Party of Two

by Jasmine Guillory

  Max let himself smile.

  “Uh-huh,” he said again.

  “So,” she said. “Okay. We should do this.”

  Max stood up and danced around his office. Thank God Olivia couldn’t see him; she might break up with him then and there.

  “Fantastic,” he said. “Here’s a thought: I have season tickets to the Hollywood Bowl, and Dolly Parton is playing on Saturday night. That seems like a perfect time to do something low-key, but still public. What do you think?”

  Olivia was quiet for a second.

  “This Saturday? That soon? I figured it would take some time to . . . I don’t know, for me to talk to your staff, or do a background check and get everything ready.”

  Max laughed.

  “You don’t need a background check, and you don’t need to talk to my staff, I can handle that. I don’t think either of us wants this to be a big, complicated rollout, do you?”

  He respected his staff a lot, but the less they had to do with this, the better, as far as he was concerned.

  “Definitely not,” she said. There was silence on the line for a few moments. “Okay. Saturday night, Dolly Parton. That sounds good.”

  He couldn’t wait.

  “Fantastic. And see you tomorrow night. Want to meet me at my place? I shouldn’t be home too late. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”

  He hung up the phone and immediately picked up his office line to buzz Kara.

  “Can you come into my office for a minute?”

  She was there within seconds.

  “What’s up, sir?” she asked.

  He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face.

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a while, but I had to wait until it was okay with her. I’ve been dating someone. She’s a lawyer in L.A.; you’d love her. We’ve been trying to keep it quiet, but we’re ready to be less quiet about it.”

  Kara grinned back at him.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me this, sir. Congratulations. You seem very happy.”

  He sat back and stared at her.

  “You knew? How did you know?”

  She laughed.

  “I already suspected, but if you thought you didn’t make everything clear when you told me about your ‘friend’ who had the great idea for the town halls . . . well, we need to work on your poker face. It also helped explain why you’ve been in such a great mood lately. So after we had that conversation, I came up with a plan. I drafted a press release, you can look at it shortly, but first, we can—”

  He held his hand up to stop her.

  “I appreciate that so much, but I think we both want this to be pretty low-key. No plans, no briefing, no press releases—we’re just going to go to the Hollywood Bowl together this weekend without me in any baseball cap or glasses or anything like that. We’ll just take it from there.”

  Kara sat down across from him.

  “That’s lovely, sir, it really is, but this weekend? Can you at least hold off another week? Maybe I could just have a call with her, to talk about . . .”

  He shook his head.

  “Thank you, Kara, I really am grateful you think about all of these things for me, but I don’t want to make a whole thing about this. I don’t think people will care all that much about my personal life. Plus, she’s nervous about this, understandably, so I don’t want to make this more stressful for her.”

  He wanted to ease into this—do something fun with Olivia this weekend, and then maybe by the end of the summer she’d be able to come with him to all sorts of events and it wouldn’t be a big deal.

  “I understand that, sir, but I’m pretty sure people will definitely care about this. You were on those most-eligible-bachelor lists in both DC and L.A., remember?”

  He brushed that off.

  “Those were both last August in very slow news weeks, but the news has been more of an onslaught these days; I don’t think we have to worry about all of that.”

  Kara folded her hands together.

  “Can I convince you to let me make sure there’s a friendly photographer around? There will be a ton of people there—someone is likely to take a picture of you, and it’ll get out, I promise. Think about this from her point of view—you may not care if the pictures are unflattering, but she likely will.”

  This was yet another reason why he was glad he had Kara.

  “Good idea, please do that.”

  Kara stopped, right before she opened his office door.

  “And, may I ask—what’s her name?”

  He smiled.

  “Olivia Monroe.”

  Kara smiled back at him.

  “Congratulations again, sir. And good luck this weekend.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Olivia took longer to get ready for her date with Max that Saturday night than she had for any other date in her life. She’d been a little taken aback when Max told her his chief of staff had arranged for a friendly photographer to take photos of them on their way into the Hollywood Bowl. That seemed so . . . intentional. But she agreed that she’d rather have good photos out there of her than bad ones, so “friendly” photographer it was. Friendly photographer or not, though, she had to look perfect. She’d searched Instagram for pictures of people at the Hollywood Bowl to see what they wore to concerts there; she’d washed, moisturized, and twisted her hair the night before so it would be perfect and bouncy today; and she’d spent an entire hour doing her makeup, when she usually spent no more than five minutes.

  She was a little surprised she hadn’t had to talk to Max’s staff before this, but she was relieved, too. That probably would have stressed her out even more. She still didn’t quite know why she was doing this, but that was the story of her entire relationship with Max. Why had she talked to him at the bar? Why had she gone out with him in the first place? Why had she started dating him? Why had she told him she loved him, no matter how true it was? There was just something about Max—the way he smiled at her, the way he looked at her, the way he loved her—that made her feel as if he saw her, all of her, and loved every single thing about her. And against all odds, she felt the same about him.

  Finally, she was ready, thirty minutes before Max was due to pick her up. She took a picture of herself and her outfit in her full-length mirror (long, flowy blue sundress, jean jacket, gold wedge sandals) and a close-up selfie to get her jewelry and makeup (dangly gold earrings, tortoiseshell sunglasses, pink lip gloss, and just a hint of highlighter) and texted both pictures to Alexa and Ellie.

  Okay, we’re really doing this. How do I look? I’m going for woke up like this

  Ellie immediately responded.

  You look fantastic!

  That was all well and good, but this was a time she actually wanted some constructive criticism on her outfit. She would have trusted Ellie better if she’d told her to change her lipstick or to wear the yellow dress or the gold hoops instead. It was like how she always trusted a proofreader better as soon as they found a typo.

  I’m with Maddie and she says you look excellent but that you need a bracelet—don’t you have a gold one? Oh, and roll up the sleeves

  Thank God for little sisters and their best friends for giving her the notes she’d been looking for. She grabbed her gold bangles out of her top drawer and slid them on her left wrist, and rolled up the sleeves of the jean jacket. She snapped a new picture and sent it to Alexa.

  How’s this?

  The text came back in seconds.

  PERFECT

  “You ready to go?” Max appeared in the doorway of her bedroom. “Oh wow, you look amazing.”

  She tucked her phone into her pocket and picked up her bag. Shit, she hadn’t consulted with her fashion advisers about the bag, but she thought
it worked—a big caramel leather tote she’d bought a few weeks ago. Well, if it didn’t work, it was too late now.

  “Thanks.” She smiled at him. He looked great, too, in jeans, sneakers, and a blue-striped button-down. But tonight, he had no fake glasses, no wig, and no baseball cap. And instead of the tousled hair he usually had when he was off duty, his Ken doll hair was in all of its shellacked glory. That told her more than anything that tonight was going to be different.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” he asked.

  She definitely was not.

  “Thank you for giving me room to back out, but let’s do this.”

  He smiled and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  He touched her knee on the car drive over.

  “Nervous?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “It’s just a concert, right? I’m fine.”

  That wasn’t exactly true, but maybe if she said it enough, she’d feel fine.

  “You talked to your staff about me, right? Did you tell them—”

  Max slid his hand in hers.

  “Don’t worry. They’re very happy for us, and my chief of staff completely embarrassed me by saying she already knew I was dating someone because I seemed so happy.”

  She shot her head in his direction.

  “Really?”

  He laughed.

  “Really. Also, Kara says there might be a flurry of stories about us for a day or so and then people will get bored and move onto something else in the news cycle.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m really glad we’re doing this.”

  She nodded again, and tried to ignore that What have you gotten yourself into? rattling around in her head.

  They pulled into the parking lot. Max turned off the car, and they looked at each other.

  Olivia smiled at him.

  “I’m glad we’re doing this, too,” she said. Despite all her fears, she was.

  Max took her hand as they got out of the car. Olivia tried to look straight ahead as they walked into the Hollywood Bowl, when all she wanted to do was to look around for the photographer in the crowd. But no, she was trying to look as natural as possible, so she just kept a smile on her face and her hand in Max’s and kept walking. The whole crowd was amped up tonight—it was mostly lots of women of all ages who seemed just as excited to see Dolly Parton as Olivia would have been if she weren’t vibrating with anxiety about everything else going on tonight.

  They walked through the first level, up the stairs, and to the box seats, where Max waved her in front of him into their seats. As soon as she sat down, she let herself relax. No one would probably take a picture of them up there, right?

  “So is this what it’s going to be like, then, going out in public with you?” Max asked under his breath. “Complete silence except for periodic sighs of relief?”

  She realized she hadn’t said a word to him since they got out of the car, which was at least ten minutes ago.

  “Give it some time, okay? I’m just trying to figure out how to do this.”

  He touched her elbow with his.

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I was just teasing you.” He stood up. “I think we both need a drink. Wine?”

  She looked around for the first time—really looked, instead of surveying the crowd.

  “Oh wow, we’re in the fancy seats, aren’t we?” She let herself grin. She found it sort of hilarious that her first time at the Hollywood Bowl was with a damn millionaire senator. “God yes, a glass of wine is exactly what I need. Rosé if they have it, whatever white they have if not. Normally I’d be a lot more picky than that, but tonight isn’t a night to be picky about the wine selection.”

  While Max was gone, Olivia forced herself to relax. She just had to pretend that this was simply a fun outdoor concert on a beautiful night with her boyfriend, which, technically, it was. None of the rest of that stuff mattered.

  “Glass of rosé for the lady, beer for me, and I couldn’t resist a cone of french fries. One for each of us.”

  See, this is why she’d fallen in love with him. He not only got her french fries without her asking for them but had gotten one for each of them.

  Damn it. Even french fries made her all gooey.

  She took the fries in one hand and the rosé in the other as he sat down.

  “Thanks. I needed this.” She smelled the hot, salty, greasy goodness of the fries and smiled.

  He sat down next to her and took a sip of his beer. She took a sip of her wine. They each slowly ate their fries. She looked around the amphitheater, careful not to look right at Max.

  He leaned in close to her.

  “I’m so happy to be here with you right now, I hope you know that.” He looked straight at her. “I really hope you know that.”

  Warmth spread through her body. She couldn’t quite trust herself to talk, so she just nodded.

  “Good,” he said.

  The lights onstage went up, and it seemed like every single one of the thousands of people there cheered wildly. Including both her and Max. And thank God for that—she was delighted Max was the kind of guy who would yell at a Dolly Parton concert before Dolly even came out onstage.

  As soon as the opening act started, Olivia felt her whole body relax. She didn’t know if it was the music itself, or the way the whole crowd swayed back and forth as they listened, or the energy in the crowd, or Max’s hand in hers, but she felt calm and happy, and like she could—and would—conquer the world. And when Dolly finally came out onstage, there was an explosion of noise like Olivia wasn’t sure she’d ever experienced. Pure, loud, joyful screams and yells and cheers rang out and kept on ringing until Dolly started singing, and then they all shut up so they could hear her.

  In the middle of “9 to 5,” Max took her hand. She turned to him and smiled so hard her face hurt.

  “I love you,” he said in a low voice, but she could hear him as clear as if he’d shouted it from the stage.

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  * * *

  * * *

  Max was relieved as they walked back to the car. Olivia walked with the bounce back in her step, and didn’t seem as skittish or closed off as she had on their way in. Maybe they’d be able to have fun like this all summer—especially in August when Congress was in recess and he’d be back in California for five fantastic weeks.

  “Olivia! Hey, Olivia!”

  Max shook himself out of his daydreams when Olivia stopped. They both turned toward the direction of the shouts.

  “Jamila! Hi!” Olivia greeted the woman walking toward them, but her whole body was tense again.

  “Hey, I thought that was you!” the other woman said. “You look great, I love this dress.”

  “Were you just at the concert?” Olivia asked. She shook her head in answer to her own question. “Of course you were just at the concert—did you have fun? Wasn’t it great?”

  He’d never seen Olivia babble like this before. Was this how she got when she was nervous? She’d said she was fine, but he knew she wasn’t—at first she’d been stiff and silent, and now she couldn’t stop talking.

  “Yeah, it was so fun, right? We got tickets last minute, otherwise I would have texted you to see if you wanted to come with us.” Jamila looked back and forth from Olivia to him and back again, and smirked slightly at Olivia. “Glad you made it anyway.”

  Olivia glanced at him, and he could tell she was gearing herself up to introduce him. After a few too many seconds of silence, she turned back to Jamila.

  “Oh, I’m sorry—Jamila, this is Max, Max, Jamila.”

  First names only; that was a nice compromise.

  He reached out to shake Jamila’s hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Jamila,” he said.

  She shook his h
and.

  “Nice to meet you, too . . .” She looked up at him, and recognition dawned over her face. He winked at her as her mouth gaped open.

  “Um. Max. Nice to meet you, Max,” she said.

  Jamila turned back to Olivia, her eyes still wide. He couldn’t see the look on Olivia’s face, but after a few seconds, Jamila smiled at her.

  “We should probably get out of here; it’ll take forever to get home,” Jamila said. “And I have to find my friend, she was supposed to meet me out here, but . . .” She looked down at the phone gripped in her hand. “Oh, she says she’s already at the car, what the hell? Okay, I should run. See you on Wednesday, Olivia?”

  Olivia nodded.

  “I’ll be there,” Olivia said. “Maybe we can get dinner after?”

  Jamila glanced back and forth from her to Max. Max tried to pretend he didn’t know exactly what was going on.

  “Mmmm, definitely,” Jamila said.

  Jamila dashed off into the crowd, and Olivia and Max walked off toward the car.

  They didn’t say anything to each other until they were in the car and a block away from the stadium.

  “So,” Max started.

  Olivia burst out laughing, and then he did, and they laughed so hard he almost pulled over.

  “No offense,” she said through gasps, “but that was one of the weirdest dates I’ve ever been on. The middle part was good, the part with Dolly Parton and holding hands and all of that. But the beginning and the end were very stressful! I thought dating a famous person was supposed to be glamorous!”

  He poked her in the arm.

  “Oh, you think you were stressed? You didn’t have to stand there and take it while your friend Jamila looked me over like I was a piece of meat and she was measuring me up to see if I was good enough for you. Or try not to react when she was looking straight at me and made that face when she suddenly realized who I was!”