He was falling in love with her? Not despite her ambition, but because of it? It was the triumphant, victorious look on her face when she’d beat him in bowling that made him realize it?

“I— ” she said, and then stopped. She hated how Max’s face lit up and then fell when she didn’t finish the sentence, but she had no idea what to say.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to say something back,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say all of that just now, obviously. Or maybe not obviously, I don’t know, we still don’t know each other all that well, which might make everything I just said sound ridiculous, but— ”

“It didn’t sound ridiculous,” she said in a quiet voice.

His eyes drilled into hers, and a smile slowly dawned over his face.

“Good,” he said. “Now, let’s talk about something else. Um, how’s the firm going? Unless you don’t want to talk about that, that might still be stressful, um, how’s the food pantry, did you go there this week?”

She took a sip of beer and tried to pull her mind away from what Max had just said.

“The firm is going … okay. Ellie and I are both working every avenue to get business, which is all we can do, and the handful of clients we have seem to like our work a lot, which is key. We’ve gotten a few small projects lately, and that’s promising. I’m still anxious about it, though. I just wish we had one more big client; then maybe I could take a deep breath.” She picked up a nacho. “And yeah, I did go to the food pantry this week. I’m really glad I started going there—I think Jamila, the woman who runs it, and I are becoming actual friends, which is great. I told you about her; she’s the one who helped me get the car. And she had this really great idea for getting teens more involved with their work.”

For the rest of their time in the bowling alley, they drank beer, ate nachos, and talked about everything but the thing they were both thinking about. She told him about Jamila’s idea, and the birthday cake they’d had for one of the other regular volunteers that week; he told her about the protest signs he’d seen that week that had almost made him laugh out loud on national television. And every time they made eye contact, they both looked away, like if their eyes met for more than a few seconds, they’d have to stop talking and laughing and pretending that everything between them hadn’t completely changed in the past hour.

They finished the game—Olivia won handily, though Max had gotten a lot better over the course of the game—and Max touched Olivia’s hand.