Party of Two

by Jasmine Guillory

  “I will,” Jamila had said. “You’re coming, too, right?”

  “Oh, well . . . I’m still deciding that,” she’d said. But that tone in Jamila’s voice had decided for her. Plus, she couldn’t let Max go to her place without her.

  There was a flurry of handshakes when they got to the front door. When Olivia shook hands with Jamila, both of them could barely keep a straight face. Finally, they all walked together into the building and to the kitchen, where a group of volunteers—some regulars, some Max’s staff—were waiting for them.

  “Thank you all for having me and my staff here today!” Max said in his booming senator voice. “We’re all so impressed with the important and necessary work you do here, and we’ve been really looking forward to helping out.”

  Jamila handed Max an apron.

  “We’re thrilled you’re here,” she said. “And we’re ready to put you to work!”

  The whole room laughed, and Max rolled up his sleeves. Olivia saw two of the college-age women in the room look at each other and whisper. She didn’t blame them—if Jamila had been standing next to her, Olivia would have turned to her to whisper, “Holy shit, my boyfriend is hot, isn’t he?” Okay, she wouldn’t have actually done it, but she would have really wanted to.

  They divided into groups to work on the day’s menu: barbecue chicken, potato salad, and baked beans. Olivia slid her own apron on and looked around the room. She was more grateful than she would have thought possible that she’d come to the food pantry that first night. What a difference it had made to her life to be in a job where she could come here every week—she never would have been able to do something like this at her old firm. And now that she had room in her life, she’d found a community here. And—she smiled when Jamila winked at her—a friend.

  She’d wanted to bring Max here for a while, but as soon as she told Max she’d come along with him, she’d become increasingly anxious about this event. She’d worried it would feel weird to have Max in her space, with her people, and that it would feel like he was invading the one place—other than work or home—she’d made her own since she moved to L.A.

  But she’d been wrong. It felt natural to have him here. And it made her heart so full to introduce him to this place, and these people, that had come to mean so much to her over the past few months. She wasn’t just happy he was here, she was happy he was here with her.

  Jamila came by to check on them, and Olivia moved over so Jamila could tell Max more about the pantry and kitchen and the work they did. Soon she was making fun of him for not knowing how to use a vegetable peeler for the potatoes, and Max in turn made fun of her for a typo in the recipe. Damn, it was good to see her friend and her boyfriend getting along so well.

  “It’s so easy to see the difference between your real smile and your camera smile,” Jamila said in her ear.

  Olivia laughed.

  “I have resting bitch face, okay? I have to fake the camera smile; it does not come naturally to me. But the press dug up all of these old pictures of me, and people said I looked angry—I’m not angry! My face just looks like that!”

  Jamila laughed.

  “I think that’s why we got such a good deal on your car—the guy kept thinking you were mad.”

  Olivia laughed as Jamila moved on to another table. Soon, a few more volunteers came over to their group to meet Max.

  It was interesting to see him being Senator Powell, something she’d really only seen glimpses of since she’d known him. Sure, she’d seen him on TV lots of times, but that was different. It had always felt like he was two people: her boyfriend, Max, who brought her cake and made her laugh and gave her great orgasms, and Senator Powell, who argued with other people on TV about politics, pontificated a little too much, and occasionally cracked very dorky jokes. But now she was here with her boyfriend Max, but she was also with Senator Powell, who chatted warmly with everyone there. He smiled and shook hands and took selfies and asked intelligent questions and had a pleasant smile on his face, and did it over and over and over again.

  Would she have to learn how to do that if she and Max kept going like this? Is that what he had meant when he suggested they do an event together, that she see how events like this worked for politicians . . . and politicians’ wives? If she married Max, would this be what her life was like? Would she have to learn how to put a fake smile on her face all day whenever she was in public so she could look pleasant and harmless? Would she have to remember talking points and details about charities in different cities in California and the name of someone who had volunteered for a campaign two years before, like Max just had? Would she be some sort of Max appendage, where people wouldn’t see her as an individual but only as “the senator’s wife”? Would the world expect her to nod and smile next to him no matter what he said or did? Would she have to go everywhere in some sort of politician’s-wife suit?

  “How’s the potato salad coming?” Max came around the counter to her. “Can you put me to work?”

  Yes, right, she was supposed to be concentrating on potato salad, not a whole pile of what-ifs. Why was she even thinking about marriage? Ridiculous. She handed Max the washed herbs.

  “Here, dry off the parsley. And I thought you were working, what happened to the potato peeling?”

  He took the parsley out of the bowl and carefully rolled it in the towel.

  “Well, I had a few pictures to take and hands to shake, so Jamila took over.” He lowered his voice. “That always happens when I do this stuff, and for a while I felt guilty about it, like I wasn’t pulling my weight with volunteering, but then—”

  “But then you realized your presence here is pulling the bulk of the weight, so you should give yourself a break? I’m sure those photos you just took—which will be posted everywhere—will bring in tons of volunteers and money, and will do an incredible job to spread the news of the good work we do here.”

  He shrugged.

  “Well, I hope so. That’s the goal, anyway.”

  She smiled at him.

  “It’s a great goal.”

  After they were done at the food pantry, Max and his staffers dropped her back off at his house, before they took off for a parade on the other side of L.A. He would meet her back at his house before they headed out to the fundraiser. She had no idea how Max managed to go to three events in a day and stay sane.

  She sat down on Max’s couch with her laptop in her lap to work on their pitch to Clementine. It wasn’t for two weeks, but their PowerPoint and script were mostly already done—at this point both she and Ellie were just tinkering with it, but neither of them could help it; they both wanted to get it perfect.

  The next thing she knew, she woke up to the sound of the front door closing. She opened her eyes to see Max walk into the living room and smile at her.

  “Hey.” He moved her laptop off the couch and onto the coffee table. “Get some good work done on the pitch?”

  She nodded as he pulled her into his arms.

  “I did. And I got in a very good nap. How was the parade?”

  He kissed her on the shoulder.

  “Very exuberant. Did I tell you this morning that you look incredible in that dress? Because I kept thinking it, but we were with my staff the whole time, so I can’t remember if I said it out loud.”

  She pulled off his tie.

  “You did say it, as a matter of fact, right after I got dressed. But I’m happy for you to say it again.”

  He smiled as she unbuttoned his white shirt, which he’d somehow managed to keep crisp through all of that cooking and a parade outside in the July heat of Los Angeles.

  “Do you know the only thing you look better in than that dress?” He pushed her back on the couch. “Nothing at all.”

  She smiled as she ran her hands up and down his warm, firm chest, and then down to his waistband.

  “I
think that could be arranged.”

  She couldn’t stop touching him. She’d seen him last night and this morning, but that didn’t make a difference. It was like he was a magnet, drawing her to him, and she was powerless to resist.

  “How much time do we have until we have to be at this fundraiser?” she asked as he tossed her dress onto the floor.

  “Plenty of time.”

  She closed her eyes as his hands roamed over her body.

  “Oh thank God.”

  Forty minutes later, they got out of Max’s big shower, and she pulled her shower cap off.

  “Okay, but really—what’s tonight going to be like?” she asked.

  He rubbed a towel over his hair.

  “Did your old law firm used to have holiday parties?”

  She opened the drawer where she kept all of her toiletries.

  “Yeah—lots of standing around, holding a drink in one hand and a plate in the other, and trying somehow to shake hands with people. Occasionally someone would get too drunk and make a fool out of themselves, a few boring speeches, frequent low-level sexual harassment, the usual.”

  Max nodded.

  “It’ll be a lot like that, hopefully without that last thing. Though—incredibly—the egos will all be bigger.” He combed a dollop of gel through his hair with his fingers. “The good thing, though, is that I always get to arrive late and leave after exactly an hour. It’s amazing what you can get away with as a senator, I’m telling you.”

  He gave her that cocky grin, and she couldn’t help but grin back at him. Damn, she loved this man.

  As soon as they walked into the party, though, all of her fears and what-ifs from earlier in the day came back to her with the first words out of their host’s mouth.

  “Senator Powell! This must be Olivia! Shouldn’t your woman be in blue, not red?”

  No So nice to meet you, no Hi, Olivia, my name is Asshole, not even a Would you like something to drink? before he was calling her Max’s woman and assuming Max had decision-making power over her wardrobe.

  Max ignored the last sentence, and put his hand on her back.

  “Olivia, this is a very old friend of mine, Cary Thompson. Cary, this is my girlfriend, Olivia Monroe.”

  Olivia forced her face into a smile and reached out to shake Cary’s hand.

  “Hi, Cary, thanks for having me.” Was it petty that she refused to say Nice to meet you? Maybe, but did she care? No.

  She kept the fake smile on her face as she and Max and Cary walked outside to Cary’s enormous multilevel deck.

  “Jerry! Hey, great to see you, happy Fourth!” Max said to someone who came up to them. “I’d like to introduce you to my girlfriend, Olivia Monroe.”

  Then it hit her. Max was introducing her to everyone tonight as his girlfriend. He’d never done that before.

  She liked it.

  Jerry nodded to her and shook her hand.

  “Olivia, it’s lovely to meet you. You’re a lawyer, I hear? Tell me about the kind of work you do.”

  What a relief that not everyone here would just see her as a Max appendage.

  Cary brought her a glass of wine—at least he was good for something—and Max a beer, and they each stood there nursing their drinks for thirty minutes while they chatted with an endless number of people. Most of them were perfectly nice and friendly to her, though obviously very curious. Max stayed glued to her side the whole time, which she found both unnecessary and completely charming—she’d been to lots of cocktail parties, she knew how to play this game, but it was lovely of him to want to protect her.

  After a while, Max’s staffer Andy came up and nodded to him. Olivia hadn’t even realized Andy was at the party. Max turned to wink at her, then walked over to Cary’s side.

  “If you’ll all indulge me for a moment,” he said into a microphone that seemed to magically appear in his hand, “I’d like to thank you all for being here, and wish you all a happy Fourth of July!”

  The whole party cheered, Olivia among them. Max kept talking—just your standard politician patriotic speech, but somehow, it sounded great coming from him. Olivia felt a swell of pride for Max and what a good man and politician and public servant he was, and that she was here with him. To be here, by his side, with his eyes on her, and that special smile just for her—that felt incredible. Suddenly the publicity and the reporters and the photographers and the constant smiling and the people who looked at her strangely and talked down to her didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was Max, who was both a senator and a man she loved very much. And he mattered more than anything else.

  As soon as his speech was over, Andy was at her elbow.

  “Ms. Monroe, the senator would like you to meet him at the front door as soon as you’re able to do so.”

  She glanced at her watch. It had been exactly an hour since they’d arrived. Max hadn’t been kidding.

  “Will do. Thanks, Andy.”

  Granted, it took Max fifteen more minutes to actually get out of the event, but at least he’d made the effort.

  “I’m impressed by that exit,” she said as they got in his car. “It’s getting dark—I assumed we’d stay for the fireworks.”

  He turned to grin at her as he turned on the car.

  “I have another plan for the fireworks.”

  He drove them up into the hills, where they joined a bunch of other cars at a lookout point. Before they got out of the car, he pulled a hoodie over his button-down and put his old UCLA hat on. She took the sweatshirt he tossed her, and pulled it on over her dress. They sat on the trunk of his car, and he wrapped his arm around her.

  “We made it just in time,” he said.

  There were crackles in the sky, and they both looked up to see the first explosion of white stars over their heads. She laughed and clapped.

  “I love fireworks so much,” she said.

  He kissed her cheek.

  “So do I.”

  They watched the bursts and shooting stars light up the sky, her head on his shoulder, their fingers intertwined. After a while she looked up at him and saw the red and white lights of the fireworks dance across his face.

  “I’m really happy,” she said.

  He looked at her for a long moment.

  “I am, too. It was really good to have you with me tonight, you know.” He brushed an invisible hair off her face. “We make a good team.”

  She looked into his eyes and smiled.

  “We sure do,” she said. “And speaking of that: I thought we were going to eat at that party, but all I had was two glasses of wine, and I’m starving. Can we get burgers on the way home?”

  He laughed.

  “Absolutely.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Two weeks later, Max was in his office in DC, reading briefing materials for his afternoon committee meeting, when Kara walked into his office with barely a knock and shut the door.

  “Excuse me, Senator? We have a situation.”

  He dropped his papers on his desk. Whenever Kara used those words and that tone, it wasn’t good.

  “What’s up?”

  Her mouth was in a tight line.

  “I just got a call from someone at Politico, wanting to know if we had a comment about the story they’re going to run about Olivia Monroe’s arrest as a teenager.”

  He made a fist and then forced himself to flex his hand. Shit. This was bad. He had to call Olivia.

  “What did you tell them?”

  Kara narrowed her eyes at him.

  “I told him I would get back to him in ten minutes. Before I can do that, I have two questions for you. The first is, did you know about this before I walked into your office just now?”

  He put his hand flat on his desk.

  “I can’t see how that’s any of your business.”

 
; She walked closer to his desk.

  “Oh, really? You can’t? Because you are my business, everything about you is. I can only be as good at my job as you allow me to be. Did you know about this?”

  Oh shit, this was what Kara looked like when she was mad. He’d forgotten that. She was usually so calm and collected.

  “Yeah, I knew. She told me early on.”

  Kara nodded, opened her mouth, closed it, and nodded again.

  “Okay. Good, that was smart of her, I’m glad to know she was watching out for you. Now I know which one of you to be mad at. Because, if you knew that, why the FUCK didn’t you tell me?” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “My apologies, sir. I didn’t mean to say that.”

  He just looked at her.

  “Yeah you did, don’t give me that ‘I’m sorry, sir’ bullshit. It happened when she was a teenager, and those records are sealed, so I thought it wasn’t relevant.”

  Plus, he hadn’t wanted to make this whole thing even worse for her.

  Kara sat down in the chair across from him.

  “Sealing records means nothing if you have people who know and who will talk, which is I’m sure how this reporter got hold of this story. If only we’d known this, we could have prepared for it; I could have talked to Olivia in advance, we could have maybe even controlled the release, depending on what she’d said, but now . . . Do you know what people will say about your criminal justice bill now? Not to mention what will happen to her.” She let out a breath and stood up. “I’m sorry, I know you didn’t want to hear that, but I had to prepare you. At least the news cycle the rest of the summer will be so bananas that I think this might be a few days of stories and that’s all. But Ms. Monroe should know this is coming.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded. Dread filled the pit of his stomach at the thought of telling Olivia this.

  “I know. I’ll call her.”

  Kara walked across the room and opened his door, but before she walked out, he raised a hand to stop her.

  “Kara.”

  She closed the door again and looked at him.