Page 86 of Goalie and the Girl Next Door
“Did she ever teach you to cook anything other than lasagna?” she asks and I laugh.
“Ah,mademoiselle, I can cook anything.”
She asks more about my exploits in the kitchen and I perhaps oversell myself—soufflés, coq au vin, the time I tried to make croissants from scratch and nearly cried into the butter block. She laughs and makes quiet sounds of “mmm.”
Her expression grows serious. “I never talk about this,” she says, eyes on her fork, not me. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually said the whole story out loud.”
I sit a little straighter. The evening air has cooled, but the twinkle lights above us sway in the breeze, casting golden movement across her face. I wait for her.
“I followed someone here. To Maple Falls, I mean.”
My stomach knots.
She keeps her voice level, like she’s reading a weather report. “In retrospect, we were never serious. It was that sort of thing where everyone assumes you’ll end up together. He was my high school sweetheart, if you can call it that.”
Marcy looks at me, and her gaze is bracing. She’s daring me to flinch.
“I came out here because his team was playing the Ice Breakers. I thought maybe if I showed up, if I took that leap, he’d see I was ready for that next step in our relationship. That I wasn’t afraid of his hockey career. I thought he’d finally seeme.” She laughs, but there’s no joy in it. “Instead, he told me I needed to stop clinging to certainty. He’d always said I should do something brave for once, and I’d thought that was it.”
My jaw tightens and I grip my water glass.
“I thought coming here would be enough.” Her voice doesn’t shake. She’s already cried this story dry. “I took a bus across the country. I don’t fly. I’m petrified of it. But I came here. Turns out, I was never going to be enough for him.”
I want to reach across the table and hold her hand. Then, I want to find that man and tell him exactly how much courage it takes to start over, to rebuild a life alone in a place you don’t know, where no one is waiting.
He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t see her at all.
She exhales slowly. “I gave up on relationships after that,” she says, brushing an invisible crumb off the table. “When I got to Maple Falls, I was so focused on building a new life. I had a degree, a laptop, and four pencil skirts. That’s it. No money. No plan. No backup. Just this idea that maybe if I could make a life here on my own, I’d stop feeling like a cautionary tale.”
She says it so plainly, like it isn’t one of the most courageous things I’ve ever heard.
“I didn’t even realize how long it had been until Angel told me to wear something that wasn’t covered in ranch life.”
I sit forward, arms resting on the table, and say the only thing that feels remotely worthy.
“Marcy, I don’t think I’ve ever admired anyone more.”
She looks up sharply.
“I mean it,” I continue. “A woman who started over with nothing but ambition and four pencil skirts? That’s a legend where I come from. He’s the coward who couldn’t see the strength it takes to cross the country—on a bus, no less—just to give your relationship a try. He didn’t deserve you for a second.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it again. Her eyes shine and she blinks fast as she reaches for her glass.
I pretend not to notice.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
We talk for another hour—about nothing, about everything. Our families. Our first jobs. The meals that defined us and the fears that have followed us.
With each story, I watch something in Marcy loosen. Her shoulders relax. Her hands, which she always folds neatly in her lap or clasps together, start to move as she speaks. She gestures. She laughs. She teases me about the way I say “croissant” and I tease her right back about how she cutely butchers it. Her guard doesn’t drop all at once. It peels away like the delicate layers of a pastry, one truth at a time.
Angel, bless her, moves like a ghost—clearing plates, serving warm peach cobbler with vanilla cream, never interrupting. At some point, the lights in the ranch house dim.
I glance at my watch hoping time has stopped, because I don’t want this to end. The night feels stitched together from a thread that’s rare and fleeting. One wrong move, and it might dissolve.
Marcy finishes her dessert and sets her fork down gently. I swallow hard.
“I know dinner’s winding down,” I say, forcing the words past my jaw that suddenly feels nervous. “But I don’t want to leave yet. I know it sounds… I don’t know. Over-eager. But I don’t want to lose this feeling.”
