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“I like to think that Luke saved you. He loved you so much that he wanted to protect you until the very end.” I finally looked up to meet Mrs. Greenberg’s eyes. There wasn’t a tear in them. I had expected her to be as much of a mess as I was talking about the night that her son died. “Honey, that night was not your fault. If I had known you’ve been carrying around this guilt inside you this entire time, I would have told you that sooner.”
“How are you doing so well?” I asked her as I swiped at my tears.
“Because I had to learn that I will never lose my baby boy.” She put a hand up to her heart. “He’s in here, just like he’s in yours. Honey, you have to let him go. You deserve to be happy.”
“How can I find the kind of happiness I had with Luke again?” I asked her. “Even you said our love was once in a lifetime.”
“Maggie . . .” Mrs. Greenberg’s hands moved to cup my face as she made sure she had my full attention. “There are so many kinds of once-in-a-lifetime loves. You both were so fortunate to have found that in each other so young. But, Maggie, your heart is so full of love. You will find someone else. It won’t be like Luke’s and your love, and I know you would never want that anyway. The next kind of love you will find will be something completely different. Something you didn’t know you needed.
“And, to me, it looks like you may have already found it.”
“Oh, Mrs. Greenberg. No.” I started to shake my head. There was no way that I would lie to this woman about my relationship with Tommy. I would surely end up in hell at the end of this if I did. “He and I aren’t like that.”
“Are you sure?” she asked as she pulled away from me. “Because from what I can see, the way you two look at each other is something quite special.”
I wasn’t sure what had happened, but it was like a dam had opened up inside me after I had finally unlocked the ugliness for Mrs. Greenberg. So after she insisted that Tommy and I were special, it was like my mouth had a mind of its own as it opened again to tell her the truth.
“We aren’t really dating.” I looked back up at her after the words passed my lips. Some part of me felt relieved to be able to unload the secret onto someone else. “It’s for the media and to help his career. We aren’t in love.”
“Maggie, you have never been a good liar.” Mrs. Greenberg gave me a wry smile. “Any time you’ve ever been around someone, your feelings for them are always written all over your face, good or bad. If you’re trying to tell me that you don’t like that boy right now, you’re in denial.”
A heat spread across my cheeks as she read my feelings plainly. I cursed myself for being so obviously enthralled with Tommy Mikals. I had told myself from the start that if I got feelings for him, I’d be made a fool.
“Even if that may be true,” I replied softly, “he’s only doing this to save his career.”
“Are you that dense?”
My mouth dropped open at her candor. “I’m sorry?”
Mrs. Greenberg took out her phone and tapped away on the screen before flipping it around so I could see. She had pulled up a picture of me and Tommy getting pizza the night before. The two of us were laughing as we raced across the street toward the pizzeria. Pure joy was all over my face. It was the brightest I had seen my smile in a long time.
“Do you see the way that boy looks at you?” She pointed at the second picture on the screen. I was eating my folded pizza, and Tommy was watching me. His eyes had crinkled at the corners, and the way he looked at me made my breath catch in my chest. “Are you trying to tell me that a man that looks at a woman like that isn’t in love with her?”
As I rode the ferry back to the city, I thought through what Luke’s mom had said to me. She never said she forgave me because she didn’t think there was anything to forgive me for. And did I really deserve happiness? A small part of me knew that I did, but a bigger part was scared to hope for happiness like that again.
I picked apart our conversation about Tommy. Mrs. Greenberg’s perception was rarely off. But could she really be right about how she thought Tommy felt about me? It felt too good to be true.
Was Tommy my next once-in-a-lifetime kind of love? I was scared to hope that the happiness I had from Tommy would last. I didn’t want to let myself hope for someone to make me happy again only to be disappointed in the end.
Maggie
The empty parking lot stretched before us. Tommy sat in the driver’s seat, and I was still firmly sitting in the passenger seat. He had been trying to convince me to get out and switch places with him for about fifteen minutes now, but I refused to move.
The Chicago Cougars had a few days off from traveling, which meant neither of us had to go to the stadium, and apparently, off days were dangerous for Tommy because it was when he came up with terrible ideas. Today’s terrible idea was finally helping me get back behind the wheel of a car. He had showed up at my house earlier than I would have liked and called me until I came out. When he didn’t tell me where he was taking me once I got in, I knew I was in some serious trouble.
“Maggie, come on,” Tommy said. “You’ve been wanting to do this for a while and now you have the opportunity to.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to let you chicken out.”
“I know.”
Tommy got out of the car and walked over to the passenger side. He opened my door and stepped to the side, staring down at me with expectant eyes. After I realized he really wasn’t going to walk back over to the driver’s side this time, I sighed and pulled myself out of the car.
“There we go.” Tommy slipped into my seat before I could even blink, forcing me to either sit in the back like a loser or face my fears and get behind the wheel again.
Every step I took felt like an eternity, and soon I was looking down at the wheel of Tommy’s car, wondering how something I hadn’t thought twice about at one time was now the most difficult thing in the world. Before I could talk myself out of it, I dropped down into the seat and stared out the windshield like it was the first time I was ever looking out this side of it.
