Another night Nick had come to see him backstage before he went on. He’d handed him a package. “That’s for Maggie,” he’d said mysteriously. “Go find her.”
Nick had been clearing out some old stuff and found a children’s book that he’d held onto. It was The Little Engine That Could. The tale of a blue railway engine that had to try and pull a long train over a hill, all the time the little engine kept repeating the words “I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can”. Alone in his dressing room after the performance, Alex’s heart thundered when he opened the package and found the worn copy of the book with his father’s inscription inside. “You can! All my love, always, Dad”. Holding the book felt bizarre. He realized that there must have been a time when his parents had wanted to get it right. Even when their personal lives crumbled, determination had driven them to succeed, and despite everything else they’d passed that determination on to Nick and Alex.
Nick and Cassandra had been pestering him about New York. His mother kept sending him texts saying things like “How smitten were you with Maggie? Do something about it!” Nick was blunt. The last one from him read, “You wouldn’t know a good thing if it walked up and grabbed you by the codpiece!”
He had people who cared about him, but they didn’t need him like they once did. Maggie had become the one person who mattered to him most in the world and he’d closed his heart to her magic. Her belief in him was what had pushed him to nail Hamlet. All she’d needed in return was his belief in her love and he’d let her leave, too afraid of what ifs to see that he was wrong.
What if he could take her by the hand and walk forward into the future, no looking back?
Everything in Alex’s universe had clicked into place and all he wanted was to see Maggie again. She’d got so deep under his skin that she was like a part of him, a piece of himself that he couldn’t live without, like his beating heart. He’d requisitioned the stage manager’s Smart car, shoe-horned himself into it, and set off for Cornwall. He only had twenty-four hours to find her before he had to be back in theater-land.
Emotional paralysis set in as Alex strode along the beach. What if she didn’t want to see him? Going by Layla’s snippy reaction to him turning up out of the blue, she mightn’t be pleased to see him. What if it was too late? What if she didn’t want him? She had every right to send him packing. He’d hurt her. She’d told him she loved him and what had he done? He’d put her in a taxi.
He froze. A soggy, sandy dog came running up to him carrying a stick. It dropped the stick and ran off. Alex picked it up and started writing in the sand. He wrote his name. ALEX. Then he drew a great, big, enormous heart in the sand. Underneath he wrote MAGGIE. Alex heart Maggie. He stood back to look at it. Was that what he’d come to say? The dog came bounding back, ready to play. Alex threw the stick and the dog tore off across the sand, scuffing most of the letters in Alex Heart Maggie as it went. “You’ve ruined my handiwork,” he called after it. “It looks like Alex Heart Maggot. Thanks for that.”
He scrubbed away the letters with his foot and stamped out the heart, kicking clumps of seaweed over what remained to disguise it.
His gut churned. He wanted to hold her, touch her, love her. But how would he tell her? He was no good with words. Only ones he’d learned, rehearsed, repeated over and over. Improvisation wasn’t his thing. He scowled at the empty beach. Where in heaven’s name was she?
The dog reappeared at his feet. He threw the stick again. And again.
Just then he saw her. He looked up and there she was, standing on the cliff above the beach, hair flying in the wind, wearing the coat she’d had on the night he’d put her into a black taxi. Watching the tail lights leave with her on board, he’d felt wretched. His heart thumped. She waved and started zig-zagging her way down the path to the beach. She seemed to be taking forever, ambling across the sand, swinging her shopping bag and stopping every few feet to pick up shells and put them in her pockets. He gazed at the scene, as though she was his favorite film. Bracing himself to face her, he forced his legs to move, each step he took towards her more difficult than the one before.
Suddenly she was right there. She held out a square of opaque green glass. “Sea glass,” she said, as if she’d been expecting him. “What’s that?” Puzzled by the mess of seaweed and scrubbed out writing in the sand, she nodded to the cliff and added, “From up there it looked like “Alex heart Maggot”.
“Blame the dog.” Alex jerked his head at the wet animal. It was sitting, looking up hopefully, stick in mouth.
“Who’s your new best friend?”
He wanted to say Ophelia, because the little dog reminded him of the actress who’d been relentlessly hanging around making eyes at him for the last few weeks, when all he could think about was Maggie.
He shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe it’s a stray.”
Maggie dropped her shopping bag. She knelt down on the sand and checked for a collar. Nothing. “She’s skin and bone under all that fur.” She searched the empty beach. “Maybe she’s been abandoned.”
Alex crossed his arms over his chest. “What should we do?”
“I’ll bring her home with me, give her something to eat, and ask around, see if anyone knows who she belongs to.” She stood up and dusted the sand off her hands. “I guess if no one claims her, I’ll have to keep her.” Their eyes locked and his heart missed a beat on impact. “Alex, what are you doing here?”
“I’m … Um … I came to say …” Small white-crested waves gently rolled and broke. Pushing closer, the incoming tide swept up the beach and formed a perfect heart of foam on the sand. “I’m sorry.” Alex looked down into the face he loved and laid himself bare. “Sorry I stayed in LA and didn’t contact you. Sorry I didn’t come back for you. Sorry I didn’t say goodbye.” He hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Sorry that I let you go twice.”
“That’s a lot of sorry.” She stared at the place near her feet where the sea had made the foam heart and hugged her arms defensively across her body. “Is there anything you’re not sorry about?”
Unnoticed, the little dog nudged open the shopping bag, chewed through a biscuit packet and chomped away at its contents. Alex’s heart filled with hope. He should tell her that he wasn’t sorry Nick had found her. He wasn’t sorry about what happened in New York. Mostly he wasn’t sorry that he loved her more than life itself and he wanted to spend the rest of his days with her.
“I’m not sorry that when I’m with you I know exactly who I am – who I want to be.” Remembering the stupid strategy he’d come up with on the plane to Boston, he thought of a point five.
Point Five: Scratch the strategy and marry Maggie.
He circled an arm around her waist, pulled her close and tucked a knuckle under her chin.
“I’m not sorry that I want to marry you.” He searched her eyes. She didn’t try and look away. “If you’ll have me.”
He folded her into his arms, lowered his head, and kissed her for the longest time, exploring her soft mouth, reveling in having her close. Finally, he forced himself to break the kiss. It was harder than knocking a limpet off a rock with a stone. He wanted to go on kissing her and holding her until the tide came in. He held three lives in his arms. And he loved all of them.
In a crazy spin, Maggie reeled from his kiss. She ached to tell him that she was still in love with him. But did he love her back? Or was the marriage proposal more about being there for her? A rehashed version of what he’d offered her on the bridge that night. She needed to know, and there was only one way to find out.
“Do you love me?”
He put a big, strong, reliable arm around her. She gazed up at his face, the face she’d missed so badly, the face she’d