way out to her car on Wednesday night. In the past few weeks, it had become a routine that Jamila would drive her home after her volunteer shift. It had been another productive evening: this time they’d made forty servings of lasagna, with roasted carrots as a side. Olivia couldn’t believe how proud she felt at the end of the night when she saw the sealed packages, all lined up in the fridge and ready to be delivered the next day. It felt amazing, like this was a real accomplishment—no matter what else she’d done today, she’d done one tangible thing to help people.
Not only that, but she felt a real sense of community here. Some of the other regular volunteers had been working at the food pantry since it had started, and after she showed up the second time, they’d taken her under their wing. They’d laughed at her—but in a kind way—when she asked questions, they’d taught her to chop and dice, and they always oohed and aahed over her outfit when she walked in on Wednesday nights. She felt like she was part of something; that there were people who embraced her, and whom she embraced right back. Many of them were from the neighborhood and so they knew some of the recipients of the meals well, which almost made it feel like they were cooking for family. Olivia wondered what they would think of Max.
Max hadn’t pressed her to make any grand commitment to him before he’d left her place late Saturday night, and they’d texted more or less the same amount this week as they had in the previous weeks. But something had changed between them after the confidences they’d exchanged that night.
Why had she told him about her arrest? Their whole conversation had been about him, not her; it wasn’t like she would have been lying to him if she hadn’t told him anything. She’d woken up that night at four a.m. and spent an hour mad at herself for that. But when she woke up the next morning, she had a text from Max waiting there on her phone, and somehow she wasn’t angry anymore.
No, now the problem was that she was mostly scared. She’d meant for this to be a casual, easy, low-key thing to keep her busy while her firm was slow, but the amount of space Max took up in her head was neither casual nor low-key. And she had no idea what to do about it.
She knew one thing: if they slept together, it would absolutely not be casual. Which sucked—she just wanted to have some really fucking great sex with that really fucking hot guy who kept touching her like that and kissing her like that and, oh God, looking at her like that. But that was the problem—there would be nothing casual about the sex with anyone who looked at her like that.
Oh no. How did she look at him?
She needed to stop thinking about him. She was acting like some sort of lovesick puppy.
“Sooo, tonight was interesting,” she said to Jamila when they got in the car. “I’m glad we had all of the manpower, but . . .”
Jamila looked at her sideways.
“But how did those frat guys hear about us? I have no idea! One of them called me yesterday and asked if they could bring a group of ten, which I didn’t think was actually going to happen but I said sure, and then they brought a group of twenty. Must have been some sort of community service requirement from school.”
Olivia tossed her bag on the floor.
“Yeah, when I walked in, I thought maybe I was in the wrong place! But hey, I’ll take it.” That reminded her. “Do we ever get high school groups out to help? I used to do a lot of volunteering with teens—now that my work schedule isn’t as packed, I need to find a way to do that again.”
She’d thrown herself into that kind of work in her early years in New York, but then her job had taken over most of her life. Maybe now she’d have more time to do it again.
“Not as often as I’d like,” Jamila said. “I need to work on that; I’ve been wanting to find a way to get teens in the community more involved. Sometimes they do the delivering with their parents, but that’s not enough.” She laughed. “Speaking of that, our new friends from tonight are going to do