“Um, do you want to go to my place, or yours?” he asked when they got to the end of the block.

“Yours,” she said. Her place was unnaturally clean lately, because he’d come over a few times now, so it wasn’t that she needed to clean up for him. It was that she was pretty sure she wanted to abort this whole “telling Theo everything that went wrong today” mission, and just flee back to her own space. He’d managed to get into the car before she’d driven away, but that didn’t mean she had to sit around and confess every one of her flaws to Theo of all people. That sounded like a nightmare she’d had before. Maybe she could walk into his place with him and then suddenly remember a client meeting she had later on today and could run out the door without having to talk about any of this.

“I’m ordering pizza,” he said, looking up from his phone. “The usual toppings?”

Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten since the coffee and half a muffin she’d forced down early this morning. Maybe she would stay just until the pizza came.

“Yeah,” she said. “The usual toppings sound great.”

They walked into his apartment, and instead of immediately asking her questions or pulling her into another hug that she didn’t think she could handle right now, he dropped his bag and jacket in his living room and kept walking down his long hallway to the kitchen. She followed him, expecting him to pull out his bar cart and make her a fancy drink, like he’d done that first night.

Instead, he walked to a closet in the corner of his kitchen that she’d never noticed, and opened it. Inside, there were many racks full of wine.

“Where did all of that wine come from?” she asked.

He laughed as he scanned the rows of bottles.

“Lots of places. Some were gifts; most were from tipsy purchases on trips up to Napa with my brother.” He bent down and pulled a bottle of wine off the second to the bottom shelf. “Here, I think this one works for now.” He pulled a corkscrew out of a drawer and opened the bottle with a few quick turns.

He turned and walked back out of the kitchen with the open bottle of wine in one hand, and grabbed two glasses out of a cabinet on his way. Again, she followed him, back to the living room, where he set the bottle on the coffee table and poured wine into both glasses. He sat down on the couch and gestured for her to sit next to him. She sat and felt some of the tension drain from her shoulders.

Theo picked up a glass and handed it to her.

“You don’t have to talk to me. If you don’t want to, I mean. If you just want to sit here and drink wine and maybe eat some pizza and not talk, we can sit here and drink wine and eat some pizza and not talk. Or I can show you the spreadsheet I made for Alexa’s wedding invitations and you can tell me how beautiful it is.” He picked up his own glass and took a sip. “But if you do want to talk, at any point tonight—at any point ever—I’m here to listen. I just want you to know that.”

She set down her glass on top of a magazine on the coffee table.

“Why are you being so nice to me? I don’t deserve any of this. I was the world’s biggest bitch today. What you said about me was right: it was completely self-absorbed to go to your office like that. I wasn’t thinking of you at all—I was just upset and trying to make myself feel better, and I wanted some attention. That was really shitty of me.” She stood up. “I should go. I shouldn’t sit here drinking your wine and letting you be nice to me when I don’t deserve it.”

He glared at her.

“Maddie. Sit down. Please.”

She didn’t want to sit down. She didn’t want him to see her cry, yet again, or have to talk about the interview and why it had made her feel like the biggest asshole in the world.

“Theo, I think I really should just go.”

He shook his head.

“Maddie, I’m serious. Stay so we can talk about this. We don’t have to talk about why you were upset today, but . . .” He took a deep breath. “We both said some shitty things to each other in my office—I’m really sorry about what I said, by the way—and if we want to keep doing”—he waved his hands in the air—“this, I don’t think we can do so if you leave now and we both just feel bad and unsettled and uncomfortable with each other.” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s what you want; maybe you’re ready to be done with this, which . . . if that’s the case, just tell me now.”

She sat down.

“No, Theo, that’s not . . .” She sighed. “That’s not what I want. I’m just so humiliated about the whole day today, about what I did, and how I acted, and what you think of me now, and I’m scared to look you in the eye.”

He put his arm around her and pulled her into his chest.

“So don’t, just yet. Just sit here and drink wine with me.”

She was less than half a glass in before she started talking.

“The problem is, I was exactly what they wanted me to be. They brought in clients for me to work with, and I made fun of the clothes they were wearing, and I told them how they needed to reinvent themselves, and I told them all of the stuff that was wrong with them, and I was funny and everyone loved it and I made these women feel terrible, and that’s not the kind of person I want to be.”

He rubbed the side of her neck with his thumb, and she leaned into the pressure.

“The way I grew up . . .” She stopped herself and looked at him. Did she want to trust Theo with all of this? Oh hell with it, she’d already sobbed her eyes out to him in his office; she might as well. “It was just me and my mom, and she worked hard to get me everything I needed, but we were often right on the edge. Which meant a lot of things, but one of them was Mom always sacrificed her needs for mine. That took me an embarrassingly long time to realize; I used to make fun of her clothes for years when I was a bitchy preteen. And suddenly one day she was preparing for an interview and I asked her what she was going to wear and she said some old out-of-date outfit of hers, and I remembered the new clothes she’d bought me just a few days before, and I realized I couldn’t remember the last time she’d bought herself anything new.”

She still felt the shame that had washed over her that day.

“My mom used to do the same thing,” Theo said. “I don’t think I realized until I left for college.”

Maddie closed her eyes. A few tears still seeped through.

“I’m glad . . . I’m glad I wasn’t the only one.” He wiped her tears with a tissue and she smiled. “Anyway, after that, I made it my mission to ensure my mom was well dressed. I even found a sewing machine secondhand and taught myself how to do alterations for her. But it was when I tried to figure out what ‘well dressed’ meant for her, a woman going to job interviews for all these corporate jobs while she was going through school, I discovered how complicated all this stuff is. There are so many unwritten rules, and if you don’t follow them, you’re ‘not a culture fit.’ And of course, it’s even harder if you’re a woman of color, or you’re plus size, or you speak accented English. There’s no one to teach this stuff to women who don’t already know it.”

She glanced up at Theo. How was he taking all this? But he was looking at her with his open, interested expression that she knew by now he couldn’t fake.

“Right, white men can show up to important meetings in ripped jeans and hoodies, and people still take them seriously,” he said. “I have to wear a suit just for people to even consider taking me seriously.”

She nodded.

“Exactly. I think that’s one reason I got so excited about doing this show. It would be my opportunity to help women who really need me. But as things started getting more serious, I guess I forgot about all that, and thought about it in terms of what would make good TV, and not what would be something I could be proud of. And today, the old mean girl Maddie came back. I’m just so ashamed of myself and what my mother would think of me.” She shook her head. “I’m ashamed of what I think of me. I’m ashamed of what you must think of me; you do volunteer work all the time. I’m sure you’re so great at it.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it. Oh God, what did he want to say? Probably something about how she should be ashamed of herself.

“What? Just say it.”