For Max, this pitch with Lina signifies his chance to break out of Andrew’s shadow and lead his own path. One sibling was always used as a measure of success for the other a proverbial yardstick. They spent their entire life competing against each other where neither of them were able to become their own person.

We learn throughout the story that Max and Andrew are not as close as siblings as you’d expect. Previously, they worked in separate states but later joined their mom’s firm. Max and Andrew both work at their mother’s communications firm, Atlas Communications. The second theme we see is sibling rivalry. Not that anyone would expect her to jump for joy or cry tears of joy at every wedding, but lack of emotion in the middle of such an important life event for many is noticeable.

This too becomes her blessing and her curse because this helps her focus on making sure the weddings she plans go off without a hitch, but at the same time, can come off as cold and impersonal to her clients. Due to this, she’s built a wall around herself to stop from experiencing any kind of emotion in her job.

She echoes the sentiment that women, especially Black/Latine/women of color, aren’t allowed to show emotion in professional settings (or at all to be honest) – especially male dominated fields – or otherwise they’ll be perceived as weak, incapable, irrational, etc. Both a blessing and a curse because this event led her to forming her wedding planning business. We learn early on in the story that Lina has chosen to not show any sort of emotion in her work as a wedding planner, due to an emotional outburst at work which resulted in her losing her old job. One of the major themes that runs throughout the story is emotions.

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