Page 95 of Party Favors

“This is the last nice conversation I’m going to have for the rest of the week, so listen up. Don’t read too much into tonight. Ask him about it. I mean, maybe there is a possibility that his flight really does leave early in the morning.” She immediately stopped herself with a grimace. “Yeah, I heard it. It was an excuse.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to have that talk with him.”

“If nothing else, you have to take back your edict.”

“My what?” I asked.

“You’re the one who told him that you wanted to be friends. You need to tell him you changed your mind.”

That was entirely possible. She’d pointed it out previously—that maybe he was just being a gentleman and taking me at my word. It scared me to undo it, though. This way was safer, but it was also making me sadder.

“You need to think about what that Kitty person would do.”

It took me a second. “Kitty? Do you mean Kat?”

“Same difference,” she said. “First you have to figure out what you want. Do you want to be in a relationship with him? I think you do.Decide, and then go talk to him like an actual grownup and have a real conversation about your feelings. If you want to be in a relationship with him, tell him and deal with the fallout.”

“I don’t know if that’s what Kat would do,” I said, because she didn’t know that it wasn’t an apt comparison. “She ran away from Nico when she thought he had rejected her.”

And I understood her fear all too well. Because if Max told meno thanks, not interested, I was going to crawl into a deep, dark hole and try to disappear completely.

“Why do you like Kat so much? I mean, seriously. Is it that she’s a queen? Or is it something else?” Vella asked.

“I admire her. I like that she has her fairy-tale love story.”

“There it is,” she said, jabbing her finger toward me. “What you like about her is that she’s living happily ever after and you want that. Which is not a bad thing to want. It’s not for me, but I can understand the appeal. What you want is a successful relationship. Not a castle and ball gowns.”

Huh. I’d never examined it that deeply, but I suspected that Vella was right. “Maybe you should reconsider that psychology career.”

“Oh no, it would involve way too much of me having to listen to other people talk about their stupid problems and boring lives and I am not interested in that.”

“Except for me.”

“Except for you and only you. And don’t tell anybody.”

I made anXacross my heart. “It just seems a shame because you’re so intuitive and smart.”

“That’s because I’ve had more higher education than actual professors,” she said, and I finally smiled. “You just give me the word and his hair is literal toast.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

She nodded with satisfaction and got up. “I’m going to bed. If you hear a drill early in the morning, don’t worry about it—I’m justmaking a hole into the neighbors’ apartment so that I can drop some stink bombs through the wall.”

Now I finally did laugh as she walked away. She always managed to make me feel better.

Until tonight, I would have said the same thing about Max, that he always made me feel better. I had always loved being around him—if he were a song, I would have put him on a loop and happily listened to him all day.

But now I was confused and distraught. Dating really was like a foreign country where I didn’t understand the language or the customs. And Vella, who lived there permanently, didn’t seem to understand my situation any better.

Which did not bode well.

I would take her advice. I needed to figure out what I wanted and then communicate that to Max.

If it meant that I lost his friendship, that would truly suck.

But what would suck worse was never knowing if we could have had more.

I spent the rest of the weekend working and got to the office a little bit early on Monday morning. Vella had yelled through her door that she’d see me there later, and I hoped that bylatershe meantat a point that might still be considered relatively on time.

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