MARCH
Chapter 9
Everett sat on the uncomfortable wooden bench and imagined the splinters he might be getting in his ass. It was the only way to keep his mind off what a hot mess he was.
He lowered his sunglasses from where they perched on top of his head to cover his eyes as the sun finally broke through the quintessential San Francisco fog and streamed down over his little spot. He’d arrived almost an hour earlier for their “date,” and now he sat here on this little bench in front of the Conservatory of Flowers and rubbed his thumbs in circles wondering if she’d even show at all.
He also wondered how he’d gone from pretty damn smooth when it came to women to a nervous neophyte when it came to Maya. It was as if she completely tore down his ego, confidence, and any swagger he might ever have possessed. And without those things he was somehow supposed to be sexy and desirable?
He stared up at the wooden dome of one the oldest buildings in the state and remembered the conversation he’d had with Alice. He hadn’t told her who he had a date with, but he’d confided in her he was nervous about it and that it made him feel as if he’d lost his mojo. After a lecture about toxic masculinity, she’d told him the woman who tied him up in knots like this would love the vulnerable side of him, and if she didn’t, she wasn’t worth his time.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Maya’s voice startled him almost as much as how she looked when he turned his head to gaze at her. For the first time since the night they’d met, Everett got to see Maya in a skirt. The flouncy blue number landed a few inches above her knees and was complemented by a white cotton shirt and fitted sweater that was not only perfect for the warmish day, but absolutely stunning on her.
Everett shot to his feet and moved to stand in front of her. “You look great. I didn’t know you wore skirts except on special occasions. I mean…What I mean is the only other time I saw you in a skirt…” Damn, the last thing he wanted to do was bring up the past. He ran a hand over his head and sighed. “I’m a mess.”
Maya smiled up at him, squinting against the sun. “It’s kind of adorable.”
Alice’s words came back to him and he smiled. “I don’t think anyone other than my mother has ever called me adorable before. But I’ll take it.”
They stared at each other for a long beat. Maya’s head was cranked back and she was probably burning her retinas in the sun, but she didn’t complain. She just stared back at him. He examined the freckles on her nose and the long, dark eyelashes that framed those bright, green eyes.
“Shall we?” Maya finally broke the spell and gestured with her chin toward the conservatory building.
Everett nodded and turned. He placed his hand on her lower back, half expecting her to move away when they touched. But she didn’t. Instead, she stepped closer to him and stayed by his side as they walked into the entrance and he paid their admission. They walked slowly though the various rooms covered floor to ceiling in exotic flowers.
Everett stopped to point out his favorite varieties, discuss the unique survival methods of some of the plants, and talk about color and blooms. Maya listened and took a million pictures, telling him which ones she intended to paint later.
It wasn’t until they were in the last room, perusing the small gift shop, that she questioned him. “So how is it that you know so much about plants? Another one of your hobbies?”
“Not mine, really. My mom’s.”
“Hmmm. She does have a beautiful garden.” Maya picked up a small ceramic pot and examined it. “My dad says she won’t let him touch it. He can mow the lawn, trim the trees, whatever else he feels like, but he’s not to touch the garden, even to pull weeds.”
“It’s our thing,” he said casually. “I really ought to do all that other stuff, too, instead of leaving it to your dad.” Guilt pooled in his stomach.
Maya took a few steps over to him and placed her hand on his arm. “No. Don’t do that. He enjoys it. The important thing is you take the time to garden with her. You do, don’t you?”
He nodded. “I should spend more time with her, though.”
“So, do it.”
He grinned. “Okay.”
Maya took his hand and pulled him toward the single wooden desk where a volunteer waited to ring them up. “Come on, buy me this pot to replant my succulent in and we’ll go to the art museum. I have so many things to show you there.”
Everett dug out his wallet and gladly handed a few bucks over for the pot. As the short blonde volunteer wrapped it up in tissue paper and Maya stuffed it into her large purse, he tried to convince himself not to say what he said next. “I like that you let me pay.”
“Let you!” Maya laughed. “I think I insisted, actually.
As they hit the door and headed out into the sunshine, Everett dropped his glasses onto his nose and grinned. “Yeah, you did.”
“I thought you would like that.”
“I do,” he admitted.
“It’s date-like, right. And it’s not a gender thing.” She poked at his upper arm firmly as if to make her point. “Let’s be clear. If I had way more money than you, I’d be paying.”
“Okay.”
“And when we get to the de Young, the admission is on me because I have a membership.”
If the people at the admissions desk recognized him, he’d get them in for free, too, because he’d made a major donation last year. But he kept his mouth shut and let Maya lead him to her favorite place in the world.
Experiencing an art museum, even one he’d been in a dozen times before, with an artist was a whole different level of cool. She pointed things out to him he’d never noticed before, told him obscure stories about the masters, and exuded so much enthusiasm it was hard not to be deeply affected by it.
They closed out the museum and headed downtown to get dinner at Maya’s favorite vegetarian restaurant. After Maya explained her on-again off-again flirtations with being vegetarian, they ordered four dishes to split and experiment with.
It wasn’t until they were stuffed to the gills and lingering over a bottle of rich red wine that the conversation turned from flowers and art to a more serious subject matter.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your father?”
Everett had been utterly relaxed, leaned back in the leather booth, stomach full and a tall glass of wine in his hand. But her question made his body tense. “What?”
Maya looked down at the table for a moment, then glanced back up at him, her eyes full of determination. “Seven years ago. We texted every single day. And you never once told me about your dad dying. But that was all happening during that time. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Um…how do you know?”
“I’ll tell you that after you answer the question.” Maya squared her shoulders, and he knew he wasn’t getting out of this.
Everett leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table, and told the complete truth. “I guess it was because you were this ray of light in my life back then. Your messages helped me get through the most difficult period of my life. I didn’t want to talk to you about the darkness I was swimming in then. I wanted to talk about your day, your friends, your art. I used my conversations with you as an escape from reality. Maybe that’s not right. Maybe it’s not what I should have done. But that’s the way it was. That’s the truth.”
Maya’s eyes roamed his face. Her expression was unreadable. Lips pursed together, eyes searching, chin held out. “Wow.”
“What does that mean?”
“Thank you. Thank you for telling me the truth.”
Everett didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded.
“On New Year’s Eve, your mother and I got drunk.”
Everett smiled, hoping to lighten the mood. “I figured.”
Maya didn’t react to that. She just plowed on, her brow furrowed. “She told me about a lot of things from that time. She told me about your dad dying and about how she felt so lost. She told me she was the one to pressure you into getting engaged. Well, it sounded to me like a combo of her and Rebecca. It sounded like you didn’t have much choice.”
Everett took a deep breath. He wouldn’t settle for anything but the truth now with Maya. “I did have a choice. I didn’t have to go along with it.”
She smiled then, the crease in her brow disappearing. “But you did. Because you love your mother. Because you’re a good son.”
“But a lousy man. I shouldn’t have done that to Rebecca. I didn’t want to marry her. I should not have gotten engaged to her regardless of whose idea it was or what kind of manipulation was used to get me there.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing uncomfortably at his throat. “And I shouldn’t have done that to you.”
Maya reached her hand across the table, palm up. It looked like an invitation. Everett took it. He pulled his hand from where it sat on his knee and settled it around hers.
“You didn’t owe me anything. We weren’t officially a thing back then. And I knew you had a girlfriend. You never lied about that.”
“But I wanted us to be a thing. There were so many times I tried to figure out how to untangle everything in my life so I could—”
“It wouldn’t have worked.”
He gazed into her eyes and found only sincerity there. “No?”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t the right time. There were too many things happening in your life. Mine, too. I had a bad habit of being with men who underestimated me, treated me like I was stupid and belittled my dreams of being an artist.”
Everett’s brow furrowed and his lips turned down in a deep frown. “What?”
“You were an exception to that rule at the time, but you didn’t break that pattern. There were more like that after you. I needed to find my own sense of self, my sense of worth, and my self-confidence before I could stop dating douchebags. It also took not dating at all for a while, to be honest. So, I wasn’t in the right place for you then either.”
Everett took a deep breath. “And now you can’t forgive me, so…”
Maya squeezed his hand and leaned toward him. “You’re forgiven.”
****
Seven years ago…
Maya: What are you doing rn?
Everett: Ugh. Something painfully boring. Tell me what you are doing? Way more interesting.
Maya: Don’t be so sure. Baking cookies with my mom.
Everett: That’s adorable.
Maya: Im rolling my eyes.
Everett: No emoji?
Maya: Not in an emoji mood. What r u doing?
Everett rubbed his chin and looked at the seashell wallpaper of his Aunt Alyssa’s bathroom. The after-funeral luncheon had been too much for him so he’d escaped to spend some quality texting time with Maya. He didn’t want to lie. But he didn’t want to talk about how he grieved for his strong, caring father and felt inadequately prepared for the task of taking care of his mother.
Everett: Hiding from my family in a bathroom.
Maya: Seriously? LOL! And I thought my family was crazy.
Everett: I have this aunt whose entire house is covered with wallpaper. Every room is a different kind. Who the hell still has wallpaper?
Maya: LOL! Your aunt apparently. Tell me more.
Everett: The bathroom I’m in has a nautical theme. The living room has pink and gray stripes. The kitchen (and I am not making this up) has cream-colored wallpaper that is covered with little tiny tacos. Her bedroom is like this checkered weirdness and the spare room is straight up paisley. No joke—paisley!
Maya: Oh my God! This is magic! I have to see this!
Everett could think of nothing he’d like better than to bring Maya to his aunt’s place outside L.A. while they were on a little mini-vacation. Maybe they’d drive down the 101, stopping in Monterey to see the aquarium and pick up some crab, which they’d eat on the beach a little farther down. They’d get to his aunt’s place after watching the sunset over the ocean and spend the night in her spare room, laughing at the décor and the creepy clowns that sat on one long shelf on the far side of the room.
Everett: How about next weekend? We can drive down there together.
The pause was so long Everett had no choice but to leave his aunt’s cramped bathroom and return to the wake. The gathering was a strange combination of tears and laughter that made him squeamish. He could be talking to someone, like his father’s cousin, Gina, and they would be talking about something completely normal like basketball stats and suddenly she’d start crying.
Everett made his way through the living room with his head down, his goal to get out on the porch. But Rebecca managed to catch up with him. “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” She put her hand on his upper arm, stopping him in his tracks.
“I just needed a minute. And…ah…I need to call that lawyer about something.” He held up his phone and gestured to the back door. It was at that moment the text notification went off, making the phone vibrate in his hand and his heart leap.
Rebecca pouted, her deep red lipstick punctuating the expression. “Is it about the whole starting a company thing? Maybe Elias can do it?” She gestured to the corner of the room where his best friend was chatting with his father’s second cousin and his wife.
Everett hated how she called his start-up business a “thing.” He squared his shoulders. “No. I need to do this myself.” He planted a kiss on top of her head. “I’ll be right back.”
Rebecca didn’t argue any further, and she stayed put as he made his way out into the lush backyard. It was warm out there and he was alone. So he perched himself on a concrete bench beside a set of azaleas and looked at his phone.
Maya: Believe me, a vacation with you sounds amazing. But…
Everett: The girlfriend.
Maya: I know it might not sound very modern of me. But I just don’t get this open thing. I don’t want to be the other woman.
Everett wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He wanted to tell her that he was close to making her the only woman if she’d have him. It was crazy and rash, but it was also honest. He’d had one night and exchanged a bunch of texts with this woman and yet he felt so much closer to her than he did to his girlfriend of two years.
Unable to decide what to say, he pressed the call button. With butterflies doing a killer dance in his stomach, he waited while the phone rang.
“Hi.” She sounded shy. It was freaking adorable.
“I just wanted to hear your voice.” The admission came out in a single string of words run together.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m actually having a bad day.”
Concern dripped from her voice. “Wanna talk about it?”
“No. I don’t. I want to talk about happy things. I want to talk about you.”
“I’m not that interesting.”
“That is so not true. You’re fascinating.”
“So where exactly is your aunt’s house?” Her voice sounded lighter and he liked that.
Everett leaned back on the bench, propping himself up with the arm he wasn’t using to hold the phone. “Outside L.A.”
“And what does your aunt do for a living? I mean, how does she pay for all this extravagant wallpaper?”
“Oh, that’s where it gets really interesting. You see, my aunt is the designer for a wallpaper company.”
Maya’s laugh was the most beautiful sound Everett had heard in a long time. “I should have seen that coming. So did she design the wallpaper in her house?”
Everett closed his eyes and smiled. He took a deep breath before answering her. He planned to keep talking about any damn thing she wanted, except his dad or his girlfriend. He just wanted more of Maya.
****
Everett blinked at her. She forgives me? “Why?” The question came out sounding more curious than anything.
“Because, I realized that I was only seeing the situation from my perspective. In seven years I never once considered how absolutely ridiculous it was for me to expect you to drop a girlfriend you’d had for two years for a one-night stand.” She smiled ruefully.
“It was more than a one-night stand.” His voice came out gruff and broken.
They held each other’s gaze for a long, intense moment. Then Maya stood quickly. “Okay, then. Time for the next part of our date.”
Everett stood as well. “Where are we going?”
“To Alameda for ice cream.”
“Alameda? We have to go all the way to Alameda for ice cream?”
“Yes. There’s the best little local ice cream shop there. I took the bus to the park, so you’re driving.”
Everett took his credit card back from the leather folder on the table after he’d paid and held his arm out toward the door of the restaurant. “I will literally follow you anywhere. Lead the way.”