Page 30 of Party Favors

I wondered if he might tease me, challenge me, but instead he just answered, “Go into the family business.”

“Which is?”

“Deceiving people for money.”

Were they lawyers? Actors? Writers? Max had sounded a bit prickly, and I got the sense that I shouldn’t ask him specifics. I settled on, “That doesn’t sound great.”

“It’s not. My mother isn’t much better. Growing up I had a babysitter who was really dedicated to helping other people, and I guess it stuck with me. But all in all, I’m a disappointment to everyone in my life.”

“I get it,” I told him with a sigh. “Even the family business part. My mother wanted me to come work with her at her nail salon after I graduated from college, but I didn’t want to, which did not make her happy. She didn’t want me to move to New York, either. She also seems to be upset with my personality. She thinks I’m too much of a people pleaser.”

“You can’t be that much of a people pleaser if you came to New York City over her objections.”

That mollified me slightly. That was sort of true. “There are things I’m not willing to back down on and will stand firm, but she’s not wrong. I usually want to make other people happy.”

He considered this information and then said, “Did your parents fight a lot when you were a kid?”

“Constantly. All the time. They would have arguments that would last for days where they would just scream at each other. I hated it so much. It was actually kind of a relief when my dad left.”

“I understand,” he said. “Same in my home growing up. And the arguing is what made you a people pleaser.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I was in therapy for a long time as a kid. My parents also fought constantly before they got divorced. I wanted to make everything okay for them by making them happy. Thinking that if I could just be the perfect kid, then they’d stop fighting all the time. I took on that burden of wanting to make others feel better. Because if I could do whatever they asked, then maybe my life would have been okay.”

It was, in all honesty, probably one of the most profound and insightful things anyone had ever said to me. It was like Max hadcracked open my soul and peered inside. His revelation shook me. “That was exactly how I felt, too.”

He looked at me then, his face close to mine. And if we’d been just regular people who’d met for the first time at a bar, felt an attraction for one another, and were walking home together, this might have been the part where he kissed me.

My pulse went haywire and my lips tingled with want. There were two heartbeats, three, four, where he just looked into my eyes. I wanted so desperately to see what color his were in sunlight. The streetlamps weren’t doing him justice.

“I suppose that makes us kindred spirits,” he said, facing forward again and breaking the spell. “My dysfunction manifests less as people-pleasing, more savior complex. I like to rush in and save someone.”

“You like to rescue people.” I nodded, finally understanding what had happened tonight. “Which explains why you came over to talk to me in the bar and why you work for a nonprofit.”

“That’s not why I ...” But whatever he’d been about to say, he stopped. I held my breath, hoping he would finish his sentence and that he might confess something—that he’d thought I was pretty or he felt the same spark I had when we’d first met. But he didn’t and instead just said, “It’s complicated, I guess.”

I got caught up in imagining what he could have said and fell silent. I didn’t know him well enough to accurately predict it but was coming up with some very outlandish explanations.

“What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?” he asked me, probably because I’d fallen silent again and was forcing him to single-handedly carry the conversation.

“Oh. Let me think.” I hadn’t done a lot of bad things. Pettiness hadn’t ever really been a part of my personality. Except for that one time. “I had auditioned for the Christmas nativity at my church. When I was twelve, I really wanted to play Mary, but they picked Ellie Macon to play the part. The director just did not like me, and to this day I haveno idea why. This was right around the time my parents divorced, and I had a lot of pent-up anger.”

“I’m almost afraid to find out what you did,” he said, sounding amused.

“I downloaded and printed out a copy of Imagine Dragons’ ‘Radioactive’ sheet music. I took off the name and entitled it ‘Baby in the Manger’ and put it on the piano the night of the performance. Sure enough, the pianist played it all the way to the end before Ellie Macon ratted me out to the pastor and the director. I got yelled at by a bunch of church leaders.”

He laughed.

“What about you?” I asked. “Worst thing you’ve ever done or your deepest regret?”

“I’ve never been yelled at by religious leaders. The worst thing I’ve ever done—it’s probably how I treated my father. He fought my mother hard for custody, and I think it was more about how much he hated her than wanting to be with me. He got primary custody of me for years and I resented him the entire time, so I did everything I could to make him miserable. Especially since he married my stepmother six months after the divorce was finalized. My stepmother couldn’t have children and she wanted to mother me, but I wouldn’t let her. I’ve been angry with both of them for a long time. I’ve been trying to work through it.”

“How is that going?”

Max grimaced. “It’s going. Slow and steady.”

“Well, the tortoise does win the race. Although now you have me thinking I have to revise my answer because I don’t speak to my dad. To be fair, he doesn’t speak to me, either.”

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