course Nathaniel knew such hypothetical thinking was pointless and absurdly flawed. No one would ever know how things would have turned out if they had listened to their raging teenage hormones. Nonetheless his imagination created a fairy tale for them, which was why he gave in to temptation and called Maggie to invite her for coffee on his mom’s birthday.

  He had wanted to call her since the day Abby told him. Every time he was alone, his first impulse was to call her, but he only ever got as far as picking up his phone before he came to his senses. What was he going to say? “Hi. I know I kissed you on New Year’s, but I have a girlfriend, and she’s pregnant, and I think I’ve always loved you, so I don’t know what to do.” Yeah. That would go over well. But when Abby finally gave him some space, he was able to see what he needed to d
o. He needed to see Maggie again so he could sort out his feelings for her and gauge her feelings for him. He didn’t need to tell her about Abby, not yet. That wasn’t exactly first date information. So he called her up. They made plans to get coffee. It felt right.

  Maggie

  Maggie changed her clothes three times on Saturday afternoon, finally settling on a sweater dress over leggings and ballet flats. She looked good, but not like she was trying too hard. Or at least that’s what she hoped.

  She watched for Nathaniel so that when he pulled into the driveway, she bolted out the door, reaching his car before he could even attempt to get out to ring the bell for her. She slid into the passenger seat and grinned.

  “What? Are you afraid your mom will see me?” he said returning her smile. He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You look nice.”

  “Thanks,” Maggie said, smoothing the short skirt of her dress down on her legs.

  Nathaniel fiddled with his iPhone for a minute and then Counting Crows came over the stereo speakers.

  “Ah, just for me?” Maggie asked. They had always listened to August and Everything After on their many nights of aimless driving around back when gas was cheap and they had nothing but time.

  “For old time’s sake.”

  Maggie leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. How could somebody smell the same after fifteen years? Had he not switched colognes after all this time? It was like she had stepped through a wormhole and emerged in 1997, except he had traded his Jeep for a Camry.

  “Oooh la la,” Nathaniel sang along to the song and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

  He found a parking space down the block from their old haunt, and as they walked up the street, he put his arm loosely around Maggie’s waist. She felt like she was drunk in the middle of the afternoon; she felt like she could start skipping gleefully down the street at any second. And yet, in the back of her mind, she couldn’t stop wondering how long it would be before he broke her heart the way he always did.

  The new coffee place was indeed much nicer than the old one. It was small and cozy with a shiny, intricate espresso machine and a glass case full of baked goods. They ordered cappuccinos from a man with a goatee and a thick accent Maggie couldn’t precisely place—maybe Greek—and took a table near the window.

  “So. Tell me about this guy who managed to pin you down, however briefly,” Nathaniel said, stirring sugar into this drink.

  “Oh, God, you don’t want to hear about him. There’s nothing to tell, really.”

  “I don’t believe that. You were Miss Independent. He must have had magical powers to get you to marry him.”

  “He had a lot of money. Besides, my independence was all bravado.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Maggie looked out the window at the traffic rushing past. She wanted to change the subject, but she didn’t know what to talk about. She turned back and smiled, saying, “Next time I think I’ll pick a guy who isn’t quite so smart. Know-it-alls are so tiresome.”

  “Don’t tell me he was a professorial type,” Nathaniel said, his eyes twinkling in the dim light.

  “Worse. Psychologist.”

  “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.” Nathaniel shook his head.

  “And he thought he was an expert on pretty much every subject. Oh my God, this one time, we were out with his friends, who were all alike, by the way—spoiled Ivy Leaguers with trust funds and drinking problems—and one of his buddies was trying to cut the night short on the excuse of having work the next morning. And Andrew says, ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,’ very dramatically and then winks at me and says, Hamlet.”

  “Macbeth.”

  “I know. And I told him so. Of course he didn’t believe me. Well, you know me, I can’t let a thing like that go, so I began my recitation, ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day,’ which I had to memorize for a class in college, and I just kept going, ‘To the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’”

  “Well done.” Nathaniel lifted his coffee cup as if to toast.

  “Right? And one of his friends chimed in that he thought I was right. But Andrew could not be convinced until he whipped out his phone and Googled it. Once he had the answer, he clicked off his phone, shoved it into his pocket, and said, ‘Show off.’ His friends were in hysterics, but he was pissed.”

  “Over that?”

  “It’s possible that I gloated a little.”

  “You?”

  “Right. So my next guy is going to have to be dumb. Like no contest, not as smart as me. I want a pretty idiot. A trophy husband.”

  “So you haven’t given up on marriage all together?” Nathaniel asked.

  Maggie hadn’t even realized she’d used the word husband. She blushed. “I guess not.” For a moment she had had the illusion that she could laugh off her marriage, treat it like a folly of her youth, a starter marriage that lasted a few years too long. Now that feeling was gone.

  They sat in silence for a moment, and then Maggie asked, “So what about you? No little woman by your side?”

  Nathaniel shook his head.

  “Still haven’t found ‘the one’?” She hoped he caught her teasing tone and didn’t take offense.

  “The thing is, how can you ever be sure? What if I already met her, but I just didn’t know it at the time?” he answered earnestly.

  Was he talking about her? Maggie wondered. “I think you’d know,” Maggie said. “But what if there’s no such thing as ‘the one’?”

  “You know, lately I’ve been thinking about that. In fact I had almost concluded as much.”

  “Almost?” The way he held her gaze made her feel naked.

  “Almost.”

  For a moment, Maggie was sure he was going to lean in and kiss her, but then he sat back in his chair and looked away. Maggie tried to hide her disappointment by stirring the foam at the bottom of her cup. Finally, she asked, “So what about your music? I heard you were in a band.”

  “Past tense being the key to that statement.”

  “Oh?” Nathaniel had always been a hell of a performer. She used to love to watch him play, whether he was acting in a drama club show or just strumming his guitar after school.

  “We had some artistic differences and I sort of lost interest. What about you? You still painting?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Some days I think about painting,” Maggie said.

  All of the glee Maggie had felt when they first sat down was gone. Instead of reminding each other of who they were, they only succeeded in reminding each other of their failures and disappointments. What a disaster.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” Nathaniel said. “I’ll write a song this month, you make a new painting. A little healthy peer pressure.”

  That was her old friend, finding a way to salvage the moment, finding a way to overcome any awkwardness and to pull her out of her funk.

  “Okay, deal.”

  That night, after Nathaniel had dropped her off, Maggie finally unpacked the box containing her art supplies. She unfolded her easel and set her large sketch pad upon it. It felt good to put things in order, to breathe in the scent of her oil pastels, gummy erasers, and graphite pencils. But when she picked up a pencil to sketch, she felt as if she’d never held one before. She set the pencil down, grabbed the dog-eared copy of The Great Gatsby that she was rereading from her nightstand, and went downstairs. Maybe that would inspire her.

  Abby

  Abby genuinely believed Nathaniel would go to Breanna’s engag
ement party with her. Even though his first response was no, and his second response was still no, she was certain that he’d come around. He had to realize that it was time for him to start acting like her partner. Besides, the party was on Valentine’s Day, so it would save him the trouble of having to do anything to celebrate. Breanna was worried that everyone would be annoyed that she was stealing their romantic night with her party, but her future in-laws were hosting, and they picked the date. Abby assured her that she was doing everyone a favor, since no one ever knew what to do on Valentine’s Day.

  As of February thirteenth, Nathaniel still had not agreed to go, nor had he proposed any alternative Valentine’s Day plan. Abby had been trying to make things good with him, to act relaxed and not to nag him, to show him that this could work, so when he said, again, that there was no way he was going to the party, she didn’t put up a fight. She’d backed off since those first few weeks so that he could have some space to come to the right conclusion.

  “Well, I have a little Valentine’s surprise for you,” she said, over the phone in a last effort to change his mind.

  “Oh,” he said. “I, um, I don’t—”

  “I know Valentine’s isn’t your favorite or whatever,” Abby said. She didn’t need to hear another lecture on the evils of the commercialization of everything and how Valentine’s day was a stupid made-up holiday. She had been hoping that he’d realize it mattered to her and put on a happy face. “I’ll just drop it off tomorrow before the party.”

  “I might not be here,” Nathaniel said.

  “You’re going out? On Valentine’s Day?” Where could he possible need to go? And with whom could he possibly plan to spend the night?

  “Maybe, I don’t know.”

  Abby looked at the plate of heart-shaped sugar cookies she’d made for him. She had planned to give him the cookies and to wear her sexiest lingerie, which soon would not fit her. She figured she might as well wear it while she could, because who knew if she’d ever get back into it.