Maeve paused her spreading. She turned to face him, the knife still in her hand. “I want you to wait. Let her get to know you.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. Again, she wondered how often he heard the word no. “Why?”
“Brodie, you’re new in her life It’s too much to come in and tell her you’re her dad. Last night you were about to tell her you were once as famous as Taylor Swift?—”
He looked mildly affronted by the wordonce.
“I mean, I’m sure you’re still as famous?—”
“No, of course not.” He glossed over her clumsy attempt to make it better.
It hadn’t occurred to her before that he might still crave that level of fame. Sometimes, late at night, she’d go on his Instagram, see him standing with a scantily clad model on some Malibu beach with his surfboard under his arm or taking a selfie on the world’s best golf course, and presumed he relished retirement.
“Anyway,” she said, going back to the toast. “It’s too much. She’s only little. We have to take our time.”
Brodie gave it two seconds’ thought before seemingly accepting the rationale and said, “Maybe I could pick her up from school?” He stood up to pour the coffee when the machine was done. “Take her for a smoothie at the diner or something? You take milk?”
Maeve looked at the cups he’d chosen. They weren’t her normal coffee cups. On instinct, she was about to say something about how she liked the striped ones for morning coffee but stopped herself in time. How used to living on her own she had become. “No milk, thanks.”
Brodie turned so that he was leaning against the countertop, one hand wrapped round his coffee mug. For some reason, it seemed obvious that he wasn’t someone who’d use the handle.
Maeve took a deep breath and said, “If you take her out, someone will photograph the two of you together and then I—we—lose control of the narrative.” She saw Brodie about to protest that she was being overly cautious, but she carried on before he could. “Why else would you be photographed with an eight-year-old?”
He shrugged. “She could be my niece?”
“But she’s not,” Maeve shot back.
Brodie sighed, clearly annoyed. He looked away out the window, squinting in the shaft of sunlight. Hair sticking up, faint stubble on his face. His attractiveness was a dominating presence to have in the room, took some of the air away, made it difficult to breathe. Made her want to just say, fine have what you want.
Then she looked past his profile at where he was looking and saw a sparrow on the birdfeeder and a goldfinch taking a bath in the water bowl. She thought how much she had gone through to get to this point and rolled her shoulders back, resolute.
“So how do I—we—do this?” he asked, turning back after the pause had hung for long enough without him getting his way.
“I don’t know,” she replied, willing the floor to open up and for him to disappear. “We make a plan.” She moved to the hallway to shout, “Zoey, your breakfast is ready.”
When she came back Brodie had moved so he was standing in the kitchen doorway and they almost collided. He seemed completely normal again, any hint of annoyance gone, as if he couldn’t be derailed by anything for long. “Are you working this weekend?”
“Why?” she squeezed past him suspiciously. How could someone smell so good after a night on the couch?
He followed her back into the room where she busied herself putting the toast on the table and pouring Zoey’s juice. “We could go to the cabin,” he said, eyes now alight as if there had never been an idea better. “It’s my uncle’s. It’s in the middle of nowhere. No one around for miles. We used to go there to write songs. I’ll call and check it’s empty, but he’s rarely there. Yeah?” He already had his phone out his pocket.
Maeve buttered herself some toast, she was starving—she’d barely eaten since their pizza the night before. “Brodie, I’m not staying in a cabin with you in the middle of nowhere.”
That made him pause, look up from his phone and grin. “Why not?”
She tipped her head exasperated. “I don’t know you.”
“Oh, come on,” he huffed like that was the stupidest reason he’d ever heard. “We grew up together.”
“You’d barely spoken to me before—” She paused, then a little too formally said, “Before that night.”
Brodie raised a brow, grinned knowingly. “We have a child together, Maeve, I think we know each other well enough.”
Maeve was about to both protest and shush him, but the subject closed at the sound of Zoey thundering down the stairs and swinging round the banister to hurl herself into the kitchen. “Don’t you think my school uniform’s gross?” she said to Brodie, pulling at the collar of her maroon polo.
“Awful,” he agreed. “But we all had to wear it.”
“You wore this?” She looked down at the shirt with its Autumn Falls Elementary School logo.
