Theo walked up Alexa’s front steps carrying a grocery bag and wondering how the hell he’d gotten himself into this situation. He was about to go into the house of his close friend and coworker, to hang out and drink tequila with her and her best friend, who, coincidentally, he’d been secretly sleeping with on a regular basis for the past month.

Today had the potential to be either a train wreck or enormously awkward, but he didn’t bother lying to himself: he’d take any excuse at this point to be around Maddie. The past month had been way too much fun. Sometimes he wished he wasn’t always so tense, so earnest, never spontaneous or relaxed or just fun. But for some reason, he could be all those things with Maddie.

He was pretty sure this whole thing was going to blow up in his face at some point, but he had chosen not to worry about that. Between dealing with fifteen elected official–size egos, and their accompanying staffers, along with doing the rest of his job, he didn’t have time to worry about how much Alexa was going to flip out when she eventually found out he and Maddie were sleeping together.

He pulled out his phone to text Alexa, since he didn’t think her doorbell would reach to her backyard.

I’m outside, open up

A minute later, the front door opened to Maddie in a bikini.

Holy fucking shit.

“Come on in. Alexa’s out back.” She waved him into the house, but he didn’t move. He definitely hadn’t imagined he’d be this lucky today.

“How the hell is it possible to look that good in any article of clothing? And why the fuck do you look that sexy when I’m going to have to sit there with you and Alexa, and I can’t jump on you and peel that bikini off your incredible body?”

He looked over her shoulder to make sure the coast was clear and then stepped into the house and wrapped his arms around her. He pulled her flush against his body and brought his lips down on hers. She laughed against his mouth as he kissed her, and she kissed him back just as hard.

“Who’s playing with fire now?” she asked when they finally broke apart.

He picked up the grocery bags again.

“What the hell was I supposed to do with you answering the door looking like that? I’m going to get back at you for this later.”

She grinned sideways at him as he preceded her into the kitchen and started unloading the bags.

“If I remember correctly, your method of ‘getting back at me’ is a very pleasurable one, so I’m not going to make any arguments.”

He shook his head as he plunked the bottle of tequila on the counter.

“You win this round, Forest. I know I’m going to win one eventually.”

He opened the sliding glass door to the backyard and yelled to Alexa.

“I have snacks and the makings of margaritas. Come help.”

He took a bag of limes out of the grocery bag and handed them to Maddie.

“Here, make yourself useful. Slice all of these in half.”

Maddie looked from the bag of limes, to the bottle of tequila, and then back to Theo. She didn’t move.

“Why, exactly, am I slicing limes in half?”

Theo opened one of Alexa’s cabinets and took down the bag of sugar.

“So I can juice them. For lime juice? For margaritas? You two did order margaritas, didn’t you?”

Alexa walked into the kitchen.

“Oh, is Maddie being introduced to the way Theo makes drinks?”

While he’d made plenty of cocktails for Maddie by now, he realized most of those had been easy ones. Well, maybe she’d learn something.

Theo measured out sugar and water into a saucepan and turned it on.

“Hi, Alexa, how are you? Great to see you. Yes, I am making the drinks you ordered me to come over to your house to make, while you’re standing there about to make fun of me for how I’m making your drinks, that is correct.”

Both women ignored him.

“ How . . . exactly . . . does Theo make drinks?” Maddie asked.

“Very, very slowly. Look, you ask the man for chips and salsa, he goes into the kitchen and fries tortillas to make the chips, and roasts tomatoes to make the salsa, okay?”

That made him turn around.

“That only happened one time! I bought you salsa this time!”

Alexa kept talking like he hadn’t even said anything.

“So, I’m just saying, if you expected his margaritas to start with anything so pedestrian as margarita mix, or even bottled lime juice, you were barking up the wrong cocktail tree here.”

Theo shook his head and swirled the saucepan full of sugar and water.

“Margarita mix. Like I would ever.”

Maddie opened up one of the bags of chips he’d brought and poured them into a bowl.

“Why didn’t you warn me?” she asked Alexa. “I thought he was going to come over, plug in a blender, zuzz us up some margaritas, and we’d be happy. Now he’s in the kitchen . . . cooking sugar?” She walked over to Theo at the stove and peered over his shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?”

He swirled the pan again as Alexa popped open the jar of salsa with a big grin on her face.

“Making simple syrup, of course,” he said. “You can’t just pour sugar into lime juice. It won’t dissolve. Simple syrup is the basis for many great cocktails, you know.”

Maddie looked over at Alexa, who was now doubled over with laughter. Theo was having a hard time keeping a straight face himself, even though most of what Alexa had said about him was the absolute truth. He was pretty sure Maddie was questioning what she’d gotten herself into.

“How have you worked with this man for so many years without killing him?” Maddie asked Alexa.

Alexa handed her a knife.

“I’ve learned it’s just easier to go along with it when he does stuff like this. Plus, unfortunately, it almost always turns out great. Here, you cut the limes. I’ll squeeze them.”

Thirty minutes later, the three of them were outside in the backyard with margaritas, chips and guacamole, and an ice bucket full of cold grapefruit sparkling water. Theo watched Maddie as she took a sip of her drink. Her smile made him feel victorious.

“Worth the wait, wasn’t it?”

She ignored him and turned to Alexa, which only made his grin get bigger. He dug into the bowl of guacamole with his chip and took his biography of Ida B. Wells out of his bag.

Alexa looked over at him and laughed.

“I knew you’d be reading a book like that. Didn’t I say that, Maddie?” She lifted up her magazine to show it to him. “This, Theodore, this is how you take an actual break from work.” She dropped the magazine onto her lap. “How’d the call go yesterday? We didn’t get to talk about it afterward.”

He leaned back in his chair and shook his head.

“I’m fighting so hard to have the kickoff rally in Berkeley, and every conference call is two steps forward and one step back. This time, I had answers to all of their arguments and talked about the many parents we know who will be able to speak at the rally, and how we’ll get such favorable press here, and I think I won Sybil over, but then all the Central Valley people brought up protestors.”

Maddie looked over at him.

“Aren’t you worried about protestors?”

He shrugged.

“Like there won’t be protestors anywhere in this state, but who cares? So what, a handful of people will have some ugly signs and bad chants. We’ll turn up the sound system and deal with it. Saying, ‘But protestors!’ is just their excuse to get the rally out of Berkeley and into their boss’s city. It’s so frustrating, and I really hope it doesn’t work.”

Alexa turned to Maddie.

“This is the initiative I told you about that Theo was working on for universal pre-K in California.”

Maddie raised an eyebrow at him, with an expression on her face like this was all brand new to her and she hadn’t listened to him rant about this campaign for fifteen minutes the other night.

“I know that would have helped my mom a lot when I was a kid. Do you think it has a shot at winning?” she asked him.

She hadn’t asked him that question the other night.

He thought about whether to give the politic answer or the real one, and shrugged.

“Anything has a shot. Wild things happen on Election Days, for good and bad. But, do I think it’ll win? No. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting for, though. The better job we do this year, the more people will be inspired by it, and the more likely it’ll be that we’ll win the next time. The great and terrible thing about politics is you have to play the short and the long game all at once.”

Maddie held up her glass.

“Okay, now that you’re done boring us, can I get a refill?”

He tried not to show his irritation at her brush-off and reached for her glass.

“Lex, you want another, too? There’s more inside.”

Alexa nodded.

“I do, but do you know the other thing I want?”

He looked at her sideways.

“What?”

“Pizza. Chips and salsa and guacamole aren’t a meal. I’m hungry.”

Maddie drained the dregs of her margarita glass.

“Okay, but I’m very confused,” Maddie said. “I really expected you to say tacos just now.”

So had Theo, actually.