by Elise Faber
My mom was quiet for a long time, then she slipped her hand free from mine. “And did you tell her that when you talked?” she asked.
“I told her . . .” I sighed, admitted, “Pretty much as far from that as possible.”
She smiled. “Ah. My baby boy, Aaron, stubborn from the time you came to life in my womb. Don’t make that face,” she said when I’d apparently let my uneasiness at the word womb coming from my mom’s mouth—shudder—bleed through my expression. “You’re like your father in many ways. Smart, passionate, hard-working, but you’re also like me.”
“Wonderful? Loving? Makes awesome pancakes?”
A tap on her nose. “Got two out of three, baby,” she said, lips tipped up at the edges. “The third way you’re like me is your mad stubborn skills.”
I snorted. “Rose”—my younger sister—“is a bad influence on you.”
“She’s keeping me young.” A flash of a smile. “But stubborn isn’t always a bad thing, no matter how much your dad likes to tease me. It’s what got me through cancer. It’s what helped you build your business. But, it’s also something we can hold on to blindly, something that can hurt more than push forward.”
“I’m not sure I’d call you fighting cancer as stubborn.” I slipped my arm around her shoulders. “I think it’s because you’re strong as hell.”
“I’ll take that,” she said, “but it doesn’t preclude my point.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Unfortunately, my stubborn meant that it took me three weeks from the conversation to realize that Mags had several valid points, and the biggest of those being that I’d been eighteen and stupid and we wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”
“I’m not sure I believe that. Things could have—”
I glanced at the clock, interrupted, albeit gently. “We should go.”
She kept her eyes on me for a heartbeat then nodded, slipping from the stool and starting to gather up her purse and jacket. I trailed her to the door, opening and closing it for her, then repeating the action when we’d made it to my car.
“How long until you’re back?” she asked once we were driving down the street, heading for a quick pit stop at the dry cleaners.
“I might be here for a weekend if the harvest comes in at the right time between L.A. and France. Otherwise, I’ll be in for Christmas.”
“Good.”
Quiet fell, not uncomfortable, but my mom was deep in thought. Fine by me, as mine were dominated by a particular brunette who’d only grown more beautiful over the last ten years. I parked at the curb by the dry cleaners, ran the bag of linens inside.
“Did you know that Maggie came to visit me in the hospital after my surgery?” she asked as I buckled back in and pulled back onto the road.
My heart skipped a beat, and I nearly swerved out of my lane.
“Um. No,” I said, forcing my tone to be calm. “I— that’s— it doesn’t . . .” I trailed off because it was what? Shocking? Painful? Unsurprising? “Why didn’t you tell me?” I eventually asked.
“She asked me not to,” my mom said softly. “She’d pawned her car to pay for the plane ticket back.”
Forget skipping a beat. Now my heart seized. “She sold her car?”
A nod. “Wouldn’t let me give her money for a new one, or at least a down payment for something that wasn’t a clunker.” My mom rotated in her seat, gaze meeting mine for a split second before my eyes returned to the road. “I told her to go and not come back.”
Now it took every bit of my concentration to stay straight in my lane. “What?”
Her hand came to my arm, gripping lightly. “Maggie needed to look forward instead of worrying about everything behind her.” Her fingers slid away. “It was the right call for both of you. I still think that, and perhaps that’s my stubborn talking. Maybe I overstepped, but Aaron, I worried for both of you. Worried what might happen if you two continued to tangle each other up and get pulled back into the past.” She sighed. “I’d hoped that once she fulfilled those big dreams she would come back.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No.” Eyes on her hands, voice quiet. “But do you know that she’s sent me a postcard from every place she’s visited?” A beat. “It’s a lot of places.”
I took the exit for the airport, mind spinning as her next words came.
“Just like you, honey. You’ve lived some big dreams, ones you never even knew you wanted,” she said, still soft. “Only now, I think you understand the value of those big dreams. You’ve traveled and lived . . . and you’ll both be in the same place.” Her hand found mine again. “Now, you can do something about this new knowledge. Now, you can put some of your stubborn to good use.”
“Southern California is a big place.”
She sighed. “It’s not that big. Don’t try and find an excuse to keep avoiding your life.”
I checked for traffic behind me and changed lanes, not arguing with the last statement. It was true, that much had been blatantly spelled out to me three weeks before, had been pounded home into my brain with my constant thinking.
“Even if she would let me see her and apologize, I don’t know if she’s in town. And I have no clue where she lives,” I said, navigating us to the terminal. “I don’t even have her number.” I pulled to stop, turned to face my mom, who’d pulled out her cell, fingers moving on the screen. “Somehow I doubt it’s listed.”
My own phone buzzed.
My mom’s mouth turned up. “Funny story . . .” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt as I did the same then shifted to retrieve my cell from my pocket. My brows drew together when I saw the text was from her. “I have Maggie’s number.” She pressed a kiss to my cheek. “And now you do, too.”
Breath catching, I wasn’t able to form a response as she leaned back and opened the passenger’s side door. My eyes were locked on the screen, on the name in the contact my mom had just shared with me.
Maggie Allen.
Pulse skipping, heat trailing down my spine.
The sound of the car’s trunk opening finally tore my eyes from the screen. I hurried out my door, moving to grab my suitcase before my mom tried to and hurt herself.
She smiled when I nudged her out of the way.
“You’re a good man, Aaron.”
I’d thought so, but the last few weeks had made me wonder. Now, hearing the surety in her tone relaxed some knot inside me I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding on to.
She closed the trunk once I’d retrieved my bag, waited until I’d made it to the curb before tugging me down for a hug. “I love you,” she murmured into my ear.
“I love you, too.”
She release me, stepped back. “Now, go forth and use your powers for good.”
I snorted.
“That means text her.” A pause, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Or better yet, forget all this newfangled texting and just call her.”
I shook my head, smiling despite myself. “Bye, Mom.”
A pat to my arm as she headed for the driver’s door. “Bye, baby.”
“Mom?” I called as she started to get in.
“Yeah?”
I held up my cell. “Thanks.”
She grinned. “Anytime, honey.”
I watched her drive away then headed into the terminal for my flight. But while my body was firmly in security then waiting at the gate, my mind was on a whole other plane of existence, no pun intended. Because . . . I was with Maggie. With her words and the past. With those words and the possibility of where they might lead us in the future.
I needed all my powers to craft the perfect text.
Eight
Maggie
What would you say if I told you that you were right and I was wrong?
I rolled over in bed, eyes bleary from the late event the night before, and squinted at the text on my screen. The number wasn’t in my contacts, and I cautiously opened the message, for fear of random dick pics.
Thankfully, it was just that
single question.
“Weird,” I muttered, shoving out of bed and thinking about the date I’d gone on the previous evening.
Not quite a disaster, but close.
Troy was gorgeous, smart, and had held down a solid job for several years, but he’d also spent the entirety of the appetizers and main course talking about himself.
I got nerves. I understood that sometimes they made people babble.
This was beyond babbling.
Although, I now knew everything I thought I could comprehend about writing code to select the largest number in an array, something he’d apparently used to test a prospective employee in an interview that afternoon.
Though, I should probably admit, all I’d been able to process was that an array involved a grouping of numbers.
Look, I got numbers, but they were usually in social media followers, in views on a video, in a high Q Score—a quotient of likeability brands and celebrities used to measure their appeal and familiarity. But I got lost in the math of calculating that Q Score and most definitely in writing an equation to select for the largest number in a series of numbers.
Why I couldn’t just look at them and point out the biggest one was beyond me.
But then again, I wasn’t the mathematician.
Anyway, eventually I’d gotten tired of hearing about it and had made my excuses, planning on sitting in the hot tub and drinking a bottle of wine.
Pierce, Artie, and Brenna were traveling, and I been alone, and well . . . one bottle had turned into two. Which meant I’d stayed up too late and drank too much and—hello, too bright morning and hangover central.
So, the knock at the door was not welcome.
“Ugh,” I groaned, pulling the pillow over my head.
Unfortunately, it didn’t drown out the sound of the knocking.
“Son of a goddamned array,” I muttered, shoving the covers back, “And two fucking bottles of chardonnay—” I paused, shook my head at the bad rhyme and pushed myself out of bed. One quick glance to determine that I was decent enough to answer the door, another to look at the clock.
Seven-thirty.
Seven-freaking-thirty in the morning when I’d been up until . . . two? No, three. I distinctly remembered looking at the time before I went to bed.
The knocking increased in volume and my annoyance flared. “I’m coming!” I called.
Okay, yelled.
Either way, it had the desired effect of cutting of the incessant noise as I made my way down the short hall that led to the front door of the guest house.
The security guards traveled with Pierce and Artie, but the system was still active and monitored when they weren’t home. Since I hadn’t gotten a call from the security company or an alert in the guest house’s separate system, I could safely assume I knew the knocker and that they were most likely on the approved visitor’s list.
I still peeked through the window to make sure most likely was actually true.
It was.
“Talbot!” I gasped, flinging the door open. “Didn’t you just get in late last night? Is everything okay?”
“Fine, babe.” He slipped past me, leaving me standing in the open door.
I rolled my eyes, knowing from that single sentence that nothing was fine, and shut the door behind me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said again. Except his gaze was deliberately pointing away from me, circling the room like he’d never been in the space, when in actuality he’d crashed on my couch not that long ago, when a pipe had burst in his brand-new house in West Hollywood.
“Tal.”
“I’m fine.”
“Tal.”
He finally turned his head so I could see his face. His expression wasn’t pretty.
“You didn’t come here this early in the morning because everything is fine,” I said. “What’s happened?”
A sigh. Then, “Kasey happened.”
Kasey was his girlfriend, and I was not a fan, to say the least.
“What do you mean?” I asked carefully, trying not to make a face, even as I struggled to keep my voice neutral.
“Shooting wrapped early, and I took an earlier flight to surprise her—”
“Oh, no,” I said, a sinking feeling in my stomach telling me where this was going.
He turned away, thrust a hand through his hair. “This shit is only supposed to happen in movies.”
“Was it that bad?”
“If you mean bad in the sense that I walked through the front door and found her fucking my assistant in the middle of my newly completed staircase,” he gritted out. “Then yes, it was that bad.”
“Didn’t you tell me it was all wood and steel?” I asked then shook myself because that was so not the point.
Anger had hardened the lines of his handsome face, but my asinine and unnecessary question softened them with confusion. “What?”
“No, sorry,” I said. “That was . . . uncalled for.”
His head tilted to the side. “No, Mags. Tell me.”
I wrinkled my nose. “It’s just . . . that doesn’t seem comfortable. To be”—I waved a hand up and down, cheeks flaring hot, not able to believe I’d gone there with a client—“having relations on something that’s hard and made of wood and steel.”
Talbot froze.
“See?” I pointed out. “Uncalled for.”
His lips twitched. “Relations?”
My cheeks went hot. “You may be my friend, but you’re my client first. I was trying to be professional.”
He snorted. “That’s not you.”
Ouch. Averting my gaze, I started to shift backward, already thinking up the guise of needing to grab my cell from the bedroom, knowing that I could take thirty seconds and pull myself together because I’d done it time and again in my life.
First, get away from the person who hurt me.
Second, find a quiet and separate space.
Third, breathe and hold back any unplanned and unnecessary tears.
I’d gotten really good at those three steps over the years.
Today, the steps proved unnecessary.
“And it’s not me,” Talbot went on before I could carry them out. “For one, you saw me puking my guts up because I ate too many crab legs at the free buffet at my first real Hollywood party. For another, you covered me when my tuxedo slacks ripped, and I almost flashed the red carpet. Not to mention the time you snuck me out the back of the club downtown when I had a few too many tequila shots and got sloppy.” His brows dragged down. “Come to think of it, maybe you are the professional one. You always seem to be rescuing me.”
I shrugged, relief filling me. “That’s my job.”
It shouldn’t really matter what this man thought of me, but Talbot was my boss, my friend, my family, and if he thought of me like my dad did—a flighty, useless nuisance, then I was mature enough to admit it would hurt.
A lot.
“Not your job, sweetheart,” he said. “I know I’m lucky to have you. We’re family, more than either of us have.” He chucked me under the chin, his expression soft and not hiding the pain in his eyes. His childhood and mine were very similar, and probably also one of the reasons we’d clicked from the get-go. “So anyway, things between us aren’t always professional, and I’m glad for it.” He slung an arm over my shoulders, making my breath hitch, making those tears that I was so good at holding back dry in an instant.
“We are good at polishing off bottles of alcohol,” I said.
He laughed but broke off with a groan.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, turning to face him, cupping his cheeks, feeling his forehead. “Are you sick?”
“Not sick.” He dropped his chin to his chest. “I forgot Ben”—his manager—“set up a business meeting at a winery today. I’m supposed to talk with their owners, see if I’m the right fit for the face of their brand.”
That was strange.
One, that no one had run it by me. Two, for a wine company
to want to pay a celebrity to market their wine was unusual. I would have expected a tequila or even a whiskey. A wine was . . . okay, I guessed. I would have preferred some time to process the brand implications.
“When was the meeting set?” I asked, starting with the most pressing issue. If someone on Talbot’s team was trying to circumvent me, I had a bigger problem than fitting wine in with a brand.
“Maybe three weeks ago. Sam handled the details—” He broke off. “Shoot. You didn’t know?”
I shook my head. “I’m guessing it all came together when I was in Utah.”
“Yeah. That’s when it was relayed to me.” He squeezed my shoulders. “Sorry you were blindsided.”
“It’s fine.” I waved a hand. “Okay, so based on what you walked into, I’m guessing you want to cancel the meeting.”
“Yes,” he said. “I mean, no, I won’t cancel, of course. It’s just . . . Kasey was supposed to go with me. It’s some sort of couple’s tasting we’re trying out.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No—”
I stepped out from under his arm, rotated to fix him with a glare. “What time is the meeting?”
A hesitation.
I gave him Mean Publicist eyes, and he caved, just like I’d know he would. “Ten-thirty.”
“Where?”
“Temecula.”
I shifted so I could see the clock above the oven. It was already eight, and by the time I showered off any lingering traces of hangover and pulled myself into some semblance of order—which meant less pajamas and more professional clothes and makeup—it would be nearing eight-thirty. If I was fast.
And this time in the morning . . . I did some calculating of L.A. rush hour traffic and knew I needed to be fast if we were going to make it from Pierce and Artie’s in Malibu to Temecula.
I spun for the bedroom.
“I’m going to shower really quick. Do you need me to rustle you up a change of clothes? I’m sure I can grab something of Pierce’s from the house.”