Chapter Nine
After-hours, the office at Overnight is dark and quiet, and Dalisay and Evan stay late to work on their project. Naomi has some last-minute additions she wants them to include in one of the pieces, so to make the deadline, they need to put in extra hours.
“You can’t let them overwork you, especially so close to the holidays,” her mom says, when Dalisay called to tell her why she would be late.
Dalisay sighs and glances through the large windows lining the conference room, watching Evan as he rests his cheek on one hand, scrolling on his laptop with the other. His eyes flick up when he notices her looking, and she turns away, drawing her attention to the indoor Christmas tree, which she now notices is made of plastic. “It’s okay, Mom. May I remind you, I actually like this job.”
“I didn’t forget. I am proud of you, and I love that you’re happy, but I want you to have a life outside of work.”
“I do! I won’t make this a habit, I promise. This is just part of the job.”
Calling her mom now, especially in front of Evan, makes her feel a little immature. A part of her still feels like she owes it to her family to tell them where she is, while another part of her knows that for an American, the idea seems ridiculous. Of course, it’s nice to know that her family cares enough to worry, and calling them to tell them is the least she could do, but at the same time, shouldn’t she have a little independence?
“Is Evan there?” her mom asks.
Dalisay swallows a lump in her throat, panicking a little. “Uh, no!” She has to lie. What would her mother think if she was alone with the guy who was “supposedly” courting her?
“Who’s there with you?”
“Just a couple other editors. Don’t worry.”
“Oh. Well.” She almost sounds disappointed. “Leftovers will be waiting for you in the ref.”
Dalisay smiles, relieved. “Thanks.” It’s the little kindnesses that contain the most love.
When Dalisay comes back into the conference room, she notices now how Evan’s cologne fills the space, spicy and warm, and she has to remind herself that they’re at work. She needs to be professional. She can’t let him distract her. But first—food. Naomi gave them the company card so they could order whatever they wanted.
As she passes behind Evan to get to her seat at the table, he asks, “What are you in the mood for? I was thinking tacos.”
“Oh! Me too, actually … How about the place down the block, La Taqueria?”
Evan spins his laptop around to show her his screen as she sits. He’s already got La Taqueria’s menu pulled up. “It’s like you read my mind,” he says, one corner of his mouth raised in a half smile.
Funny. Never did she think they could agree on anything, even about something as simple as tacos.
Evan takes the initiative to place the order for both of them and when he does, he says, “Food’ll be ready in twenty. I’ll pick it up.”
“Thanks,” she says, and they get back to writing. On her laptop, she sees Evan working in their shared document and she watches his words as they appear on her screen. Despite the speed with which he types, she can tell he’s tired. He looks like he didn’t sleep well last night; his hair is extra mussed and his eyes a little glassy.
With the office empty, she can’t help that her mind starts to imagine all the things that could happen without worrying anyone would walk in on them. She’s seen enough trash TV to easily picture the way he could press her up against the wall, kiss her neck, hold her hips … The image invades her mind before she can stop it, and she scrambles for anything else to think about in a desperate effort to gather her wits.
“How long do you think this will take?” she asks, a little pitchy.
Evan sighs and rocks his head to the side, still not looking up from his computer. “As long as it needs to, right? Got somewhere to be?”
“No. I just … You look tired.”
“Thanks?” he says, with a hint of a smile.
“I didn’t …” She catches herself and licks her lips. “I just know you’ve been working hard lately. With servitude and all.”
“Are you taking pity on me?” When he looks at her, with those dark eyes lit up by the glow of his computer screen, that smile of his takes center stage. Damn him. Something inside her coils up, a heated pressure below her navel. How can he turn her on with just one smile? The back of her neck feels sunburned.
“I’m saying,” she says, forcing her gaze to the keys on her laptop, “we can get an outline at least, figure out our main points, and then take another stab at it tomorrow. I’ll ask Naomi for an extension if we need it.”
Evan seems amenable to that idea. “All I want is to get home to Tallulah,” he says and glances at his watch.
“Tallulah?”
Evan’s eyes flick up to her and a hint of a smile creases the corners. “My dog.”
“Oh.” The pressure below her navel dispels the longer she sits in silence. Is she really starting to feel something for him? She rolls her teeth across her lower lip. For some reason, she never expected that he would have a dog, let alone a dog with such a delicate name. “What is she? Tallulah?”
“Dachshund. Wiener dog.”
Dalisay actually laughs.
Evan raises his eyebrows. “What?”
“I didn’t picture you’d have a dachshund, or a dog period, for that matter.”
“Why?”
“I figured you were more of a cat person because you’re also independent, aloof, and stubborn.”
This time when Evan smiles, it’s the kind that melts into Dalisay’s skin like sunshine. “Then I guess you don’t know me at all.”
Her heart sinks a little. Pinky was right, she really doesn’t.
All Dalisay can do is try to smile, but she knows how unfair she’s been toward him these past few days. She realizes this is the first time they’ve had a conversation, a real conversation, since he started doing the Five Stages. Normally, they wouldn’t be alone in the same room together if they were playing by Manila rules. But nothing, when it comes to Evan Saatchi, is normal.
Dalisay draws her eyes back to her computer, as if she’s about to start working again, but she can’t, not when it feels like everything’s been set off-balance between them. He’s had to learn so much about her to go through the stages, and here she is, not knowing anything about him, even something as small as him having a dog. If their roles were reversed, and she was the one doing the Five Stages, how would she go about winning his affection? What music does he like? What kind of gifts would she give him? How could she be helpful to his family? Where does he even live? The answers are all infuriatingly blank.
And it’s her own fault.
The Ramos family goes all out for the holiday, it would seem.
Evan stands in the driveway while Mrs. Ramos opens the garage to reveal plastic boxes upon boxes labeled Christmas. Evan is certain there isn’t room left to park a car, there are so many.
“Wow,” he says as he looks at the two-dozen or so boxes labeled Lights. “They must be able to see your house from space.”
His attempt at a joke falls flat. “I don’t think so,” she says, earnestly. Just like her daughters, Mrs. Ramos has dark eyes and hair, but unlike them, when she smiles at him it’s pure, simple warmth. Her wrist is still in a cast, so he does all the work carrying the boxes to the driveway for her. As if he’d let her do it anyway, even if she wasn’t hurt.
“Use a ladder,” she says, “and hang the lights on the outside of the house. Then bring the parol from the garage to hang in the bay window.”
“What’s a parol?”
Evan’s not sure if he should explain that his family never gets into the holiday spirit like the Ramoses do. The most the Saatchis ever did to decorate was hang a “Christmas tree” made out of driftwood on the wall. No lights, no pine needles, no candles. And then after the divorce, his dad didn’t keep up with that tradition either.
“A parol is an ornamental star lantern,” Mrs. Ramos says.
“Oh. Okay, then leave it to me!”
Mrs. Ramos goes back inside, and already Evan’s wondering if it’s too late to run home to grab a jacket. The sky is unusually gray and chilly for the Bay Area. If he’d known he’d be working outside all day, he would have worn more layers. His hoodie does a poor job keeping out the rain as it barely falls—spits, really—on Evan as he climbs the ladder, balancing precariously, to hang the lights across the gutter on the roof.
It’s slow-going, and his fingers are numb by the time he’s secured one string of lights to another, but he won’t be caught dead complaining about it.
Shivering, his whole body tense from the cold, Evan climbs the ladder again with another bundle of lights. This high up, he’s level with the bay window on the second floor, and he can see right into the living room, where it looks so warm and inviting. Their Christmas tree stands in full view of the window, capturing the spirit of the holiday with pale twinkling lights.
He doesn’t mean to be a creep, but he keeps watching as Dalisay comes into view carrying a box of ornaments. She completes the welcoming scene in her cozy sweatpants and hoodie, and unprompted, his chest tightens with longing. Through the glass, he watches her laugh and joke with Nicole as they hang up some handmade ornaments, likely from their childhood, on the tree. When she reaches up to hang one on a higher branch, Dalisay’s hoodie rises and reveals the small of her back. Her skin looks warm and soft, and a thrill goes up Evan’s spine. He looks away, for her sake.
Like the changing of the season, there’s been a shift inside of Evan. He’s been thinking less and less about the bet. Seeing Dalisay every day for servitude has done something to him, made something malleable. He can’t quite place what exactly it is, just that he knows it’s different than before and that it wasn’t one thing that made it happen but a matter of time.
Whatever change this is, Evan isn’t sure what to make of it.
While he gets back to hanging the lights, Dalisay notices him through the window and her face brightens as she smiles at him. A real smile. And all at once, he can’t help but wonder … Is she actually starting to like him?
He can’t be imagining it, can he? The way her dimples get deeper and her eyes light up like that when she sees him, what else could it be? If anything, they’ve become friendlier toward each other, but—Evan reminds himself—that doesn’t mean anything. They were both clear that there weren’t any strings attached to this bet, and he intends to uphold his side of the bargain.
She said no; he would always respect that. After this is all over, they can go their separate ways. He can’t read into anything so simple as a smile. It wouldn’t do anything good for his heart.
By the time he’s done, the Ramos house looks like it belongs on a Christmas card festooned with warm yellow lights. All that’s needed to complete the picture is snow. Of course, there’s no chance of that, but Evan amuses himself with the idea of flakes falling from the dreary gray sky. Crazier things have happened to him recently.
By the time he brings the ladder back into the garage, it’s already dusk, and Evan can’t feel his fingers anymore. He breathes some feeling back into them by cupping them over his mouth and blowing. All he wants to do is get indoors to warm up, but he remembers he has to bring the parol to the living room. He searches everywhere in the garage, opening and closing seemingly every box labeled “Christmas” until finally he finds it inside the last one, cradled with packing peanuts and copious amounts of tissue paper.
When Mrs. Ramos said it was ornamental, he expected something small, but the parol is huge, the diameter as long as his forearm, and fragile. While the frame is made of aluminum, the faces are made of some kind of translucent pink shell and there’s a lightbulb inside. It’ll look incredible when it’s lit up, that’s for sure.
Eager to finally get warm, Evan carries the parol into the house with numb fingers and Daniel stands with a mug of hot chocolate, greeting him from the top of the stairs. “All set?”
“Thanks for all your help,” Evan teases as he kicks off his shoes.
“You had it covered,” says Daniel. “Careful with that.”
“I’ve got it. No problem.” He climbs the stairs and spots Dalisay and Nicole still in the living room, debating what kind of Christmas music they should play, and Dalisay smiles again when she sees him. Evan’s body feels just like his fingers, tingly.
“That’s a family heirloom,” says Daniel to Evan.
“I said I got it.”
Just then, Little Luis comes tearing from around the Christmas tree, running full tilt for Evan as he chases his fire truck rolling across the floor. Evan’s too busy staring at Dalisay to notice quick enough. By the time he does, it’s too late.
The toddler knocks into his shin, and Evan pulls back before he can do any harm, but he loses his balance.
Evan tips forward, and so does the parol. It slips from his numb fingers and the star hits the floor, fracturing into pieces like glass.
Little Luis’s screams bring Melinda running. Everyone’s asking what happened.
Evan tries to apologize, but the toddler is inconsolable. At least he’s unhurt. Evan doesn’t know what to do as Melinda carries Little Luis to another room to calm him down.
“What is it? What happened?” Mrs. Ramos appears, wide-eyed. She must have heard the commotion. Then she gasps and covers her mouth at the sight of the parol.
Pieces of shell glitter on the floor, the bulb inside broken too. The only thing that remains is the skeletal frame of the star, but it’s dented now.
“I am so, so sorry,” Evan says. His brain finally starts working again as he scrambles to pick up the pieces. But Mrs. Ramos rushes to him, hands fluttering.
“No!” she says. “Don’t cut yourself!”
Evan repeats his apology, over and over. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for it. It’s my fault—”
Everyone in the room assures him that it’s nothing to fret about, but Evan feels like they’re only saying it to be polite, maybe to make him feel better. Guilt crushes him like a ten-ton weight on his chest. He’s a complete oaf, and they trusted him with a family heirloom.
While Mrs. Ramos and Daniel hurry off to get a broom and dustpan and the vacuum, Evan kneels to pick up the pieces. Most of the shell has shattered into bits, but he does what he can to gather the larger fragments into his palm.
Dalisay kneels next to him and helps.
“I’m so sorry,” he says again.
“It’s okay, really.”
He can’t bear to look at her. He has to fix this somehow. Memories of being a little kid again, scrambling to piece together his mom’s favorite vase because he was tossing a baseball in the house when he knew he wasn’t supposed to. And knowing how angry she’d be with him, that she had enough problems to deal with already, and thinking that it was his fault his parents got divorced—
Panic bubbles up. He can’t breathe.
“Hey, look at me,” Dalisay says. Her dimples come out when she smiles. “It’s just a parol.”
Evan feels helpless. He swallows thickly. “What about Little Luis—?”
“He’s fine,” Dalisay says, smiling assuredly. She reaches out and touches his wrist, and the warmth of her fingers makes Evan’s breath catch in his throat. “You’re okay too. No one’s angry. I promise.”
Looking into Dalisay’s dark eyes, Evan forces himself to breathe, hissing between pursed lips. Dalisay’s fingers slowly slip off his arm. He misses their heat right away. “Sorry,” he says. He’s got more than one thing to be sorry about.
Whether she understands or not, Dalisay simply nods, still smiling, and helps him clean up without another word.