Vivienne's POV
Maya had been trying to engineer a casual gathering for three weeks.
She had not called it engineering. She had called it a low key Saturday thing at my place, just us and whoever, completely relaxed, no agenda. I had agreed because refusing Maya's low key Saturday things was an exercise in temporary postponement rather than actual prevention and because I had known for approximately two weeks that the whatever of just us and whoever was specifically Charles and that the no agenda was the most thoroughly agendaed thing Maya had proposed since she orchestrated an entire product launch around a meeting she told me was a routine check in.
Charles arrived twenty minutes after Maya and Lyla. Ella arrived simultaneously with him, which I suspected was not coincidental, and whic
