Party of Two (The Wedding Date #5)(69)

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.