sip.
Max glanced down at his phone. Even though it was a Friday during recess, he still seemed to get an email about every minute. They’d both spent some of this time by the pool working on their phones, but it still felt like vacation.
He turned to her with his eyebrows raised. Oh no, she knew this look.
“You know,” he said, in his most convincing voice. “The last town hall meeting is going to be in L.A., at your community center.”
Olivia picked up her pineapple again.
“Excellent,” she said. “I hope Jamila takes credit for that.”
She took another sip from her pineapple. She probably didn’t want to know how much rum was in this thing, did she? Well, whatever was in it, it was delicious.
“I know how you feel about that center, after all the time you’ve spent there,” Max said. “What would you say to coming with me to the town hall there? Especially since this whole thing was your idea, after all.”
Olivia couldn’t help but smile back at Max.
“With an offer like that, how can I say no?”
Olivia took another sip of her pineapple and smiled at the world. If only every workday could be spent in the sunshine with pineapples full of rum. She’d get very little work done, but she’d be in an excellent mood.
After they finished their pineapples, Max reached for her hand.
“Let’s go take a walk along the beach,” he said. “I’m getting hot.”
“You’ve always been hot,” Olivia said, and giggled.
Max grinned at her.
“I think I like Hawaii Olivia a whole lot. Can we bring her back to California?” He stood up and pulled her up out of the chair.
Olivia pulled on her cover-up.
“Look, I’m still trying to get rid of New York Olivia, okay? But if you can manage to bring me one of these drinks every day, I feel like Hawaii Olivia will just naturally take over.” She slung her beach bag on her shoulder. “She won’t have a job anymore, but she’ll be real cheerful about it.”
They walked down to the beach, hand in hand, and strolled along the water’s edge.
“This was a very good idea on your part,” Olivia said.
Max turned to her, that cocky grin she loved on his face.
“I know,” he said. Then the grin faded and his eyes opened wide. He turned her in the direction he was looking and dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Look!”
A man was on one knee, and the woman in front of him had her hands in front of her face. Slowly, she lowered them, and took his hand. Olivia and Max couldn’t hear what the couple was saying, but everyone on the beach knew exactly what was happening. After a few minutes, the man slid a ring on the woman’s finger and stood up. Everyone around them—including Max—applauded. Olivia joined in.
“Wasn’t that romantic?” Max said, after the couple waved at everyone and walked back up to the hotel.
“It was,” Olivia said.
Max turned to her and smiled. Olivia saw something in his eyes change. He opened his mouth, almost in slow motion. A sudden apprehension hit Olivia.
“You’re not going to propose, are you?” she blurted out.
His face dropped. That crestfallen look made her want to take back what she’d said, but it was too late. Damn that pineapple drink and all this sunlight; she would have done that much better if she hadn’t been this tipsy.
“Would it be so bad if I was?” he asked.
No, it wouldn’t be so bad, but also yes, of course it would be.
Shit, shit, shit, how could she say this to him?
“It wouldn’t be, if now was say . . . a year from now. And if in that year, we’d had even one conversation about getting married—though I’d prefer more like four or five conversations.”
Max threw his hands in the air.
“Four or five? Who needs to talk four or five times about getting married? I love you, you love me, isn’t that enough?”
Olivia took a deep breath. Every time he said he loved her like that, it made her heart want to burst.
“I do love you, so much, but that’s not the only thing. Even normal people in normal relationships need to talk through this, and our relationship has at least two or three major abnormalities.”
Max dropped down on the sand and pulled Olivia down next to him.
“Okay, fine, what do normal people in normal relationships have to talk about?”
Olivia looked sideways at him.
“You don’t . . . I mean . . .” Why was her mind suddenly