“Yet,” Haley adds. “You’re welcome to work on this screenplay when you get home, but no more escapism into false worlds and false realities.”
I love how she says this, like she hasn’t created my terrible reality that I’m currently trying to escape from on this crazy ship. “Did you have a nice time with Sam?”
Her mood instantly lightens. “Oh my goodness, we had a blast. Didn’t we, Kathleen?”
Kathleen gets my question on a deeper level and stares mournfully at me. “We did have a good time, but we missed you,” she answers without emotion.
“You wouldn’t think so, but Sam can really dance when he gets going,” Haley says, still in her own fog of romantic bliss. “I thought he’d have that whole white-man shuffle going on—you know, where he bites his bottom lip?” She slaps her knee like we’re all sharing in her joke. “But he has the moves!”
Kathleen shakes her head. “He really can’t dance. I think you were blinded by the out-of-body experience you seemed to have in trying to teach the dab to us. The guy has white-boy disease to the nth degree—he was like an arthritic monkey. I almost felt sorry for him. You wouldn’t have enjoyed yourself, Maggie.”
I smile at Kathleen. It’s okay, I mouth, but the concept of Sam as an arthritic monkey dancing to hip-hop makes me laugh out loud.
“Brent was too stiff as well. He can’t get around those monstrous muscles of his to move well. His arms are so big, they’ll barely go down to his sides, so he looked like he was doing the sprinkler the entire time.” Kathleen imitates Brent’s dance moves. “I’m telling you, they were horrific, and we got the best dancers on the ship. If this is the state of the singles’ club scene, we are all doomed. The human race is doomed.”
“It’s the state of the singles’ scene on a cruise ship. It’s a small sample. I have faith there are soul mates out there for each of us, and I don’t really care if mine can dance. It would probably be better if he didn’t.”
“Okay, princess,” Kathleen says. “That’s enough romance writing for the day. Put that computer away.”
“You told me to get a hobby and I got one.”
“A hobby that gets you outside that head of yours. Not this. This is just more escapism.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. It seems like you can’t be happy no matter what I do, so I’m going to take Sam’s advice and make myself happy. First I work too hard, then I don’t work enough. I mean, do you want my Google calendar to make me a schedule?”
“Sam’s advice?” Haley’s ears perk up. “When did Sam give you advice?”
“We talked.” I don’t give her any further information. It feels like it would be breaking an intimate confidence.
The idea of Sam dancing with Haley after the moment we shared in each other’s arms on the breezy deck—well, Sam dancing with anyone, really—turns my stomach into a ball of knots. I have to remind myself what the Bible says about jealousy and envy, because I’ve got them in spades. Pretty sure that isn’t God’s ideal, and if I ever want to get back to church, I need to start being who I used to be.
22
Other people cannot be responsible for your happiness, and vice versa. Own your own life and take responsibility for what makes you happy in this lifetime.
The Science of Bliss by Dr. Margaret K. Maguire
WHERE DOES ONE GO WHEN FAILURE invades every aspect of her life? If I follow my own advice, well, there’s nowhere to go but up, and I’ve gone my own way long enough. Jake checked off all the boxes. He wasn’t religious when we first met, nor did he believe in any higher power, which my parents loved. And I told myself it didn’t matter. We both believed in science. Wasn’t that enough? I’ll never know if he truly believed, but he’d marked the territory of our church and taken that from me. There’s no one to blame in this scenario but me, and that’s painful. It’s so much more pleasurable to blame other people and be a victim—but even my best friends have tired of that routine.
Okay, God, have at it. I’ve done nothing to improve my situation, no matter how much escape I’ve tried. It’s all you now. All you. No one can save me but you. Not a job, not a man, not my friends. It’s all you.
It’s a pathetic prayer, but I suppose God knows that my brain isn’t running at full capacity. Failure feels better at the beach, where one can look out across the distance and know that there has to be more. I simply have to put one foot in front of the other until I find the path again.
Getting off the ship for our beach excursion feels like getting out of prison. I’m not great at forced imprisonment, even with fantastic food and a fancy ball at the end of it. I’m still huddled with the masses with nowhere to get away and recharge. Our little gathering of awkward acquaintances includes Jules (for all intents and purposes, my only boss at the moment), her husband Kyle, Brent and Kathleen—who are leaving us for the parasailing excursion—and Haley and Sam.
Let me paraphrase. That’s Kyle and Jules, Brent and Kathleen, Haley and Sam, and me. Well, there’s Arvin the butler. So one could argue that my apparent date, Arvin, is the best dressed of this crew. Except Sam looks incredible in his navy shorts with white ship wheels. They don’t look like something he’d pick himself, so I’m assuming that when his sister kidnapped him, she also made some fashion choices. He’s got deck shoes on and a marl-gray, long-sleeve linen sweater pushed up to the elbows. He looks like he’s running crew for an elitist East Coast university, if I’m honest. It’s a look that works on him though, and he pulls it off as manly and sexy.
It’s daunting to be on the beautiful, romantic coastline as an extra, but I grip my notebook containing my rom-com screenplay and remind myself this is the perfect place to finish my story. While the girls may have confiscated my computer this fine day in the dry heat of the Mexican sun, they can’t take my notebook from me. I wrote “Travel Journal” on the cover so they have no reason to read anything I’ve written within the pages. As far as they’re concerned, my screenplay is a simple play-by-play of my cruise journey thus far.
As I follow the trail of my group, the white-sand beach sizzles the bottom of my toes, even with flip-flops on. The water is a tranquil aqua and clear all the way to the floor of the sea. Unlike California, the tide is subtle, lapping gently toward the shore like a clear glass lake.
Sam hasn’t spoken to me since he told me what happened to his wife—what seemingly made him avoid intellectuals. Who can blame him? I overanalyze everything, like why the sand here is white and slick under my feet, while at home it’s much more gravelly and brown.
I mean, who cares, right?
Meanwhile, Haley and Kathleen have tossed their cover-ups with abandon and run into the ocean, where they are laughing and trying to dunk each other. Kyle and Jules are staring into each other’s eyes like newlyweds. And I have my screenplay, the sum total of romance in my life presently.
Arvin places all of the beach chairs out for our group. He lays a towel over each chair and provides a few bottles of sunscreen. Someone else pours a metal tub full of ice and puts in bottles of drinking water. It’s the perfect setup for a beach-read day.
While Kathleen and Haley frolic in the ocean, Sam comes and sits beside me. “Is this seat taken?”
“There wouldn’t be a seat if it weren’t for your butler. Feel free. It seems as though I’m invading your party, not the other way around.”
“There would be no party were it not for the great Dr. Maggie Maguire speaking tour.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Again with the suspicion!” he says. “I wonder what would have happened had we met under better circumstances. You wouldn’t question everything I said in jest, for one thing.”
“I might. It’s a bad habit I’ve developed. Nothing to do with you, really.”
“So what if we had met under better circumstances?”
“Better circumstances than a singles’ cruise to a paradise beach, you mean? What would that look like? The perfect meeting.”
“A man and a woma
n without so much baggage on one small trip, I imagine. You see me across a crowded room, I see you. I don’t say anything stupid and we enjoy one another’s company.”
“That’s so normal! Shockingly so.” I’m thinking I should write that down in my notebook. “I suppose it would have helped if my best friend wasn’t a gorgeous redhead with a crush.”
“I didn’t kiss the redhead.” Sam sounds irritated. “I kissed you.”
“That was the emotion talking. We were both frightened after the fire, and there was so much at stake with your sister being the first female president at BrainLit.”
“You’re such a know-it-all, Maggie. You claim to know why I kissed you?”
“It was a crazy day. So much chaos, the smoke, the darkness—”
“That’s why you think I kissed you?” He shakes his head and looks off over the water before turning back to me. “My kiss didn’t tell you there was more to it than getting caught up in a situation? I like to think I brought my A-game to that kiss because it meant something to me. You’re the first woman I’ve kissed since—well, you know . . .”
“Really, that’s an honor, Sam. I don’t take that lightly, but it’s all right if you were testing the waters.” I shrug.
Sam’s kiss had so much passion in it, I felt utterly destroyed by it, like I’d never settle for anything less in my lifetime. I hadn’t known I could feel such peace and explosive energy simultaneously in a mere kiss. But so much passed between us—a surge of emotions and connections—and I knew one thing, standing beneath the shadow of Sam Wellington. I wanted him to kiss me again. More than I wanted a fellowship at NYU under Dr. Hamilton, more than I wanted my screenplay made into a movie, more than I wanted to go home and prove my innocence at the university.
How did I, this left-brain, rational-thinking scientist, turn into the teenage girl of my youth who dog-eared pages in my forbidden romance novels? It was the one vice my parents never caught wind of, and I embraced my rebellion wholeheartedly. The same way I do everything else in life. I just never expected it to happen in real life. Sam makes me want to believe anything is possible.
“You should strip down and go in the ocean with your friends,” Sam says.
I narrow my eyes.
“That didn’t come out right. I meant, you should go have fun. You don’t want to sit on the beach with me and my boring self.”
I do. I really do. “I don’t go in the water.”
“What do you mean? It’s like a clear Caribbean bathtub out there.”
“I don’t do water.”
“Do you swim?”
“Not very well.”
“I’ll spot you. Let’s go.” He reaches for my hand.
“No, really. I don’t like the water.” My pulse starts to quicken, and I can feel the beads of sweat gathering on my forehead.
“All right. No pressure. I thought you might like to cool off, is all.” Sam kicks off his Sperrys so his bare feet are next to mine. He touches my toes with his own until I meet his eyes again. He continues to play footsie with me in the sand, and his skin against mine sends a surge of electricity through my veins.
It’s chemistry. Simple pheromones and chemistry. It means nothing.
“Did you know pheromones are species-specific? An iguana pheromone will only stir another iguana.” Just shut up now.
Sam offers that confused look that I’m used to by now. “Is that so?”
I nod.
“The redhead—Haley—is sweet. She’s smart, she’s fun, and she’s beautiful.”
Oh my heart.
“But she’s not you, Maggie Maguire. I find myself wanting to know everything about you. What kind of food you like to eat. What you want to do on the weekends. If you wear socks to bed. If you ever trade gelato for popcorn during a movie. Why you bring up the pheromones of iguanas in normal conversation.”
My head begins to spin and I’m weak at his words. “Don’t tease me, Sam. I’ve always been a sucker for words, and if this is some kind of test, I’ve failed.” I run my hands through the silky curls at the nape of his neck. “Haley never wanted to be me, that much I can say with certainty.” I crack a joke rather than face him and look directly at those brown, soulful eyes. Time has passed while I was lost in conversation, mostly the invisible communication that passed silently between us. “Haley can have any man she wants, and she appears to have chosen.”
“Has this man been rendered helpless under Haley’s spell, or does he have a choice in the matter?”
“No one has a choice with Haley. She gets what she wants.”
“You must find me awfully weak to think I don’t know my own mind.”
When I finally look around me again, Brent and Kathleen are on the dock in the distance, getting strapped into parasailing gear and ready to take to the skies. Jules and Kyle are walking hand in hand up the crowded stretch of public beach. And Haley . . . Haley is missing.
While I can’t see Haley, I know she must be on her way back, and I’m panicked as I check around for her. She’ll accuse me once again of trying to steal her man. As if I could do that. She’ll know that I didn’t keep my promise and that my desire for Sam has taken on a life of its own. Sam makes me weak in the knees and soft in the brain, but not in the same way Jake did. It’s not the debilitating, blindsided, ignorant way I acted toward a man who couldn’t love anyone but himself.
I give myself a little grace in that Jake Stone felt natural to me. He felt like my parents. I’ll love you if . . . I’ll love you when . . .
In contrast, Sam’s presence pacifies me. It offers me the notion that I don’t have to dance for his affection or win at everything to be worthy of attention. I simply have to be, and that feels so overwhelmingly amazing and . . . violently uncomfortable. I want to run from it, but the peace I have is like what I felt in church when worshipping. I feel connected, cherished, and wholly me—that I am enough. If I never see Sam again, he’s gifted me with that knowledge that love doesn’t have to hurt.
“Maggie, did you hear me?”
“I didn’t,” I say, frantically searching the beach for Haley. “Is Haley all right? She got out of the water, right?”
“Forget about Haley for a minute. I don’t want to end what’s between us. I want to see you after this cruise.”
I shake my head. “That’s not possible.”
“I knew the moment I saw you that you were the one for me. I’ve only ever felt that one other time in my life.”
“No, I’m not. You’re just moved because you felt something for someone else after your wife. I’m just the first, the bad pancake. You throw this one out and then the next one is the good pancake. She’s your forever pancake.”
“I know what I feel, Maggie. It irritated me that I’d fall for a woman smarter than me again, and when you stirred me in the lobby, that’s what came out.” Sam brushed his hand along my cheek. “You moved me in a way I haven’t felt since the first time I laid eyes on Isabella. My anger came out because I was repeating history. It annoyed me that I couldn’t fall for a nice, unsuspecting, cookie-making, casserole-carrying woman from church.”
“What makes you think I can’t make a casserole?” I cross my arms and stand to run away from him. He gets up and chases me. I turn back. “Does anyone actually like casseroles? I can grill a mean steak.”
“I’ll bet you can.” He wraps his arms around me and lifts me off the ground. He cradles me as though I weigh nothing, the same way he’d done after the fire. He looks me straight in the eyes, and the emotions I feel melt my heart. If I died this very moment, I’d have lived a full life. Nothing Jake has done, nothing my parents have said to me, nothing matters. For that brief moment, I feel the unconditional love I’ve craved, no matter how short-lived and impossible it is.
Haley is standing beside us, her lithe body dripping with ocean water. My screenplay is in her wet hand. She pulls her hair back and squeezes the excess drops from it. She stands waiting, as if I’m holding her place in line and
I can move on now. I put my legs down and release my hold on Sam.
She points to a place in my so-called travel journal. “ ‘Haley, I’m sorry. It’s Maggie. It’s always been Maggie,’ ” she reads.
I shake with terror as I hear my utterly ridiculous words read back to me.
“What is this?” Haley shakes the notebook. I realize now that she must have taken it when Sam and I were talking.
“It’s nothing.”
“ ‘It’s always been Maggie’? Are you smoking something on this beach? Why are you writing this drivel? I thought this was your travel journal. You’ve got a science book to write and you’re still living in that fantasy world of yours.”
Sam’s mouth is agape, and I’m mortified to be back in reality. The beach no longer has the tranquil sheen that I planned in my screenplay.
“Don’t read any more, Haley. Please don’t. It’s just a hobby. I’m not good with names, so I used ours.”
Haley’s face is drained of color, and she looks at Sam and then back at me.
“Please,” I mutter. “It’s just a story. Fiction.”
“Did this really happen?” She shakes the notebook at me.
“No, I told you, I’m writing a screenplay. That’s just the end that I created. I was going to finish it while you and Kathleen were in the water. You took my computer, so I brought that notepad and thought I’d finish it here on the beach.”
“You came to the beach to write this and not the book for Jules? Have you missed everything Kathleen and I have done for you to get your career back up and running?”
“I can’t write that book without all the data in front of me. I need two screens and my algorithms. This was simply for fun.”
“I give up, Maggie. You’re like an addict. I can’t help you if you don’t want to help yourself, and you clearly don’t want to help yourself.”
“What else was I supposed to do while my best friends were on a double date with the only people I know on this ship? You don’t think that was difficult, to be the odd woman out yet again?”
“I thought you enjoyed being the odd woman out. You seem to relish the title.” She opens the notebook again. “You used my name. You used Sam’s name!” She keeps reading, though I try desperately to grab the notebook from her grip.
The Theory of Happily Ever After Page 24
