Now that he’d started, it was like he couldn’t stop talking.
“I was really hopeful about the bill when I first announced it—I got a ton of press attention, I was on all of the TV shows, and people kept saying how important criminal justice reform is, blah blah blah. I know people bring up bills just to use as talking points—hell, I’ve done it, too—but with this one, I really wanted to make some real change. And there have been some strides, in the past few years, but I guess there’s a limit to how much change people can really handle. How much good they really want to do.”
Olivia rubbed his arm gently, up and down. The expression on her face was softer than he’d ever seen it.
“That bill was the whole reason you ran for the Senate?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Well, criminal justice reform in general.” He laughed. “I didn’t even think I’d win. I jumped into the race on a lark when the Senate seat came open. I just hoped it would raise my statewide profile enough so that when it came time to run for governor a few years later, I’d have a real shot. And then, strangely, everything just kept going my way.”
Olivia poured more wine into both of their glasses.
“Do you regret it? Running for the Senate, I mean.”
He thought about that question for a long time before he answered.
“No,” he finally said. “No, I don’t regret it. Not even on my worst days, the days I’m frustrated at the world and every other member of Congress, and it’s midnight and I’m in my boring Washington apartment. Even then, I want to scream and rant at everything wrong with the government, but I want to make it better, and I think right where I am is exactly the place I should be.” He looked at her and smiled. “Thank you for making me realize that.”
Olivia stared down at the bright red blanket she’d pulled out of her linen closet to turn into their picnic blanket. She’d assumed Max had run into an ex, or had gotten a call from someone in his family, or had to fire someone on his staff, or something else stressful but easy. For something like that, she could listen to his story, pat him on the shoulder, sympathize with him, tell him he’d done the right thing (if, indeed, he had), and then they’d eat pie and hopefully make out.
But this was different. This wasn’t what she’d expected.
Should she tell him . . . no, definitely not. There was no point. Plus, tonight had been heavy enough as it was.
Strangely, though, it had been heavy in a good way. She’d enjoyed going out with banter-y, fun, hot-boy Max the past few times she’d seen him; she’d looked forward to doing it again tonight. But tonight she had serious, thoughtful, introspective Max. She might like him even better now.
A lot better, actually.
“Thank you for telling me that,” she said. “And for not blowing me off when I asked you if something was wrong.”
He smiled at her.
“Thank you for asking,” he said.
She looked at him, and the look in his eyes was so warm, so grateful, she had to look away.
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s what I propose. We sit here and eat our food and drink our wine and watch a really dumb movie on my brand-new TV there, and then we eat that entire pie, and then maybe we’ll drink more wine.” And maybe after that they’d make out, but she hoped that part didn’t need to be said. “Does that sound like a good way to recover from today?”
He smiled at her.
“Just you, here with me, is a way to recover from today. Thank you for being here.” He moved closer to her. “This would have been a depressing, lonely night without you. I’m really glad to be here.”
He stroked his finger across her cheek, and then pulled her chin up toward his. He kissed her on the lips, gently, tenderly, but still with so much power. Olivia lost herself in that kiss. She put her hand on his cheek and felt his stubble there from his long day. Everything in her wanted to speed him up, to unbutton those last buttons of his shirt, to move his hands to where she wanted them, but she let him lead the way, and kept the kiss just as slow and gentle as he wanted it.
Finally, he pulled back and stroked her hair.
“I’m really glad to be here,” he said again.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” she said.
She touched his cheek, then traced her fingers over his dark eyebrows. She marveled at his long, curly eyelashes. Life was so unfair.
“How’d you get this scar?” she asked, her finger on his left eyebrow.
He laughed.
“Back when I was still an assistant DA, I was out at a bar one weekend with some friends, and some people near us got in a fight. I, very stupidly, jumped in to break it up, and got hit with a broken beer bottle. I probably should have gotten stitches, but once everything died down, I just wanted to relax and see the end of the game. I had a black eye for like a week afterward.” He kissed her softly. “Most people don’t even notice it anymore.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder while he picked up the remote and flipped among all of the possible streaming services for a silly movie for them to watch. For the next hour, they sat there together, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her, snacking, drinking wine, occasionally giggling softly at the movie, until he pressed pause.
“Are you ready for pie?” he asked her.
“I was arrested when I was a teenager,” she said.
He stopped halfway through leaning over to get the pie, and sat back down.
She hadn’t meant to say it. And she definitely hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. She hadn’t meant to tell him this at all. She almost never told people about her arrest; not because she was ashamed of it, but because it always made them look at her differently, and she hated that.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked.
She nodded slowly.
“It was stupid, just one of those teen things. There was this guy I liked, and he wanted to break into the school one weekend night just to prove he could, and I thought if I went along with the group, maybe he’d like me back, so I did. We got caught, of course, and we all got arrested. It was . . . terrible.” She flashed back to that moment the police had come in, that call she’d had to make to her parents, the look in her baby sister’s eyes the next morning. “It ended up okay—community service, it got wiped from my record, et cetera, and I’m fine about it now, I have been for a long time, but it was really awful at the time, and for a while later.”
She rarely thought about that year anymore. She told her story occasionally, but it was more of a recitation at this point, an uplifting little story about survival and triumph. She never touched on the actual hard parts; how she’d disappointed her family, how she’d disappointed herself, how she’d worried about her future, so much so that it made her sick to her stomach for months on end.
“Anyway, in the grand scheme of things it was just a blip, and I was fine, and it’s not something I think or talk about much. The few times I’ve told people about it, they often get weird—fascinated in a creepy way, or all condescendingly proud of me. Sometimes I’ve talked about it when I’ve volunteered with kids and teenagers, and once a few years ago I alluded to it at a city council meeting to help my sister out, but I don’t tell a lot of people about it anymore. But I thought . . . I guess I just thought I wanted to tell you.”
He took her hand.
“You didn’t have to tell me, but I’m really glad you did.”
She kissed him this time. She kept her kiss soft and slow, but as she drew him closer to her, his kiss, his touch, got more passionate. His hands roamed around her body, and my God did they feel good. She didn’t let herself touch him below the shoulders until his hands were on her thighs; then she sighed happily and moved her hands down his chest. She slid her hands up underneath his shirt.
“Can I?” she whispered in his ear.
He nibbled at her neck as his hands moved up and down her body again.
“Mmmhmm.”
She pushed his shirt up
and over his head, and gave herself up to stroking his chest as they kissed. His chest hair was springy under her fingers; it delighted her. She couldn’t stop touching him, kissing him. By the way he kissed her harder, he felt the same way. She trailed her hands down to his waist, and lower. His hands slid up under her dress.
This felt too good. She pulled away from him.
He reached for her again.
“We don’t have to stop,” he said.
She wanted to listen to him so much, but she knew she couldn’t.
“It’s been an emotional day for you, and as much as I want to take you at your word right now, it feels like it’s a better idea to chill out a little, eat some of that pie, and watch the rest of this movie.”
He sighed.
“You’re probably right about that.” He reached for the pie again, but this time he turned around with a grin on his face. A very sexy grin.
“I have a better idea than pie.”
She scrunched her nose at him.
“Better than pie? How is that— ”
Before she could finish her sentence, he pushed up her dress and knelt at her feet.
She looked at him in disbelief. Was he really going to do what she thought he was going to do?
“Max, you’ve had a long day, you don’t have to . . .”
Why the hell was she arguing with him about this? What was wrong with her? She shut her mouth and let him guide her legs open.
He knelt at her feet and pushed her legs further apart.
“I know I don’t have to, but I really, really want to.”
Well, if he put it like that.
He tiptoed his fingers up the inside of her thighs, and she giggled.
“Any more objections?”
She folded her arms behind her head and smiled down at him.
“Not a one.”
He slid first one finger inside her, then a second. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. God, the way he touched her, she couldn’t get enough of it.
He spent a while exploring her with his fingers, touching her in slow circles that felt so good she could hardly bear it. And then, thank God, she felt his tongue against that spot where she most wanted him. Finally, she screamed, and dropped her hands by her sides.
He sat up, disheveled and grinning.
She sat up, too, and smiled at him.
“Now do I get some pie, so I can decide if that was actually better?”
Max let out a bark of laughter and stood up.
“Oh, Olivia. I like you so much.”
The smile fell from her face as he cut their pie. She liked him so much, too. Oh no.
Chapter Eight
Olivia fell in line with Jamila on the way out to her car on Wednesday night. In the past few weeks, it had become a routine that Jamila would drive her home after her volunteer shift. It had been another productive evening: this time they’d made forty servings of lasagna, with roasted carrots as a side. Olivia couldn’t believe how proud she felt at the end of the night when she saw the sealed packages, all lined up in the fridge and ready to be delivered the next day. It felt amazing, like this was a real accomplishment—no matter what else she’d done today, she’d done one tangible thing to help people.
Not only that, but she felt a real sense of community here. Some of the other regular volunteers had been working at the food pantry since it had started, and after she showed up the second time, they’d taken her under their wing. They’d laughed at her—but in a kind way—when she asked questions, they’d taught her to chop and dice, and they always oohed and aahed over her outfit when she walked in on Wednesday nights. She felt like she was part of something; that there were people who embraced her, and whom she embraced right back. Many of them were from the neighborhood and so they knew some of the recipients of the meals well, which almost made it feel like they were cooking for family. Olivia wondered what they would think of Max.
Max hadn’t pressed her to make any grand commitment to him before he’d left her place late Saturday night, and they’d texted more or less the same amount this week as they had in the previous weeks. But something had changed between them after the confidences they’d exchanged that night.
Why had she told him about her arrest? Their whole conversation had been about him, not her; it wasn’t like she would have been lying to him if she hadn’t told him anything. She’d woken up that night at four a.m. and spent an hour mad at herself for that. But when she woke up the next morning, she had a text from Max waiting there on her phone, and somehow she wasn’t angry anymore.
No, now the problem was that she was mostly scared. She’d meant for this to be a casual, easy, low-key thing to keep her busy while her firm was slow, but the amount of space Max took up in her head was neither casual nor low-key. And she had no idea what to do about it.
She knew one thing: if they slept together, it would absolutely not be casual. Which sucked—she just wanted to have some really fucking great sex with that really fucking hot guy who kept touching her like that and kissing her like that and, oh God, looking at her like that. But that was the problem—there would be nothing casual about the sex with anyone who looked at her like that.
Oh no. How did she look at him?
She needed to stop thinking about him. She was acting like some sort of lovesick puppy.
“Sooo, tonight was interesting,” she said to Jamila when they got in the car. “I’m glad we had all of the manpower, but . . .”
Jamila looked at her sideways.
“But how did those frat guys hear about us? I have no idea! One of them called me yesterday and asked if they could bring a group of ten, which I didn’t think was actually going to happen but I said sure, and then they brought a group of twenty. Must have been some sort of community service requirement from school.”
Olivia tossed her bag on the floor.
“Yeah, when I walked in, I thought maybe I was in the wrong place! But hey, I’ll take it.” That reminded her. “Do we ever get high school groups out to help? I used to do a lot of volunteering with teens—now that my work schedule isn’t as packed, I need to find a way to do that again.”
She’d thrown herself into that kind of work in her early years in New York, but then her job had taken over most of her life. Maybe now she’d have more time to do it again.
“Not as often as I’d like,” Jamila said. “I need to work on that; I’ve been wanting to find a way to get teens in the community more involved. Sometimes they do the delivering with their parents, but that’s not enough.” She laughed. “Speaking of that, our new friends from tonight are going to do a bunch of delivering for us tomorrow and next week!”
Olivia turned up the music.
“Wow, they all have cars?”
Jamila laughed at her.
“This is Los Angeles, Olivia—a lot of people here have cars.”
“I know, I need to get one. But it’s a big decision! And I’ve never actually bought a car before, so I’m intimidated by the whole going-to-a-dealership-for-it part.”
Jamila turned to her with a wide smile on her face.
“What are you doing tomorrow at lunchtime?”
Olivia desperately wished she had a client meeting, or a conference call, or something.
“Nothing specific, but I have work to do.” She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. “Why?”
Jamila flashed a huge smile at her.
“Because I’m going to pick you up from work, and I’m going to take you to buy a car, that’s why.”
Olivia argued with her, but somehow the next day at 12:15, she got into Jamila’s car.
“Seriously, if you have better things to do on this beautiful Los Angeles day, you don’t have to spend the afternoon helping me buy a car,” Olivia said.
Jamila waved her words aside.
“Thanks for making me feel like a loser since I actually don’t have anything better to do on this beautiful Los Angeles afternoon.” She made a face at Olivia, and t
hey both laughed. “Okay, what kind of car are we buying today?”
As soon as they walked into the dealership, a tall, thin salesman with a big smile on his face greeted them.
“Can I help you two today?” He looked back and forth between Olivia and Jamila. “Let me guess . . . sisters?”
Olivia looked at Jamila and grinned. Sure, why not.
Jamila nodded and smiled at the salesman.
“Hi . . . Brad,” Jamila said. Oh right, he was wearing a name tag. “My sister and I here would love to test-drive a few cars, if you have them on the lot?”
Two hours later, after four test drives—one car twice—some negotiation, and a whole lot of signing of papers, Brad handed Olivia a key.
“Congratulations on your new car, Ms. Monroe,” he said.
Olivia and Jamila grinned at each other as they walked out of the dealership.
“I’m taking you to happy hour for that,” Olivia said. “Isn’t there a good Mexican place nearby?”
Olivia pulled into a parking space by the restaurant after circling the block only four or five times. She made it to a table before Jamila did, so she pulled her phone out of her bag. She had to tell Max about her car. They’d texted a few times already today, but she hadn’t told him she was going to actually buy a car. Partly because she hadn’t really believed it herself.
Guess what I did today?
Just then, Jamila dropped down into the seat across from her. Olivia pushed a menu toward her friend.
“I shouldn’t drink anything if I have to drive that car home; I’m too paranoid,” Olivia said as they looked over the menu. “But you should have something if you want. I’m definitely getting a plate of nachos as big as my head.”
Jamila shook her head.
“Oh, thanks, but I don’t drink. You should come back here sometime when you’re not driving—the margaritas are supposed to be great. And the nachos are fantastic.”
After they ordered food, Jamila cleared her throat.
“Before you started your own firm, did you work in a different law firm for a while?”
Party of Two: The brilliant opposites-attract rom-com from the author of The Proposal! Page 11