Page 60 of Party Favors

I got yelled at by one, remember?

Now I was wondering whether he was smiling, imagining him doing just that.

Sunny said to tell you that you’re perfect.

That shouldn’t have hurt. I should have been pleased. But if anything, it felt ironic, given what he’d told her.

She’s biased.

So am I.

What did that mean?

And why did it seem like the exact opposite of what he’d told Sunny?

Despite my best friend’s assertion that men shouldn’t be treated like skittish horses, I was going to do just that. If I asked him to explain himself, he might bolt. Better to wonder in private.

A voice inside me whispered that this was not what Kat would do.

But I didn’t know how to be braver without scaring him off.

Claudia signed off on my presentation for Hyacinth’s party, and both Hyacinth and her mother approved my plans. When I mentioned my recent idea to hire Italian and Monterran models to dress up in royal uniforms to mingle with the guests, Hyacinth even managed to look up from her phone with one of her eyebrows slightly lifted—was that interest? It was hard to tell since the rest of her face was so impassive.

Tuesday evening I met with Sunny to look at the Belmonts’ massive apartment. “They want it to be outside,” she said.

“Are they aware that it’s winter?” I asked.

She showed me the terrace. It was very large, but weather was the bane of every outdoor event. Snow and rain I could handle—I could put up tents and have space heaters. It just meant that I’d have to make multiple contingency plans. I asked Sunny to verify her final guestcount as soon as possible because nothing else could be organized until we knew exactly how many people would be there.

Adrian kept texting me with inane requests, like wanting me to tell the staff at his hotel not to chew spearmint gum around him and for me to find out whether or not the water in France was different than New York because he thought it tasted so much better.

I wasn’t sure if he wanted an environmental report or what, so I told him I’d look into it when I had the chance.

And in between all of this, Max was texting me.

While I had to remind myself on an almost hourly basis that we were just friends, it was so hard to remember.

It started out with him asking me about Sunny’s shower and what he could do to help. When I told him I had it covered, he asked about my day. After I filled him in, I asked about his and we texted for hours. My evenings had turned into working on my projects and texting Max, giggling at the things he would say.

“You two text constantly. Like he’s your boyfriend,” Vella had commented one night while heating up a quesadilla in the microwave.

“That’s what friends do,” I countered. “It’s what you and I do.”

“I do not ask you about your day, and I am not at all interested in event planning. Unlike this lovesick fool who thinks you’re some goddess and every word you say is scripture he has to memorize.”

“That could not be further from the truth.”

“You only smile like that when Max is texting you,” she said.

“Do you not remember the part where I told you he said that I was ‘down-to-earth and simple’?” Saying it again made me feel sick to my stomach.

She shot me a look that implied something was wrong with me. “You told me that he was down-to-earth.”

“Yes, but I meant it in a humble, not-full-of-himself kind of way, which is surprising, given how he looks.”

“How do you know he didn’t mean it in the same way?”

For some reason, this literally had not occurred to me until Vella brought it up.

---