Olivia sighed. She was glad she seemed like that, at least.

“Thanks, but sadly, I’ve had to stand it, many times. Especially early in my career, when I felt blindsided by it, and had no idea what to do other than just sit there. But my biggest piece of advice is very lawyerly—do everything in writing. And shout yourself to the heavens. Email him your ideas, your successes, your numbers, and be as bold as hell in claiming them for yourself. And this is the key: cc board members on those emails. Especially the one you’re going to send about this teen program, because I love it. Hell, feel free to cc me on that email too! Basically, you need to make it impossible for him to keep pretending you have nothing to do with this, and even more impossible for the board to be clueless.”

Jamila nodded slowly.

“That sounds . . . smart, but really scary.”

The waitress put their nachos in front of them, and Olivia picked up a cheese-laden chip.

“Oh, it’s definitely scary, especially at first. It gets a lot better with practice, though. Feel free to send me any draft emails, if you want me to look them over before you send them. I’ve gotten very good at this in the past six or seven years.” She took a bite of the chip, and reached for another one. “It’ll be good payback for your help in buying that car—maybe even better than these nachos.”

Jamila spooned salsa over a chip.

“I’ll definitely take you up on that. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

Olivia smiled at her.

“My pleasure. We shouldn’t all have to reinvent the wheel every time, you know?”

Olivia hated that this all-too-familiar thing was happening to Jamila, but it made her feel good that Jamila had asked for her advice. Especially since the whole car-buying process, and her anxiety over it, had made her feel vulnerable. She was glad both she and Jamila had shared with each other.

Maybe she’d made a real new friend here in L.A.

“Okay, and can I ask you another question?” Jamila put down her chip. “Where do you get all of those great button-down tops? I can never find ones that fit my chest; but yours all fit perfectly!”

Olivia laughed.

“I couldn’t, either, for years. Then finally I just gave up and bought one two sizes too big—which was hard enough to find—and got it tailored. It was so perfect I got like ten more.”

Just as Jamila got up to go to the bathroom, Olivia felt her phone buzz in her pocket.

Don’t keep me in suspense!

 

She grinned, and sent Max the picture of her and the car that Jamila had taken right before they left the dealership.

I bought this!

 

Just as he sent back a flurry of exclamation points and applause emojis, Jamila sat back down. Olivia slid her phone into her pocket.

Jamila grinned at her.

“Sooo, things are going well with that guy?”

Shit, Olivia had forgotten that she’d told Jamila anything about Max, if only vaguely.

“It’s . . . complicated. But . . . yes, I guess so.”

Jamila laughed.

“That smile on your face as you looked at your phone was more than ‘I guess so.’ ”

Olivia covered her face with her hands. Apparently she had her answer about how she looked at Max.

“Okay, you got me. Yes, it’s going well, it’s just that . . .” She put her hands back down on the table and looked at Jamila. “When we first started—and actually, when I first told you about him—I thought it was going to be a casual thing and probably wouldn’t last very long. But . . .” She took a deep breath. “It’s possible I was wrong about that. And I wasn’t really prepared for something like this.” She laughed. “I don’t know why I say that in the past tense; I’m not really prepared for something like this.”

Jamila looked at her like she was a brand-new species.

“What do you have to prepare for? Can’t you just keep dating?”

It sounded so easy when Jamila said it like that.

“That’s sort of what we’ve been doing, but . . .” It was too early—both in her friendship with Jamila and her relationship with Max—to tell Jamila who Max was, so she couldn’t tell her the whole story, even though she desperately wanted to. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about me, but I’m not that much of a ‘go with the flow’ kind of person.”

Jamila laughed at her again.

“Oh, really, the woman who took two months to buy a car isn’t a ‘go with the flow’ kind of person? I never would have guessed.”

Olivia couldn’t help but laugh.

“I’m just saying,” Jamila said as she picked up a chip, “any guy who makes you smile like that is worth getting out of your comfort zone a little.”

Her other friends, or her sister, would tell her she wasn’t acting like herself, that they hadn’t seen her so into a guy in a long time, and blah blah blah. But Jamila didn’t know her well enough for that, so she just cheered her on. It was kind of nice to have a new friend.

“You might be right,” she finally said.

She texted Max back as soon as she got into her car.

Can’t wait to show you the car in person this weekend! That hike you mentioned sounds good, but please remember that I’ve spent the last ten years living in New York, where there are no hills, and be gentle on me. See you Saturday.

 

She looked down at her phone and smiled.

Max couldn’t stop thinking about Olivia as he got ready for their hike on Saturday. Obviously, Olivia was gorgeous and brilliant, but there was more to it than that. Maybe it was just that she challenged him in a way no one had in a while. She forced him to earn her respect, and whenever she smiled or laughed or nodded at something he said, he felt like he’d won something. But she was also so warm and caring, under that perpetually suspicious look on her face—the way she’d noticed something was wrong last weekend was proof of that. He felt such a connection with her already. If he was honest with himself, he’d felt that since the very first night at the bar.

She was the only person he’d felt this easy with, this comfortable with, this happy with, in as long as he could remember. He could open up to her in a way he couldn’t, and didn’t, to almost anyone other than Wes. Sure, he could be impulsive in his actions, but he rarely let himself be anything other than the public version of Max Powell with other people. Why didn’t he mind doing that around Olivia? Maybe because she’d been the only person in years who had looked past his whole senator persona and asked if he was okay. She’d recognized he was a person in there, that he had feelings underneath his senator facade.

He had to admit it to himself: he was falling for her, and the more time he spent with her and the more he thought about her, the harder and faster he fell. And no, that wasn’t taking it slow, but you know what—fuck taking it slow. Slow was a waste of time; he was thirty-nine years old, he knew his own mind, he knew what he wanted. He’d known Olivia for two whole months now. That was plenty of time for him to know how he felt about her.

Was that enough time for her, though? He hoped to find out.

Olivia got to his house at two on Saturday afternoon, and he threw open his door and pulled her inside.