16. Maya
— ? —
Maya
He takes me back to where we started.
Chloe is with Ms. Yvonne for the evening.
She offered without being asked, said she missed having the little one around and wanted to spoil her with cookies and cartoons.
I suspect Oliver called her before he called me, orchestrating the whole thing with the same precision he used to apply to business deals.
The restaurant is exactly the same as I remember it.
A tiny Italian place downtown, tucked between a dry cleaner and a vintage bookshop, a neighborhood gem that tourists never find because there’s no sign out front and the entrance looks like it leads to someone’s basement.
Same red-checkered tablecloths that have probably never been replaced.
Same mismatched wooden chairs that creak when you shift your weight.
Same faded murals of the Tuscan countryside painted by someone who had clearly never been to Tuscany but had very strong feelings about what it should look like.
Same corner table where we sat on our first date, seven years ago.
“I can’t believe this place is still open,” I say as the hostess, a tiny Italian grandmother who might genuinely be the same woman from our first visit, preserved in a Mediterranean time capsule, leads us to our seats.
“I was sure it would have closed by now. Everything else from back then is gone.”
“I reserved our table specifically.” Oliver pulls out my chair, a gesture so old-fashioned and unlike his usual efficiency that I almost laugh. “The exact one. I called ahead three times to make sure they understood it was important. I think they’re a little afraid of me now.”
I remember that first night with a clarity that surprises me.
I was twenty-one, fresh out of journalism school with a degree I was still paying off and an internship that barely covered my rent.
The magazine had assigned me to write a profile piece on the youngest CEO in the city’s tech sector.
A fluff piece, really, the assignment they gave to interns because it didn’t matter if we screwed it up.
He was twenty-five and so arrogant I wanted to throw my notebook at his head within the first five minutes of the interview.
“Your company’s PR strategy is aggressively mediocre,” I’d told him, right there in his corner office with its floor-to-ceiling windows and its view of the entire city spread out below like it belonged to him.
Which, in some ways, it did. “You’re spending millions on campaigns that say absolutely nothing to anyone.
The messaging is bland, the targeting is unfocused, and your social media presence is so corporate it’s actually painful to read.
It’s like you’re actively trying to be forgettable. ”
He’d stared at me, long enough that I was certain I’d just ended my career before it began, that he was about to have security escort me out and call my editor to get me fired, and then he’d laughed.
A real laugh, surprised out of him, transforming his face from intimidating to something almost boyish.
“Have dinner with me tonight,” he’d said.
“That’s wildly inappropriate. I’m supposed to be interviewing you, not dating you.”
“Probably. Have dinner with me anyway.”
I should have said no. My professional judgment insisted this was a terrible idea, that I was compromising my integrity for a man I’d known for less than an hour.
But there was a spark in his eyes, a genuine interest that had nothing to do with the interview and everything to do with me specifically, that made my mouth say yes before my brain could intervene.
He’d brought me here. To this ridiculous little restaurant with its terrible wine and its amazing pasta and its murals that looked like they’d been painted by a very enthusiastic child who’d seen a postcard of Italy once.
We’d talked for four hours, closing down the place, and by the time he walked me to my car, I was already falling.
Now I’m sitting at the same table, looking at the same murals, wearing the same emerald pendant he gave me the night he proposed, wondering if we can ever get back to who we were before everything went wrong.
“You remembered all of this,” I say quietly. “The table. The restaurant. Everything.”
“I remember everything about that night.” Oliver takes his seat across from me, and the candlelight catches the angles of his face, softening them.
“I remember you ordered the carbonara because you said it was the only true test of an Italian restaurant, and then you told me it was better than any pasta I’d ever eat at whatever fancy restaurants I probably frequented.
I remember you spilled wine on my suit…”
“You bumped my elbow.”
“…and you didn’t apologize because you said it was my fault for wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit to a place with checkered tablecloths. I remember thinking you were the most terrifying woman I’d ever met.”
“Terrifying?”
“In the best possible way.” He meets my eyes across the table, and there’s something vulnerable in his expression that I’m not used to seeing.
“Everyone else in that interview was kissing my ass, Maya. Every journalist, every business partner, every person who walked into that office performed for me. And then there was you, telling me everything I was doing wrong and not caring at all if it cost you the story or your career or anything else.”
“It almost did cost me the story. My editor was furious when I came back with a critique instead of the standard puff piece he was expecting. He said I was supposed to make the company look good, not point out their flaws.”
“But you got a better story instead. A real story.”
I had. The profile I’d written, honest, unflinching, deeply critical in places but ultimately fair, had won me my first journalism award. It had launched my career, gotten me a full-time position, put me on a path that I’d eventually abandon for motherhood and marriage.
It had also won me Oliver.
The waiter appears with menus, but Oliver waves them away without looking. “We’ll have the carbonara and the house red. Two glasses.”
“You remember my order?”
“I told you.” He leans forward, elbows on the checkered tablecloth in a way that would have horrified his mother.
“I remember all of it. I’ve been thinking about it constantly these past few weeks.
About how different things were then. How different I was.
How I managed to convince the most brilliant woman I’d ever met to give me a chance, and then spent the next seven years taking her for granted. ”
The wine arrives. The same terrible house red, probably from the same box they’ve been pouring since before I was born. I take a sip and wince at the sharp, cheap taste.
“Still awful,” Oliver observes, taking his own sip.
“Still perfect.”
We both laugh, and for a moment, just a moment, it feels like no time has passed at all. Like we’re still those two people who met in a corner office and fell in love over bad wine and good conversation and the thrill of finding someone who actually challenged them.
Then I remember everything that’s happened since, and the moment passes. But it doesn’t disappear entirely. It lingers, a warm ember beneath the ash.
“So,” I say, setting down my glass. “You wanted to remind me why I said yes. This is your chance. I’m listening.”
“That’s not exactly…” He stops, reconsiders. “Okay, yes. That’s exactly what this is. But I don’t want to just remind you of the past. I want you to see who I’m trying to become. The changes I’m actually making, not just promising to make.”
“Talk is cheap, Oliver. You’ve made promises before. Beautiful promises. And then broken every single one of them.”
“I know. So let me show you instead of just telling you.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone.
My heart sinks. This is where it always falls apart, where some emergency demands his attention and proves that nothing has really changed.
But instead of checking it, he sets it face-down on the table and pushes it across to me.
“You keep it. For the whole dinner. I don’t want to be tempted, and I don’t want you to wonder if I’m distracted. ”
I stare at the phone like it might bite me. “You’re serious.”
“Completely serious. Tonight, you have my undivided attention. No interruptions. No emergencies that absolutely can’t wait. No quick check that turns into an hour of emails. Just us, the way it should have been all along.”
I pick up the phone and slip it into my purse. “Okay. I’m listening.”
For the next three hours, we talk.
Really talk, not the surface-level small talk we’ve defaulted to for years, the how-was-your-day and fine-how-was-yours that fills space without communicating anything.
Oliver tells me about the changes he’s making at work: delegating more, trusting his team to handle things he used to insist on controlling personally, discovering that the company doesn’t collapse when he’s not micromanaging every decision.
He tells me about the father-daughter dance next month, how he’s been watching YouTube tutorials every night to learn the steps, how he’s rescheduled the quarterly board meeting that everyone told him was unmovable.
“You actually rescheduled it?”
“Pushed it to Friday. The investors were annoyed, but they got over it.” He shrugs like this is nothing, but I know better.
The old Oliver would never have done this.
The old Oliver would have found a way to do both, or he would have missed the dance and bought Chloe something expensive to make up for it.
“Chloe wants me there. That matters more than any meeting.”
He tells me about the notes app on his phone, the running list of everything Chloe teaches him, how he reads through it every morning like it’s scripture.
Bunny crackers, not fish. Two braids on school days.
Purple, not pink. The names and complex relationship dynamics of every stuffed animal in her collection.