Closest To My Heart

Chapter Twenty-Three

Maggie smoothed red gingham cloths over two long folding tables while Andi attached decorative weighted clips at the corners. Tag had gone to help the other men in building a fire, and Maggie paused to watch them work.

"I'm not thrilled with the division of labor, but that's how it always works out," Andi said, folding her arms over her chest as she fell in beside Maggie. "I could've had that pile blazing ten minutes ago, but instead I'm over here setting the table like Suzy Frickin' Homemaker—it's so sexist!"

"What is it with men and fire, anyhow?" Maggie pondered. "Maybe it's instinctual, leftover from the caveman days or something."

"Nah, they're just flaunting their manhood," Andi theorized. "Men are obsessed with proving that their own dick is bigger than everyone else's."

Maggie laughed and turned back to the task at hand. She stooped to grab an armload of condiments from a large plastic bin and began placing them at evenly spaced intervals down the length of the tables. Andi followed suit, pulling paper plates and utensils from an identical bin.

"So how long have you and Tag known each other?" Maggie asked, trying to sound casual and indifferent.

"Since Kindergarten," Andi said. "But before high school on the mainland, there were only twenty-something kids in our whole grade, so it's kind of impossible not to know someone, you know what I mean? But Tag and I would've been friends regardless—he's a great guy. He took me to the senior prom, actually."

Maggie's head snapped up as an image from one of Nana Mae's photo albums popped into her mind.

"Oh, my word! Pink taffeta? That was you?"

"Ugh, don't remind me!" Andi groaned. "I hated that dress! I only wore it to make my mother happy, which is the same reason I even went to the stupid prom in the first place!"

"You didn't want to go?" Maggie asked, recalling the eagerness she'd felt over her own high school prom. "C'mon, every girl wants to go to the prom!"

"Not when the person you really want to go with is going with someone else," Andi sighed.

Maggie remembered that feeling all too well. Along with every other girl in school, she'd dreamed of going with Derek Slater, the star running back from the football team. Of course, Derek had barely even acknowledged her existence, let alone asked her to Prom. Maggie had ended up going with her biology lab partner, Barry Welles, whose mother had driven them to and from the prom in a beige minivan, with Barry's little sister strapped into the backseat between them. They were home before midnight, while Derek Slater's cherry red Mustang convertible was seen cruising the streets well into the wee hours of the next morning...

"Yeah, been there, done that," Maggie empathized, snapping back to the present as she placed bowls for melted butter on the table. "Who did you really want to go with?"

"Amber Larrabee," Andi confessed, a smile breaking over her face at Maggie's wide-eyed shock. "What, Tag didn't tell you I'm gay?"

"No, he didn't. I mean, not that it matters, of course!" Maggie stammered. "I'm just... surprised. You don't look..."

"Like a lesbian?" Andi finished for her. "Yeah, I get that a lot."

Maggie blinked back at her, stunned speechless. Finally, she found her voice again.