“It’s not important how long you took to get to the party, what’s important is that you got here at all. And if I can give you some advice . . .”

“ ‘If,’ he says, like there’s any way I could stop him from doing it,” Max said to his water glass.

Wes kept talking like he’d heard nothing.

“Take your time with this. She doesn’t like snap decisions; be thoughtful on this one, as much as it kills you.”

Max grinned.

“Speaking of, I think I forgot to tell you I almost proposed to her on the spur of the moment when we went to Hawaii. Scratch that—I would have proposed to her, but she stopped me.”

Wes turned to face Max, his mouth wide open.

“Yeah,” Max said. “So. You’re probably right about taking my time with this.”

A few minutes later, the buzzer rang.

“And there’s our food,” Wes said. “I’m warning you, I got a salad and I’m going to make you eat at least ten bites of it before you have any pizza.”

Max ignored that. He’d just remembered something Olivia said a long time ago. He might have an idea of how to do this.

But he still had to figure out what to say to make her realize how serious he was about her, about them. And the biggest question was, would she be willing to give this another try, despite everything?

God, he hoped so.

Chapter Twenty-One

In the two and a half weeks since she’d broken up with Max, Olivia had tried to be angry. It was always easier to get over something—or someone—when you were angry at them. Pure, righteous anger, that’s what she needed. She thought of that moment when he’d looked at her across the auditorium with that patented charming smile, to try to get her to talk publicly about her arrest, and she hoped she’d feel that wave of fury she did at the time. But instead, all she could feel was sorrow.

How had she let herself fall in love with Max in the first place? He’d been determined to date her from the very beginning, but she’d known they wouldn’t work—she should have listened to herself. And now she just missed him so damn much.

Just to get it over with, she’d sent Alexa and Jamila identical text messages on that Monday afterward: “Max and I broke up, I don’t want to talk about it.” Jamila had obeyed her command and hadn’t asked her a single question about it, and so had Alexa . . . for the first few days. After that, she’d somehow gotten Olivia to spill the whole story to her. She was fiercely on Olivia’s side, but also kept beating the whole “don’t give up on love” drum, which Olivia ignored.

She decided to go back to the New York version of Olivia, without all these damn ups and downs. Yes, fine, the ups had been incredible, but the downs weren’t worth it. Some combination of dating Max and moving back to California had made her emotions so heightened, and she was sick of it. She tried to put Max out of her mind, to go to the gym and work and home and the gym again and get up and do it all over again. And, for the love of God, to stop feeling her damn feelings.

She still thought about Max constantly, but keeping busy helped. Those first few nights she cried herself to sleep, but after a while she didn’t even have the energy to do that.

And then one night at the gym, as she flipped channels to find something to watch while she ran on the treadmill, she accidentally turned it to MSNBC. And there was Max. A surge of happiness went through her as she heard his voice. It felt like an automatic, instinctual reaction; apparently her body hadn’t caught up to her brain. She’d been so used to being happy when she saw him, it was hard to remember she was supposed to be sad now. She stared hungrily at the tiny screen. She stopped flipping, turned off the treadmill, and just stood there watching him. She’d missed him so much. When his segment ended and they cut to commercial, she realized tears were streaming down her face.

After that night, she watched the news every single night to see if she could get a glimpse of him. God bless cable TV bookers who were so susceptible to perfect hair and charming grins—he was on at least two weeknights out of five. He always had something smart to say, and seemed like he was always in a great mood . . . though was it just her imagination he’d lost weight? It probably was. Maybe he’d already found someone else. Someone who lived in DC and could be around all week with him and didn’t have a job that got in the way and who liked impulsive romantic gestures and would beam and wave at the press like she’d been doing it her whole life.

The depression that hit when she thought of whom Max would date next didn’t stop her from watching him whatever chance she got. Ellie had told her to feel her feelings, well, now she would feel them all! She’d probably never see him again in real life, so if she needed to watch him on TV for a few weeks or months to help herself get over him, that’s just what she was going to do.

One night, he was on along with another senator to talk about climate change, and the topic got heated very quickly, as climate change conversations often did. Oh hell, who was she kidding, as every kind of political conversation did these days. Finally, the other guy shouted at Max, “Senator, if you care so much about the environment, what are YOU doing about it? If you think all of this helps so much, you should pledge right now that you and your entire staff will walk to work, and you’ll all go vegan. If you’re asking all of us to make changes, shouldn’t you make all of these changes yourself?”

Max’s eyes narrowed and his cheeks got pink, even under all the TV makeup. She was still charmed that he blushed when he got excited or heated about something, damn her. But she cringed as soon as he opened his mouth—she knew Max was mad enough to spit out an immediate agreement on behalf of himself and his entire staff; that’s just how he was. She’d seen him do things like this on TV before.

“As a matter of fact, I . . .”

But then Max did something that surprised her. He stopped himself and took a breath. Then he started over again.

“I think you’re trying to distract from the point, Senator. My point has always been that it’s not individual personal choices that matter, it’s about the need to regulate corporations and get them to commit to reducing their carbon impact. Corporations are responsible for the vast majority of global emissions—not individuals. This isn’t to say I encourage irresponsible use of our natural resources; as a matter of fact, I do walk to work every day while I’m here in Washington, DC. But we have to attack this problem from the source; unfortunately there’s no amount of plastic a family can give up, or straws we can stop using, that will make a significant difference to climate change—this is a structural problem, and we need to solve it with structural solutions.”

Olivia paused the TV and sat back on the couch. Not only was that a fantastic answer, but Max had behaved in a very un-Max-like way. She’d seen it in his eyes; he’d almost made the rash, quick decision that would impact not only him but every member of his staff. But he’d pulled himself back from the ledge, and thought about it, and had done something a whole lot smarter.

Had he paid attention to what she’d said that night? And had he really listened and made a change? Or was she being irrational and taking this personally when it had nothing to do with her?