“Ouch,” she said. “Brutal.”
“Not you,” he said.
“I live in New York now. So I don’t take it personally.”
Elliot nodded and said nothing else because they both knew exactly where she lived now.
They circled the block two more times until Birdie took a sharp left down a side street and blessedly found a stretch of about a hundred feet of free sidewalk.
“Okay, well, good luck in there,” Birdie said.
“You’re seriously not coming in?”
“I am seriously not coming in. I don’t know why you thought I’d have changed my mind.” She reached for her phone in the cup holder and held it aloft toward him. Dozens of notifications littered the screen. “I told Imani I was staying low, so I am.”
“You also told Imani that you were huddled up in my apartment in San Francisco, so I’m not quite ready to award you with a medal for nobility.”
Birdie shrugged. Elliot made a show of unclicking his seat belt while shaking his head in frustration.
“Well, you can’t blame me if you don’t like what I write, then,” he said.
Birdie thought that she could blame him for whatever she wanted to and started to say as much, but then that was probably an entirely different conversation. And sitting in front of Carter’s house while wearing Elliot’s oxford button-down with memories of Kai swimming around her cerebral cortex was not the time to say any of it. For someone who had never set out to tie herself toa man, Birdie thought, she certainly had stitched herself into plenty of knots.
“Okay,” he tried again. “Can you at least tell me why it didn’t work out? Or why you thought maybe he would have sent the letter?”
Birdie didn’t really think that Carterhadsent the letter. But Elliot had mentioned him when pitching her the idea, and, well, it was easier not to correct him. She wouldn’t mind hiding out in his bungalow with its navy blue door and rosebushes. It wouldn’t be the love-swept ending that one of her writers would dream up, but Birdie was ready to settle for a little less. What had she told Mona back in the bar about Nelson? People settled for a little less every day, all the time. If Carter had written the letter, Birdie resolved, she’d embrace it, not just for the good press (because there would be good press) but because he was also a good man.
The truth was, though, Birdie couldn’t think of anything that Carter would regret. Theirs had been a diplomatic, grown-up ending. The best type you could hope for, really. Yes, he’d been the one to end things with her, though it was more of an understanding. He’d wanted kids and a family, and Birdie hadn’t, probably still didn’t. There wasn’t much middle ground once that was established. But they had an ease between them that she hadn’t felt in a long time. Carter was funny and smart and obviously athletic, and they had fabulous sex. In hindsight, maybe Birdie was looking for an off-ramp from the mess of Kai and the lingering residue of Elliot, the thought of whom still bruised her, and so she and Carter fell into each other, and it worked until falling into each other wasn’t enough for him.
“Last chance,” Elliot said. He hesitated in the passenger seat and met her eyes, and Birdie saw his chest rise and fall, and she knew hers was beating in time too.
“I’m not budging.” She shrugged.
“A woman who knows what she wants,” he replied, like that was some sort of answer.
Then he opened the RV door, jumped out like he was parachuting into a war zone, and was gone.
21
ELLIOT
Elliot had absolutelyno idea what he was doing when he marched up to Carter’s lacquered blue door and knocked three times, then popped back down the steps to wait. It was rare that he felt discombobulated at work or really, actually, at anything, but he had expected Birdie to cave, and now he was just some sort of lecherous gossip reporter beating down the door of one of her exes. This wasn’t what he had pitched Francesca, and though he knew he could zig when he thought he’d be zagging, mostly he was thinking of Birdie in that striped blue oxford of his and how the only thing he wanted to do was pop each button one by one and certainly not give an ex of hers the fourth degree to see if he wanted to get back together.
The truth was that Birdie Maxwell made Elliot crazy. She had since forever. She continued to do so. He didn’t know why he thought that this assignment would be any different. He’d been a fool to believe that she could just bework, just another story. Birdie had never been just another anything.
The front door to Carter’s home swung open, and Elliotsincerely began to regret his choice, much like he began to sweat around his neck as panic crept in over this entire calamity. He could be back in the RV, giving Birdie a pep talk, giving Birdie a massage, giving Birdie... He told himself to focus, to take this as seriously as an embedded piece in the Middle East. Then he glanced up the three steps of the stoop and found himself staring at a ridiculously gorgeous Black man who had at least five inches on Elliot and a wingspan that anyone on Elliot’s swim team would envy. He was in a white T-shirt and tapered gray sweatpants and barefoot and grinning, as if he was delighted that someone had rung his doorbell, and as if he was delighted that the someone was Elliot O’Brien.
“I thought you might show up,” he said, his velvet voice filled with nothing but joy. “But where’s my girl? No offense, she’s much easier on the eyes than you.”
“Elliot O’Brien,” Elliot stammered, scooting up the stairs, extending a hand, which Carter shook; then he wrapped his other palm around their grasp because he was that welcoming. Elliot decided he hated him, this beautiful man who got to sleep with Birdie for the better part of a year. This beautiful man who had been ranked forty-first in the world on the ATP.
“I came without her,” Elliot lied because he needed to prove to Birdie that he was an intrepid reporter all on his own. He was. He had Pulitzers! Or nominations anyway. Why was he out here trying to prove himself to a girl he’d slept with seven years ago? Why was he swimming in envy at this beautiful specimen in front of him, who was whisking him into his house with nothing but graciousness?
Birdie Maxwell was dangerous, Elliot thought. Birdie Maxwell scrambled his fucking brain.
Carter led him through the house, which was tastefullydecorated and not at all like Elliot’s embarrassing crashpad, and out to the backyard, where a dog, a midsized mutt of some sort, yapped and hurled itself toward him. Elliot tried to pat its head to calm it down, but it wasn’t the type of dog that seemed interested in being calmed, so it spun in circles and then launched itself into the pool.
“Oh, ignore Lucy,” Carter said. “She’s working through some things.”
