We all have such fateful objects—it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another—carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
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1999
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January
On her twenty-first birthday, Maeve does nothing of significance. It's a dull day. Her parents can't make it until late that night, it's inconveniently a Wednesday so all her friends are indisposed, and she's stuck at work for the entire duration. As a birthday treat, one lonely whimsy to get her through the morose reminder that it probably only goes downhill from here, she sweet-talks her boss into an extra-long lunch break and finds her way to a secluded park that she loves for the wide berth of trees circling a shaded pond.
Clouds gather overhead warningly. The day is cool. She sits on the dewy slope with her knees in the grass and watches two boys trying to make paper boats float on the choppy surface of the pond. It's a quiet, uneventful moment of a quiet, uneventful day in a quiet, uneventful life; she can't help but pick at her apple tea cake, spilling crumbs onto the tattered corner of the Happy Birthday Maeve! sticker they'd foisted on her at work, and wonder if she's boring. Boring, dull old Maeve Donovan: PhD student at twenty-one, daughter of geneticists, future geneticist, eternally lonely.
It's really only downhill from here.
By the pond, the boys have been joined by a tall man in what appears to be his grandfather's clothes. Maeve hides a smile as he hovers awkwardly above them, hands moving quickly as he tries to explain something to the bemused looking children. Some kook, she assumes, eyeing his battered cardigan and corduroy trousers, a shoulder tote abandoned on the grass nearby. She wonders if he's lost. She wonders if he works at the college. She wonders if he prefers coffee or tea, if he caught the bus today, if he worries that he's becoming insignificant.
And then she stops wondering and just pays attention, because he's taken up the waxed paper the boys are using and is showing them how to make a boat. Nimble fingers work quickly and he's quiet now, crouched over his work while the boys giggle and chatter amongst themselves. Thunder rattles overhead. Rain begins to patter down, Maeve standing and drawing her umbrella against the weather. The broad shoulders of his tan cardigan hunch up and darken as he's caught in the downpour, but he doesn't stop. Just looks up with his head tilted curiously as the boys scamper away, vanishing with waves and shouted thank yous.
Despite his audience absconding, this curious man continues his work. Maeve watches. Her watch beeps. She should go back to work.
She should.
Instead, she walks towards over there and holds the umbrella over him as he finishes his boat. It's smaller than it had seemed from a distance, dwarfed by his wide hands. He looks up at his sudden shelter, surprised. He's pretty. A sharp-jawed face with cheekbones to die for and hazel eyes that catch her and trap her and make her feel a little underdressed, which is ridiculous since he's dressed twenty years out of his time.
"Thank you," he says politely, and his voice is gorgeous too.
Instead of being brave, of being not boring, she asks, "Does it float?" and nods to the boat. He looks confused for a second, before laughing and extending a long arm from the circular world she's created in the middle of the rain-swept park, placing the boat on the pond.
It does.
"A lucky boat," he comments, plucking it back from the water and standing, knocking his head against the umbrella and blushing at his clumsiness. She wants to respond. She does, but he's pretty and nervous and she's always been shy; now that he's looking directly at her, she doesn't know what to say except a laugh that's drowned out by another roll of thunder. The boat is extended to her and she takes it in the hand still holding the wrapping from her muffin; "For you," he mumbles, stepping away from and out of the shelter of the umbrella, "Happy Birthday, Maeve."
And he's gone, leaving her standing alone.
She doesn't expect to see him again, but she still keeps the boat hanging from a hook on her ceiling above her desk. It bobs and waves with the breeze from her open window, always more alive when it rains.
It feels significant.
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February
He's lonely. It's something he's grown accustomed to, this overbearing misery of isolation, but that doesn't mean he welcomes it. When he goes to class, he sits at the back, by himself. When he goes to lectures, he's similarly seated. When he goes back to his dorm; the very same. He regrets rooming alone.
"Are you okay, Spencer?" his PhD advisor asks him one afternoon; he's sitting in the labs moodily helping her with an experiment she's running on the genes of mice. "You've been quiet lately."
"Just tired," he replies softly.
That night, he goes to the movies. He watches October Sky and falls asleep in his half-eaten popcorn. He doesn't mind; there's no one to discuss it with afterwards, anyway. He goes home and falls asleep; alone.
The next day, he asks to be moved to a shared dorm, despite this meaning he has to share with the undergrads.
He's seventeen and lonely. He thinks only sometimes about the girl in the park.
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March
Sometimes, she goes back to the park. She's not sure what she's looking for here. Something newer, something interesting. Something more. She loves her work. Her passion for her genetic studies is without bounds, and she knows she'll be happy following this career path for the rest of her life. She's aware that she's a woman in a STEM track and she's going to be expected to be focused, her ambition narrowed forward. But there's more to life than what's between her ears. Something a lot of the men in her doctorate studies would do well to remember, she sometimes thinks.
There's more to life than being intelligent, successful, and alone.
Today, there are children by the pond. They have a boat made of plastic with a dinky little motor chugging it along. Their father sits near them, guiding the boat through the returning spring ducks as the children run alongside and cheer. It's a lovely boat. All blue and purple and trimmed in silver. As a child, if her father had been inclined to play with electric boats, she'd have adored it.
These days, she thinks she prefers the paper kind.
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April
Ethan, as far as dormmates go, is probably not the greatest. He plays his music loudly, is in several bands of varying intensities, and extensively smokes weed in their tiny, barely-ventilated room. He's also incredibly, surprisingly intelligent, which begins a fierce rivalry between the two that Ethan, at his worst, still easily keeps up with. It surprises no one as much as it does Spencer that, in a very short time, they become very good friends.
"You know, it's annoying that you're seventeen and this smart," Ethan is grumbling one day, paging through a textbook and idly adding nipples to all the photographic inlays.
"You know, it's weird that you're nineteen and this immature," Spencer chides him, taking his textbook back and fighting the urge to make the nipples more anatomically correct. "Grow up, Ethan."
Ethan just grins.
Having a friend is nothing like what Spencer expected; it's far, far better.
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May
Every month without fail since high-school, Maeve makes time for these lunches. Sometimes, her friends make the time also. As the years have gone on, they also sometimes haven't. It's okay. She doesn't mind. Life moves on and people move on with it: Josh has a new baby, Carly's career has taken her down to New Orleans, Ann's having a Bad Day and can't face leaving the house. They're all valid, valid reasons for why, today, Maeve is sitting alone. She shreds a paper napkin into the pancakes she'd bought out of some childish whimsy, a paperback propped between her plate and glass of orange juice. The book is her refusal to be upset about this; the napkin is probably a sign that she's failing in that refusal. It's Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, and the first time she'd read it, she was three days away from meeting her best friend. She misses her. It's been eight months since they'd last spoken, which is probably too long to rekindle the connection.
"Wherever you go, take yourself with you," she reads out loud, and then feels silly for doing so. A flight of fancy that she's far too old to be engaging in, especially if this it and she's as adult as she's ever gonna get.
She closes the book. Lunch is over.
Maybe next month.
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June
Sometimes, he goes back to the park. His scheduled visit with his mom has fallen through this summer, which adds a morose kind of air to his holiday. Since he'd expected to be in Vegas for the duration of the break, he hasn't organized summer housing or to work for the college over the period beyond what he's required to do to keep his stipend.
Basically, he's screwed.
"Only one solution then," Ethan announces when Spencer tells him. "Pack your shit, kiddo, you're coming to stay with me. How do you feel about New Orleans?"
It's his first real holiday. Ethan's already making plans to ensure that it won't be his last.
New Orleans, Spencer thinks, is wonderful.
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July
She visits her parents in the break. They're doing fine, doing great. Distant as always, but she's used to that by now. Sometimes she wonders if she's an only child because, as they've always stated, of them being 'completely satisfied' with how she'd turned out, or if there's something a bit exhausting about paying attention to the world long enough to raise a child. They love her, dearly, and she knows this, but there's being loved and then there's being loved, and dinnertime conversation never delving beyond genetics and Maeve's studies into anything deeper—like, are you happy? or is this what you want? —feels… lonely. But she's far too old to entertain thoughts about her parents not understanding her, so she sweeps it aside and smiles politely.
The fall comes at dessert. The conversation lapses. Unlike most families, it's not a companionable silence. They're a little unsettled because she'd murmured that her doctorate studies were unlikely to be fast-tracked further, as they'd hoped she would be, and she can feel a thrum of disappointment from her father that she's not achieving highly enough.
Never rebellious, rarely brash; she's both these things in this moment as she blurts out, "I met a man in the park."
They stare at her. A spoon clicks on her mother's bowl as she lowers it gently, looking confused.
"A man?" her mother repeats blankly.
"What for?" asks her father, half a smile on his mouth as though it's a joke, silly Maeve, messing around. She's always had a sense of humour, our Maeve, god knows where she gets it.
"A man," Maeve repeats weakly, and puts her spoon down too. Suddenly, she's not hungry at all. "I think he might have been nice." The silence is painful. To her horror, she's dangerously close to tears and entirely unsure of why—she doubts it has anything to do with the man with the paper boat and everything to do with not knowing what she's doing or why anymore. And there's very little hidden about crying at the table.
Her father breaks the silence first, coughing and managing weakly, "Would you like to talk about him?"
It's a concession. Him trying to make her feeling better.
It works. "Thanks, Dad," she murmurs, and begins with the rain.
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August
There's a carnival coming to town next month, just before the mad rush of grant applications begins. It'll be cutting it close, but Ethan is determined to drag him to it before they drive back together.
"We can go on the Ferris wheel, it'll be romantic," Ethan quips as he shows Spencer how to work the aging lawn mower so they can help Ethan's gran with her yard. There's already a tear in Spencer's shirt, two cuts on his calf, and a rose thorn stuck in his palm—he eyes the mower warily and wonders if he'll make it out alive. "Or, we buy two tickets and give one to a girl of your choice." He pauses. "Or guy. Whatever boats your float."
"Carnival games are all rigged," Spencer responds evenly. He doesn't want to go.
The next morning, he's harassed over morning pancakes. "Come on, come on," Ethan grumbles. "You never do fun things! We've never done a fun thing together, not once since I met you. We can get your fortune told!"
"I really don't want to," Spencer says.
Ethan's gran tells Ethan to leave him alone, but Spencer doubts that will stall him.
Three nights later, they're flopped on the riverside watching fish skirt the bank. It's the hour before sunset and the threat of mosquitoes looms, despite the liberal repellent they're both coated with. The smell of it is thick and almost biting, an unfamiliar scent that Spencer is sure he's going to associate solely with this night from now on. When birds call, Ethan quietly names them for him. Spencer will return the favour, when the stars come out. They're tired and hot and almost-not-quite bored.
"You really don't want to go, do you?" Ethan asks suddenly, tilting his head back and watching Spencer. There's an unlit smoke between his lips and a smudge of dirt on his cheek. Spencer rolls onto his belly, feeling his knees sinking a bit into the boggy turf, and grins to think that he's never really had dirty knees before now. "To the carnival?"
"I really don't," Spencer replies.
Ethan is quiet for a moment. "Well, how about we leave early instead and take the scenic route home?" he says. "Maybe drop in on some museums, or something. Something you like." Stunned, Spencer stares at him. He doesn't say anything, but his surprise must be written on his face, because Ethan adds, "It's never really been a problem that I don't really take no for an answer because I've never cared before… but you're not so good at even saying no to begin with. And I don't… yeah, I guess I don't really want to fuck this up, okay?" He's flushed and awkward and Spencer does him a favour and looks away, but that doesn't stop him from hearing the final, mumbled, "I've never really had a friend I've wanted to keep before now."
"I've never had a friend," Spencer states plainly. A mosquito finds his bare arm and bites down, ending their riverside relaxation.
They don't go to the carnival. They do take the long way home.
Spencer hopes this could be the start of new things.
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September
September takes her down to New Orleans and this moment, drunk with Carly as they stumble through a carnival that's cheap and nasty and brilliantly fun. She feels, right now: silly and alive and not even bothered that she's a speck in the universe.
"You gotta stop driving yourself so hard, love," Carly shrieks at her, the gin loosening them both up and spilling their hurts out onto each other. Carly's boyfriend cheated on her again, she's put on more pounds than she's comfortable with, and she's worried her grandma might be dying. Big hurts, small hurts, all Maeve has to offer up is 'I'm not good enough'. And Carly rebuts: "You're a damn smart chick, always have been. I think your problem is that you're alone too often."
"I'm surrounded by people," Maeve says, because she is. They're pressed against the side of the carnival walk, her shoulder brushing the grubby tent of a fortune-teller. As though they both become aware of it, they turn and look. "Also, I'm not going in there."
"Lame," Carly complains, followed by, "yeah, maybe, but are they people who matter? I'll give you a fortune, if you're too science to let that lady do it—" She swoops in close, wraps them together and grins widely—Maeve remembers, very suddenly, being a teenager with every hope in the world: "—something great is gonna stagger into your life and you're gonna let it stagger right on out, because you're too busy being mad that you're not top-shit to realise that sometimes average is just fine."
Maeve blinks. Considers that. Considers that she's had too much carnival food and too much gin and not enough sitting down.
"That kinda fell apart at the end there, didn't it?" she says instead of agreeing, and Carly laughs and drags her away.
They don't go into the fortune-teller's tent. Maeve's glad; she thinks she'd preferred to be surprised.
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October
Ethan forces him to celebrate his birthday. That's concerning, because if there's one thing that Spencer has learned about Ethan, it's that the man's plans never come without layers. The stated plan is that he and Ethan have one alcoholic drink each in their dorm-room to celebrate his 'coming of age'. That's the stated plan; Ethan is adamant that eighteen means breaking the law, in one way or another. Spence declines the joint he's offered as he drinks his lukewarm beer, but the tiny window in their room doesn't exactly offer what he'd call adequate airflow. He declines the joint, but he's pretty sure he's half-stoned anyway just from the second-hand smoke. Which could explain how weird the night has gotten after the layers of Ethan's plan come into play.
"Am I drunk?" he asks Ethan mournfully, trying to count on his wavering fingers just how many beers that one had turned into.
"Nah," Ethan reassures him, rapping his knuckles with the paintbrush he's wielding, "now, stop moving. I'm going to smear your whiskers."
Spencer nods. That makes sense.
Wait.
What?
The layers unravel. Spencer, as it turns out, is dangerously pliable when five and a half beers in. And Ethan is dangerously well-prepared.
He never had a chance.
It's three days until Halloween but Ethan's found an early party; Spencer finds himself face-painted, wrestled into a brown sweater and slacks, and bedecked in a collar and fluffy ears. Before he can question what's become of his sensible celebrations, he's Scooby Doo to Ethan's Shaggy and he finds himself propped up in a corner of his first ever house party with yet another beer and the vaguest sense that he's lost control of his life.
The night begins to pass in shuddering, stop-motion blurs. Ethan's there. Then he's not. Someone is teasing his fluffy dog ears. At some point, he blinks and finds himself sitting on a staircase in a narrow, darkened hallway. Alone. It's peaceful. He decides to stay there, right up until someone walks out of a door beside him and falls over his spread-eagled legs with a gentle squeak and a thump.
"Oh no," says the costumed scientist his legs had almost assassinated, kneeling in her spilled drink as he tries to help her and instead tips onto the ground beside her. "Who put you here?"
"Shaggy," says Spencer sadly, and then realizes that he has no idea who he's talking to and tries to explain: "Ah, my dormmate, Shag—Ethan. I'm… hello. Sorry. Legs."
She stares at him. "Well, hello, Legs," she teases, and he recognises her. The same cat-eyes in a smiling face; the same shy smile that's almost uncertain to be pleased by him. She's in a lab coat and goggles today, a purple scarf wrapped around her throat, and she's lacking the umbrella or the birthday sticker; he remembers his boat and blushes. "I know you. You're the man with the boat."
Spencer doesn't answer; just blushes more. His voice seems to have abandoned him, his shame pooling deep like the beer they're still kneeling in, right until she laughs softly and helps him up.
"Where's your Ethan?" she asks him, her hand twitching like she's going to fix his crooked ears, "I'll take you back, Scooby."
Morosely, he admits: "I don't even know who Scooby Doo is," and her face turns wide, surprised, right before she begins to laugh. Helplessly, and he thinks she might have forgiven him for his legs, but is too swirly to ask for confirmation.
"Maybe some air," she says instead, and leads him to the backdoor and out into the autumn night.
When he blinks again, his head is between his knees and there's a warm hand rubbing concentric circles in between his shoulderblades, someone sitting tucked against his side.
"Urgh," he says, his stomach lurching. And, miserably, "Some birthday."
He thinks it's Ethan.
It's not.
The hand pauses. "It's your birthday?" says a lilting voice, and he twitches up to find the woman from the park sitting there, her gaze fixed on him. It's mortifying. Why is he never at his best around her? As though confirming this feeling, his stomach makes a terrific grumbling sound and cramps tightly. He whimpers.
"Maeve," he whispers, before wincing. Way to sound creepy.
"Oh, you do remember," she says, in that same gentle voice, and in the light from the house he sees her blush a little. They're under a tree—poplar, he recognises—, their backs to the trunk, and the night is too cool for his frazzled brain. "I'm sorry, I can't remember…"
"Spencer," he says, and has to lean back. "I'm Spencer. Hi."
And she's there, a warm shoulder supporting him, as she says, "Well, Happy Birthday, Spencer," and brushes her lips against his cheek. "That's for your birthday."
The rest of the night is a hazy blur of being passed from Maeve to Ethan, of being half-carried home and tipped into bed, of waking still drunk in the early hours of the morning with his pillow make-up smeared and a candy-cane scent thick from the purple scarf he's, for some reason, wearing.
And a distant memory: And this is for the boat.
He sleeps with the scarf cuddled close and a smile on his lips, and Ethan only teases him a little.
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November
Work is dreary today. She's propped at her desk over a mug of hot chocolate, staring blankly out the window to the treeless verge outside, when someone coughs overhead. Probably the man bringing over the box of genetic samples from MIT, annoyingly late—
Bad mood cemented, she looks up and blinks.
Blinks again.
He's balancing a sealed cooler box designed for biological cargo, his eyes wide and shocked as he looks down on her. Dressed today for the weather, a warm coat and gloves and… and her purple scarf.
"Maeve, hello," says Spencer, and then turns adorably pink.
Maeve tries to answer, to be normal and polite and well-presented, and instead goes, "Um," because he's knocked every sensible thought out of her head.
"Oh." To her horror, the pink turns redder and bypasses cute to go on to embarrassed. "You don't remember me. We, um, met… at the park, once, uh, hang on—" Thunk, goes the cooler on her desk and he grabs the paperwork from the top and, faster than before, folds it into a rough facsimile of her boat at home. "—if, um, if this helps you remember…"
The boat is deposited gently on the cooler. She stares at it, looks at him, and then promptly realizes she's been sitting here without saying a word.
"I'm supposed to sign that," she says dumbly.
He stares at her, all woeful hazel eyes with his hair falling into his face, crestfallen. And she can't think—she's never been good at easy conversation and she hadn't been expecting him today—doesn't think he'd expected her here either, judging by the way he's falling over himself—so instead of putting her foot in her mouth again, she unfolds the boat, signs the bottom, and adds a sticky note from her drawer to the carbon copy she hands him.
"Bye," he practically yelps, skittering out of the door, elbow banging on the doorframe painfully on the way out. "Ow, shi—"
The door shuts between them.
"Who was that?" Chantelle asks, picking up the creased and folded receipt-turned boat-turned-receipt once more. Maeve doesn't answer. She's too busy leaning over and watching out the window as a tall, hurried figure skids to a stop on the sidewalk outside and pauses to read the note she's attached to his documents.
I do remember you. I hope you like the scarf.
He turns and looks and she ducks back down. The note was brave enough.
She's sure that she's too mousey to face him again.
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December
It's ridiculous. It's impetuous. Most of all, it's not her.
It's also, she thinks, significant. A significant event in her insignificant life.
It's an email, the address of which she finds on the paperwork that still bears the creases of her original waxed-paper boat. She sits at home on her desktop and watches the boat hang still, the window closed in the dead of winter. She thinks about the man who made it, and she thinks about how their paths keep crossing. Something so opportune… well, it has to be significant, right?
She finds the email address, written hastily on a torn-up sheet of scrap paper, and boots her PC.
And she writes:
Subject: A Man with a Waxed-Paper Boat
Date: Thurs, 2 Dec 1999 18:25:13
From: "Maeve Donovan" sherlockneversaidelementary
To: "Dr. Spencer Reid" mynameisnobody
-message contents-
Dear Dr. Reid,
You may remember me as the girl from the park, with the umbrella. Or perhaps the Halloween party where I was attending much as I am, in lab-coat sporting a purple scarf, which is now in your possession. I'm almost sure that you remember me from my workplace; you created me a boat out of very little, a facsimile of the one I look upon now, from our first meeting.
You may not remember me. In case you do not, my name is Maeve Donovan. I find myself fascinated by the memory of a man building a boat out of very little. I would love to get to know him.
Please respond via this message if you would share this sentiment
Warm regards, Maeve Donovan
And then something remarkable happens. Hours later, she's reading a book and regretting her brashness when there's a minute sound from her tinny speakers.
She looks over and blinks
One Message Received.