Party of Two (The Wedding Date #5)(31)

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.”