Party of Two (The Wedding Date #5)(63)
She reached for her phone and laughed out loud when she saw Jamila’s text, sent approximately one minute after they’d said good-bye last night:
THE MYSTERY MAN YOU ARE DATING IS MAX POWELL THE MAX POWELL WAS I JUST IMAGINING THINGS HOLY SHIT OLIVIA I NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING
Olivia laughed out loud again and took another big bite of cake. THE Max Powell indeed.
She shrugged. She had no choice here but to go all in, did she?
You free tonight? Come over for dinner. This is a story that has to be told over a bottle of wine—for me, not you—and also not in public
Jamila texted back a lot faster than Olivia thought she would this early in the morning.
Just tell me what time and I’m there
At 6:03 that night, Olivia finished making a cheese and charcuterie plate that even her sister would be proud of her for, and opened one of the bottles of wine she’d picked up along with the cheese. Thank God Jamila was one of those people who was always five to ten minutes late, which Olivia considered to be perfect timing. The worst people were the five-to-ten-minutes-early people—half the time she wasn’t even dressed ten minutes before someone was supposed to arrive at her house.
At exactly 6:10, the doorbell rang. Olivia swung open the door and handed Jamila a wineglass full of sparkling water.
“Come on in. I hope you’re hungry, I got us a ton of food.”
Jamila was smiling from ear to ear when she followed Olivia inside.
“Starving—I haven’t eaten since brunch, and that was at eleven. Brunch always throws me off for the rest of the day—it makes me want to eat again at like three, and then again at nine. But I refrained from doing so because I knew I was coming over here and why the hell am I still talking about brunch when all I care about is what the HELL IS GOING ON BETWEEN YOU AND SENATOR MAX POWELL?”
Olivia laughed as she poured herself a glass of wine.
“I was waiting for you to get there. Come into the living room so we can get comfortable; this story will take a while.”
They sat down on the couch, and Jamila looked at Olivia expectantly. Olivia took a sip of wine and started with that first night at the bar, giving her an edited version of the past few months.
“And that’s why I went up to the Bay Area a few weeks ago—yes, to see my sister, but also because Max was there instead of in L.A. that weekend, and we . . .”
Jamila put her hand to her heart.
“You didn’t want to go two weeks without seeing each other!” Olivia hadn’t planned to put it exactly that way, but it was the truth. She nodded. “Oh my God, that’s adorable!”
Olivia reached for more cheese as she absorbed that. She wasn’t used to being one half of an adorable couple. It didn’t feel like her—the Olivia who had worked her ass off for years and had kept relationships at bay, the Olivia who never took a plus-one to a wedding, the Olivia who rolled her eyes at a guy clearly trying to hit on her at a bar, the Olivia who men found intimidating, or too closed off, or too self-assured, the Olivia who had hardened herself against the world because of all that and refused to let herself hope. Was she still that Olivia?
She poured Jamila more sparkling water.
“Anyway, we decided we were tired of being a secret, so last night was our first semipublic night out.” She bit her lip. “It’ll be actually public soon—his chief of staff leaked it to a photographer that we’d be there, so pictures should pop up online of us any minute.”
Jamila opened her eyes wide.
“Wow, that’s a big deal. How are you feeling? About all of this, I mean. You looked kind of . . . shell-shocked last night.”
Yeah, that was a good description of how she’d felt.
“Last night was kind of overwhelming, to be honest. I did—I do—want to be public with him, I’m getting tired of sneaking around. But when we got to the Hollywood Bowl, and he wasn’t in any kind of disguise, and there were so many people there, and they all had their phones out . . .” She let out a deep breath. “I didn’t know what I’d gotten myself into. I’d relaxed a lot during the concert; Dolly Parton can make anyone feel better, I think, but then I saw you, and it all hit me again. Sorry if I looked like I was mad at you or something, that wasn’t it.”
Jamila shook her head.
“No, I get it. I’m sure this is all a lot.”
It sure was. It had all happened so fast, and Max had become such a fixture in her life so quickly that she hadn’t stopped to think about just how wild this whole thing was.
“It feels totally normal most of the time, when we’re together. But sometimes I’ll be flipping channels and hear my boyfriend’s voice, and it feels really fucking weird.” They both laughed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I really wanted to, but . . .”
Jamila brushed that aside.
“Of course you couldn’t tell me. And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone until you give me specific clearance to do so.”
Olivia let out a deep breath.
“Thanks. I really appreciate you saying that. I have no idea what’s going to happen here—which is not a phrase I enjoy saying, trust me—but I just hope whatever happens, I can handle it.”
Jamila clinked her glass of sparkling water against Olivia’s glass of wine.