Chapter 7
7
“Happy Wednesday!” says Evie’s boss, soon to be ex-boss, Katia Belafonte, executive producer of After Ever After. “How are you?”
Evie’s eye twitches. “Great.”
“Great!”
They’re the first two in the weekly pitch meeting, a video call that Evie takes from Imogen’s couch, her laptop propped on a stack of books. During a moment of awkward silence, Katia tucks a rogue strand of her otherwise sleek onyx bob behind her ear and by the time it occurs to Evie to ask her how she is, more faces populate her screen. Cohosts Amber B. and Tiffany P. Outreach and booking manager Claudia Cho. Graphic designer Saskia Evans. Just six people are responsible for producing the dating show recap podcast. Soon to be five, after she quits. Once this salary, combined with Theo’s salary, secures his apartment.
If she quits.
Evie has no clue how to quit.
I quit.
Her pulse spikes just thinking those two words. How? She’s a twenty-seven-year-old adult who’s in therapy, who’s doing the work. Yet she’s still the little girl who walked into Miss Stella’s class all those years ago, so terrified by something she wants, by articulating that want.
First, to dance.
Now, to quit.
At least she has a few weeks to figure out how to quash the panic that swells her throat every time she even thinks about quitting because she’s not a person who leaves—not places, not people, not even a job. After participating in hellos and small talk, Evie turns her camera off. She takes her laptop to the couch, lies down, closes her eyes, and tries to stay present. She truly does. Why? It doesn’t matter. Five years of her life that included surviving three rounds of layoffs, two promotions, and an acquisition that opened an antitrust case against her employer are ending.
It’s not just quitting that scares her, but what it means.
Accepting the fellowship.
Marrying Theo.
Any attempt at active listening is over the moment her phone lights up with an email.
Subject: marriage license (holy shit)
As someone from the analytics department (Gerri? Kerry?) joins the call to go over last season’s engagement metrics, her anxiety about quitting becomes second to the memory she’s spent the last three days attempting to rebury.
The memory Theo unknowingly excavated with those three words.
Marry me, Evelyn.
She’s no longer on Imogen’s couch. She’s lying in a king-size bed in a tiny Airbnb nestled in the Santa Barbara mountains, tangled in butter-soft satin sheets, tangled in Hanna, who’s still asleep. Evie watches her chest rise and fall, absorbing every detail of this moment—the silk bonnet with little strawberries protecting her curls, the drool on her pillow, the way her gold septum piercing reflects the light. She watches in awe of their present and reminisces about their beginning. Sophomore year. UCLA. Hanna Greene, bursting through the door of A History of Cinema ten minutes late like a sexy tornado. Evie, taking in her every detail—her ombré blue box braids, the small mole under her left eye, her choice to wear socks with Tevas. Hanna, twisting in her chair after choosing the seat in front of Evie.
“Do you have a pencil?”
“Yes.”
Evie handed over her only pencil, distracted by the septum piercing.
For two years she ignored her crush, until they were on the set of a senior thesis together. Hanna, a grip. Evie, a boom operator. After a 2:00 a.m. wrap, Hanna asked her if she wanted a milkshake. “Yes,” she lied, instead of telling Hanna that dairy messes with her stomach. They went to Lulu’s, the twenty-four-hour diner on campus, where Evie opted to sip on a root beer while they whispered their biggest, scariest dreams out loud and laughed until the sun came up. Their first kiss tasted like a root beer float.
“Come back to mine?” Hanna asked against her mouth, Evie’s back pressed against Lulu’s brick facade.
She replied without hesitation. “Yes.”
“I have a job lined up in Atlanta,” Hanna confessed the following morning. “I’m not looking for anything serious.”
Lucky for Hanna, neither was Evie. So their beginning was a situationship with a defined end date. Easy, casual, perfect. After graduation, Hanna left. Evie stayed. But the following year, Hanna returned to LA, showed up at the bungalow with a lavender latte, and what started as a senior-year situationship became a three-year relationship.
Evie’s first real relationship.
Hanna’s eyelids flutter as she rolls onto her side and burrows into Evie. Hanna, a script coordinator for a network procedural, planned this getaway during the brief hiatus between seasons. Both live in LA, separated by up to an hour-long commute. For now. It’s their three-year anniversary and Evie’s ready to live with Hanna, ready to really begin their life together.
Hanna drapes her leg over Evie’s thigh, her knee pressing into her full bladder. Evie untangles herself, in need of the bathroom, then searches Hanna’s overnight bag in need of toothpaste. Her fingers brush against velvet and the sensation is an electric shock of panic. No . Her hand wraps around a small velvet box. No. She removes it from Hanna’s bag and it’s exactly what she thinks it is. No . She opens the box. No . A simple solitaire diamond set in gold sparkles in the morning sun.
No .
“Ev?”
Hanna’s morning voice sounds like sex.
Evie’s knees feel liquid.
Hanna presses her palms against the mattress to sit up and reaches for clear-frame glasses on the nightstand. Seeing the ring box in Evie’s hand, she laughs. “Shit.”
“I needed toothpaste.”
“Come here, Ev.”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
She locks the bathroom door behind her and squeezes her eyes shut. Evie’s just twenty-six, the same age her parents were when they got married, and though she’s certain she doesn’t want to follow in their footsteps, it terrifies her how easy it would be to say yes.
It’s always been so easy to say that word to Hanna.
Yes.
Too easy to lose herself in the fantasy.
Yes.
Like Naomi did.
Yes.
Like Evie swore she would never do. She won’t . Hanna is unfazed by the amount of time she spends in the bathroom. When Evie opens the door, Hanna isn’t on one knee. She’s standing at the end of the bed, ring in hand, looking so goddamn good in an oversized Paramore T-shirt that barely covers her ass and the strawberry bonnet that fully covers her hair.
“I had a whole thing planned, but fuck it. I love you so much. Marry me, Ev?”
No.
No.
No—
“Ev? Is that doable?”
Evie is jolted out of the memory, Amber B.’s direct address reminding her she’s somehow still in a work meeting.
She unmutes herself. “Super doable.”
“You’re the best,” Tiffany P. says.
A message notification pops up on her screen.
Saskia.
Saskia E. (they/she): ummm… u good?
Evie B. (she/her):… do i even WANT to know what I just agreed to?
Saskia is typing…
Saskia stops typing.
A moment later, Evie’s phone vibrates with a text from Saskia.
sass evans
bitch?? u just OK’d weekly bonus podcasts like it was nbd??
10:31 A.M.
DID I?
10:32 A.M.
NO
10:32 A.M.
*gif of Michael Scott screaming no*
10:32 A.M.
this is why u can’t sleep thru these calls!!
10:33 A.M.
or this is why they WANT me to sleep through them…!
10:34 A.M.
touché
10:35 A.M.
Evie reads that last message in Saskia’s voice.
Toosh.
She first heard their Australian accent say—shout— toosh in a crowded Midtown bar last year while visiting the New York office, where Saskia is based. Now Saskia and Evie are work besties bonded by the super specific ability to recall any Best Picture film if prompted by a random year (1942? How Green Was My Valley. 2011? The King’s Speech. 1984? Terms of Endearment ), the shared trauma of surviving multiple layoffs and an acquisition, and the casual sex that happens whenever they’re on the same coast. They first hooked up after her relationship with Hanna imploded, and it’s so nice, how not-complicated Saskia is.
Wait.
If I marry Theo, can I still hook up with Saskia?
Yes, she reasons, because nothing will change.
Theo promised.
And he’s the only person in her life who doesn’t make a promise unless he can keep it. It’s why, outside his life-changing benefits, she agreed to this ridiculous arrangement. Also because a past version of herself would accept a request as absurd as doubling her output. She has medical debt, student loans, so many bills. She needs the money, the benefits, the stability. And at least she likes her colleagues, likes putting her degree and expertise to use, likes that eighty percent of the time she works in her pajamas.
It could be so much worse , she would’ve rationalized just a week ago.
Evie has always been good at rationalizing.
“So. Off to… where, exactly?” Evie asks after Theo slides into the passenger seat of Phoebe outside Foothill Elementary. “I keep wanting to say city hall even though I know that’s wrong.”
“LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk office is a mouthful.” Theo unbuttons the sleeves of his light blue dress shirt, rolling them up to his elbows to expose toned forearms that she absolutely never notices. “But actually…”
His knee bounces, a nervous habit. Evie’s mind races with possibilities, the first and most obvious one being that he changed his mind, that he doesn’t want to go through with this. Even though it was his idea. Evie isn’t sure how she feels. Relieved? Disappointed? Resigned?
“… can we swing by the house first?”
“Really?”
Theo nods. “I need to pick up something.”
“Oh.”
It’s so unexpected, Theo’s request, that it doesn’t even make Evie’s top ten list of possibilities. The house refers to his childhood home, a Spanish-style ranch in Lamanda Park, where his father still lives. Theo avoids it. Uses language that distances himself from it. The house. Not his house. Evie doesn’t avoid it. Every Sunday morning, she swings by with Lucky Boy breakfast burritos—a weekly routine that started shortly after Lori’s death. In the beginning, Jacob told Evie to fuck off and slammed the door in her face. She left the burrito on the porch. But she kept coming back. Eventually, he let her in.
First, they just ate together in silence.
Then they watched old episodes of Monk , Cold Case , whatever was on cable television.
He didn’t mention Lori by name for two years.
But now?
He cooks for her, and they talk. Every Sunday, Jacob asks about Theo. Afterward, Theo always asks how Jacob is doing. Call him , she nudges gently. As far as she knows, he hasn’t. Sometimes it pisses her off that she’s still the intermediary between Theo and Jacob. How they live in the same city but may as well be on opposite sides of the planet. She knows it was never great, their relationship. She saw how Jacob tried to mold Theo into a version of himself, a successful commercial real estate developer. She knows that it wasn’t easy for Theo to have a father who, on a fundamental level, didn’t understand him. Losing Lori only further drove a wedge between them, and it’s just so sad how broken they are—because Jacob Cohen may be flawed but at least he’s here .
At least he cares enough to try.
Five minutes after Theo’s out-of-character request, Evie pulls over at the curb in front of the house and puts Phoebe in park. Jacob isn’t home. His silver Buick isn’t in the driveway. It’s intentional, the timing. She understands what this means. “Is this a rescue mission?”
Rescue missions happened regularly after Lori died.
Evie and Theo sneaking into the house to retrieve artifacts, memories of her.
Theo nods. “Mom’s rings.”
Evie short-circuits, her heart leaping into her throat. “What?”
“We don’t have rings. What couple shows up to get married without rings, Evelyn?”
Theo says this simply, like it’s so obvious, before he’s out of the car and heading toward the house and no, no, no . It’s a valid point. Needing rings. But there’s a T.J. Maxx down the street. The idea of Theo sliding Lori’s ring onto her finger? Of carrying such an important piece of her around? No. It’s way too much. Evie wants a ring that’s as fake as this marriage.
It needs to be fake.
She follows him into the house to tell him this, but he doesn’t even make it beyond the front door.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
Evie is used to the state of the house—the stench of weed, the dust that covers the furniture, the lack of available surface area. Piles of papers stacked on tables, outerwear draped over every kitchen chair, boxes filled with miscellaneous trinkets, collections of vintage dishware, comic books, Beanie Babies.
It’s hard to let things go , Jacob once told her over Sunday morning breakfast burritos.
Evie’s hand finds Theo’s, their fingers interlacing.
She squeezes.
Because it’s a lot.
Theo squeezes back, then lets go. Pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes. “Let’s start upstairs. I’ll take their bedroom. You check mine?”
Theo saying their bedroom cracks her heart in half. “Okay. But Theodore? I can’t… her rings…” She hears the emotion in her voice but doesn’t want him to be the one comforting her so she swallows it. Refuses to allow her eyes to water. “I’ll rescue them with you. But I don’t want… I can’t . You should save them. For a real proposal.”
Theo’s eyes meet hers.
He scratches his neck. Then says, so softly, “I think she’d like it? You holding on to them in the meantime.”
And what is she supposed to say to that?
She doesn’t say anything. Isn’t even given a chance to because, once again, Theo’s gone, those words propelling him beyond the front hall, toward his parents’ bedroom in the back of the house. Evie follows him, splitting off at his bedroom door, another room that’s less a memory of childhood and more a storage closet for a hoarder. It’s all Lori’s—her clothes, her books, her baking supplies. Only a shelf of trophies and plaques, relics from their competitive dance past, are recognizably Theo . She opens drawers and sifts through boxes— endless boxes—as she tears apart the room, unsure if she wants to laugh or cry because the last time she came in contact with an engagement ring?
It broke her heart.
“Any luck?” Theo asks, standing under the doorframe.
“No.”
“Me either.” He rakes a frustrated hand through his hair, then crosses the threshold to sit on the edge of the bed. “She tried to give them to me. Toward the end. But I was in so much denial I couldn’t, and now who knows where they are? If Jacob even knows where they are?”
She moves a box of baking sheets to the floor to sit next to him. “Theodore. We’ll find the rings. Maybe not today, but that’s okay! We don’t need them to get married. It’s not—”
“You’re getting married?”
Jacob’s voice scares the shit out of them, as does his presence in Theo’s room. He’s business semicasual, dressed in slacks a size too large because he hasn’t put back on the grief weight loss and refuses to buy new clothes. Evie hears a hint of joy in the question that’s impossible to process.
Theo stands. “You’re here.”
“In my own home?” Jacob snorts. “Where the fuck else would I be?”
Theo winces. “Hi, Dad.”
“Answer my question.”
“I don’t know where else—”
“No, the first question.” Jacob’s expression softens, his eyes shifting to meet hers. “Evelyn, are you marrying my son?”
Then, Jacob Cohen smiles.
He smiles.
And Evie’s brain breaks.
It’s the only explanation for what happens next, for the way her limbs take on a life of their own. She stands and loops her arm through Theo’s, then rests her head on his shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world because Jacob smiled for the first time in literal years and if this marriage is going to give her a shot at her dream career maybe it can also give Theo a chance to repair his relationship with his dad.
So.
Evie speaks before her brain can stop her.
“Yes,” she says, beaming at Jacob, then beaming at Theo. “I am.”