15. Maya #2
It’s enormous, purple, sparkly, ridiculous, bigger than Chloe herself, the prize that’s clearly designed to be impossible to win.
Oliver won it anyway.
“This is the best day EVER!” Chloe is practically vibrating with joy as she hugs the unicorn, then Oliver, then the unicorn again. “Even better than last week at the park! Princess Sparkle is the most beautiful unicorn in the whole world!”
We spend another hour wandering the fair.
Cotton candy gets everywhere: in Chloe’s hair, on her tiger-painted face, on Oliver’s shirt even though he claims he didn’t eat any.
The face paint smears into abstract orange streaks that make her look more like a sunset than a tiger.
She wins a goldfish at a booth I’m fairly certain is rigged, and Oliver immediately starts researching proper fish care on his phone, the first time he’s touched it all day.
“They need a real tank,” he’s saying as we walk toward the parking lot, Chloe skipping ahead with her unicorn and her goldfish in its plastic bag. “Not just a bowl. And a filter, and special food, and apparently you have to condition the water? I had no idea fish were so complicated.”
“You really don’t have to…”
“She won it. She should get to keep it properly.” He looks up from his phone. “I’ll pick up everything tomorrow and set up the tank at your apartment. If that’s okay with you.”
Your apartment. The one he bought. The one with my name on the deed.
“That’s okay,” I say slowly. “Chloe would like that.”
“Sunday afternoon? I could come by around two, help her pick out decorations for the tank, make sure everything’s set up right.”
He’s asking permission. He’s actually asking, instead of assuming or announcing or simply showing up and expecting me to accommodate his schedule.
“Sunday afternoon works.”
Near the exit, we’re stopped by a voice calling my name.
“Maya? I thought that was you.”
I turn to find a man approaching, tall, dark-haired, handsome in a conventional, entirely forgettable way. It takes me a moment to place him.
Wes. His daughter is in Chloe’s class.
“Wes. Hi.”
“Great fair, right? The kids are having a blast.” His eyes slide to Oliver, assessing. Taking in the expensive clothes, the confident posture, the proprietary way Oliver has shifted slightly closer to me. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Wes.”
“Oliver.” The handshake that follows looks firm. Possibly too firm. “Chloe’s father.”
“Right, right.” Wes’s expression shifts, recalibration, reassessment. “I’ve heard a lot about you. From Maya.”
“Have you.”
It’s not a question. The temperature between them drops several degrees.
“I gave Maya my number a few weeks ago,” Wes continues, either oblivious to the tension or deliberately poking at it. “In case she wanted to grab coffee sometime. I know she’s been going through a difficult time, and I thought she could use a friend.”
“She has support.” Oliver’s voice is steel wrapped in silk, the CEO voice he uses in negotiations when he wants to intimidate without appearing overtly aggressive. “She has me.”
“Does she?” Wes’s eyebrows rise. “Because from what I’ve heard…”
“Wes.” I step between them before this escalates into a scene I’ll have to explain to Chloe. “Not here. Not in front of the kids.”
He holds up his hands, all innocence. “You’re right. I apologize. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.” He takes a step back, but his eyes stay on me. “The offer still stands, Maya. Coffee. Whenever you’re ready.”
He disappears into the crowd. Oliver watches him go with an expression that could curdle milk.
And God help me, the possessive steel in his voice went straight through me.
She has support. She has me. I hate that it’s hot.
I hate that after everything, all the neglect and the broken promises and the words I overheard that shattered my heart, my body still responds to him like this.
Still picks his side without consulting my brain.
“Oliver…”
“Don’t.” He turns to face me, and the mask of control has slipped. Underneath is something raw, not just jealousy, but something deeper. Recognition, maybe. Understanding. “Don’t tell me I’m overreacting.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
He’s quiet for a moment, processing. I can see him working it through, his expression shifting from anger to something more painful.
“Is that what I’ve been doing to you?” His voice is rough. “For years? Making you watch other men be ready to step in while I was too busy with work to even notice they existed?”
“I’ve been too busy trying to hold our marriage together to notice other men,” I say honestly.
He takes it standing, but only just. “I deserved that.”
“Yes. You did.”
We stand there in the chaos of the fair, children shrieking around us, parents herding their charges toward the parking lot as the day winds down.
“Is this what I did to you?” Oliver asks again, slower now, like he’s finally grasping what he should have seen years ago. “Made you watch someone else be ready to stand where I should have been?”
“Yes.” My voice is steadier than I feel. “Every time you chose work over us. Every time you weren’t there when you promised to be. Every time you looked at your phone instead of at me. There was always someone else ready to step in. Ready to be present in the ways you weren’t.”
His expression cracks open. Pain. Recognition. Shame.
“I’m so sorry,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
The noise of the fair fades into background static as we stand there, facing each other.
“Have dinner with me,” Oliver says suddenly.
“What?”
“Not here. Not now. But soon.” He takes a breath, visibly steeling himself. “Let me take you on a proper date. Like the beginning, when we first met. Before everything got complicated. Let me remind you why you said yes in the first place.”
“A date.”
“A real one. No Chloe, much as I love her. No phones, no distractions. Just us. Getting to know each other again.”
I look at Chloe, bouncing impatiently nearby with her goldfish and her enormous unicorn, tiger paint smeared across her delighted face. At Oliver, watching me with hope, fear, and a third thing I’m afraid to name written across his features.
“Okay,” I hear myself say. “One dinner.”
His smile could light up the world.
Later, walking to the car, I find a card in my pocket. Wes’s number, slipped in during the chaos of the confrontation.
Oliver sees it. His face goes carefully, deliberately blank.
“I’m not calling him,” I say. “I never was. I don’t even remember him putting it there.”
“I know.” But his voice is tight.
I keep the card anyway.
Not because I want to use it. Not because I’m interested in Wes or coffee or anything he’s offering.
But because for the first time in years, I want Oliver to feel what it’s like to wonder. To worry. To not know for certain that I’ll always be there waiting for him.
Maybe that makes me petty. Maybe it makes me human.
Either way, I slip the card back into my pocket and walk toward my car, leaving Oliver standing in the parking lot watching me go.