Wes flipped open the pizza box.

“Hey, thanks again for letting my cousin crash at your place last week when he was stranded in L.A.”

Max waved that off.

“It was no big deal; it was only for a night. Nice kid.” Max glanced at the pizza. “Broccoli on the pizza? Seriously?”

Wes gave him a stern look.

“You can’t work as hard as we both work and not eat vegetables. I should have gotten us a salad, too, but this is better than nothing.”

Max’s phone buzzed, and he picked it up from the table.

Now I’m already excited for Friday night

Shit, wait a minute—he was only going to get into LAX midday on Friday, if everything went well. He’d better temper her wig expectations. Maybe he could order new glasses or something instead.

Ok don’t get too excited—the wig may have to wait until I have extended LA shopping time. This is where being in DC the bulk of the time cramps my style. How’s your Monday going?

“Who are you texting?” Wes asked him.

Max picked up a slice of pizza and took a bite. Should he tell Wes about Olivia already? He laughed at himself—he hadn’t even kissed her yet, and he wanted to tell the world about her.

“Man, do you need to work on your poker face,” Wes said when he didn’t answer right away. “It’s a woman, that’s clear enough.”

Max shrugged, but he couldn’t keep from smiling.

“Yes, it’s a woman. Her name is Olivia. Olivia Monroe.”

Wes dropped his pizza back on his plate and turned to stare at Max.

“Oh no. She’s already a full name with you? You’ve got it bad. How did this happen? We only had recess for one week!”

Max laughed.

“I know, but it started a few weeks ago. You see, one night there was a water main break in my neighborhood, so I went to a hotel for the night. And at the hotel bar . . .”

Wes covered his eyes.

“No. Oh no. Don’t tell me that you, a United States senator, fell for some line from some woman at a hotel bar and took her back to your room, where all of your classified documents live in your electronics. Don’t they teach you better than that over in the Senate?”

Max picked up the remote and turned the TV back to spring training baseball.

“This is what you get for thinking so little of me. No, I did not fall for some line from some woman at a bar. I just met her at the bar, that’s all. And there was no line at all; I’m the one who started talking to her, not the reverse. And . . . we talked for a while, and she was funny, and smart, and interesting, and she kept making fun of me, and . . . it was great. That’s all.”

Max’s phone buzzed again.

Ok, I won’t expect a blond guy to show up at my door Friday then. My Monday is busy—tons of meetings with clients and potential clients. Now on my way to a local bar association thing to network, even though I wish I was on my couch watching bad reality TV

Wes waved his hand at Max’s phone.

“That little meeting at the bar was obviously not all, because if it was, why do you have that schmoopy look on your face? Did she take you back to her room after she got you to hit on her at the bar?”

Max rolled his eyes.

“Get your mind out of the gutter. No one went back to anyone’s room. I didn’t even get her last name—then, anyway. But then—last week when I was back in L.A., I gave a speech at a luncheon. I looked around the room when I was up onstage, and there she was.” He held up a hand to forestall Wes’s conspiracy theory. “She was not stalking me; she’s a lawyer, she just moved to L.A. to start her own firm, and one of the board members of the center has known her for years and invited her to the luncheon.”

Wes took the remote back and changed the channel.

“I see. How did you get this poor woman’s number, then? Did you fall that hard for her after a chat at a bar and seeing her from across a hotel ballroom?”

Max picked up his phone to text her back.

Good luck! You’ll be fantastic.

He looked up from his phone to Wes, and tried to wipe the schmoopy look off of his face. Whatever that meant.

“I remembered the name of her law firm and looked it up.” Wes didn’t need to know about the cake. “And long story short, we went out Saturday night.”

Wes’s eyes widened.

“Oh shit. You really are running for president, aren’t you?”

Max set his beer down.

“What? No, what are you talking about? How did you get from here to there?”

Wes tore off another slice of pizza.

“Gotta wife up to run for president. Everybody knows that.”

Max balled up a napkin and tossed it at him.

“Now you sound like one of those stupid magazines that put both of us on their hottest bachelors in Washington lists. I’m not trying to ‘wife up’—I just like her, that’s all!”

He wouldn’t admit this to Wes, because then Wes would be certain he was going to run for president, but he had been . . . lonely lately for more than just the reasons he’d said to Olivia the other night. He’d been to a lot of fundraisers for other candidates in the past sixteen months, and at many of them, the candidate’s spouse was there with them, by their side. He’d wished he had that.