Party of Two (The Wedding Date #5)(91)

The stern look on Jamila’s face softened. She took plates down from the cabinet and scooped food onto both of them. Olivia just stood back and let her do it.

“Okay. And me, too. No one was talking about you, and no one knew,” she said, “but I understand how you felt. Do you want to talk about what happened? And how you’re doing? Or do you want to watch Housewives?”

Ooh. Thai food and Housewives seemed like a much better idea for a Wednesday night than MSNBC and the crackers from the back of her cabinet.

“That second thing, please. I’ll get the drinks.”

A few minutes later, she followed Jamila into the living room, holding their glasses in each hand. It wasn’t until she saw Jamila stop cold as soon as she walked into the room that Olivia remembered what was paused on the TV.

Jamila looked from Max’s face, frozen on the screen, to Olivia, and back.

“Okay, change of plans. When you said you weren’t doing great, I thought maybe you meant you were ‘doing too much online shopping’ not great. I didn’t realize you were ‘watching your ex-boyfriend on TV just so you could get a glimpse of him’ not great! I assumed you were far too together for that!”

Olivia sat down on the couch.

“Yeah. I’m good at seeming together. But I . . . we . . .” She sighed. “I broke up with him, but I still love him so much, and I don’t know how to handle it. So yes, I’ve been watching him on TV to get a glimpse of him. But he just now did something that really confused me, and I still don’t know what to think about it.”

Jamila sat down next to her and handed her a plate.

“Just now as in he called you, or as in TV Max did something?”

Olivia picked up a spring roll and dipped it in peanut sauce.

“TV Max, but—so one of the reasons we broke up was because he would always jump into things without thinking about what would happen, or about how other people would react. You saw that, a little bit, at the community center.”

Jamila nodded.

“Right,” Olivia said. “Well . . . okay, I’m going to show this to you.”

Olivia rewound the clip and pressed play. Afterward, she pressed pause again.

“Well, he looks like hell, if that’s what your point was,” Jamila said. “Thin and miserable, and even his always perfect hair is all wrong. He’s missing you. Bad.”

“Really, you think so?” Olivia asked. She looked at the TV again. His hair really was all wrong; way too long, far too much gel. She shook her head. “No, that wasn’t my point, and while that’s nice of you to say, that’s not what I was asking for.”

Jamila shrugged.

“Whether you were asking for it or not, it’s true. That’s a depressed man trying to pretend he’s fine if I’ve ever seen one, and I’ve seen lots of them.”

Olivia bit her lip. Was Jamila just saying that? She sounded serious, but she could just be trying to make Olivia feel better. And was it true?

“Okay, we can talk about that later. And maybe I’m making too much of this. But I was absolutely certain he’d yell back at that jerk that yes, he would walk to work, and he would become a vegan, and so would his whole staff. Because that’s how Max is—he talks first, and thinks afterward, or not at all. And it’s worked out for him for the most part, so he’s never thought he needed to change things. But this time, he didn’t do that.”

Jamila waved a chicken satay skewer at her.

“You got to him. He’s trying to win you back, by coded messages on MSNBC.”

Olivia laughed out loud.

“Okay, when you put it like that, I sound ridiculous.”

Jamila picked up her fork and pulled the chicken off the skewer.

“I’m not kidding! He was also wearing that same tie he wore when he came to the food pantry.”

Olivia put her fork down.

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, he definitely was,” Jamila said. “I’m sorry if it sounds creepy that I remember that, but I always remember clothes. It’s a message to you, I tell you. That man loves the hell out of you, Olivia.”

It felt great to hear that, and it hurt so much, all at the same time.

“Maybe he did. But he’ll be better off with someone who can be a political wife in the way I can’t be. Who is friendly to reporters and can wave and smile all the time and looks perfect at a moment’s notice and doesn’t have anything scandalous in her background, or any radical opinions people can get mad about.”

Jamila tossed a pillow at her.

“Or maybe he’d be better off with you than with that imaginary boring-ass person. And maybe you’d be better off with him than with whatever dull, perfect guy you could conjure, one exactly like you in all ways and therefore will bore you to tears. I’m not saying the two of you didn’t have real problems—what relationship doesn’t? And I’m definitely not saying he didn’t deserve everything you threw at him—he sure as hell did. But I am saying he is absolutely so in love with you that he’d try to show you and everyone who knows you he’s trying to become a better man, just for you.”

Olivia thought about that for a second, then flicked the TV off.

“That’s what my sister says, too.”

Alexa had been trying to get her to give Max another chance, with some bullshit about how she couldn’t give up on love at the first sign of adversity, and that she was clearly miserable without him, and that sometimes relationships took hard work, and no, their fight wasn’t a sign that she never should have dated him in the first place. First of all, yes it was a sign, and secondly, how did her sister know her so well?