Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Evan served himself a modest amount and passed the bowl to Hudson, who immediately added twice as much to Evan’s plate.
“You look terrible,” Hudson said as he pushed the bowl out of reach. His bluntness might have sounded cruel from anyone else, but he and Evan had known each other too long to bother disguising concern as politeness. “When was the last time you slept somewhere other than that sofa in your office?”
“Tuesday.” Evan picked up his fork, reconsidered, and corrected himself. “Possibly Monday. Tuesday might have been the night the cleaning crew asked whether I needed medical assistance.”
Makayla gave a short laugh without looking at him. “And people wonder why I feel like I’m single.”
Evan’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth, but he completed the movement before answering. “I asked if you wanted to meet me for dinner.”
“I’m tired of rearranging my life around your schedule.” Makayla reached for the rice and spooned some onto her plate with careful precision. “Mostly because I’m asked to find it temporary, but it’s been six years of this.”
Abby had heard variations of this argument from Makayla, but never with Evan sitting across from her.
In Makayla’s telling, he was always the man absent from the room—the vague, unreasonable force keeping her from holidays, dinner reservations, and the wedding she wanted.
His presence made the familiar complaints land differently, because every accusation produced a visible reaction he tried to hide.
“What happened this week?” Abby asked before the silence could harden. She turned toward Evan, giving him a question that did not require defending his relationship. “Makayla said you have another investor meeting.”
“We do, but that isn’t the immediate problem.
” Evan rested his forearms on the edge of the table, and some of his fatigue receded as his attention shifted toward work.
“One of our enterprise clients wants a feature moved into the current release. It’s something we planned to build eventually, but eventually and “next Quarter” are different engineering concepts. ”
Hudson swirled the wine in his glass and studied Evan over the rim. “Can’t you tell them no?”
“I can tell them anything I want.” Evan tore off a piece of naan and used it to gather sauce from his plate. “Keeping the client afterward is the difficult part.”
“Then charge them for the change.” Hudson leaned back in his chair with the confidence of someone accustomed to problems becoming negotiable once money entered the room. “If they want to rewrite your schedule, make the inconvenience expensive.”
Evan’s mouth shifted in something that was not quite a smile. “You sound like our investors.”
“Your investors are right occasionally. You only resent it because they control the purse strings and stifle your creativity.”
Abby watched the two men settle into an old rhythm, Hudson provoking and Evan refusing to be provoked in any satisfying way.
Their differences had once made them unexpectedly close.
Hudson moved through the world by instinct and assumed every closed door concealed someone he could charm, buy, or bully his way through, while Evan examined the hinges, researched the building code, and worried the door might belong to someone who had a legitimate reason for locking it.
“This client represents almost a quarter of our recurring revenue,” Evan explained, directing the answer toward Abby rather than Hudson.
He seemed to recognize that she genuinely wanted to understand, and his voice lost the compressed quality it had carried when discussing the investor meeting.
“If we charge enough to cover the work, they may leave. If we absorb the cost, we delay everything else and risk losing two smaller clients who have already waited too long.”
“So you’re choosing which group gets to be angry with you.” Abby folded her napkin beneath the edge of her plate. “That sounds like planning a wedding.”
Evan laughed, the sound quiet and surprised. “Do your relatives also threaten to migrate their data?”
“Hudson’s aunt threatened to boycott the entire ceremony because the venue’s chairs weren’t padded.
” Abby glanced at Hudson, who had spent forty minutes on the phone persuading his aunt that a cushion could resolve what international relocation could not.
“At least your clients are upset about something that matters.”
“Her back condition is recognized by three specialists,” Hudson said, although his mouth had begun to curve. “One of them owns a clinic in Switzerland.”
Makayla pushed food around her plate while the rest of them laughed. Her gaze moved from Abby to Evan, lingering on the ease that had entered his expression, and Abby felt a small stab of guilt for succeeding where her friend had been failing all week.
“You explain it better to her,” Makayla said. She placed her fork beside her plate and leaned back, her appetite apparently gone. “Whenever I ask what’s happening, you tell me it’s complicated.”
Evan’s smile faded. “You usually ask when I’m answering six messages and trying to get out the door.”
“Which would be every time I see you.”
“I don’t mean that you can’t understand it.” Evan turned toward her, lowering his voice even though there was no one beyond the four of them to overhear. “I mean I don’t always know how to explain it before I’ve figured out what we’re going to do.”
Makayla touched the bracelet at her wrist again. “Abby didn’t ask what you were going to do. She asked what happened, and you managed an answer.”
The observation carried enough truth that no one could dismiss it. Evan looked across the table at Abby, then back at Makayla, and the apology that appeared in his face seemed to anger her before he could speak it.
“You’re right,” he said as he laid down his fork. His hand moved toward Makayla’s on the table, but she withdrew hers to lift her wineglass. “I’m sorry.”
Abby had spent most of lunch encouraging Makayla to tell Evan what she needed.
Now that she had, Abby wanted to intervene, translate the apology into something Makayla could accept, and protect Evan from the humiliation of offering tenderness to an empty stretch of table.
She kept quiet because helping had become too tangled with preventing other people from experiencing the natural consequences of a difficult moment.
Hudson did not share her restraint and rolled his eyes. “Now that Evan has confessed to insufficient technical briefings, can we eat before the curry gets gelatinous?”
Evan gave a tight smile, muttered an apology, and resumed eating, though more slowly than before, and Abby wondered whether he had tasted any of the meal at all.
They moved to the living room after dinner with the second bottle of wine and the bakery box Makayla had brought.
The pastry inside was a glossy chocolate tart decorated with flakes of gold, elaborate enough that Hudson accused Makayla of trying to make the rest of the meal look inadequate by comparison.
“I didn’t choose it just for you,” she said as she handed him the knife. Her tone was light, but she watched his hands while he cut the first slice. “I got it for Abby. You don’t even like chocolate.”
“I like dark chocolate.” Hudson transferred the slice to her plate and gave her the narrow end, where the filling was thickest. “Anything else is subpar. I object to mediocrity in all its forms.”
“You tolerate yourself beautifully,” Makayla said, accepting the plate without looking at him.
The exchange was familiar enough that Abby smiled as she carried coffee into the room. Hudson and Makayla had irritated each other since college, each privately convinced the other relied too heavily on charm, although neither seemed aware of how similar that made them.
Evan stood when Abby entered and took two cups from the tray before she could set it down. “Where do these go?”
“Coffee table, unless Hudson has introduced a new rule about drinks near the rug.” Abby nodded toward the center of the room, then watched Evan place the cups well away from the edge. “You can relax. We’ve never made a guest pay for professional cleaning.”
The conversation became easier once food no longer required anyone to face one another across a table.
Hudson told a story about a disastrous presentation at the family company, Makayla supplied questions, and Evan listened with the patient amusement of someone grateful not to be the evening’s subject.
Abby noticed Evan checking his phone only once. He read the message, typed a reply with both thumbs, and then turned the device facedown on the arm of the chair.
Makayla noticed too, though she barely looked at him. “You can go if you need to.”
“I don’t need to.” Evan picked up his coffee and looked at her over the cup. “They know not to call unless the building is on fire.”
“They’ve called you for less.”
“And I’m learning to set boundaries.” Evan’s voice remained calm, but his thumb moved once against the ceramic. “Slowly, apparently.” He smiled apologetically.
Makayla looked away first. Her attention settled on Hudson, who was dividing the last piece of tart despite claiming he did not want it.
Abby watched Evan watch her, and for the first time she understood that his absences did not mean he had failed to notice what they cost. He looked like a man keeping a private account of every disappointment, convinced he could repay the accumulated debt once his company succeeded.
“You should take the cookies home,” Hudson said when the silence began to stretch. He nodded toward the untouched paper bag on the kitchen counter. “You may have stopped liking them, Makayla, but that doesn’t mean Evan has.”
Makayla’s face changed, regret appearing too late to prevent what she had said earlier. She leaned toward him as though she might apologize, but Evan spoke before she could.
“Leave them here,” Evan said, taking Abby’s empty plate from her hand. “Abby likes lemon.”
Abby did, although she could not remember ever telling him. Evan’s gaze moved to her for a moment, thoughtful, before Makayla reached for the wine bottle and filled her own glass again.