Chương 11
Bad therapy day. I was an ass.
She called instead of texting.
He answered on the second ring.
“Hello.”
“You sound terrible.”
“Good evening to you too.”
“What happened?”
“I tried to win an argument with my knee.”
“Who won?”
“The knee has retained counsel.”
She laughed.
Then she heard how tired he sounded.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Want company?”
He hesitated.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
He told her.
Maya arrived at his apartment forty minutes later carrying takeout noodles and no special expression.
Adrian opened the door himself in the wheelchair.
She looked at him.
“Good. You’re dressed.”
“What were you expecting?”
“I’ve seen movies.”
“Disappointing.”
She held up the bag.
“I brought carbohydrates.”
“You may enter.”
They ate at the kitchen counter.
Maya did not ask about therapy until half the noodles were gone.
Then she said, “How bad?”
“Seven.”
“Out of ten?”
“Out of my therapist’s patience.”
“Also bad.”
He told her.
Not every detail.
Enough.
When he reached the part where he had shouted at Erin, Maya winced.
“You apologized?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“She called me a stubborn jackass.”
“She’s right.”
“I apologized to you too quickly.”
Maya ate another noodle.
Adrian looked at his hands.
“I keep doing this.”
“What?”
“Treating the chair like something I need to defeat.”
Maya set down her fork.
“Do you want me to answer that?”
“No.”
“Excellent.”
He looked up.
She smiled.
“You’re learning.”
He shook his head.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
Maya glanced at the chair.
“So don’t defeat it.”
“That sounds suspiciously like an answer.”
“It slipped out.”
He leaned back.
“What if this is it?”
She waited.
“This level. Chair most days. Cane sometimes. Maybe walking across a room.”
Maya shrugged.
He stared at her.
“That’s all?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look devastated?”
“No.”
“Promise a miracle?”
“No.”
“Tell you it doesn’t matter?”
He looked away.
Maya’s voice softened.
“It matters to you.”
“Yes.”
“Then it matters.”
She picked up her fork.
“But you’re still going to have to decide what to do tomorrow.”
Adrian looked at her.
“With my life?”
“With these noodles. They’re getting cold.”
He laughed.
The laugh became something else halfway through.
His eyes filled.
He lowered his head.
Maya did not move toward him.
She did not touch him.
She waited.
Adrian wiped one eye with the heel of his hand.
“This is humiliating.”
“No.”
“Please don’t tell me crying is brave.”
“I was going to say you have soy sauce on your cuff.”
He looked.
He did.
A laugh escaped him through the tears.
Maya handed him a napkin.
He took it.
They sat in the kitchen until midnight.
Nothing happened that would have looked important from outside.
No kiss.
No confession.
They argued about whether Boston or New York had worse drivers.
Maya discovered Adrian had never done his own taxes and called this a character flaw.
Adrian discovered Maya put ketchup on scrambled eggs and nearly asked her to leave.
At eleven forty-seven, while she was telling him about a guest who had demanded a different sunset because clouds ruined photographs, Adrian realized he wanted her there the next morning.
The thought scared him.
This time he said it.
“I’m afraid of liking you.”
Maya stopped.
“Oh.”
“Not my best opening.”
“No.”
“I could try again.”
“Please don’t.”
He nodded.
Maya looked down at her hands.
“I’m afraid of you liking me.”
“That is worse.”
“Thank you.”
“Why?”
She breathed out.
“Because your life is enormous.”
He frowned.
“My apartment?”
“Your whole life. Company. Money. People writing articles when you break up. Assistants. Lawyers. Security.”
“I don’t have security here.”
“You have a doorman who asked for my last name before I could enter.”
“That’s New York.”
“Exactly.”
Adrian waited.
Maya continued.
“I make eighty-two thousand dollars in a good year with charter tips. My mother still thinks frozen vegetables are a luxury because of how she grew up. I’m taking accounting classes because I don’t want to be fifty carrying champagne for twenty-five-year-olds.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your job.”
“I didn’t say there was.”
He stopped.
She noticed.
“See?”
“What?”
“You heard embarrassment where I said ambition.”
He looked away.
“That’s fair.”
“I like you too.”
His eyes came back to her.
Maya swallowed.
“I just don’t know what liking you becomes once other people notice.”
Adrian thought of Melissa.
The press.
Board members.
Photographers.
Vanessa.
All the machinery he had learned to treat as background.
“That’s a real problem.”
“Yes.”
“I could say I don’t care.”
“You would be lying.”
“I care.”
“I know.”
He nodded.
“Then we go slowly.”
Maya studied him.
“How slowly?”
“Glacial.”
“That sounds boring.”
“I’m thirty-four. Boring is underrated.”
“You own a yacht charter membership.”
“I chartered one yacht.”
“In a storm.”
“I did not order the storm.”
“Can you prove that?”
He smiled.
Maya reached across the counter.
Her hand stopped halfway.
Adrian noticed.
He turned his palm upward.
She placed her hand in his.
Nothing cinematic happened.
The refrigerator hummed.
A taxi honked somewhere below.
Adrian’s leg hurt.
Maya’s noodles were cold.
Her thumb moved once across his knuckles.
For both of them, it was enough.
They went slowly.
Not elegantly.
There were weeks when Maya vanished into charter schedules and Adrian resented it more than he admitted.
There were dinners canceled because his pain flared.
There was a photograph of them leaving a restaurant that appeared online under the headline ADRIAN COLE MOVES ON WITH MYSTERY BRUNETTE.
Maya stared at it for ten seconds before saying, “Mystery brunette makes me sound like a candle.”
Adrian laughed.
Then she grew quiet.
Her name appeared online forty-eight hours later.
Not because Adrian’s team released it.
Someone recognized her from an old crew photograph.
MAYA BROOKS IDENTIFIED AS YACHT WORKER WHO DEFENDED COLE DURING BREAKUP NIGHT.
The article made her sound heroic.
She hated it.
Then a second article made her sound opportunistic.
That one she hated more.
May you like
Former crew colleagues were quoted anonymously.
One described her as “ambitious.”
