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When her phone vibrated, she jumped, too lost in her own thoughts to have expected it.
“Hello?” she asked, hopeful and nervous when she saw that it was Katie.
“Hi.” Katie’s voice was barely more than a breath—a soft, warm, wishful thing. She sounded like she hadn’t spoken to Maggie in days.
Maggie felt like she hadn’t.
“Is everything okay?” she asked cautiously, wondering about the quiet voice.
“Yeah. I was just wondering where you are right now?”
Maggie’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I’m just at home…”
“Great.” If she hadn’t sounded so genuinely delighted, Maggie would have worried. “Can you get to the hospital in the next half an hour?”
And Maggie was worried again. “Yeah, of course,” she said, leaping up. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I just have a break coming up and I want to see you.”
“Oh.” Maggie froze, her whole body feeling like it was melting over a deliciously warm heat. “I… want to see you too.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Katie’s tone implied she was wincing. “We haven’t had much time lately…”
“It’s okay. I get it. Your mom needed to see you.”
She sighed and Maggie could hear the complicated swirl of emotions she was pretty sure Katie had been dealing with since the moment her family showed up. “Yeah.”
“But, I’ll be there in half an hour and then I get to see you,” Maggie said, desperate to cheer Katie up again.
She laughed. “I can’t wait.” She cleared her throat. “But, for now, I should get back to this paperwork.”
Maggie winced. She’d been so happy to hear from Katie that she hadn’t fully pieced together that she was working. “See you soon.”
“Not soon enough,” Katie called before hanging the call up.
Maggie felt herself blushing as she rushed to get ready. Part of her was sure Katie was just being funny and friendly. The other part of her couldn’t help but wonder…
She pushed the thought out of her head and got ready in record time, basically racing to the hospital. It was embarrassing how much she needed to see Katie. And to see her without Irene being around. Maggie liked Irene well enough, but she liked Katie infinitely more, and, if she went the rest of her life without having to have another conversation with Irene about what Katie’s type was, and when she might be ready to move out of the city, it wouldn’t be long enough.
“Right on time,” Katie’s familiar, happy voice called as Maggie practically ran at the hospital doors.
She stumbled to a halt, looking towards the voice, searching for the one person in the world she wanted to see.
There, leaning against one of the columns, was Katie. Exhausted, happy, bundled up Katie.
Maggie knew just from a glance that it wasn’t work that was exhausting her right now. She was emotionally exhausted. Katie was incredibly good at looking after herself emotionally when it came to everyone but her family and Maggie could see the toll it was taking on her.
She wasn’t even all that bad at it with her family, she just worried about upsetting them, so she kept things bottled up inside sometimes, she danced around the truth looking for a softer way to say things. Maggie was hardly one to judge. She was hours away from a flight she didn’t want to take, all because she couldn’t tell her family she didn’t want to spend Christmas with them, that it didn’t make sense to spend Christmas with them anymore.
She idealized a world where everything was simpler, and everyone said what they were feeling, but that wasn’t reality. Reality was wishing you could and knowing that doing so would unleash emotions you had no way to control, ones that would be turned back around on you. And it was the turning back against you part Maggie struggled with most. It was the part she was certain Katie struggled with the most. It was probably the part most people struggled with. Upsetting or disappointing people was hard, made harder by a history of knowing what those people did with that disappointment.
But she wasn’t disappointed now.
She grinned wide and giddy at Katie. Even exhausted she was perfect—the most perfect person Maggie had ever known. Perfection, on a person, wasn’t about not having flaws or never making mistakes, it was having them and still being the best thing in the world to someone. At least that was how Maggie felt with Katie, and she wasn’t about to reassess that view for anyone.
As she got closer, Katie reached out a hand, gripping the cuff of Maggie’s coat, and pulling her in for a tight, lingering hug.
Maggie went willingly. Her arms encircled Katie, holding her close, breathing her in. She’d missed everything about Katie—her warmth, her laughter, her scent, the stories she told, that twinkle in her eye.Everything. So, while Katie was willing to hold her like that, Maggie simply relaxed into it and enjoyed every second of it. She didn’t even care if someone saw them, or if they made sarcastic comments—she could only imagine the field day Rea would have if she saw them.
