“Has she seen him?”
Max shook his head and pressed the fingertips of both hands to his temples. “No.”
“Do you believe her?”
He nodded. “I cross-examined her big time on that. Jesus, I can’t fucking believe this.”
I curled my arm around his. “How did this start? What are they talking about?”
“He called her out of the blue one day. She said they fell right into talking about the past. About me, about their teenage years, their honeymoon. I guess all the good stuff they remember. All the stuff that happened…before.”
“Reminiscing,” I said.
“And in denial,” Max added, sharply.
“Maybe the loneliness will subside and she’ll stop talking to him.”
He turned to me and took me in his arms, pulling me in close. “I’m sorry I tried to smooth things over with your family.”
“What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t my place,” he said quietly, his chin resting on my shoulder as we sat in an embrace. “Some things are just unfixable.”
My eyes welled up. It was the truth. A very sad one.
“You try too hard,” I said.
He pulled back from me. “At what?”
“At everything. And most of the time it works out for you. But you can’t make people do things in real life like you can make them do on the page. That’s why you became a writer in the first place.” I shrugged. “So, now this is just more evidence that you can’t control what you can’t control.”
“Profound,” he said, cracking a smile for the first time that day. “You’re right. Anyway, we have too much work to concentrate on. That’s the important thing. But I am having someone keep tabs on all of this. If he shows up or if she goes to him, I’ll know about it.”
Max told me that he had called Carl, figuring a lawyer could put him in touch with a good private investigator, and by the time Max got home, the deal was already in the works.
“And then what?” I asked. “What are you going to do if that happens?”
He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing.”
It sounded to me like the only viable option.
TWELVE
Max and I drove to his mother’s house the next afternoon.
“Let’s see how long it takes her to notice the ring,” Max said as he drove.
“What? That’s not nice. What if she doesn’t notice and feels bad?”
“Oh, she’ll see it.”
It was a gorgeous day, so Max had put the top down on his Porsche. He wore jeans and a black button-down shirt, untucked. Sometimes I couldn’t decide if he was sexier in casual clothing or something more formal, but I always came back to the conclusion that anything he wore was sexy, because his delicious body was waiting for me underneath.
I had to snap out of my sexual reverie as we approached his mother’s house, and I did so by turning my thoughts to the excitement of telling her we were getting married. Surely it had to go better than the way my parents sounded when I called.
She was waiting on the front porch as Max pulled into the driveway, and came down the steps to meet us as we got out of the car. She kissed and hugged Max first, then turned around for me after I walked over to the driver’s side of the car, dodging the dogs as I did so.
When we pulled away from each other, her hair caught on my ring. It was a comical scene for a moment, as she went from surprise and a quick shout of “Ooh!” to a big smile and a few tears while she looked from the ring to me, then to Max and back to the ring again.
“Well, that’s one way to surprise her,” Max said.
“I swear I didn’t plan that, Paula.”
She laughed and hugged me again. “I know you didn’t, sweetie, but I wouldn’t have cared if you did.”
Over lunch, Paula insisted on knowing every detail of the proposal, and Max let me tell the story.
“Nice touch,” she said to him, when I was finished.
“I thought so, too,” he said.
“But there’s more,” I said. “Remember when Max went to Maine for a location scouting?”
Paula nodded. “Just the one night, right before the Oscars.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, it turns out he didn’t go to Maine after all. He went to Ohio and talked to my parents.”
“Wow, Max,” Paula said, turning her head in his direction. “Quite the traditionalist.”
“Not really,” he said. “Olivia’s parents haven’t been my biggest fan, so that’s the only reason I did it.”
“It’s true.” I shifted in my seat. This topic still made me uncomfortable. “They always had this view of my life that was more like theirs. Well, you know what I mean, Paula.”
She nodded her head. “I grew up the same way. Listen, I wish I’d had your opportunities and your gumption, Olivia. I admire you.”
I felt bad now, watching Paula’s face drop to an expressionless mask as she no doubt felt regret about how her life had gone.
Max lifted his hands, palms up. “Wait a minute.” He looked at me, then at his mother, a smile spreading across his face. “If you had been able to go off and do…whatever it was you wanted to do, you wouldn’t have had me.”
Paula reached out and put her hand on his forearm. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
Max lifted his drink. “Jesus, I might just have to write that script based on our family, after all.”
Paula finally went back to looking happy. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Max put his glass down. “Never.”
It was a tense topic, yet they handled it with ease and humor. I wish things with my parents had been like that.
“So your parents,” Paula said, looking over to me. “I take it they don’t approve.”
I shook my head and told her how it went down.
. . . . .
When I called my parents shortly after Max proposed, I already knew that he had gone to talk with him before asking me. He warned me and filled me in on how the trip had gone.
Which was, to put it mildly: not good at all.
I called them just after 11 am Pacific Time. We hadn’t been out late the night before, but we’d stayed up late together, making love. I woke up around 10 and that’s when Max told me about going to see my parents.
“You should call them,” he said.
I didn’t want to, but I needed to.
My mother answered, and my father picked up the extension.