Page 105 of Even Beneath the Stars

"You're alive… I was getting worried."

I turn. Maggie sits in the alcove hunched over one of her miniature worlds. The overhead lamp catches her pink hair, making it glow.

I blink, sure I'm hallucinating. "What are—it's your night off."

She doesn't look up from the tiny building she's painting. "I didn't want to leave Finn." A pause. "Or you."

"Rita's supposed to be—"

"Yeah, I know." Maggie cuts me off, finally meeting my eyes. "I still didn't want to leave you guys. I told her she could go home."

Heat crawls up my neck. After the disaster at lunch, after puking in the bushes while she waited with Finn… Driving my drunk-ass home.She stayed.

For us. Forme.

I lean against the wall, suddenly unsteady for reasons that have nothing to do with my hangover. Her kindness, even after dealing with me at my worst, makes me want to crawl under a rock. Preferably a boulder. Hell, a monolith would be good.

"I'm so fucking sorry, Maggs." My voice comes out rough.

Maggie laughs. "You already said that about fifty times."

"I did?" My brain feels like it's wrapped in cotton. I slide down the wall to sit across from her.

"Yep." She dips her tiny brush in paint. "First time was in the lineup at the McDonald's drive-thru. Then again when you insisted on ordering sixty chicken nuggets to 'make it up to me for being such a dick.' Then in the car. Then when we got you up to your room." She counts them off on paint-stained fingers. "Oh, and about five times when you were half-asleep and kept slurring about ruining our third date."

I press my palms against my eyes, mortified. "Sixty nuggets?" I shake my head. "You had to listen to me barf up a bottle of whiskey and two chocolate eclairs, and drive my drunk-ass home when I was supposed to take you on an epic date—and I got yousixty chicken nuggetsas an apology?"

"Actually, I talked you down to twenty. Although, you did make me promise to give some to Finn because, and I quote, 'he deserves better nuggets than me.'"

"Jesus." The shame burns hotter. I remember fragments now—Maggie's steady presence as she helped me stumble up to my room, her quiet understanding when I couldn't even look her in the eye.

"For what it's worth," she adds softly, "you didn't ruin anything. Well, except maybe those hedges."

"And lunch."

"Nooo." Her eyes go wide, and she shakes her head. "Lunch was already a disaster before you showed up."

I tip my head back against the wall, my eyes closing on a groan. "I'm so sorry."

"You're not going to insist on buying me another twenty nuggets, are you?" She laughs, and I chuckle, opening my eyes to meet hers. She tosses a ball of clay at me.

I catch it and roll it between my fingers. "I'll get you anything you want."

"Anything?"

"Pretty much." I'm not even joking, I would build a spaceship out of her modelling supplies right now, fly to the moon and bring it back if that's what she wanted. And it would still be less than she deserves for not bailing on my ass after what I've put her through.

"I want to have our third date tonight."

"What?Tonight?" My brows lift, and a soft, confused chuckle escapes me. "But Finn—"

She shakes her head. "We don't have to leave the house."

"I'm not cheaping out on our third date." I lean forward slightly, resting my forearms on my knees, fiddling with the clay ball. "I had this… thing planned. In Boston."

"Boston?" Her eyebrows shoot up.

"Yeah, there's this place… it's like an escape room, but bigger. A whole warehouse converted into an abandoned dystopian city maze thing." I rub the back of my neck. "I thought it would feel like you were inside one of your dystopian worlds."

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