22. Rhodes
— ? —
Rhodes
The morning light through the venue windows is doing Maren absolutely zero favors.
She walks in at eight-fifteen, coffee in hand, and I know immediately that something kept her up last night.
The shadows under her eyes are purple-gray, the kind that concealer can soften but not hide.
Her hair is in a messier bun than usual, strands escaping around her temples like they gave up halfway through being tamed.
She’s wearing a sweater I don’t recognize, oversized, navy, sleeves pushed up to her elbows, and she looks like she got maybe three hours of sleep.
She still looks like the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, which is annoying.
“You look terrible,” I say, before I can think better of it.
Maren stops mid-stride, coffee cup frozen halfway to her mouth. “Good morning to you too.”
“That wasn’t an insult.”
“You should work on your compliments.” She takes a deliberate sip, watching me over the rim. Her eyes are sharper than they should be for someone running on empty. “What exactly is the non-insulting version of ‘you look terrible’?”
I consider this. “You look beautiful and terrible.”
Surprise flickers across her face, or the ghost of a smile she’s actively suppressing. “That’s not better.”
“It’s more accurate.”
She shakes her head, but there’s no real annoyance in it. She sets her bag down on one of the folding tables Patricia left out and starts pulling out her tablet, her notebook, a thermos that probably contains more coffee. “I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep great.”
“Okay.”
She looks up, waiting for the follow-up question. The why didn’t you sleep or what happened or any of the dozen probing inquiries I’d have launched at her three years ago, convinced that her problems were my problems to solve.
I don’t ask.
Her eyebrows draw together slightly. “That’s it? Just ‘okay’?”
“You said you’re fine.” I shrug, turning back to the sample tiles Patricia wants us to review for the courtyard flooring. “If you want to tell me more, you will.”
The silence stretches for a beat too long. When I glance over, Maren is staring at me like I’ve grown a second head.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.” She shakes her head again, but this time there’s something softer in it. Confusion, maybe. “Nothing. Let’s look at those tiles.”
The problem is that working together is becoming easy.
Not comfortable, exactly, there’s still too much unresolved history between us for comfortable.
But easy in the way that matters: the rhythm of collaboration, the shorthand of two people who used to make decisions together about everything from dinner reservations to five-year business plans.
We keep falling into it without meaning to.
By ten o’clock, we’ve rejected Patricia’s first three flooring options, agreed on a modified version of the fourth, and gotten into a genuinely heated debate about whether the original venue lighting can be salvaged or needs to be completely replaced.
“The fixtures are historic,” I argue. “The whole point of acquiring Livingston House is preserving its character.”
“The whole point of acquiring Livingston House is making money,” Maren counters. “Which you can’t do if your guests are squinting through their vows because your historic fixtures have the wattage of a dying flashlight.”
“We can supplement with-”
“Rhodes.” She puts both hands flat on the table, leaning toward me.
“I have done exactly four weddings in this space. Every single one required us to bring in supplemental lighting. The brides complained about the photographs. The photographers complained about the brides. One mother of the groom told me, and I quote, ‘It looks like they’re getting married in a very elegant cave.’”
“A cave.”
“Her words, not mine.”
“That’s…” I pause, searching for a diplomatic response. “That’s feedback worth considering.”
“It’s feedback worth acting on.” She straightens up, crossing her arms. “Replace the fixtures. Keep the style, update the functionality. Your guests will thank you.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. I’ve been holding onto the original lighting out of some misguided sense of historic preservation that has more to do with stubbornness than actual business strategy.
I hate admitting when she’s right.
“Fine,” I say.
“Fine?”
“Fine. We’ll replace them. I’ll talk to Patricia about-”
“Wait.” Maren holds up a hand. “You’re agreeing with me?”
“I just said fine.”
“You said fine like it was causing you physical pain.”
“It was.”
She laughs, a real laugh, surprised out of her before she can catch it. The sound hits me somewhere in the chest, warm and unexpected, and I find myself laughing too. Actually laughing, for the first time since I saw her standing in this venue pretending not to know me.
“God,” she says, pressing a hand to her forehead. “I forgot you could do that.”
“Do what?”
“Admit you’re wrong.”
“I admitted I was wrong all the time.”
“You admitted I had ‘valid concerns that deserved further consideration.’” She drops her voice an octave, doing an unflattering impression of me. “That’s not the same as saying ‘you’re right.’”
“It’s exactly the same thing.”
“It’s absolutely not.” But she’s still smiling, and I realize with a start that I’ve missed this.
Not just her, though I’ve missed her constantly, desperately, in ways that made the last three years feel like holding my breath underwater, but this.
The arguments that aren’t really arguments.
The push and pull of two people who know exactly how to get under each other’s skin and do it anyway, because the friction is half the fun.
I was so careful, for years, to never let myself feel like this with anyone else. I told myself it was because I was still grieving. The truth is simpler and worse: I didn’t want to feel it with anyone else. Only her.
Lunch arrives via delivery, sandwiches from a place down the street that Patricia recommended.
We eat at the folding table, laptops pushed aside, tablets propped against water bottles.
It’s surprisingly companionable. Maren has tomato soup with her sandwich and keeps dunking the bread into it, which she’s done as long as I’ve known her.
“Still doing that,” I observe.
“Still judging me for it?”
“It’s inefficient. The structural integrity of the bread degrades with each-”
“Please stop saying ‘structural integrity’ about my lunch.”
“I’m just pointing out that there are better-”
“Rhodes.” She points at me with a soup-soaked corner of bread. “Eat your sandwich. Stop analyzing mine.”
I eat my sandwich.
After a moment, she asks, “What time does Patricia need the final flooring decision?”
“End of day. She’s got contractors lined up for next week.”
“That should be doable.” Maren pulls out her phone, checks something, frowns slightly. “I need to leave by five.”
“Hot date?”
I mean it as a joke. A bad one, probably, but a joke. The kind of thing I might have said years ago, teasing her about her meticulously planned schedule.
She doesn’t answer immediately. Just takes another spoonful of soup, deliberate and slow.
“Something like that,” she says.
I wait for the punchline. The clarification. The I’m meeting Nora for drinks or I have a client consultation or I’m finally trying that pottery class I’ve been talking about for years.
It doesn’t come.
“Oh,” I say, because I’m an idiot who has apparently lost all capacity for intelligent conversation. “Plans for the evening, then.”
“Someone’s waiting for me at home.”
Someone.
The word drops into my chest and sinks.
I keep my face neutral, or I try to. I take a bite of my sandwich and chew mechanically, not tasting anything. Someone’s waiting for her at home. Someone who isn’t me. Someone who gets to be there when she walks through the door, tired from a long day, shadows under her eyes.
Someone who might have been the reason she didn’t sleep last night.
“That’s nice,” I hear myself say. The words come out slightly strangled.
Maren looks at me. Really looks at me, her head tilting slightly to one side, and I watch understanding dawn in her eyes. She knows exactly what conclusion I just jumped to. I can see it in the way her expression shifts, surprise, then something sharper. Almost satisfied.
She doesn’t correct me.
“It’s nice,” she says. “Having someone to come home to.”
I set my sandwich down. My appetite has vanished entirely.
“How long have you-” I stop myself. Clear my throat. “Sorry. None of my business.”
“You’re right.” Her voice is mild. “It’s not.”
I nod, staring at the table. There’s a crack in the wood grain that I didn’t notice before. I trace it with my eyes, following the dark line from one edge to the other.
“Is it serious?”
The question escapes before I can stop it. I regret it immediately, regret the desperate edge in my voice, the way I’m betraying exactly how much this information is destroying me.
Maren pauses, soup spoon halfway to her mouth.
“Rhodes.”
“I know. I know. I just-” I scrub a hand down my face, frustrated with myself. “I’m asking questions I have no right to ask. I’m aware.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.” I push back from the table, needing distance, needing to not be sitting two feet from her while my entire chest cavity rearranges itself.
“I just spent the last few days thinking, I don’t know what I was thinking.
That maybe we could…” I trail off, shaking my head.
“It doesn’t matter what I was thinking.”
She watches me pace to the window and back. “You were thinking what?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Rhodes.”
“I was thinking that being in the same room with you was the first time in three years I’ve felt like myself.
” The confession comes out raw, unvarnished.
“That every conversation we have makes me remember why I fell in love with you in the first place. That maybe… maybe there was still a chance.” I stop, facing the window, unable to look at her. “Obviously I was wrong.”
The silence that follows is heavy.