Chapter Text
Maeve hoisted her suitcase over the curb and onto the sidewalk and thanked the driver with a wave as he pulled away from Anna’s house. It was a splurge to call a car but she had weighed the hefty fare against the cost to her sanity of 6 or so more hours at the airport after a day of flying and a night of waiting for a severely delayed flight and decided she deserved this small luxury. She knew she could count on Aimee or Anna to give her a lift from the bus station like they had planned to do hours ago, but there was no way she was waking them up at 2 in the morning for her sake.
As her stiff legs brought her to the front door and she put her key into the lock, she gave a sigh of relief to finally be home. After moving in with Anna, she had begun thinking about the idea of home that she’d never really had before, and her trip to America gave her the experience of being homesick much sooner than she’d expected. After a long day of trying to just muddle through the inconveniences of international travel, she felt so eager to return to a place where she was wanted and loved instead of to an empty caravan. She shivered as she removed her coat and scarf and hung them by the door inside, but she let the thought of her family and friends warm her instead.
As she dropped onto the couch to remove her boots, she was a tight coil of emotion just starting to unwind—relief, exhaustion, anticipation, and an undercurrent of fear as realized she’d now be diving back into all the things she’d by necessity put off during her trip. Things she had imagined for a long time that she would now just…have. What it would be like to have her sister close by, have a home, a family to rely on, with no more caravan park and no more scraping together rent or food money.
And—the deepest pit of nerves in her stomach interjected—what it would be like to finally have Otis.
She didn’t know what she would say to him, even though she had imagined their reunion often overseas. She’d close her eyes to try and drift off to sleep on her borrowed bed but instead she’d see him there on that chilly day last fall outside of his house. Behind her eyes she would play out the image of him shuffling down eagerly to greet her in his characteristic jacket, and she’d remember the way he met her with a casual kiss. Her mind would zoom in until she saw just his face, his blue eyes full of emotion that shifted so transparently, so earnestly, from joyful to concerned to proud to tearful, as they both tried to keep the sadness out during that bittersweet moment of her departure.
And then she would try to picture their reunion, always in different places—perhaps his place or hers, maybe at school, maybe at the bus station or the airport. But he’d always look just like he did that day she left—same clothes, same smile, same awkward downward glances at his hightops as they both tried and failed to sufficiently express what they meant to each other in words. In her mind, they’d open their mouths but nothing would come out. She was a writer and she could express almost anything she knew in words. But she didn’t know love, didn’t understand it. She just knew she felt it.
Sometimes, when they had been flirting relentlessly over text or over a phone call that day, she would imagine herself being bolder than she actually was. They would lock eyes as they saw each other for the first time in months and he would smile sweetly and open his mouth to speak. Before he could even let a “Hi” tumble out, she would pin him to the nearest wall, and shut him up soundly, with no thought of who was watching. She would lead him off somewhere and let her body do the talking before there was a chance for words to fail her. At least she understood this feeling as she felt it crawl down her abdomen — and she knew exactly what to do about it.
And sometimes, especially on the bad days when she felt like a failure or they missed each other’s calls, she would imagine a much different reunion. She’d go to see him and he’d be wearing something totally un-Otis, like he did earlier that year, and he’d have forgotten she was coming back that day altogether. He’d smile and say something appropriate like ‘welcome back’ with all the charm she missed but none of the feeling. Then, he’d be off somewhere more important with a wave and she’d be left standing by the cavernous valley his house overlooked, with a hollow in her heart that could have only been filled by a person he just wasn’t anymore.
In her borrowed bed in America, she’d snap open her eyes to erase the image. Then she’d close them again like she did when they first kissed and she’d remember the feel of him, forehead on hers, lips connecting, hands searching and she’d play back the desperate way he had said “I don’t want to lose you again”. She’d remember their equally breathless confessions in the back garden and how she could see through to him so clearly in that moment as he stood bare to her, with his heart as open as she always knew it to be. As she played it all back again in her mind to that last moment before she left, she would wrap the bed cover around herself tightly, imagining their tight embrace that night at his house, and she would let the memory warm her body until she was asleep.
Now that she was actually seeing him again soon, about to actually experience their long anticipated reunion, she tried to focus on the words he had said to her on their last chat over the phone in America. She had admitted that she missed him and couldn’t wait to see him again and he had replied, “I can’t wait to see you, either. But I would wait. As long as I had to.”
No, she wasn’t really concerned anymore about Otis Milburn’s intentions.
She yawned from her current place on the couch. Her mind processing the reality of being back and seeing Otis again had almost made her forget how fucking exhausted she was.
She was so fucking tired that it wasn’t until she went to arrange her discarded boots near the front door that she noticed something was off.
There were three other pairs of shoes in the entryway. The first was the tiny pair with velcro straps she recognized from her frequent struggles to get Elsie to wear them on the way out of the door. Arranged neatly to their left were Anna’s stylish but comfy clogs. Then, her eyes landed on the last set: A rogue pair of high top sneakers neatly placed at the end of the line of shoes. She could almost hear them squeaking down the hallway as Otis rushed to a clinic appointment.
It couldn’t be.
She glanced around the entryway to prove herself wrong until she noticed something lying in the grass outside the window to the front porch. Pulling back the sheer curtain to get a better look, she finally saw it: the discarded bike. The combination was unmistakable. Her hand went to her mouth and her eyes shot over to the hallway entrance that led to the bedrooms. Otis was here.