“Satisfied?” he said to Wes.
Wes dished out some of the salad into a bowl and took a very pointed bite.
“About that, at least. Now eat some damn vegetables; we both need some in this godforsaken town.”
Just as Wes got up to go to the bathroom, Max’s phone buzzed.
Thanks for giving me time to think about it—Saturday sounds great. Maybe the Getty?
Max smiled, for maybe the first time that day. Finally, something went right.
Chapter Seven
Max wished he could spend all day Saturday with Olivia, but he had an event that afternoon to honor one of his old teachers who was about to retire. So he’d suggested they head up to the Getty in the late afternoon to see the art and walk around, and then they could picnic outside at sunset. As soon as Olivia agreed, he ordered a bunch of picnic supplies from his local, exorbitantly priced grocery store—they were supposed to have great pie, so he ordered one of those, too. He hoped the pie lived up to the rumors.
Max slapped on a name tag from the front table when he walked into the event, and was immediately surrounded by people. He hadn’t brought any of his staff along with him today, because this felt more like a personal event than a political one, but now he suddenly appreciated everything they did for him. He shook what felt like hundreds of hands, tried to remember what everyone said to him, and took all their business cards with no idea of what to do with them. He laughed at himself—he’d gotten so used to having one to four extra brains working on his behalf at all times, it was like he didn’t remember how to do all this himself. This was probably a good exercise to go through every so often, just so he didn’t get too soft.
Finally, he made his way over to Ms. Sussman and gave her a hug.
“Congratulations on forty years as a teacher, and on your retirement,” he said. “Best teacher I ever had, even though you sent me to the principal’s office far too many times.”
She blushed and hugged him back. And then scolded him gently, as he’d expected.
“Now, Maxwell,” she said. Ms. Sussman was one of only two people in the world who called him Maxwell; the other was his grandmother. “That only happened twice, and I’m sure you agree with me that you deserved it both times.”
He grinned.
“I absolutely did,” he said.
Max chatted with her for a while, until another of her former students came up to them. They’d had this event for her outside of school hours because so many of her former students wanted to come. She’d worked at his private high school early in her career, and then twenty years ago she’d surprised everyone by moving to a public school in East L.A., and had been there ever since.
Soon, her daughter brought him up to the microphone for one of a handful of speeches. He talked about how much she’d taught him, most of which was about how to be a good person and how to treat other people well, told a self-deprecating story about himself that made people laugh, told one of his favorite stories about Ms. Sussman that made people cry, and managed to weave in his passion for criminal justice reform, especially as it related to kids. When he walked down from the podium, he was proud of that speech.
At the end of the event, Ms. Sussman brought him around to meet some of her more recent former students. He went around the circle and shook hands with all of them, but one of them looked so familiar. Why couldn’t he place him?
“Great speech, Senator,” they all said, and he smiled.
He knew this kid. Who was he? He glanced down at the name tag to see if that would help. Mateo Ortega.
Oh. It all came back to him now.
Mateo’s brother Antonio had been a defendant, early in Max’s career as a prosecutor. He’d stolen stuff from a store, and knocked someone down on his way out. Max, full of his own importance, had thrown the book at the kid.
He’d spent years regretting that. He still did. After he spent a few years prosecuting that kid and some of the others like him, and saw what his actions did to their lives, his feelings about the criminal justice system had fundamentally changed. He’d consulted advocates—many of whom he still consulted on a regular basis—changed his entire process, and after he’d become the district attorney, had changed policies in the office to try to keep kids, and everyone else, out of jail and prison as much as possible.
But none of that had helped Antonio, who’d been incarcerated for two years because of Max.
On the way out of the event, Max caught up with Mateo in the parking lot.
“Hey, Mateo,” he said. “How’s your brother?”
Mateo barely glanced at him.
“Okay, I guess. I mean, I don’t really know. He’s back inside. Supposed to get out again in a few years, with good behavior and all.”
Fuck.
“Oh,” Max said. He pulled a card out of his pocket. “I’m very sorry to hear that. Well, if you ever need anything, or if he does, or you’re looking for a job in government, or anything . . . call my office, okay?”
Mateo took the card and dropped it in his pocket, still without looking at Max.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll get right on that.”
Max didn’t blame the kid for his rudeness; hell, it had probably taken all of Mateo’s self-control to not punch Max in the face. And Max would have deserved it.
He drove home on autopilot. He wished he hadn’t seen Mateo. He wished he didn’t have such good memories for faces and names. A normal person wouldn’t have seen a twentysomething who had been a preteen the last time he’d seen him and remember either the face or the name; why couldn’t he be a normal person? Then he wouldn’t be thinking about Antonio and his family right now. He’d instead just drive back home and remember how he’d brought tears to Ms. Sussman’s eyes with his speech, the laughter of the crowd, and that one baby who had the fattest cheeks he’d ever seen. He’d drive home and look forward to seeing Olivia later . . . fuck. Fuck, he’d almost forgotten his date with Olivia. He had to pull himself together and out of this funk before he got to her house.
By the time he got back to his house, changed out of his suit and into jeans, collected all of the food into a tote bag, and drove back down to Olivia’s place, he’d gotten more of a hold on himself. For the rest of this night, he just had to forget that he’d seen Mateo, forget about all of this. He could do that—he’d done a fundraiser the day he and his last girlfriend broke up, and had made a floor speech the day after his grandfather died, and each time he’d shut his emotions away, put his big politician smile and his big politician voice on, and aced it each time. He could ace this, too.
He knocked on Olivia’s door, and made sure a big smile was on his face when she opened it.
“Hey! Ready to go?”
She gave him a slightly weird look, but he brushed it off. Olivia always looked at him like she didn’t quite know what to make of him, but she kept going out with him anyway, didn’t she?
“Almost,” she said. “Come in for a second while I grab a sweater? It’s warm now, but I want to be prepared for after the sun goes down.”
Max nodded and followed her into the house. She walked through the kitchen and into her bedroom, and he stood just outside the doorway while she looked through her dresser drawers.
“I’m really excited that you’re going to get to see the Getty!” he said. “You know, not only does it have a wonderful art exhibit, but it has some of the best views in all of Los Angeles. You don’t want to miss the sunset there! Also, fun fact: did you know that a number of the former curators were investigated for trafficking in stolen antiquities?”
She walked out of her bedroom, heavy gray cardigan in hand, and gave him that look again.
“Are you okay? You’re acting strange.”
Apparently he wasn’t acing this yet.
He shook his head.
“No, no, everything’s great! Just excited for tonight.” He shot another big smile at her.
She shrugged, then walked into the kitchen.
“We can bring wine, right?
I know you said you were taking care of the picnic supplies, but I bought this bottle of wine today; I thought it would be fun to bring it.”
He took the bottle of wine from her and set it back down on the counter.
“Unfortunately we can’t, but we can buy wine there. Whether you can bring wine to a location often has to do with the way their liquor license is set up, but sometimes it’s just about wanting to drive more wine and beer sales of their own.”
Olivia steered him into the living room and sat down on the couch.
“Okay. What’s going on? I know I don’t know you all that well, but you don’t seem like yourself.”
How could she see right through him like this?
He started to shake his head again, and she stopped him.
“Please don’t say ‘Everything’s great!’ again in that weird voice, or spout another fun fact at me. You’re not on TV right now, you know. You don’t have to tell me what’s up, but . . . is something wrong?”
He sat down on the couch next to her and took a deep breath.
“Do you know, I can’t remember the last time someone asked me that,” he said.
She put her hand on his shoulder. It felt really nice. Comforting. No one had comforted him in a really long time.
“I’m guessing that means the answer is yes. Do . . . do you want to talk about it? We don’t have to rush off to the Getty just yet, you know.”
He looked at his watch.
“We do if we want to get to see any of the art before sunset. Sunset is at sevenish, and by the time we get there, and park and everything, it’ll be— ”
She moved her hand down his arm and covered up his watch.
“We don’t have to go to the Getty tonight. It’s not going anywhere, we can go another time.”
Something in him thrilled at her implication that there would be another time, that they had a future together. But he still wanted to push on, to not admit defeat.
“Oh, but I know you wanted to go up there, and I have all this stuff for the picnic in the car. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine!” He flashed a bright smile at her and stood up.
She stayed on the couch.
“You’re doing it again. It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me what’s up, but don’t pretend to me, okay?”
He dropped back down next to her.
“I’m sorry. It’s just been . . . a tough day today, for some unexpected reasons. I didn’t want to burden you with all of that.”
She slid her hand in his.
“I have an idea. How about you go back to the car and get all of that picnic stuff, and bring it right in here, and I can open up that bottle of wine without having to pay for it, and we can sit here and have our picnic and relax.” Her eyes twinkled at him. “Plus, your hair still has that Ken doll look; you might get recognized at the Getty.”
He brushed his hand over his stiff hair, and shook his head.
“I can’t believe I forgot about that. You sure that’s okay?” he asked.
She stood up.
“I’ll open the wine right now.”
He went out to the car for the picnic supplies, and by the time he got back inside, she’d moved the coffee table to the far side of the living room and had spread a big blanket out on the floor, with the bottle of wine and two glasses in the middle of it.
“See what a good picnic we can have indoors?” she said when he came inside.
He dropped the bag down onto the blanket and unloaded it.
“And we don’t have to worry about the wind coming up and blowing the blanket away, or ants,” she said. She uncorked the wine bottle and poured wine for both of them.
“And we can use actual wineglasses instead of plastic,” he said. He touched his glass to hers.
She set to unwrapping all the food he’d brought.
“Ooh, you got some good stuff. I’m going to pretend I don’t see that pie until later, but I’m very excited about it. And this cheese looks oozy and perfect. I’m starving.”
He tore off an end of the baguette and handed it to her.
“Me, too.”
He hadn’t realized that until now.
She looked at him, and her expression softened.
“When did you eat last?” she asked. “Do they feed you at those things?”
When had he eaten last? That half a bagel he’d downed for breakfast while he read a stack of memos and briefing papers.
“Technically, yes, there’s usually food at these things—there was today. But the problem—and the thing I still forget, even though I’ve been in this job for going on two years now—is that even when there’s food I almost never get the opportunity to actually eat it.” He laughed. “Today wasn’t so bad, because the food was just things like sandwiches and vegetables and dip, but a few months ago I went to something in the Central Valley and there was all of this amazing Mexican food and I kept putting food on a plate and taking one bite and then having to shake someone’s hand or take a picture with someone else and my plate would disappear and I would get a new one and it would happen all over again. I think I gave up after my fifth plate and just made my staff go out to an enormous Mexican meal with me after we left.”
Olivia handed him a piece of baguette, covered in that good, oozy cheese.
“Here, eat this. I can’t have a senator faint from hunger in my living room. That feels like a felony of some sort.”
He looked away from her and pretended to check the bag to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He’d briefly forgotten why they were here on her living room floor instead of on their way to the Getty, but those jokey words of hers brought everything back.
He cleared his throat.
“I . . . the reason I was upset this afternoon . . .” He put his wineglass down and rubbed his temples. “It’s kind of a long story, we don’t have to go into all of that.”
She touched his arm gently.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I don’t mind long stories.”
He looked into her eyes and could tell she meant it.
“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “You know I was a prosecutor before I was in the Senate, right? Well, I had this mentor early in my career, a family friend; he was the whole reason I became a prosecutor in the first place. He was an old-school prosecutor, very hard-line, all about safety and how kids especially need to learn what they did was wrong, and I listened to him. Far too much. People talk about prosecutorial discretion; well, at first, mine went in the ‘more jail, more punishment’ direction. This isn’t a defense, but I floated through most of my life as a privileged trust fund kid, not really paying attention to politics and all of the bad things that could happen to people—sure, I volunteered some in school, but I guess I bought into that whole ‘they didn’t work hard enough’ bullshit.” He sighed. “That job made me wake up. After a few years in, and a few years of seeing the hard situations these kids lived in, and the racism they dealt with every day, and listening to advocates who somehow never gave up on me, I realized how much I didn’t want to keep being that kind of prosecutor. Hell, that I didn’t want to be that kind of person. Throwing kids behind bars could, and often did, ruin their futures and cause so much harm to their families. I was the one causing that harm. I came very close to quitting my job then.”
He looked at the floor. He still remembered how angry at himself he’d been then, how he’d realized how wrong he’d been, how much pain he’d caused.
“Why didn’t you?” Olivia asked.
He looked at her, for the first time since he’d started this story. She was giving him that look again, like she really cared about the answer. Like she really cared about him.
“My friend Wes. I called him and told him I was going to quit and why, and he yelled at me.” Max smiled to himself. “I’d never heard him like that. He told me he was glad I’d finally woken up, but what a damn waste it would be if I woke up just in time to hand over the job to another clueless trust fund bab
y. He said we needed good prosecutors, that those kids needed me, now more than ever.” He looked down. “Until then, I think I really believed I deserved everything I got in life. That job made me realize . . . so much. About everything. Among other things, I still can’t believe my eyes were so closed to the way racism infects every part of the criminal justice system. There were just so many little things that I just didn’t see. Or worse, ignored.” He shook his head. “I listened to Wes. I stayed at that job, eventually I even became the DA. I’ve worked hard for years now to help kids like the defendants I saw, so they can change their lives, and stay in school, and so one mistake won’t follow them forever.”
He looked down at his piece of baguette covered in cheese. He’d somehow lost his appetite.
“But?” Olivia said.
He sighed.
“But today, at the event this afternoon, I saw a kid there. He’s not a kid anymore, he must be in his early twenties now. His brother was one of those defendants who I worked hard to toss in jail in those early years of my career. The kid seems like he’s doing well, but when I asked him about his brother, he told me he’s back inside.” He shook his head. “And that’s my fault. All of it. I could have helped his brother. He wasn’t a bad kid; most of them aren’t. I could have gotten him into programs to rehabilitate him, made it easy to wipe his record, gotten him back to school, to his family, to people and places that keep kids—and the adults they become—out of prison. But I did the opposite, and here we are.”
Mateo would never call his office, he knew that. He wished there was something he could do for him and his family. Especially since he wasn’t accomplishing what he wanted to in the Senate.
“And I guess it hit me particularly hard today, because my criminal justice reform bill—one of the whole reasons I ran for Senate in the first place—has a really hard road ahead. I have such a big list of things I want to change. Mandatory minimums, policing, bail, funding for public defenders, the way we try children, and so much more. I know, it’s all ambitious, but I thought I could start big, and at least get some of that passed. But none of it? It just feels like . . . nothing I do in this job matters. Like nothing is going to change.”
Party of Two: The brilliant opposites-attract rom-com from the author of The Proposal! Page 10