Tom shook his head.
“So, she’s hearing her biological clock tick. She’s seen what the straight men of this city are serving up these days. And she’s wondering if she made a mistake back then, whether she should have settled for you. Whether you might be better than the alternatives.”
“What? No,” Tom instinctively objected.
“There’s nothingwrongwith him.” Boyd came to Tom’s defense, an action slightly undercut by Ximena licking her thumb,leaning over, and swiping a smudge of eyeliner he’d missed off his cheekbone.
“I’m not saying you’re defective,” Ximena said to Tom. “But I think you have to be realistic about this. Are you okay being the guy who’s just good enough in a pinch?”
Tom frowned at the other actor. Ximena seemed to think this would be a big hit to his pride. But he’d always thought he was lucky to land Rosie in the first place, a tiny, marvelous creature dedicated to making the world better for the people she loved.
“Yeah,” he said. “Please. Let her settle for me. I’mgladevery other option sucked more than I did.”
A flash of surprise crossed Ximena’s face. “Oh. Well.” She shifted her weight, reassessing him. “So you’re going to prove your devotion with home repairs?”
“Yep, that’s the idea,” Tom said, a little pissed at Ximena’s lack of optimism. “I show her I can be a good little husband this time. I’m fully trained. I make breakfast. I run errands.”
“But then maybe you should take her somewhere nice instead?” Boyd asked. “A place with a roof? Do you want to borrow my condo in Malibu? It has a beach view and a hot tub.”
“Right, home repairs are super stressful,” Ximena agreed. “Lú and I nearly strangled each other when we redid our kitchen.”
“Nah, this place on the Vineyard is terrible, but she loves it,” Tom said. “And she asked me to help her get it fixed up. She seemed pretty stressed about it, in fact, which means I get to swoop in to the rescue.” It sounded like a sterling opportunity to demonstrate maturity! Financial stability! Core definition!All the things Rosie had probably wanted in a partner and not gotten the last time around.
Ximena squinted at him. “Maybe you could find a swooping opportunity that plays more to your strengths than managing a construction project.”
Tom was really getting the sense that she thought he’d screw this up. It would have been deflating, except that he knew Rosie perfectly and Ximena didn’t.
“You don’t understand. If there were an Olympic event for executive function, Rosie would be the world champion. She’ll have everything already planned out,” he said. “I’ll just have to do the manual labor part, and then we’ll work on our relationship. This is the perfect opportunity.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Ximena said, sounding as though she meant the exact opposite.
“When do we get to meet her?” Boyd asked guilelessly.
“Uh,” Tom said. The last two people from his current life he needed to introduce to Rosie were the judgy pregnant lady and the guy trailed by strangers obsessed with his sex life. Tom wasn’t sure how Rosie now imagined happy domesticity, but these two probably weren’t part of it. And he still had to convince her that he was.
“I’ll bring her to the premiere,” he promised.
4
“So you’re getting back together with your ex?” Sloane asked.
“Absolutely not,” Rose replied to the younger woman, hoping that would shut the line of questions down.
Rose had once dreamed of a big corner office from which she’d rule a vast financial empire on a Lucite girlboss throne or perhaps an Aeron chair (better for her back). Instead, a series of sanity-preserving moves sideways and down the finance career game board meant that she still waited for her paycheck to clear before she paid rent every month, but her theoretical boss cared much more about her love life than how she was going to manage the investment portfolio from a decaying B and B on Martha’s Vineyard.
Rose’s actual boss, the chairman of the family charitable foundation where she was the chief investment officer, was in Yellowstone on his honeymoon. Watching the bears or being eaten by them or something. His younger sister, Sloane, who was only twenty-three but seemed to think she’d been left in charge, had not just agreed to indefinite remote work but alsooffered to have her billionaire boy toy of the week drop Rose and Tom off on the island via his mega yacht. The price of transport, however, was being interrogated on Chelsea Pier while they waited for Tom to arrive. He was late.
“Then is this going to be, like, a hate sex scenario? Bang out the rest of your feelings?” Sloane asked.
Rose’s phone buzzed in her pocket. Her friend was texting her.
Adrian: You’re trying to work things out with Tom?
Rose glared at the screen. Adrian’s girlfriend, Caroline, must have snitched. Rose shouldn’t have said anything at all, but Caroline was the only other person with remote access to the foundation’s brokerage accounts if something urgent came up.
Rose: No!!! 100% no.
Of course Rose wasn’t getting back together with Tom. This was nothing more than two adults deciding to mend fences in a very civil, cordial, distant, adult way. She touched a thumb to her mouth to check on her lipstick. Today she wouldn’t look like a drowned rat. She’d look like the polished professional woman she was, even though she was running on the fumes of only three hours of sleep.
