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Maggie smiled as she approached the trio and stood next to Levi.
As if sensing her there, Levi turned. “Dropped off the present for Mrs. Kim?”
Maggie nodded. She smiled to Soline. “Merry Christmas!”
Soline stepped forward to give Maggie a hug. “Haven’t seen you since our wedding. How have you been?”
“Busy as ever.” What else could Maggie say? She was, in fact, busy as ever. “How’s life in New York?”
“Oh, we moved to Hong Kong.” Soline wove her arm around her husband’s. “Gene has a new job, so we moved.”
Obviously Maggie hadn’t kept up with Soline’s life since they moved out of town. Like the old adage said, “out of sight, out of mind.”
Maggie wondered if it would be the same for her. When she left Atlanta, would she and Levi reconnect in the future? Or would their paths diverge and never reconvene?
“They’re visiting Gene’s family in Duluth for Christmas,” Levi explained.
“Glad you could come to the concert tonight,” Maggie said.
“I heard it was sold out, so credits to Gene for ordering the tickets a month ago so we could come tonight.” Soline looked at Gene lovingly.
College classmates, those two. It had to be God’s will for them to reconnect.
“Well, we’d better go to our seats,” Levi said. “Have a good new year, you two. When is the baby coming?”
Soline’s eyes brightened. “How did you guess? Am I showing already?”
Levi shrugged. “I just guessed. Congratulations to the happy parents. May God bless you both.”
Maggie was glad to see that Levi seemed to have moved on from Soline. Theirs had been such a tumultuous relationship that everyone could see a mile away that it couldn’t have lasted.
Perhaps life was like this, filled with obstacles to happiness.
After a few months of chasing Forsythia, Levi finally had that dinner with her, only to make it a non-starter.
What about me?Beneath her smile, Maggie wondered if she had the courage to ask Levi point blank if there was hope for them together. So far, Levi hadn’t shown any interest beyond treating her as his closest friend.
Closer than Malachi had.
So what did this make them?
In one word: nothing.
“We’re seated in the balcony, so we better find the elevator.” Gene slid his arm around Soline’s waist.
“Bye!” Soline waved as they disappeared into the crowd of concertgoers.
Maggie followed Levi, but people got between them as the announcement came that the doors were closing in twenty minutes. Maggie stepped back to let the crowd through so they weren’t bumping her left and right.
Next thing she knew, a hand grabbed hers. She looked and it was Levi’s. He pulled her forward and they entered the sanctuary.
Right away, Maggie thought of two things to suggest for next year’s Christmas Concert.
Firstly, they needed to go back to numbered tickets. Midtown used to do that when the outreach pastor had been in charge. Then nobody would rush and fight for seats. After Pastor Burns had left to take up a senior pastor position in Texas somewhere, attendance to Christmas events dropped and seats were not filled. Consequently they went to a first-come-first-served arrangement. This one tonight almost resulted in Maggie being stampeded in a church, no less.
Secondly, about two years ago, the church had stopped hosting their Christmas Dinner Theater when the chef de cuisine lost his wife and fell into grief and was unable to work half the time. Eventually, he chose to retire, and they hired Chef Forsythia one year later. Maggie thought she’d find some time to talk to Forsythia about reviving the Christmas Dinner Theater—if the chef would be willing to cook for five hundred people per evening. They could spread the dinner theater over three weekends as before.
What was old could be made new again.
