Love in Maine (12 page)

“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 perjuring 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.

Maddie stared at the note then read the postscript:

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.”

“You always were a bit stuck up, Post. Why don’t you loosen up a bit?”

“Stop the car, please.”

“Relax.” Denny shook his head and slowed the car to a stop on the side of the road.

“You know what, Denny?”

“No. What?”

“I think you better just forget you ever saw me, all right?” She pulled the handle
on the door and realized that it had auto-locked when he’d accelerated. She couldn’t
find the lock button and she tugged harder on the handle.

“Chill, Post.” He clicked a button in the center console. Something about Denny Fullerton
driving a brand-new luxury SUV and painting houses for fun just rubbed her wrong all
of a sudden. She got out and held the door open to finish talking to him.

“I am perfectly
chill
, Denny. I wanted a summer away from anyone I knew. I had no idea you and Zander and
all the guys from your fraternity were going to be here.”

“Whatever,” he said with no intonation, then turned to look back in the direction
they’d been heading. “You coming or going? I’m late.”

“What a gentleman. You practically kill me with this ridiculous beast of a car and
then you tell me I need to lighten up.” She slammed the car door, and he drove off
before she’d finished withdrawing her arm.

Shit.

Maddie paced back and forth a few times, unsure if she wanted to try to go back to
her run or if she was too rattled. She stopped pacing when she heard a rustle in the
woods. Hands resting on her hips, she turned slowly, feeling the gaze of another creature.
She didn’t see them at first, through the camouflaging shadow and light of the trees.
Then the sun caught the mother’s eyes. Two moose, a large female and a young calf,
stood frozen in place about twenty feet away from her. Maddie exhaled and let all
thought of Zander and Denny and her final year of university and the stupid brute
of a man she was falling for who was probably submerged in a dark silent world as
she stood on the side of the road. She just stared at those black eyes and then at
their ears. The young one twitched a muscle on its neck, but otherwise remained beautifully
still.

She didn’t want to pet them or befriend them or throw a rock to startle them and shoo
them away from the dangers of the road. Maddie just wanted to remember every single
detail about them, every eyelash, the way the sun made their velvety noses shine,
the tender breathing of the small one, the way their shoulders turned in at exactly
the same angle.

Maddie tasted the salt of her tears before she even realized she was crying. Why couldn’t
she just
be
? Why couldn’t she just exist the way these animals did? She felt like such a conniving,
demanding, controlling human. She felt like she was in a constant whirl of pushing
or pulling or getting or spending. She couldn’t even stand here on the side of the
road without thinking about what it meant to be standing here on the side of the road.