Halfway to You(26)

“You’re ballsy, you know that?” He shimmied his shorts over his hips, and they dropped to the sand. I didn’t look at his front when he lay down, but I did get a solid view of his extremely pale backside once he settled on his stomach.

I held up my hand as if to block the sun. “It’s blinding!”

“Jesus Christ,” Todd said, looking at Keith and then quickly looking away. “Why am I friends with you?”

“You don’t have a choice, bud,” Keith said.

Todd threw the sunscreen at him. “Put some sunblock on that thing before it bakes.”

“Can you help me?” Keith teased.

Todd cuffed him on the back of the head, and all three of us laughed, good and loud and deep. Tipping my head back, I closed my eyes, and triumph filled my chest.





MAGGIE


San Juan Island, Washington State, USA

Monday, January 8, 2024

“Did you ever think it was risky to befriend two strange men and spend so much time alone with them?” Maggie asks.

The weather outside is wet and blustery; when Maggie arrived this morning, Ann already had a fire going. Every so often, the house shudders with a pattering gust of wind and rain. From her wingback chair, Maggie can’t even see the ocean; it’s as if a gray curtain has been drawn all around the house, over the windows.

Ann’s eyes narrow over the rim of her mug; she sips her coffee before answering. “For one, I was never truly alone with them, at least not early on. We were often in public places.” She sets her mug down and dabs at her mouth with a napkin. “More importantly, they never gave me a reason to feel unsafe.”

“Even topless?”

“Even topless.”

Going to a nude beach in a foreign country with two men she’d collectively known for less than a day . . . Maggie isn’t sure she could do something like that. It’s a quality she admires about Ann—the way her search for connection often resulted in a great experience, a great story. No matter how fearful Ann claims she was, she still acted. “Were you always so trusting?”

Ann sits back, uncrossing her legs and recrossing them the other way. “I never would’ve described myself as trusting,” she says. “But Keith and Todd were so obviously harmless.”

Maggie nods. Keith was a warm sunbeam, through and through—first one in the pool, first one to suggest sundaes for dinner, first one to plan just one more camping trip before the summer ended.

“Did you ever meet Todd?” Ann asks it casually—Todd was Keith’s best friend, after all—but her interest seems pointed.

“Yes,” Maggie answers. “Once. Briefly, when I was a child.”

Ann’s expression is flat, save for an intense, sparkling focus in her amber eyes. “How did he seem to you?”

Maggie’s memory of Todd—fuzzy and unfocused—is from a family barbecue when she was little. She had no idea who he was at the time, didn’t know Ann existed. Maggie was sitting on the porch eating a Popsicle, her fingers sticky. A man showed up late and came through their back gate. Many adult eyes trained on him as he walked across the lawn. Keith was by the grill and dropped his tongs with a clatter when he saw him; they embraced heartily, clapping each other’s backs.

“Maggie, come meet my friend Todd, here,” Keith said.

She stood and walked over, still clutching her Popsicle. Up close, Maggie saw that Todd had the kind, creased eyes of a sad person.

He smiled, though, crouching down to her level. “Nice to meet you, Maggie.”

It seemed strange, meeting some random man. He seemed nice enough, but she wanted to go back to the potluck table and nab a few chocolate chip cookies. Half her Popsicle had already melted down her hand.

Todd seemed to sense her impatience; he stood, his face dropping back into a frown.

Keith patted her shoulder, and she craned her neck up at her uncle; his red hair was still dripping wet from practicing cannonballs with her in the pool. “You can run along, Maggie.”

She didn’t need to be told twice. She darted off toward her father, who was standing by the food table. She’d never seen his fists balled like that before, the knobby whites of his knuckles showing, but when she threw her arms around his leg, Bob’s hands relaxed, and he ruffled her wet hair. He handed her two cookies folded into a napkin, crouching down to her level to whisper, “Don’t tell your mother,” with a wink.

Todd didn’t stay long. His hunched shoulders left the party just as timidly as they arrived. It wasn’t until years later that Keith told her who the man was, that she had met Todd Langley, lover to her new favorite author, Ann Fawkes. She flexed those bragging rights on her friends at school, inflating the story far beyond what it actually was. The truth was that she didn’t remember much of Todd at all. The most vivid thing about that afternoon, in her mind’s eye, was not the semifamous stranger but the chewy cookies that her dad gave her.

Maggie answers Ann’s question. “He seemed nice and kind of sad. But that’s different. I was a child. I didn’t have to watch out for myself like you did.”

“The more you travel, the more you realize how kind most people are. I’m not saying I was the wisest twenty-five-year-old, but it never crossed my mind to worry.”

“I’ve been wondering—I mean, I have to ask.” Maggie sets down her mug. “Why didn’t Keith ask you out himself? Was there ever any . . . interest . . . there?”