At first he just keeps walking. Then when I catch up enough to sneak a peek at his face, he’s softened by just an imperceptible degree that I know I’ve got an in.
“It’s Millie Price,” he says. “How ridiculous can it be?”
“Oh boy,” I say as we walk into the bodega. “You’re gonna regret asking that.”
Oliver lets out a sigh that does not conceal the mild amusement under his exasperation. “Let’s find a place to sit.”
A “place to sit” ends up being Washington Square Park, where we find a bench and Oliver lays out his sandwich and I pop open my seltzer. I wait until we are both somewhat plied with pastrami and LaCroix before I cross my legs and clear my throat, diving in with both feet.
“First of all, you were right.”
That sure gets his attention. Only he looks more startled than smug. His back straightens and his eyes narrow at me as if he thinks I’ve been body-snatched.
In both of our defenses, I am rarely wrong.
I give him a rueful smile. “I shouldn’t have taken this internship,” I concede. “But I want you to know it wasn’t just to get back at my dad. It was…” I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to figure out where to start, what order to tell it. “Well, first of all, it had nothing to do with you. And I’m sorry I made it sound like it did.”
“I didn’t say you shouldn’t have taken it,” says Oliver. I raise an eyebrow at him, and he stares down at the half of his sandwich still left. “You’re—well, you hold your own.”
I have about ten retorts lined up, but I figure now’s not the time. “Well—that aside. I was only really in the office that first day because I was looking for my mom.”
I wait for a beat for the justified bewilderment, but Oliver’s just watching me, seemingly on board with this harebrained scheme before I can even spell it out. Then again, after three years of prolonged Millie exposure, I’m guessing it will take a lot more than that to faze him.
“Is she … one of Georgie’s clients or something?” he asks quietly, as if someone in the park is going to overhear us.
I fiddle with my hair, pulling it back into a ponytail without actually committing to it. “No. I, uh—I’d narrowed it down to three women, actually.”
Oliver’s eyebrows arch in alarm, his sandwich hovering a few inches from his mouth. “No.”
I drop my hair down again with a wince. “Yes.”
He sets the sandwich down. “Did you legitimately, actually go this method to get a part?”
I pick up the plastic fork he’s not using and point it at him. “So we are doing Mamma Mia!”
“We are way past that, Millie,” he says, his eyes still just as disbelieving.
“Don’t let anyone ever tell you I’m not at the top of my game,” I say, trying to joke off some of the tension. Except it doesn’t work. I lower his fork back down and we both stare at it for a moment before Oliver breaks the silence.
“So … what happened?” he asks quietly.
“Well,” I say candidly, “it’s not Steph.”
“Steph? You thought Steph might be your mom?”
He leans back on the bench for a moment, like he’s trying to piece something together. Maybe superimposing my face onto hers the same way I did a thousand times this summer with all three of these women. Something that was only mildly embarrassing at the time but seems prolifically so in the aftermath.
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“I mean … jeez.” He puts a hand to his forehead, vexed. I brace myself for an Oliver the Stage Manager–level scolding, but instead he says, “I had no idea. I wish you’d have said something—I mean, no wonder you were so upset that day she caught us fighting.”
“Well. Yeah,” I say, almost self-conscious at how fast he summoned that particular memory. Like it’s been weighing on him ever since.
“And all those times you showed up early … you weren’t trying to one-up me. You were trying to talk to Steph?”
I wince. “Kind of.”
“Millie, I … I mean, I guess it makes sense you didn’t tell me.” He shakes his head. “I just wish I’d…” He trails off, and when his eyes meet mine again there’s something cautious in them. Something apologetic, even. I’m so caught up in the unexpected weight of it—the way he seems to understand the real depth of what this meant to me, even as I try to brush it off—that it takes me a moment to snap back.
“Hey, wait. You’re still fully supposed to be mad at me,” I remind him. “I did give you hell all this time for an internship I technically didn’t even know existed before I got it.”
Oliver doesn’t take the bait, though, his eyes still solemn on mine. “So did you find her?”
He’s still holding my gaze, and I understand then why it’s always been so unnerving to have Oliver’s eyes on me. He’s never really looking at me. Not my rotating outfits or my flashy entrances or the little things I say or do to avoid the big ones. He’s always seen deeper than that, whether I wanted him to or not.
“No,” I tell him.
Oliver opens his mouth like he wants to say something comforting, but doesn’t know what. But that in and of itself is comforting enough.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Like—good things came out of it. We had fun, didn’t we?”
He puts his hand on top of mine. I’ve gotten surprisingly used to what his hand feels like, but it doesn’t stop the slight flutter that starts somewhere in my chest and ends everywhere else.
“Yeah, but … are you okay?”
I may never find someone who can explain the Millie Moods. I may never have an explanation for a lot of things in my life, whether they have anything to do with my mom or not. But at least I have people who will ride it out with me. And right now, I’m mostly just glad to know Oliver is one of them.
“At this specific moment? Yeah. But thanks.”
“For what?”
“For caring, I guess.” Before he can say anything to that, I add, “And for not killing me through all this.”
I smile firmly so he knows I’m good. Like, actually good, and not that theater-kid version of good where we pretend we are and then end up bawling four notes into someone humming Dear Evan Hansen’s “You Will Be Found.”
He smiles back, then blinks, remembering something. “About that. I—I haven’t had my one-on-one with Georgie yet, so I was wondering if I could ask you something.”
I shift on the bench, twisting to sit closer to him. “Weren’t you supposed to go right after me?”
Oliver leans in, too, our food long forgotten. “Yeah, but she took a few minutes to make a call, and then she had to go. She pushed it to this afternoon.”
This seems unlike Georgie. I’d say as much, but I guess I’m not really in a position to say what’s Georgie-like and what isn’t.
“Anyway … if it’s okay with you … I was wondering about asking her if there’s some way we could split the internship.”
I turn my head to the side for a moment to hide the smile that sneaks up on my face. Not just because of what Steph told me about Georgie planning to do it anyway. But because Oliver wanted it, too. Because despite everything—despite the years of mutual torture, the weeks of competing, and this past day where I’m not even entirely sure what we are to each other—we’d rather be together than apart.