THEO WALKED INTO A NEW BAR IN OAKLAND AND SCANNED THE crowded room. Ah, there was his brother, perched at the bar, already in deep conversation with the bartender. He slid onto the empty stool next to Ben.

“Hey,” Ben said. “Another Manhattan for my brother here, please, Dahlia.”

The bartender winked at Ben.

“Coming right up.”

Theo shook his head as she walked over to grab bourbon off the shelf.

“Why do bartenders love you so much? I don’t understand it.”

Ben grinned.

“I tip well, I ask good questions, and I sympathize with them when other people are being assholes. It gets me great service and interesting conversation.” Ben nodded in the direction of the bartender. “I think you’ll like this drink; they’ve got some great bourbons here.”

The bartender set Theo’s drink in front of him and smiled at both of them before going to the other side of the bar.

Theo lifted his drink and took a sip.

“You’re right: this is great.” He looked around at the rest of the bar. “You live in San Francisco. I can’t believe you’ve been to a new bar in Oakland before I have.”

Ben plucked the cherry out of Theo’s drink and ate it.

“Well,I can’t believe I got my brother to come out for a drink. I haven’t seen you since, like, mid-June, and it’s almost August!”

Ben had tried to get him to come out a few times in the past month, but one night he’d been working late, and the other two nights he’d been with Maddie.

“Work has been crazy,” he said. “I’m working with this ballot initiative campaign, and everything is about to heat up in September for it, so we’re doing a ton of planning for—”

“Yeah, yeah, the rally, I know, you told me about it,” Ben said. “But you and I both know you’re not at work every damn time I text you at night. What’s going on with that girl?”

Theo shrugged.

“Who, Maddie? It’s no big deal. We’re just having sex sometimes, that’s all. I’ve been too busy this summer with work for anything else.”

Theo knew that was a lie, but he definitely wasn’t ready to tell his brother the truth. Things between him and Maddie had been a lot more than just sex for a while now. After he’d confessed his faults to her, and she’d cried on his chest, it had felt like their relationship had become different. Deeper. More real.

At least, it had felt like that to him. He didn’t really know how she felt. Sometimes, when they laughed together, or when they curled up on the couch in easy silence for hours, or when she gave him advice and listened to his, he thought she must feel the same way he did.

But when she snapped back at him like she had in his office, or like now, when he hadn’t heard from her for a few days, he had no idea what she thought or felt. Maybe she was looking forward to the wedding so this whole thing could be over. He was starting to dread it.

Ben shrugged.

“Must be nice. I never manage to find women who just want me for sex. Either they want too much of me, or they don’t want me at all.” He reached into his pocket. “Actually, speaking of—do you want this?”

He handed Theo an envelope. Theo opened it to find a gift certificate to one of the hot restaurants in San Francisco, for an amount that made Theo’s eyes get big.

“Of course I want this, but why don’t you want it?”

Ben sighed.

“I got it from work as a reward for a project I just finished, and they even made a reservation for me, since that place is impossible to get reservations for.” He made a face. “The problem is that I had a thing with one of the waitresses there, and . . . it didn’t end so well. And I obviously can’t tell my boss to take it back and get me into a different restaurant. But someone should get something out of this.”

Theo slid the gift certificate into his messenger bag.

“That is such a Ben problem, and I’ll happily benefit from it. When’s the reservation for?”

He hoped Maddie would be able to go. If she couldn’t . . . well, he’d worry about that later.

“In a few weeks, I think? I don’t know. I wrote down the date on the envelope.”

When Ben went to the bathroom, Theo texted Maddie.

My brother got a gift card and reservation at Fields & Bone but he can’t use it so he gave it to me. Want to go?

What if she said no? Or worse, didn’t even respond? He’d at least know how she felt.

Maybe he didn’t want to know how she felt after all.

Seriously? Yes! That place is impossible to get into and it’s supposed to be really good. Why can’t your brother go?

Theo grinned.

Oh, wait until you hear this reason

He waved at Ben’s bartender buddy so he could order them more drinks.

Maddie’s phone rang as she was washing dishes. She didn’t even have to look to know who it was.

“Hey, Mom,” she said. “You’re on speaker. I’m washing dishes.”

“Hey, girl,” her mom said. “I haven’t heard from you for days. How are things? I was about to call the highway patrol!”

Maddie made herself laugh. Usually, when Maddie hadn’t talked to her mom for a few days, it was just because life got in the way for one or both of them. But this time Maddie had been actively avoiding talking to her mom, which she’d felt guilty about. She’d texted her the day after the interview to tell her it had gone okay but not great, and she knew her mom would want details. And the details would disappoint her.

She’d tried to stop thinking about the interview, ever since the day it happened. That afternoon and evening with Theo had been a little too soul baring for her taste, so she’d avoided him for a while afterward, too. But when he texted about his brother’s woman issues and how they were getting a free fancy meal out of the deal, everything seemed light and jokey again between the two of them. Thank goodness, especially since Alexa had taken her whole “delegate things to your wedding party!” to heart, and had assigned her and Theo to go together to check out some DJ.

“I texted you, didn’t I?” Maddie said to her mom as she rinsed out her coffee cup from that morning. “Things are okay, just busy. How are you? Anything fun going on at work? How are Kathryn and Michelle? Did you guys end up going out to dinner this weekend?”

Sometimes changing the subject away from herself worked to get her mom to move from the topic Maddie didn’t want to talk about.

“We did. It was fun. So, tell me about the interview at the station. What happened?”

And sometimes it didn’t.

Maddie turned off the water and dried her hands. She couldn’t avoid this conversation forever.

“I think they really liked me. But . . .” she sighed. “You know that part in makeover shows where they tell the person being made over everything wrong with them? I was really good at that. Too good. I didn’t like myself. I felt pretty bad afterward.”

Her mom sighed, too.

“So you were too much of a bitch, huh? I was afraid of that.”

Maddie laughed out loud.

“Thanks for putting it so bluntly, Mom!” Theo had been a lot more tactful, but she supposed he’d said more or less the same thing. “But yeah, that was exactly the problem. And I made the woman I was working with feel terrible, which I think probably makes for good TV. From the way the people with the station acted, I think they think so, too, but it wouldn’t make me sleep well at night.” She moved out of the kitchen and sat down on her couch. “I was afraid to tell you about this. I didn’t want you to . . .”

Her mom laughed.

“What, think less of you? Madeleine, please, I know you far too well for that. After all those times you asked me if I was really leaving the house like that?”

Maddie put her head in her hands.

“Oh God, I’ve always been this much of a bitch.”

Her mom’s voice softened.

“No, that’s not what I meant. You can take things too far sometimes, it’s true. But you’ve also always had a good heart, and you manage to correct yourself. The older you get, the faster you get at doing it.”

Maddie put her legs up on the couch and hugged her knees into her chest.

“I’m going to try—they called me the other day and said they want me to come back in for an official filmed mock episode. That’ll be in a few weeks.”

The filmed audition was going to be the same day as her dinner with Theo, and she kept going back and forth about whether or not to cancel dinner. On the one hand, she might just want to go home and crawl into a hole and not have to deal with Theo or anyone else after the audition. On the other hand, their texts about dinner had made things feel normal between the two of them again, and she didn’t want to ruin that.

“Are you nervous about the audition?” her mom asked.

Maddie stared into the kitchen at the glass of wine she’d left in there. Maybe this time she could actually move it with her mind. She closed her eyes and thought hard.