Page 98 of Party Favors

Or that I’d agreed to go.

He buzzed me when I sat down at my desk. I pushed the intercom button. “Yes?”

“I’m going to send over a list of things I need you to get done today.”

“Okay.”

He hung up his phone and I still had that unreal feeling. An email from Adrian came into my inbox, and I glanced at the very long list. There were a lot of things he had to catch up on. The first item was to order a large bouquet of flowers and have them delivered to the office. He was probably going to give them to Claudia to apologize for taking off for so long. It wouldn’t be the first apology bouquet I’d ordered for him.

I went online to my favorite local florist’s website and placed the order. The whole time all I could think about was what I had just done and whether or not it had been a mistake. My cell phone rang and my heart leapt with excitement when I saw who it was.

Max was calling me.

I ran into the conference room and closed the door. I wanted privacy.

“Hello?” I said, my heartbeat thundering in my chest. I’d missed him so much.

“Everly? How are you?”

My hands were shaking so bad that I dropped my phone. I swore and grabbed it off the floor and put it on the table. I put it on speakerphone and said, “I’m sorry, I dropped the phone.”

“No problem. I was calling to see how things were going. Was your boss happy about the event?”

My boss? Did he mean Adrian? Did he know what had just happened? That was ridiculous. There was no way Max could possibly be aware that Adrian had asked me out on an official date. But it was where my worried mind went. It shouldn’t have, though. Max and I were supposed to be just friends.

Right?

But why was he calling me now? Why hadn’t he called me at all over the last two days? This just seemed so random.

Or like he somehow knew what I’d just agreed to.

“I haven’t seen Claudia yet.” I hesitated, not knowing what else to say. Should I tell him? It felt cowardly not to. He’d had no problem telling me about his date with his evil, stupid ex-girlfriend.

But if things really had changed between us ...

The conference door suddenly swung open and Adrian leaned in. “Everly? What kind of food do you want for our date tonight?”

My mouth dropped open, my pulse hammering so hard in my wrist that I could actually see it, and I glanced down at the phone, fervently wishing that it might have somehow turned itself off.

It didn’t.

Max was still there and presumably had heard every word.

Adrian waited for an answer, and I pressed the mute button on my phone and told him, “I don’t care. Whatever you want is fine.”

He nodded and then closed the door. My heart was in my throat as I unmuted the call. “Max?”

“I’m here.” His voice sounded completely different. There was a detachment, almost a coldness, in his voice.

I wanted to ask him if he’d heard Adrian, but then he said, “So you finally got that date with your boss? Congratulations. It’s everything you wanted, right?”

My mind was floundering. How did I fix this? Max hadn’t reached out to me until this morning. Maybe if I’d turned my phone on andseen a bunch of missed messages from him, I wouldn’t have said yes to Adrian.

It wasn’t fair to blame him. I had done this. And I didn’t know how to undo it.

Tell him. I could actually hear Vella’s voice in my mind, encouraging me to say something. But the fear was stronger and paralyzed me into not speaking.

I had to say something, had to explain. I had been so scared that Max would reject me and had wanted so desperately to protect myself that I’d allowed myself to get hurt even worse by not being honest about what I did and did not want.

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