Chapter Text
You were ready to leave and say goodbye to this place. And then Maggie kissed you.
She was always one of your weaknesses. You were so good at having none. Younger than everyone, a woman, and just a little bit small, but always smart, spitfire and quick and clever in ways that allowed you to dance circles around many of your peers.
But never her.
She made you stumble and question, falter with nerves and give pause when you hadn't. She made you uproot your life, question your faith and force you to be brave. To be happy. Claire makes you feel anxious and giddy in ways that boys never could. She's pretty and kind, simple, and she understands your culture and heritage because she's a part of it. Meeting her in Tel Aviv should be exciting. Which it is, but you can't help the what ifs in your mind.
You can't help seeing Maggie's face in your dreams.
You avoid goodbyes like the plague and you tell Maggie so. She makes a half-hearted attempt to talk you out of leaving, citing your patient and forcing the reality of distance upon you, as though you didn't already know.
A small part of you thinks the distance from Maggie will be good for you. But you don't dwell on that. Ever.
But then she sighs, scans your face with those big, big brown eyes of hers. She leans in and kisses you, short and soft and sweet, and before you can commit the feeling perfectly to memory, she pulls away.
"I owed you one," she says, smiling that crooked half-smile that you can't get out of your head. And then you walk away and leave her, Hope Zion, and the shambles of your old life behind.
Israel will be everything you never let yourself dream you think as you settle into your seat on the flight. You look at your phone background, the picture of you and Claire lighting up. The two of you look so happy and carefree. She brings with her so few complications. She doesn't know all of your personal history, can't totally read you like a book or even understand you one-hundred percent of the time. (She says you talk too fast when you're excited. She's the first person who's ever tried to slow you down.)
You were at the park together when you took that picture, a selfie, and she's kissing you on the cheek. The sunlight leaps off of her blonde hair and you can make out her freckles when you look closely. You feel yourself smile. Things with her are good. Easy.
It's what you want in a relationship. Right?
The plane takes off and you settle more solidly in your seat. You swallow a small white pill. Ambien, for the red eye flight you elected to take. You pull your headphones over your ears and lay your head back and try to sleep.
In your dreams you see bright sunshine and rolling hills covered in beautiful blooming flowers. And Maggie, with her whole-face smile and newly long hair blowing over her shoulders. She reaches her hand for you, and you can feel the softness of her skin. You can smell her lavender perfume and hear her laugh and see her deep dimples. When she leans in to kiss you, you taste her fruity chapstick and feel her fingertips against your cheek.
You wake up with a start, guilt settling low in your belly. Your heart is racing and you feel the burning heat of tears behind your eyes.
You don't sleep for the rest of the flight.
The sunlight in Israel is bright and harsh through the windows of the airport. You begin to sweat in anticipation of the stifling heat that you knew to expect. When you finally make it through customs, Claire is waiting for you with flowers and her biggest smile and wide, open arms. You run to her like the giddy excited girlfriend she's expecting, and she peppers your cheeks with kisses and giggles.
She pulls away, holding your face in her hands. "Let's go home," she says, and you release a long breath.
You didn't know seeing your girlfriend, who loves you, would make you so nervous.
Israel is at the precipice of experiencing a severe shortage of physicians, so obtaining licensing is as quick as a bureaucratic process can be. You pass the Hebrew proficiency with ease, and before you know it, you're a practicing obstetrician in Tel Aviv.
Living with Claire comes easy. She's neat and quiet and she can bake, and you two settle into a comfortable routine. You talk to her late at night about missing home, missing your family and your old friends.
You mention Maggie very sparingly.
If Claire notices that you fidget more when you bring up Maggie, or that you make less eye contact, she doesn't mention it. She doesn't seem threatened in the slightest.
And why would she? You moved across the world for her.
Sometimes, when you're in bed with her, you wake up with a racing heart and not-Claire's-name on your lips. Sometimes, during breakfast, you'll suddenly feel the memory of her lips on yours, and you come back to the present with your fingertips at the corner of your mouth and a blush on your cheeks.
You always prided yourself on your intelligence. You looked for the same quick-witted capability in your partners. Of course, until recently, you'd blamed your lack of interest in romance on your pickiness. None of them are smart enough for me, you'd think with fierce determination. And that's it.
Claire is smart. She's playful with you in ways that only an intelligent person would understand. She rivals your sass and keeps her chin high when she knows she's bested you.
She's too smart to not begin to notice.
She's observant, even though she can't quite read you still. But she notices when you stare at a brunette with short hair when you're out. She must feel you startling awake at night, or turning away from her in tears. She's walked into the kitchen in the morning and seen your far away look and called your name, asked if you're okay.
She knows she's getting close when she asks about Maggie out of the blue.
"Honey?" she calls, sitting on the off-white couch with a book in her lap. Her socked feet are resting against the coffee table, and she has a knit blanket draped over the tops of her legs. When you walk in, she smiles innocently.
"What's up?" you ask, pausing with your hands on your waist and facing her. You're careful not to cross your arms over your chest. Claire says it makes you look combative.
"I was just thinking," she starts. Uh oh filters across your mind. You feel your breath get shallow. "Whatever happened to that girl you were teaching?"
You raise your eyebrows. Play dumb, a voice says in the back of your mind. That'll work flawlessly. It sounds suspiciously like Maggie, and suspiciously facetious.
Claire closes the book in her lap and sits up straight. "You used to talk about this girl when we were first dating. She was your student--I think. Maggie? Right?" You take a breath at Maggie's name on Claire's lips. You're confused and you have the undeniable heavy weight of guilt in your belly. "What ever happened to her?"
You'd assumed if you didn't talk about Maggie, didn't see Maggie--you moved across the world for goodness sake--she'd vanish from your mind for good. But even Claire can feel her presence in your home together. Poor Claire. She doesn't deserve that. "Maggie's fine, I think. I don't really talk to her anymore."
Claire's eyebrows draw in to the middle and she narrows her eyes. "You used to talk about her all the time." You shrug. "But not anymore. Did something happen between you two? Did you fight?"
You feel your guilt get heavier, weighing your body down. You wonder if it'll drag you through the floor of the apartment. You wonder if God is watching you closely, monitoring your behavior for future karma or curses. You don't want to say the wrong thing.
You look away and at the floor and take a breath. Your hands fold in front of your belly and your thumbs are fiddling--an old nervous habit--and you chance looking at Claire. She's so kind, and she looks so innocent, her blue eyes open and honest. You don't think she'd hate you if you told her the truth about Maggie, about what Maggie was--is--to you. But you don't think you could hurt her like that and still look at yourself in the mirror. "No, no," you say, forcing a smile. You hope it doesn't look as much like a grimace as it feels. "Nothing like that."
Claire smiles. "Then where'd she go?"
You grin. "I'm the one that left, sweetheart. I came to you." You walk over and settle next to her on the couch, taking her hands in yours. "Maggie and I just sort of," you shrug, "grew apart in the end."
The lie feels sour on your tongue, and you haven't looked Claire in the eye again yet. You feel her body's light shakes as she nods in acceptance. She doesn't press it any further.
The fighting starts soon thereafter.
You suppose you should've seen it coming. Claire is more nervous around you, and working in the nearby hospital has you edgy and stressed and always so tired. Your patience is thin at the time you need it most. You understand why everyone seems to blame timing for just about everything. But you know better than to just blame timing for this one.
You're bitter and at each other's throats more often than not. Walking down the streets of Tel Aviv together used to be fun and carefree, warm with conversation and touches and smiles. Now it's all stiff movements and cold spaces and silence, sharp with your bodies angled away from one another.
Claire starts to have trouble sleeping, and you both have matching heavy bags under your eyes. You sleep when you can at home, but call rooms are smaller and less common in the hospital in Tel Aviv, and walking into one of them reminds you of Maggie. You feel that heartbreak freshly each time, and you don't have the energy to cry now. So when you pull long shifts you're generally awake the whole time.
As things with Claire get worse, you look for excuses to be out more. After the hospital you go straight to a hookah bar and drink one glass of red wine as slowly as you can. You can't get drunk; you're worried who you'd call if you did. You can make a glass of wine last about an hour, so you wait forty minutes at the bar before you order it, and then wait fifty minutes after it's gone before you go home.
You go to sleep after Claire and she wakes up before you, so you really only have time to fight on the occasional lunch break, if you decide to come home.
You don't decide to come home much.
Dreams about Maggie come more frequently. You see her smile, hear her laughter and feel her skin against yours. You picture dates with her. Things you'd always wanted to do with your partner, you're doing in your dreams with Maggie. Sailing together in the Mediterranean Sea, both dressed in white and holding glasses of bubbly. Touring the Lourve and taking pictures with the Mona Lisa, or going to the St. Peter's Basilica and smiling with the Venus de Milo. Meeting her parents, cooking them dinner in an apartment you both live in. Coming home to the bed covered in rose petals and the room littered with candles, Maggie waiting for you in lingerie and hooded eyes. Proposing to her in Jerusalem.
The more of the dreams you have, the less you talk to Claire, until you're having the dreams every night and speaking a handful of words to Claire a week.
The breakup comes on a Wednesday. Wednesdays are Claire's days off. Usually she spends them outside, jogging along the beach or reading at a table at the cafe nearby. Today, when you come home for lunch--you forgot your salad in the fridge on your way out, and now you think it was fate--Claire is waiting for you on the couch. Her eyes are red and puffy, her gaze glassy and body stiff. For the first time you notice how thin and frail she looks. Her golden hair looks waxen, her cheeks sallow.
"Claire, what's wrong?" You two have been on different wavelengths that you don't even know if something is going on with her friends or her family. "Is everything okay?"
She looks at you with the combined grief and hatred that only and ex can have. You understand immediately.
"This isn't working," she says, her voice hoarse but strong. You look and her and nod, and she narrows her eyes. Her upper lip curls into a sneer, which you've never seen on her face before, and you feel your heart quicken with nerves. "I think there's someone else."
You feel gutted immediately. "Are you cheating on me?"
"Sydney, no, absolutely not." She's eerily calm when she swallows and closes her eyes. She seems to steel herself, and when she opens her eyes and looks at you, it's with concern and love and loss all at once. "I think you need to go home."
You cross your arms and shift your weight to one leg. "What the hell are you talking about? This is my home."
Claire looks pained. "Did you know that you talk in your sleep?"
You rear back, confused. "Um, no. What does that have anything to do with us?" You take two steps toward her, careful to maintain distance but unable to fully stop your hostility.
Claire nods. She looks so kind, even when she's clearly upset with you, defeated even. "One night a few weeks ago, I woke up because I heard you. You were--I guess moaning in your sleep?" You shake your head. So? "You weren't really saying any words, you just sounded so upset and I didn't know what to do." She pauses as tears well in her eyes and slip down her cheeks. "And then you said her name, and you smiled." She gasps and wipes her cheeks. "You said 'I love you, Maggie' in your sleep in bed with me."
All of the color must leave your face in an instance. "Oh, Claire, honey, no-" you start to say, but she raises a hand abruptly and you stop.
"No, don't." She looks betrayed by your attempts to calm her. "I asked you what ever happened to Maggie the next day, and when you didn't give me an answer at all I know." She swallows and her tears continue to fall. "Syd, you clearly still love her. And while you love her, you can't love me." You start to shake your head, feeling your own tears begin to fall. "You need to go home."
Your protests are feeble at best, and they go completely unheard.
You planned to take your time moving out, booking flights back to the states and looking for apartments. But then you get an email.
Your sister Rebecca is sick, really sick, and pregnant, and you leave two days later. You guess everything fell right into place neatly.
You finally give in to your months-long curiosity and look up Maggie's social media on the flight home.
You notice she's growing her hair out, and you see pictures of her smiling with her old friends--your old friends--from the hospital, with her family. You don't see a significant other, boy or girl, or at least any evidence of one, and you don't acknowledge the massive weight that lifts off your chest at that. Mostly, you just see that she's happy. And that she looks every bit as beautiful as you remember and more.
You spend the rest of your flight researching treatment options for Becca. Coincidences seem to be a common theme in your life right now, because you stumble upon Maggie again. You read any and all information you can find on her cancer study and spend your first hours off the plane convincing Becca to let you take her there.
And that's how you find yourself back in Hope Zion, looking sheepishly over your shoulder at who you now truly believe is the love of your life.