Chapter Twenty
Evelyn had about ten thousand things on her mind the next morning.
She wanted to talk with legal regarding their precarious medical situation.
Then she had to get the entire cast and crew into rehearsal, reblocking the most important numbers alongside the choreographer, before Jared Sparks arrived on set tomorrow.
But even though she was stressed and her headache from the previous evening was still niggling away at her forehead, her top priority was finding David. It was important she talk to him.
It had been weighing on her all morning.
The kiss. Plus, all the rest of it. She kept thinking about it.
Him. His hands, trailing down her breasts and up her thighs.
The feeling of his firmness pressed up against her.
He made the most scintillating little groans of desire when he was aroused.
And being touched by him again, after all that time apart, brought her back to all those nights, taking his body into hers, the pressure building in rhythmic thrusts and heady touches, pleasure taking over . . . until release. Over and over.
David had always been a giving lover.
She might have made the second biggest mistake of her life—the first one, obviously, being marrying David—had it not been for that flu test waiting in the kitchen.
It had given Evelyn just enough time to come to her senses.
After all, she and David had already failed at being in love once.
What was she . . . some sort of glutton for punishment?
And so, when David returned to her bedroom later that evening, she pretended to be asleep.
She didn’t trust herself enough to resist him.
In the light of morning, with more than six hours of sleep, she was feeling better.
Horny, of course, but she wasn’t some teenager being controlled by her most base impulses.
She was a grown-up, an adult, the executive producer of A Christmas Carol.
She could handle this situation with the same grace and finesse she had shown when David had left her.
Evelyn just needed to be firm in her decision. Rigid in her approach. Rock solid in her handling of the man and their interactions together. She also needed to stop using vocabulary that reminded her of his penis.
Either way, she had made her decision. Arriving at CBS7-T studios, she knew what she had to do. Before anything else, before those emails to bigwigs, and meeting with the choreographer—before coffee even—she needed to speak with David.
“David,” she said, bursting through his office door. “I need to talk to you.”
David clicked off his phone, putting it away in his pocket.
“Evelyn,” he said, smiling, unaware, in her direction. He rose from his seat, grabbing a bouquet of wildflowers wrapped up in kraft paper, which had been situated on a shelf behind him. “Hey.”
She had come prepared with a speech, but instead, her eyes drifted down to the flowers in his hand. Were they for her? The audacity of this man, to have arrived to work this morning, offering flowers, smelling so sexy, pink sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing the most alluring forearms . . .
She was losing track of herself. She took a deep breath and—ignoring the flowers in his hands completely—got right down to business.
“Last night was a mistake,” she said.
“Oh,” he said, his chin dipping back. “Okay.”
She laid it all on the line. All her thoughts, all her feelings, all the anxious worries that had been spinning around in her brain since waking up that morning.
She let it all come tumbling out of her, word-vomiting all over the good doctor.
“Clearly,” she said, “it shouldn’t have happened.
We both know that hooking up with your ex is a terrible idea.
But I had been drinking, and I needed sleep .
. . and, well, you have, obviously, been working out . . .”
“Evelyn—”
He tried to cut her off, but she kept going.
“And the thing is—” she raised her voice and stiffened her back so he would know she was certain “—while I know that you and I used to have great sex, amazing sex, while it’s clear we still have all this amazing chemistry between us, maybe even feelings .
. . I think we both need to keep in mind that we’re divorced. ”
He raised both eyebrows in her direction. “I have, actually, not forgotten.”
“Right,” she said. “That’s good. Because what we had, it’s broken. It’s past the point of ever being fixed. We can’t go back in time.”
“That’s true, too.”
“And so, regardless of what happened between us last night, regardless of how overtired I was, or how good you looked, it can’t ever happen again.
The kiss. The rest of it. God, the rest of it was so good, too .
. . But point being, you and I are finished.
We have irreconcilable differences. It would be unwise on both our parts to continue pretending there’s something left to salvage between us.
We’re done. We have to be done. For both our sakes, we have to move on. ”
His eyes wandered down to the flowers in his hand. Awkward. Evelyn continued pretending not to notice them.
After a few more seconds of silence, he agreed. “You’re probably right.”
“Really?” She was surprised. And relieved. But also, and this was the part that was really confusing for her, kind of sad. It hurt that David was so easily willing to discard her. She pushed the thought down and away. This was all for the best, after all.
“Like I’ve said from the beginning,” David spoke honestly, “I’m not here to make your life harder.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “Because I just can’t afford any distractions right now. And that’s all this really is, right? A distraction. You live in Pennsylvania. I live in Manhattan. We both have different paths now . . . We’re both totally happy being divorced.”
He didn’t say anything, and the room fell into silence until all she could think about were those beautiful wildflowers he was holding, a stunning bouquet of purples and reds, wild and feminine.
She didn’t want to talk about them. She didn’t want her gaze to drift inadvertently down to his hands. Because acknowledging the flowers in the room would mean acknowledging them . . . and she couldn’t allow herself to pin her hopes on David once again. He had already broken her heart.
“I’m sorry if I gave you mixed messages,” she said finally. “I was drinking, and exhausted, and stressing out about the production, and you know how it goes . . . ghosts and old memories, right? They sometimes visit us at the most inopportune times.”
She wasn’t sure if she was talking about David or the heartbreaks, but her early-morning monologue did the trick.
David took a breath and, still holding those damn flowers, accepted her terms. “I understand completely. Being here at CBS7-T studios again is bringing up a lot of old feelings that never quite got resolved.”
“Exactly,” Evelyn said. “That’s all it is. We know we don’t work.”
“We definitely don’t work together.”
He smiled, breezy and causal. Like they were talking about breakfast and not one of the greatest traumas of their lives together. Still, it was easier to pretend it wasn’t a trauma. That the safety and security of their marriage was always a fallacy . . . versus, what happened.
“So, you’re not upset?” She squinted in his direction.
“Look,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as if it were all no big deal, “you and I don’t work. We know we don’t work. So obviously trying again, acting like we have any buried feelings for each other postdivorce—”
“We definitely don’t have any feelings for each other.” She nodded.
“It wouldn’t be good or healthy for either of us.”
“Exactly.”
“And chemistry,” he continued. “Well, we’ve always had great chemistry.”
“So true.” She laughed, breaking the tension in the room. “I mean, when I think about all the times and places we had sex—”
“It’s amazing we never got arrested.”
A quiet moment passed between them. Their eyes latched on to each other’s. On instinct, she ran her teeth over her upper lip. God, the sex was good. But last night, the kiss, all of it . . . had left her swirling in confusion. It also wasn’t helping her migraines.
“So, we’re on the same page, then?” she asked, quietly.
“From now on,” David promised her, “I’ll do my best to stay out of your hair. No more late-night doctor visits. No more kissing, either.”
“Definitely no more kissing.” She laughed. “Going forward, professional colleagues.”
“Exactly. And maybe . . .” David stumbled over the words. “Maybe we could even try to be friends?”
The room fell into silence once more. Awkward.
And still, no one was talking about the flowers in the room.
She thought back to their marriage. Every Shabbat, David would bring her flowers.
No matter what time she came home from work, they would be sitting on a table in a vase.
Sometimes, she would return the favor by bringing him a challah.
It was the way they showed their love for each other, all those little things, all those little hints and messages . . .
How did they ever go so wrong?
A series of miscommunications. A series of heartbreaks and tragedies. Words that should have been said. Words that were never said. But Charles Dickens was right: people do change. The years move forward, and the flowers become less frequent.
“Well,” she said, forcing a smile, deciding it was best to just avoid the topic entirely. “I should probably get back to work. Jared Sparks is arriving tomorrow, after all.”
“Right.” He smiled, seeming unbothered. “Me, too. I’ll see you around, then?”
“Yep.” She waved him off. “Around.”
The deed was done.
On the way back to set, Evelyn continued to tell herself that she had made the right choice.
That those feelings in her heart, all those memories that kept pulling her heart toward David were just ghosts, recollections that lingered after a loved one had departed.
She might have loved him once. She might still love him.
But as far as she was concerned, David was just another wailing, screaming phantom in a house that had long been haunted.
She would bury his apparition, like she always had, under work.