Chapter Four - Maddie
On the way home from my old house, I swing by Plumeria’s office. I don’t know why I do it. I just… I just need someone to talk to, I guess. And even though I know she’s probably got clients and has no time for me, I figure it’s almost lunch time and, well, what can it hurt, right?
Her door is closed when I get there. She shares her office with other therapists, who all share a receptionist, and even though I don’t really want to wait, the receptionist is so certain Plumeria will want to see me after her current appointment, I relent and take a seat in the waiting room and thumb through an old copy of Cosmo.
Fifteen minutes later her door opens and she leads a patient out. She sees me but says nothing until her patient has left.
“Maddie,” she says, walking towards me once she’s free. “This is an unexpected surprise.”
“Sorry,” I say, standing up and fidgeting with the hem of my t-shirt. “I was in the neighborhood and—” But I sigh, then shrug, then tell her the truth. “Do you have time? I’d really like to have a chat.”
“Uh... sure. Have a seat in my office while I grab my lunch and we can catch up while I eat.”
I do as she says and a few minutes later she joins me, not sitting at her desk, but next to me on the long comfortable couch.
“So what’s up?” she asks. “Everything OK?”
“Well,” I say. “Yes and no. I’m really not sure.” Even though there’s a lot I could tell her about Carlos, and Logan, and the whole undercover DEA thing down in Mexico, none of that is what’s troubling me now. So I don’t even bother. Instead I say, “You know how I was stuck?”
Plumeria is chewing her sandwich, nodding her head at me.
“Well… I feel like I’m unstuck.”
“That’s great,” she says, swallowing her food. “I’m so happy to hear that. What’s changed?”
“Tyler?” I say, unsure. “The guy I was holding responsible for Scotty, even though he had nothing to do with it. Mostly him.”
“So you’ve got a new guy?”
“Yeah, he’s someone both Scotty and I knew. You remember him, right? Tyler Morgan?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Sure. Went off to the military?”
“That’s him. Well, he and I are seeing each other now.”
“That’s great. Right?” She looks at me.
“It is,” I agree. “But…” I sigh, then take a deep breath. “But things are going well.”
“And?” she asks, after several seconds of silence from me.
“And I was living with these other girls, you know, while I was struggling.”
“OK.”
“And one of them is also doing well. She moved back to Kansas or Iowa or wherever she’s from. You know, to give her old life a second chance. But the other two friends, well, they’re kinda stuck, ya know?”
“So you feel guilty? Because you and this friend found something good and they haven’t?”
“Exactly,” I say. “Yes. I feel like maybe I don’t deserve all this sudden good fortune and I’m not better than they are, and yet… here I am. Tyler Morgan is a millionaire now.”
“Is he?” Plu says.
I nod. “Yeah. Like fuckin’ loaded.”
“Hmmm,” she says.
“What’s that mean?” I ask. “Hmmm?”
“Well,” she says. “You feel lucky.”
“Yes!” I say. “And luck, ya know… it’s just…”
“Luck,” she finishes for me.
“Exactly.”
“And that feels unfair. That you’ve found something good and your friends, who deserve luck just as much as you, haven’t.”
“Yes.”
“That’s called guilt. You need to appreciate that love happens to people who look for it. Who accept it. You went looking for things. Never content to stay still, never satisfied with your sadness. And even if you didn’t know it, you were making your own luck when you did this. Your friends need to do that too. The one who left town, to go give her old life a second chance. Where would she be if she never took that risk?”
“Here,” I say. “Stuck with them.”
“So she made her luck as well.”
“But nothing about me has changed, Plu. I’m still the same mess I was a few months ago. Now I just have a partner in crime, so to speak. Someone to be lost with.”
She smiles at me, like that was the exact right thing to say.
“It’s just luck,” I insist. “Tyler came home, we found each other by accident, and then… and then…”
“And then you both gave it a chance.”
“Is that all there is to it?”
“Sometimes good things happen, Maddie. For no fathomable reason. Just like the bad things. You just accept it and move on. That’s all you can do.”
“But what about my friends?”
“You want to help them?”
“If I can,” I say.
“Can you?” she asks.
Which makes me sigh. “I dunno.”
“Well, not everyone wants to be helped.” She tilts her head at me, the way she does, and continues. “I recall a certain someone who came into my office not so long ago who refused all help. From every direction.”
I nod, smiling a little.
“So whatever it was that made you change your mind… that’s what those friends need to find as well.”
“But I don’t know what that was.”
“Don’t you?”
“I mean, sure. It was Tyler. But—”
She shakes her head at me. “It wasn’t Tyler, Maddie. It was you.”
I think about that the whole drive back to Evan and Robert’s house, but it makes no sense. Love changed me. I can’t find love for people. I mean, sure, I did decide to give Tyler a chance, but that was because he and I truly are meant to be together.
So it still makes no sense.
But I have this feeling of dread hanging over me now. A feeling of foreboding. I’m sure that I can write some of it off to the fact that my life has been totally flipped upside down in the last couple of months, and I can write some of it off to the fact that I’m still really un-used to feeling safe. And happy.
But I think mostly it’s the feeling that I’m starting to get all the things I feel like I’ve wanted in my life – love, companionship, someone who really gets me – and I’m worried that the rug is just gonna get pulled out from under me again. Because that’s what happens to people, right? They get comfortable, and then they get complacent, and then, bam, the universe sucker-punches them.
I don’t know. I feel like I’m thinking too much. Maybe being around Tyler is rubbing off on me in ways I didn’t expect. Or maybe it’s just that, like I told Plu, I still feel guilty.
How do I help my friends? How do I make them keep climbing? Keep hoping? Keep looking for whatever it is that’s missing in their lives?
I dunno. But they helped me. They might not know it, but they did.
So I’m gonna figure it out. I owe them that much, at least.
No, I feel good. I do. I know I do.
I just don’t know why my knuckles are white as I grip the steering wheel.