page one last time.
“She answered,” he announced out loud even though there was no one around to hear him.
Sitting down in his chair, he read Lila’s response, unconsciously savoring each word as if it was a precious jewel.
If you’re going to be here Friday, I can meet you for lunch at 11:30. I just need to warn you that I only get forty-five minutes for lunch, so our meeting will be short. We’re usually really swamped where I work.
Everett could hardly believe that she’d actually agreed to meet with him. He’d been half prepared to read her rejection. Whistling, he immediately posted a response.
11:30 on Friday sounds great. Since I’m unfamiliar with Austin, you pick the place and let me know.
After sleeping fitfully, he decided to get up early. He had a full slate of appointments that day. Best to get a jump on it. But the minute he passed the computer, he knew what he had to do first.
And there, buried amid approximately forty other missives—all of which were nothing short of junk mail—was Lila’s response. All she’d written was the name of a popular chain of restaurants, followed by its address. But his heart soared.
Their meeting was set.
If he’d been agile enough to pull it off, Everett would have leaped up and clicked his heels together.
As it was, he got ready for work very quickly and left the house within the half hour—singing.
* * *
The second Lila hit the send button on Facebook, she immediately regretted it.
What am I thinking? she upbraided herself. Was she crazy? Did she actually want to meet with someone who had so carelessly broken her heart? Who was responsible for the single most heart-wrenching event to have happened in her life?
“What’s wrong with you? Are you hell-bent on being miserable?” she asked herself as she walked away from her computer. It was after eleven o’clock at night and she was alone.
The way she was on most nights.
Maybe that was the problem, Lila told herself. She was tired of being alone and when she’d seen that message from Everett on her Facebook page, it had suddenly stirred up a lot of old memories.
“Memories you’re better off forgetting, remember?” she demanded.
But they weren’t all bad, she reminded herself. As a matter of fact, if she thought back, a lot of those memories had been good.
Very good.
For a large chunk of her senior year and a portion of her first year at community college, Everett had been the love of her life. He’d made her happier than she could ever remember being.
But it was what had happened at the end that outweighed everything, that threw all those good recollections into the shadows, leaving her to remember that awful, awful ache in her heart as Emma was taken out of her arms and she watched her baby being carried away.
Away from her.
She’d wanted Everett to hold her then. To tell her that he was aching as much as she was. That he felt as if something had been torn away from his heart, too, the way she felt it had for her.
But all he had said was: “It’s for the best.” As if there was something that could be described as “best” about never being able to see your baby again. A baby that had been conceived in love and embodied the two of them in one tiny little form.
Lila felt tears welling up in her eyes even after all this time, felt them spilling out even though she’d tried hard to squeeze them back.
She wished she hadn’t agreed to see Everett.
But if she’d said no to lunch, Everett would have probably put two and two together and realized that she hadn’t the courage to see him again. If she’d turned him down, he would’ve understood just how much he still mattered to her.
No, Lila told herself, she had no way out. She had to see him again. Had to sit there across from him at a table, making inane conversation and proving to him that he meant nothing to her.
That would be her ultimate revenge for his having so wantonly, so carelessly, ripped out her heart without so much as a moment’s pause or a word of actual genuine comfort.
“We’ll have lunch, Everett,” she said, addressing his response that was posted on her Facebook page. “We’ll have lunch, and then you’ll realize just what you lost all those years ago. Lost forever. Because I was the very best thing that could have ever happened to you,” she added with finality.
Her words rang hollow to her ear.
It didn’t matter, she told herself. She had a couple of days before she had to meet with him. A couple of days to practice making herself sound as if she believed every syllable she uttered.
She’d have it letter-perfect by the time they met, she promised herself.
She had to.
Half the contents of Lila’s closet was now spread out all over her bed. She spent an extra hour going through each item slowly before finally making up her mind.
Lila dressed with great care, selecting a two-piece gray-blue outfit that flattered her curves as well as sharply bringing out the color of her eyes.
Ordinarily, putting on makeup entailed a dash of lipstick for Lila, if that. This morning she highlighted her eyes, using both mascara and a little eye shadow. She topped it off with a swish of blush to accent her high cheekbones, smoothed her long auburn hair, then sprayed just the slightest bit of perfume.
Finished, she slowly inspected herself from all angles in her wardrobe mirror before she decided that she was ready to confront a past she’d thought she’d buried—and in so doing, make Dr. Everett Fortunado eat his heart out.
Maybe, Lila thought as she left her house, if she took this much trouble getting ready for the occasional dates she went out on, she might not still be single at the age of thirty-three.
Lila sighed. She knew better. It wasn’t her clothes or her makeup that were responsible for her single status.
It was her.
After breaking up with Everett, she had picked herself up and dusted herself off. In an all-out attempt to totally reinvent herself, Lila had left Houston and moved to Austin where no one knew her or anything about the past she was determined to forget and put totally behind her.
She’d gone to work at the Fortune Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing assistance to the needy. Through hard work, she’d swiftly risen and was now manager of her department.
And because of her work, Lila’s life went from intolerable to good. At least her professional life did.
Her personal life, however, was another story.
