16. Maya #2
And he asks me questions. Real questions, the kind he used to ask when we were first getting to know each other.
“What do you miss most about journalism?”
“The adrenaline.” The answer comes easily, surprising me.
I haven’t let myself think about this in years.
“The feeling of chasing a story, of being the first to uncover something important. I miss feeling like what I did mattered. Like I was contributing something to the world beyond managing a household and scheduling playdates.”
“You could go back. If you wanted to.”
“It’s been six years, Oliver. The industry has changed completely. Print is dying, digital is everything, and I’d be starting over from nothing. From less than nothing, probably. I’d have to rebuild my entire network.”
“So? You’re brilliant. You’d figure it out.” He says it like it’s obvious, like there’s no question in his mind that I could do anything I set my mind to. “What else? What else do you miss?”
“I miss having something that was just mine. Not ‘Oliver’s wife’ or ‘Chloe’s mom.’ Just Maya. A person with her own identity and her own accomplishments and her own purpose beyond supporting everyone else’s dreams.”
“I took that from you.” His voice is quiet, weighted with genuine remorse. “When I asked you to stay home with Chloe. When I made my career the priority and expected yours to just… disappear.”
“I chose it too. I wanted to be there for her. I don’t regret the time I’ve had with her.”
“But you shouldn’t have had to choose. I should have made it possible for you to have both.
To be a mother and still be yourself.” He reaches across the table and takes my hand.
His thumb traces circles on my wrist, and my pulse jumps despite my best efforts to stay composed.
“I want to help you get that back. Whatever you want to do, whatever you want to pursue, I want to support you. Really support you, not just pay lip service while you do all the actual work.”
My throat is tight. This is everything I’ve wanted to hear for years. Everything I’ve begged him to understand.
“Why now?” I ask. “Why did it take me leaving for you to see all of this?”
“Because I’m an idiot.” He says it simply, without self-pity or defensiveness.
“Because I was so focused on what I thought I was supposed to be doing, providing, succeeding, building an impressive thing, that I couldn’t see what I was destroying in the process.
I needed to lose everything to understand what I actually had. ”
The pasta arrives, and it’s just as good as I remember: rich and creamy, the perfect balance of cheese, pepper, and pork.
We eat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and I realize with surprise that I’m enjoying myself.
That this doesn’t feel like an obligation or a negotiation. That I don’t want this dinner to end.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Oliver says as we’re finishing. “Something I’ve been working on for a while.”
“What?”
“I’ve been talking to someone. A therapist.” He looks almost embarrassed, a flush creeping up his neck. “I started a few weeks ago. I’m trying to figure out why I am the way I am. Why I shut down, why I retreat into work, why I never learned how to just… be present with the people I love.”
“You’re in therapy?”
“Twice a week. Tuesdays and Fridays.”
I stare at him, recalibrating everything I thought I knew. Oliver Vance, who has always treated emotional vulnerability like a contagious disease to be avoided at all costs, is voluntarily sitting in a room and talking about his feelings. With a stranger. On a regular schedule.
“I’m proud of you,” I say finally, meaning it. “That’s a big step. A huge step, actually.”
“It’s the least I can do. You deserve a husband who knows how to love you properly. Who doesn’t have to be taught basic emotional literacy like he’s in kindergarten.” He meets my eyes. “I want to be that man. I want to learn how, even if it takes years.”
When the check comes, Oliver pays without looking at the total.
Some things never change, and I find I don’t mind this one.
We walk out into the cool night air. The city is quiet at this hour, the streets almost empty, and for a moment we just stand there on the sidewalk, neither of us wanting to break the spell.
“Can I walk you to your car?” he asks.
“It’s a hundred feet away.”
“That’s a hundred feet of walking you to your car.”
I laugh despite myself. “Okay. Yes.”
We walk slowly, stretching out the distance, neither of us in any hurry to reach the destination. When we arrive at my car, he stops and turns to face me.
“I had a really good time tonight,” he says. “I’d forgotten what this was like. Just talking to you. Really listening to you. Being with you instead of next to you.”
“I had a good time too.” I’m surprised to realize I mean it completely.
“Can I…” He stops. Swallows. “Can I kiss you?”
The question hangs in the air between us. I should say no. The sensible half of my brain insists this is too fast, too soon, that one good dinner doesn’t undo years of accumulated hurt.
“Yes.”
He steps closer. Cups my face in his hands, gentle and careful, like I’m something precious he’s afraid of breaking. For a moment he just looks at me, his dark eyes searching mine, and I see the man I fell in love with. The man I’ve missed even when he was standing right in front of me.
He tilts my chin up and hovers there, a breath away, waiting.
I’m the one who closes the distance.
His lips meet mine, soft at first, questioning.
Then I grab his jacket and pull him closer, and the kiss deepens into something more urgent.
His hands slide into my hair, and he backs me against the car door, one palm braced beside my head, the other splayed at my waist, burning through the fabric of my dress.
We shouldn’t be doing this in a parking lot. We shouldn’t be doing this at all, not yet, not when so much is still unresolved between us.
I don’t stop.
His mouth drags from my lips to my jaw, to the sensitive spot below my ear, and I make a sound that would be embarrassing if I had any capacity left for embarrassment. My hands are clutching his shirt so hard I might be wrinkling it beyond repair, and I don’t care.
“Come home with me,” he whispers against my skin.
Yes. The word is right there, ready to leap off my tongue. My whole body is demanding more of his touch, more of him.
“Not yet.” The words come out wrecked, barely recognizable as my own voice.
He goes still. His forehead drops to rest against mine, both of us breathing hard.
“Maya…”
“Soon. Maybe.” I make myself step back, break the contact that’s making it impossible to think clearly. My legs are unsteady and he can see it, and the look on his face, hungry, reverent, barely leashed, almost undoes all my resolve. “Goodnight, Oliver.”
“Goodnight.” He watches me fumble with my keys, manages to resist the urge to help when I nearly drop them. “Saturday? Dinner at your place? We can talk more. About everything.”
Saturday. Three days away. Enough time to think, to process, to decide what I actually want.
“I’ll text you.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I drive away with my hands shaking on the wheel.
In the rearview mirror, he stands under the streetlight, watching until I turn the corner and disappear from view.
Halfway home, I pull over to the side of the road and sit there in the dark, replaying that kiss. The way I wanted to say yes. The ache of wanting him and not trusting the wanting.
Before bed, I take Wes’s card out of my coat pocket and drop it in the trash. It was never a contest. It was only ever a question of whether Oliver would show up, and tonight, he did.
I’m standing on the edge of something. Forgiveness or foolishness, I don’t know which.
But for the first time in months, I want to fall.