CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I didn’t question him about what he was going to ask me when the show finished, worried that he might have forgotten completely and would think me ridiculous for bringing it up.
He might have been about to ask me something completely innocuous, like what my favorite brand of bubble gum was. Or if I thought squirrels should have some kind of purgatory so that they could work their way up to squirrel heaven. It could have been anything, and I cursed my overactive imagination for wanting what I couldn’t have.
The rest of me did not get that message, though. Max and I stood up to put our coats back on, but no matter how hard I tried, I just could not get my left arm in the sleeve.
Max gave me an amused and indulgent look and reached forward to hold my coat in place for me so that I could easily slide my arm in.
He smelled so good and was so warm and strong.
I wanted to tell him I hadn’t done it intentionally.
Okay, maybe it had been intentional on my body’s part—to inhibit our coordination so that he would have to help and we could stand close to each other.
“What did you think?” I asked him as we spilled out onto the street with the rest of the audience.
“It was really good! What about you?”
Although my dating history in New York was not that extensive, I could say that I hadn’t gone out with a single man who would have admitted to enjoying a musical.
More and more I was beginning to believe that Max was some figment of my imagination that I had wished into being.
“This is like the seventh time I’ve seen it. It’s my favorite.” It was why I’d chosen it, wanting to share it with him. I was so giddily happy that he’d liked it.
“I could have guessed. You sang along to all of the songs.”
That made me gasp. I had an absolutely terrible singing voice and did not ever sing voluntarily where others could hear me. “I did not sing,” I whispered in horror.
“Oh, you did. It’s okay, though. It was adorable.”
Like a puppy. Wonderful.
“Why didn’t we go to something you haven’t seen before?” he asked as we approached the traffic light.
“I’m not one of those people that need constant variety or novelty. I’m very happy with the things I love.”
“I’m the same way!” he said.
The horde of women on his phone told me differently, but I stayed quiet.
“I eat the same breakfast every day and my—” He stopped himself. “People have made fun of me for it in the past.”
By people did he mean his ex-girlfriend? Why would that incredibly evil, stupid woman make fun of Max for anything?
My opinion of her dropped lower every time he mentioned her.
“What do you like to have for breakfast?” I asked, knowing that it was something I was probably never going to witness personally but still feeling intensely curious about it.
“Bacon and eggs. What about you?”
“Coffee and panic, mostly.”
Max laughed and I grinned at him. It took only a couple of minutes to walk over to Times Square, and I got several pictures of him with various people dressed up in costumes of famous animated characters. We walked through the crowded and busy stores, talking about other things we liked and disliked. Our conversation was easy and flowed well. It had been a long time since a man had paid this much attention to me, or had seemed so interested in learning things about me.
He stayed close, so close sometimes that when he spoke, his words would stir the hair next to my ear. That feeling made my eyes roll so far back in my head that it nearly teleported me into another dimension.
Somehow I managed to keep myself together long enough to direct him to Roma Vida, the Italian restaurant I’d mentioned to him earlier. Max didn’t seem to detect that anything was amiss with me, that I was barely hanging on to my sanity and sense of self.
All I wanted to do was get lost in him, and it was very, very distracting.
I’d been so careful in drawing boundaries with him to be just friends, but no part of my body agreed with my brain’s decision, and it was actively trying to sabotage me and get closer to him.
I “accidentally” bumped into him so many times he probably thought I had an inner-ear issue.
When we arrived at the restaurant, the hostess said she could seat us immediately, despite the fact that there were a bunch of people waiting for a table.
“I guess it pays to know the owner,” Max said to me, and his lips were close to my ear again and my head buzzed as we followed behind the hostess.
If someone had asked me to re-create the sound I made in response, I would not have been able to because it lacked any recognizable vowels or consonants.
“This place looks expensive,” he said, and it hadn’t occurred to me to take his financial situation into consideration. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but considering his comments today, my guess was that working for a nonprofit didn’t pay very well.
I didn’t have a ton of money, but given that I’d gotten paid today, I could cover dinner. It would probably mean ramen noodles for the rest of the month, though.
“It’s only expensive if you buy stuff,” I teased him. “But don’t worry about it. I’ve got it.”
“Everly, you can’t keep paying for things when I—”
We arrived at our table and Max pulled a chair out, standing behind it. He obviously intended to assist me.
Like he’d stepped out of some novel from the nineteenth century. I sat and scooted myself in while he went to the other side of the table.
Just as he’d sat down across from me, Bartolomeo, the owner, made his way over to us.
“Everly! Cara mia!” He leaned down to kiss me on both of my cheeks and I returned the greeting. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I’m introducing my friend Max to your excellent food. And if my client agrees, I have an event I’ll need you to cater.”
“No talk of business tonight,” Bartolomeo said, waving my words away with both of his hands. “You will call me later. We will talk. Tonight is for amore, eh?”
“No,” I said, hoping that I wasn’t blushing as I tried to set the record straight. No amore here. Just ... whatever the Italian word for friendship was.
Max held out his hand and introduced himself to Bartolomeo, and the two men began a rapid dialogue in Italian. I had no idea what either one of them was saying and cursed the fact that I’d never bothered to learn the language despite my Monterra royal obsession.
What I did notice was Bartolomeo pointedly looking at me several times while he made multiple hand gestures that I couldn’t interpret. Max’s smile got bigger and wider until I felt like I was going to throw my fork in an attempt to get them to stop talking.
“Dinner is my treat,” Bartolomeo said, finally shifting back to English. When I tried to object, he said, “No, I insist.”
Then he winked at Max and went back into the kitchen.
“What was that about?” I asked him.
Max shot me a mysterious smile and opened the menu. “He had some very nice things to say about you.”
“Like what?”
“What’s good here?” he asked, avoiding my question.
I wanted to probe further, to find out what exactly had happened in their conversation, but I got the sense that Max was going to keep his secrets. “I’ve never actually eaten here at the restaurant before, but I have tried his food at several events. You can’t go wrong with the lobster risotto or the spaghetti alla gricia. Both the branzino with capers and the tagliata di manzo are incredible. I’d recommend any of those.”
“If you recommend it, that’s good enough for me.”
His words sent little effervescent bubbles through my veins, making me lightheaded. He was probably just being nice, but I appreciated the vote of confidence.
The hostess came by our table. “Bartolomeo asked me to let you know that he’s going to serve you our tasting menu.”
“So much for my recommendation,” I said as Max and I handed our menus to the hostess.
“This way we’ll get to try a bit of everything,” he responded, and then hesitated a beat before adding, “Can I ask you a question?”
I nodded. This man could do anything he wanted to me and I would thank him for it.
Ugh. I had to knock it off with those kinds of thoughts.
“What’s the rubber band for?” He reached for my wrist and my breath caught, but he stopped short, his hand hovering. I was busy watching his actions, longing for the moment when his fingers would make contact with my skin. I glanced up and realized that he was waiting for my permission to touch me. I nodded quickly, my pulse ricocheting wildly the second his fingers stroked the sensitized skin of my inner wrist.
This reaction could not be normal. Something had to be wrong with me that I was in this constant heightened state around him.
Especially when I knew it couldn’t go anywhere.
“You still haven’t explained what it’s for,” he said, and I had to blink several times to reorient myself to my current surroundings. He had hooked his index finger under the rubber band, tugging at it slightly.
I had to swallow down the longing feelings that were overwhelming me. “It’s a technique where if you have intrusive thoughts, you snap the rubber band against your wrist to bring yourself out of it.” The band was there to remind me to do better, be more like Kat, move forward with my life.
“What are you having intrusive thoughts about?” Now his fingers were just gently gliding against my wrist and he was searing my skin with every slight movement.
What was I having intrusive thoughts about?
You .
I felt my lips forming to make the U sound, as if my brain were battling against my mouth to get me to say it out loud.
A waitress approached and announced the first course, which was tagliatelle al ragù. Max took his hand away, and it was like he’d torn off that patch of my skin and taken it with him. I put my hands in my lap, trying to regain some composure, snapping my rubber band over and over again.
“This is amazing,” he said after he took his first bite.
“Told you,” I said. “Bartolomeo is one of the best chefs in the city. I’ve used him for so many events.”
“Have you ever planned weddings?” he asked, settling his linen napkin across his lap.
I did the same with mine, and given how clumsy Max made me, I should have done it sooner. I was just glad I hadn’t spilled anything yet. “Why? Are you in the market for one?”
“Most definitely not.”
“You’re not engaged, right? Or about to get engaged?” He’d already told me that he was single, but I wanted to make sure. Maybe I had some weird in-a-committed-relationship sensor in my brain that made it so I was attracted only to men already involved with someone else.
If he was at all concerned about my line of questioning, he didn’t show it. “I’m not and have absolutely no plans to.”
While I was happy he was very single, I was also annoyed at the reminder that he wasn’t looking for a relationship at all and was allergic to commitment. “I will never plan weddings, because most brides are sociopaths. I like doing events where there’s a personal stake and happy emotions are involved, but brides are like skilled thieves/assassins planning some high-stakes mission, willing to strike down anyone in their path to get what they want. I did one wedding for a cousin while I was in high school, and never again. I got personally attacked on a daily basis and I’m too thin-skinned not to let it bother me. Which is probably something I should work on. Thin skin is not a good thing when you’re an event planner.”
I kind of felt like I’d been talking for too long, but Max didn’t look bored. If anything, he looked intrigued. “I don’t know. There must be some situations where thin skin could be an asset. Like what if you’re getting your blood drawn by a weak phlebotomist?”
“Or a lazy mosquito?”
“An elderly vampire.”
We were both grinning at each other as the next course arrived—tortellini with braised greens.
“Do you have any photos of your one wedding attempt?” he asked, and I wondered whether he was just being polite or if he was really curious.
I got my phone and went through my social media to find some of the photos of the reception from my cousin’s wedding. I told him that she had been so terrible through the entire planning process that we hadn’t spoken for three years. She had finally reached out and apologized and we’d been working on rebuilding our relationship.
“Here.” I handed him the phone.
He was looking at the pictures, scrolling through them, when my phone buzzed. “Oh. You have a message. Sorry, I didn’t mean to read it—it just popped up. Who is Mom Send?”
The universe just had to make sure it really and truly messed with me, didn’t it? Plus, I couldn’t be mad at him for inadvertently reading my text when I’d scrolled through messages from his female horde. “That’s from my mother. She always signs her texts and thinks she has to write the word ‘send’ to get it to work.”
“And it’s in all caps because?” he asked as he handed my phone back to me.
“Because she doesn’t know how caps lock works? I don’t know. I’ve told her so many times but she never listens.”
I glanced at the message. It said:
T MINUS 8 DAYS AND COUNTING UNTIL THE WEDDING!!! MOM SEND
With a growing sense of dread, I knew the next question he was going to ask me. Sure enough, he said, “What wedding are you counting down to?”
Oh, how could I say this without him questioning my sanity? It was very hard explaining to someone who had only a passing familiarity with something you were over-the-top invested in.
“The Monterran royal family. Princess Chiara is getting married next week, and like I told you, it’s our Super Bowl. We’re getting up at four thirty in the morning to watch it.”
That was okay, right? It didn’t sound too bizarre?
I was about to ask him something about his life, to steer him away from getting deeper into this minefield. He already knew I was weird about it—I just didn’t think he understood to what extent.
He beat me to the punch, though, and asked a question first. “Do you have a good relationship with your mom?”
I took another bite of the tortellini dish before I answered. “I love my mom. But I think she wishes I was a different person. I always feel like I’m not measuring up to who she wants me to be.”
He let out a small sigh. “I know how that feels.”
Max’s phone rang and he picked it up to glance at the screen. One of his many female admirers? “Speaking of intrusive family members, it’s my cousin Sunny. She knows I haven’t checked my voice mail in ten years, so she’ll keep calling until I pick up. Excuse me a second. Hello?”
I ate my pasta and watched as his face dropped.
“It’s okay. Breathe. What do you mean? What did she say? What did you say? I can’t understand you when you’re crying. How soon?”
Then his eyes flicked over to me.
“I think I know someone who can help. Let me call you back.”
He hung up and with a very somber expression said, “I hate to have to do this, but Everly, I need to ask you for a favor.”