Japanese fusion! I haven’t actually been there, but I’ve heard it’s great. I’ll make a reservation and text you the addy. 7?
Perfect. Looking forward to it.
Not as much as she was! She’d brought clothes with her to the photo shoot, and used a back room to change. The shoot had run late, because of course it did, and it had taken forever to get a cab. But at last, the cab pulled up outside the restaurant and she dashed inside.
She spotted him instantly. He was standing at the hostess desk in a long trench coat and a knit cap—a new one, she noted. He had a scruff of a beard and he was wearing his glasses. Carly’s heart began to race. She was astonishingly nervous. Max was the most gorgeous thing—did she know that about him? Had she appreciated just how gorgeous he was? And it wasn’t just her—the hostess was all googly-eyed as she chatted him up.
“Max,” Carly said.
He turned, and his eyes went all soft and light. “Carly.” He opened his arms, and she walked right into them, like she’d never left Austin. He kissed her like a friend, a quick peck, and then smiled down at her. “You cut your hair.”
“I did! It’s a lob now.”
“Nice hat,” he said, smiling with amusement.
She put her hand to her head. She’d forgotten she was wearing a fascinator shaped like a blue Tiffany box. “Oh. Well, that’s a story.”
Max grinned. “I can’t wait to hear it.”
The suddenly pouty hostess took their coats and Max’s hat, and Carly swore his hair tumbled out of it like a shampoo commercial, except that it wasn’t that long. He was wearing the outfit she’d put together for him when he’d made his presentation for tenure.
At the table, they ordered drinks and Max started by asking about her job. They never stopped talking. They hardly stopped long enough to order. But Carly wasn’t interested in food. She told him about the fascinators, how Ramona really liked her work. He told her that he was getting an endowment that would be more money for research and more money for him.
She asked about Jamie. Max said he was doing great. He was in a home that housed six adults with special needs, run by a retired couple whose daughter had Down syndrome. The adults shared a kitchen, but Jamie had his own room, and there was a yard for Duke. Another resident had a collie for a service dog, and Duke and Molly had quickly become inseparable. Jamie’s artwork was already appearing on the walls of the house. He rode the bus every day to the ACC and came home to his dad’s house on weekends. He still had never missed a shift of work.
“There is an art gallery on the Upper East Side where I could see his work,” Carly said. “He could make a fortune.”
Max smiled and looked at the food on his plate.
“What about your dad?” Carly asked. “How is he after . . . you know.”
“Now there is a man who knows how to bounce back,” Max said with a wink. He reported that their parents’ annulment was on a court docket in Vegas next month, and that his dad and some of his buddies were flying out to make a weekend out of it. He said his dad was back to his old self and joking about the time he’d lost his damn mind. Carly told him that her parents were planning on remarrying, but that they were going to do it in private, and none of the children were invited. “I don’t think they want a peanut gallery,” she said.
Max said there had been a feature about Victor Allen in the Austin American-Statesman recently, and a picture of him standing next to a bridal gown, and that he was wearing a long skirt himself.
Carly laughed. “He’s someone else who can bounce back very fast and very high. He’s been trying to talk me into doing some work for him, but I already have a crazy job.” She told him Mia had finally found a nanny, which was good, because this pregnancy was a hard one for her.
Max said Baxter and Hazel loved the new dog walker. He asked if she still planned to come and get Baxter.
The question made her infinitely sad. “I don’t know,” she said, and it hurt so much to say that. It hurt so much to admit that what was best for Baxter was not best for