sorry—Jamila, this is Max, Max, Jamila.”
First names only; that was a nice compromise.
He reached out to shake Jamila’s hand.
“Nice to meet you, Jamila,” he said.
She shook his hand.
“Nice to meet you, too . . .” She looked up at him, and recognition dawned over her face. He winked at her as her mouth gaped open.
“Um. Max. Nice to meet you, Max,” she said.
Jamila turned back to Olivia, her eyes still wide. He couldn’t see the look on Olivia’s face, but after a few seconds, Jamila smiled at her.
“We should probably get out of here; it’ll take forever to get home,” Jamila said. “And I have to find my friend, she was supposed to meet me out here, but . . .” She looked down at the phone gripped in her hand. “Oh, she says she’s already at the car, what the hell? Okay, I should run. See you on Wednesday, Olivia?”
Olivia nodded.
“I’ll be there,” Olivia said. “Maybe we can get dinner after?”
Jamila glanced back and forth from her to Max. Max tried to pretend he didn’t know exactly what was going on.
“Mmmm, definitely,” Jamila said.
Jamila dashed off into the crowd, and Olivia and Max walked off toward the car.
They didn’t say anything to each other until they were in the car and a block away from the stadium.
“So,” Max started.
Olivia burst out laughing, and then he did, and they laughed so hard he almost pulled over.
“No offense,” she said through gasps, “but that was one of the weirdest dates I’ve ever been on. The middle part was good, the part with Dolly Parton and holding hands and all of that. But the beginning and the end were very stressful! I thought dating a famous person was supposed to be glamorous!”
He poked her in the arm.
“Oh, you think you were stressed? You didn’t have to stand there and take it while your friend Jamila looked me over like I was a piece of meat and she was measuring me up to see if I was good enough for you. Or try not to react when she was looking straight at me and made that face when she suddenly realized who I was!”
Thank God there was so much traffic that he didn’t really have to pay attention to the road, because when he thought about Jamila’s face at that moment, it set him off again.
Olivia reached for her phone, connected it to his car Bluetooth, and cranked up a Dolly Parton playlist.
“Thank God for Dolly,” she said. “See, she was the best part of the night.”
They spent the rest of the drive back to her house singing along with Dolly, and they could tell a bunch of the cars around them were doing the same thing.
They didn’t talk about any of the other events of the night until they got back to her house. He parked around the corner, and as they walked down the sidewalk, he reached for her hand. She hesitated, and looked around her quiet street before sliding her fingers through his.
“Sorry,” she said as they walked up to her door. “I guess I’m just not used to this yet. And still a little—or maybe a lot—paranoid.”
He shrugged.
“You have reason to be paranoid, don’t apologize. You notice that I’m still not parking in your driveway.”
She unlocked her front door and he followed her inside.
“I noticed.” She kicked her shoes off and walked into the kitchen. Max grinned and followed her. “I was terrified when Jamila saw us together. I felt like a teenager again, like I’d been caught. Then I remembered I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and also that Jamila is my friend, not my mom.”
Olivia turned to look at him and finally saw the box in his hands.
“What’s that?”
He looked down and pretended to be surprised.
“This? Oh God, I don’t know. What is this? I just saw it on the counter, what could it be?”
He flipped open the top and turned the box toward her.
“CAKE!” She stared at the cake then back up at him. “Is that for me?”
He grinned at her and opened the sides of the box so he could slide the cake out onto the counter.
“Who do you think it’s for? I got it this afternoon. I had a feeling tonight might be stressful—Dolly notwithstanding. I thought we both might need a pick-me-up afterward.” He picked up the cake cutter from where he’d left it on the counter, cut a fat slice, and slid it onto a plate.
“Yellow cake with chocolate frosting!” Olivia took a