Page 101 of Songs of Summer

“It’s ketchup around here, not catsup. You were so close, though!”

He took her hand and led her off the dock. The whole group walked in silence to the Bay Harbor Market, wrapped in their thoughts.

It had been some week.

Track 51

Unwritten

Maggie

From the momentMaggie stepped off the ferry, everything felt surreal. On the one hand, she felt completely comfortable. Since she and Matt had been faking a relationship for days, it was just more of the same. But on the other, for the first time in her life, her future felt unwritten. Her belly was brimming with butterflies at the thought of being alone, truly alone, with Matt. When she pictured it, she couldn’t stop smiling—and blushing. She pressed her lips together, worried that she looked like a loon, until she glanced over at Matt, who had an even bigger grin on his face. She relaxed and smiled some more.

As much as being alone with Matt was all she could think about, she was happy that it wouldn’t occur for hours. The day was still celebratory, wedding-wise, and would be until the six o’clock ferry when the newlyweds would receive their grand send-off, along with Dylan, Bea, Paul, and Veronica, who were all headed to the airport.

Between now and then, she found herself waiting with bated breath for Matt’s every touch. His hand on the small ofher back when holding open the door for her, his finger gliding over her lip where a bit of errant catsup, excuse me, ketchup, lay. Right now, his foot was entwined with hers on the beach. Pinkies linked as well, they lay on a blanket surrounded by his family—and hers, she remembered, hers too. How had her life changed so dramatically in a week?

She thought of Jason and felt guilty for having not reached out since he left. She sat up and checked her phone. He was already in the air, but she texted anyway.

You are the very best. I’ll love you, always.

She sent it feeling awful that she had nearly forgotten about him over the last few hours, even though those had been his instructions.

“You’re starting to burn,” Dylan warned, eyeing Maggie over the cover of the novel she was engrossed in. She tossed a can of spray sunscreen at Matt to do the honors.

“I got you.” Matt smiled, holding her ponytail out of the way. She arched her back as the cool spray shocked her. He began rubbing it in, gently and methodically. She tried her very best to play it cool.

In hindsight, she had been extremely conscious of Matt’s touch since they’d first met, although she hadn’t allowed herself to entertain thoughts beyond kissing him. Which, thanks to the bratty girls at the bakery, was behind them. Now his touch had a domino effect that went way farther than her lips.

If the thought of it was too much to bear, what would the reality be? She took the can from him.

“I got it from here, thanks,” she managed—barely.

“You OK?” Matt asked quietly.

“Yes, yes.” Even with the two yeses, she wasn’t very convincing.

He softly brushed a wayward curl aside and whispered in her ear, “I know this is weird. We’ll take it slow,” thinking he was reading her mind. If he only knew that her mind was ripping his clothes off.

In the hour before the evening ferry, she and Matt sat on the back deck drinking cold lemonade and playing gin while everyone else flew by in a mad rush of packing and showering. Matt had won three games in a row, and she didn’t even care. She was completely in her head.

“Maggie! I just picked up a jack, and you threw another one down—gin.”

She barely reacted.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Later,” she confessed, not knowing if he would understand what she meant. It could have been,I’ll tell you later—or,I’m thinking about later.

“I know we have put this all out of order.”

He got it.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips.

“We can just do more of this…later.”

He kissed her again, pushing the cards to the floor and pulling her close to him. His lips tasted salty from the ocean air, his tongue cold and sweet from his last sip of lemonade. Her breath caught in her chest, and she could swear her heart skipped a beat.

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