Page 72 of Party Favors

“What?” he said it with so much incredulousness that I felt kind of stupid for saying it in the first place. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. What I meant by it was that you’re not a snob and you’re real, just yourself without a bunch of pretension. Those are qualities that I appreciate. They’ve been in short supply in my life.”

“Oh.” His words filled my veins with tiny fizzy bubbles of lightness, like I’d been carrying something heavy around and now I could put it down.

“Do I need to explain it more, so that you don’t have the wrong idea?” he asked, and I knew that he would. That he wouldn’t be angry about me misinterpreting it or roll his eyes and tell me to get over it. He would sit with me and talk about it for as long as I needed him to.

That made the fizziness in my veins intensify.

“I think I’ve got it,” I said.

“Good.” He reached for the ketchup bottle, and like some minion of the devil, he proceeded to pour it on top of his scrambled eggs.

“What are you doing?” I gasped.

He paused, holding the bottle midair. “Putting ketchup on my eggs. They taste better this way.”

“Whatever demon is whispering lies into your ear telling you to do this abomination, I’d advise not listening. Although I suppose it is your right to let that creature lead you astray.”

Max grinned at me and continued to douse his eggs. “I didn’t know my eating habits would put my eternal soul at risk.”

“Maybe you should have paid more attention in church.”

Now he laughed. “One more thing I have to be worried about now.”

“If you need more stuff to add to your ‘Worry About This’ list, I can recommend a whole bunch,” I said as I poured syrup onto my pancakes.

“Do you have a lot of fears?” he asked.

“I do scary stuff,” I responded, bristling a bit at what felt like an implication. “I moved to New York, which is not easy when you initially get here. I thought I was a somewhat sophisticated person, and the first time I was surrounded by skyscrapers, it overwhelmed me. All the people, the cars, the noise. It was a lot.”

“Monterra is very different,” he said. “Very quaint and self-contained. New York is the opposite.”

“How so?” I asked, and while we finished up our food, he told me everything he loved about his home country, the beauty and serenity, the amazing skiing, the privacy, given that no paparazzi were allowed.

His last declaration felt a bit odd—I’d never worried about paparazzi ever because they had no reason to take my picture.

I was about to ask for clarification, but he spoke first. “Do you ever think that your fears might be holding you back?”

“Some fears are good,” I countered. “They keep you alive.”

“And sometimes they keep you trapped,” he said. “Sometimes they keep you from experiencing something that might be great for you because you’re too afraid.”

There was some truth there. My fear of rejection was keeping me from being open and honest with him. What if it was holding me back in other ways that I hadn’t realized?

He threw some large bills onto the table, tipping an insane amount. “Can I show you something?”

Anything you’d like,my hormones purred. “Sure.”

“Let me grab some tickets first,” he said, pushing buttons on his phone. “There. Let’s go.”

While the rain had lightened up, it wasn’t completely gone. He got us a rideshare and we drove to a building I didn’t recognize.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“It’s a surprise.”

He took me into an elevator and pressed the button for the ninety-second floor.

“I am not BASE jumping or walking on a tightrope,” I warned him. He was cute, but not that cute.

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