Page 100 of Come Fly with Me

“I told her everything.”

“What?”

“I told her everything,” Maggie says again.

“As in?”

“As in how we met, how we ended up married, and why it all ended.”

“Did you tell her when it ended?” I ask. “How we literally have not been married since six weeks after we got married. That it’s been over a year? That we haven’t even seen each other in all that time?” My words are said in a rush, as though if I say it quickly, I can make it all happen quicker.

Maggie exhales again, but it’s different this time. “Yes, Jake,” she says. “I told her our marriage lasted a grand total of six weeks and that it never should’ve happened in the first place. I also told her that I hadn’t seen you since you kicked me out and that you’ve been trying to divorce me ever since. That up until two weeks ago, I’d been the one refusing to sign the papers.”

Now it’s me exhaling, my body sinking into the couch in relief and exhaustion. “Thank you,” I breathe out.

Something rustles through the line, and I hear a male voice murmuring before Maggie responds, her hand obviously covering the mouthpiece, so I don’t hear whatever it is she’s saying.

“Is that him?” I ask. “The guy you’ve…?”

“Yeah,” she says, and I can tell she’s smiling now. “Michael,” she adds.

“Does he know you’re talking to me?”

“He knows everything about you, Jake,” she replies.

I nod, even though she can’t see me. I feel so weirdly confused right now, about all of this.

“Why didn’t you tell Taylor about me?”

I take a deep breath, knowing that’s the million fucking dollar question. “I don’t know,” I eventually say. “I fucked up though, big time.”

“Do you regret it?” she asks, her voice changing now. “Getting married?”

I shove a hand through my hair, knowing there’s no easy way to answer her question. “Yes and no,” I eventually say, even knowing it’s not going to be what she wants to hear. “I regret we did something without thinking about what it meant,” I add, not wanting to hurt her despite what’s happened. “But I don’t regret what us being together did for each other.”

“No?”

“No,” I repeat, shaking my head. “We were both a mess, Maggie, we needed help and in a fucked up way, we gave that to each other. I’m not sure…” I pause, taking another deep breath. “I’m not sure I’d be here; not sure I’d be the person I am without that.”

I can almost hear the relief down the phone. I can tell she’s smiling when she says, “Yeah, me too.”

“Thank you for talking to her,” I say. “And for letting me know.”

Maggie laughs. “Yeah, I probably owed you that much.”

“You think?” I can’t help but ask, but we both laugh.

“You going to go and get her back then?” she asks. “I get the feeling she’s gonna forgive you.”

I feel myself smiling, my body relaxing a little more as Maggie’s words sink in. “Yeah?”

She laughs again. “Yeah, pretty sure she’s crazy about you actually,” she says. “A feeling I might be a little bit familiar with.”

After Maggie and I hang up, I throw my phone back on the couch, my head falling back as I stare up at the ceiling and try to make sense of everything that’s happened today. As weird and strange as this whole thing is, I think Taylor talking to Maggie is the best thing to happen in this whole fucked up mess. Because while I know she wants to believe me, believe it when I tell her that our marriage is over, that it never even really existed in the first place, I also know that she’s never going to be fully convinced until she hears it from both sides.

And now that’s happened.

“Fuck,” I say to myself, standing as I walk back into the kitchen to grab another beer.

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