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Chapter Thirty-Nin e

Xavier

I jolt awake, my head pounding, sprawled on top of my covers, fully dressed. The room spins as I fumble for my phone on the nightstand. The bright screen burns my eyes.

8:20 P.M. Saturday.

"Shit." I bolt upright, instantly regretting the sudden movement as nausea hits. Saturday night. Maggie. We were supposed to go on our third date today at five.

My stomach lurches as fragments of the day crash back. My mother by the hot tub in that ridiculous bikini, practically preening for my friends. Seb's house. The burn of 25-year-old Macallan. Then lunch…

Oh God. Lunch.

And Maggie… Fuuuuuck. Maggie was there.

Her and Finn waiting while I lost my dignity all over the Welsford's prize-winning cedar hedges.

I groan and fall back against my pillows. Instead of giving Maggie an epic third date, I gave her front row seats to the Xavier Rockwell self-destruction show.

My phone buzzes with a text from Seb.

Seb

u alive bro ?

I type back.

Xave

All good

Such a lie. Nothing is good. I just royally fucked up the best thing that's ever happened to me.

I lie in shame, marinating in the consequences of trying to drink away reality, wondering how the hell I'm going to face Maggie after this—because as much as I hate to admit it, my father is right. I really am a freaking embarrassment. And, as I'm sure Maggie is realizing right now, a total disappointment.

Evidently, I'm a pig-headed bastard too, because I'm still not prepared to let her go. Even though I know the right thing to do is accept that a girl like Maggie LeClair deserves better than getting dragged down by a guy like me and my mess of a life, I want to beg her for another shot. I want a chance to make it up to her. To take her on a perfect third date.

To have that kiss.

A hot shower helps clear my head, although shame still sits heavy in my gut. I'm thankful, at least, I won't need to face anyone else tonight. For a few hours anyway, my shame is my own. Maggie has the night off. Only Rita to face, who already thinks I'm a spectacular waste of space.

I pull on clean sweats and a T-shirt, desperate for food to soak up the lingering alcohol. Heading through the hallway toward the stairs, a familiar voice stops me cold.

"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. For me.

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 you sixty chicken nuggets as 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."

Maggie brings both hands up to cover her mouth, doing that thing that makes her look like some church lady getting the latest neighborhood scandal at her weekly bridge club. She gasps. "Oh my God, Xavier… you are seriously the sweetest!"

I let out a laugh that comes out more bitter than I mean it to. "Yeah, I'm a real catch." My brow furrows as I remember exactly how not sweet I was today. "Nothing says romance like watching a guy fertilize a boxwood hedge with the contents of his stomach. "

"Stop." She points her tiny paintbrush at me. "We already established your nugget-based apology was more than sufficient."

I drop my head and shake it slowly as I huff out another low laugh.

"So," Maggie drops her paintbrush in a small glass of water. "How are you feeling? You up for a date-night in?" Her lips quirk up. "Or are you permanently fused to that spot on the floor for the foreseeable future?"

I bark out a laugh, running a hand through my still-damp hair. "Think I can manage to relocate. A couple slices of toast and a Gatorade and I'll be good to go."

"You sure?" She grins playfully, standing and taking a few steps toward me. "Because that hedge took quite a beating earlier."

"The hedge had it coming." I scoff, peering up at her. "Looking all perfect and pompous and high and mighty."

Maggie snorts. "Damn pompous hedges."

I take her extended hand, and she helps pull me to my feet.

"So, what exactly does a date-night in entail? Tell me what you have in mind, LeClair, and whatever you want, I'll do my best to make it happen."

She leans in, pulling me closer with her hand still clasped in mine, until our faces are just inches apart. I can feel her breath brush against my jaw; see the constellation of freckles dusting her nose and cheeks.

She blinks.

"I want the moon."