Another Sunday – another story

Say It Louder

I was straightening the pegboard display behind the register when I heard a crash of wire, a tumble of wrappers, and sighed. I told my boss the chip display was too close to the counter and someone would knock it over. A man’s voice said, “I’m so sorry.”

I froze.

I knew that voice. I’d dreamed of hearing it say those words for a long time, but not because Max fucking Benson tipped over my potato chip shelf. Why here? Why now?

Not turning was tempting. I could pretend I heard nothing, knew nothing, just keep on sorting those handy flashlight-keychains on the little pegs and let Max pick up after himself. Except Max had always been the magnetic north I followed, and apparently nothing had changed in eight years. Unable to stop myself, I sucked in a breath and pivoted toward him.

Max looked up from where he stooped, righting the wire display rack. “Oh, hey, I just caught the edge of this with my—” I saw the moment when he recognized me. His face, a little colored from the embarrassment of dumping sixty bags of snack food, went pale. He let go and the rack clattered back to the floor, smooshing a few packs of ripple chips.

“Hey, Max,” I said, playing it cool despite the pounding of my heart. “Aren’t you rich enough yet to have minions buying your…” I eye the items he dropped. “…toilet plunger?”

After eight years, I wasn’t sure if I’d get a frown, a blank stare, or one of Max’s famed sharp comebacks. I didn’t expect him to stare at me in my “Helpful Hardware Man” apron, shudder, and bolt out of the doors.

A screech of brakes heralded a blue SUV desperately trying not to hit Max as he ran into the parking lot. Max leaped back but there was a thump and he ended up in a heap on the sidewalk by the doors.

“Shit.” I vaulted the counter and raced outside, my breath caught in my throat.

The SUV’s woman driver scrambled out of her car toward us as I bent to check Max, reaching for his pulse. “He ran in front of me! I couldn’t stop!”

Max pushed up on an elbow before I touched him, to my infinite relief. “Ouch. Fuck.”

The woman squatted. “Are you okay? I’ll call 911.”

“No!” Max sat up despite my efforts to keep him flat, pushing me away. “My fault. I wasn’t looking. I’m fine.“

“You’re not fine,” I snapped. “You just got hit by a car.”

“Bumped. I mostly tripped over the curb jumping out of the way.”

“Are you sure?” The driver peered into Max’s face. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Positive.” Max pulled together a smile, the crooked, rueful one that showed one long eyetooth. I used to tell him it made him look like a drunken vampire, and pretend it didn’t charm me at all. “You were going slow. A few scrapes and bruises, I’m sure, but nothing more. And you shouldn’t have to bother your insurance with this, when it was my fault.”

“Well.” A small child’s wail from the SUV made the woman turn and look.

“You should take care of your kid,” Max said. “Go ahead. Go on home.”

“I… I don’t know… Here.” She pulled out her phone. “Let me at least give you my contacts.”

“Give them to me,” I said before Max could react. “As a neutral third party.”

“Oh. All right.” When I told her my number, she texted. A ping in my pocket marked the message landing.

I dug my phone out of my pocket, checked, and replied. Max was frowning at me but I told her, over the increasing screams of her child, “Right, we’re good. Thank you.”

Max said, “Go ahead. Andrew will let you know if there’s any questions, but I promise, I’m fine. You’re not at fault.“

“And he’s a lawyer,” I said, not keeping all the acid out of my tone. “So he should know.”

The woman fluttered a few more seconds, then straightened and hurried over to open the back of the SUV and talk to her toddler.

Max curled his lip at me, whether with regard to screaming children, getting smacked by a bumper, or my just existing in the same space as him, I couldn’t tell.

I’d have been perfectly willing to leave him there on the sidewalk and go back to work, except he hadn’t gotten up yet and I knew Max. The man was perfectly capable of hiding a broken leg, if revealing it would complicate his life, or if a later reveal suited his purposes. This wasn’t my store— I was just Howard’s employee— but no one would be able to say we didn’t give appropriate care to an injured customer.

“You should let me call the paramedics,” I told Max, as the woman returned to her car and pulled away. “If you’re planning to sue that poor woman later, you should know we have excellent security footage of the front here to show you taking a dive.” That part was a lie. Howard was cheap, and the old camera he refused to replace was fucked up again. But Max couldn’t know that, and maybe this incident would finally get Howard to shell out a few bucks.

“Sue her?” Max blinked up at me. His eyes were still that same blue, his lashes still unfairly long and dark.

“Sure. Why not? Pain and suffering. Grab that kid’s college fund.”

“What kind of monster do you think I am?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Turns out, I never knew you at all. You do like success and money.”

“Fuck.” Max squeezed his head between his hands, pulled up his knees, and hunched over, pressing his forehead to them.

That pose felt like he’d grabbed my chest and squeezed, instead of his head. How many times had I seen him sit like that, back when we were eight, and twelve, and fifteen? When the world, especially his shitty parents, overwhelmed him, he used to go sit in a corner and hunch over like that, elbows winged out, fingers digging into the short ragged haircut his mom gave him. His haircut now had probably set him back a day’s worth of my wages, but his hands scrabbled into it the same way.

I hardened my heart. Max was a long way past fifteen now. “You can’t sit on the sidewalk. You’re blocking the doors. Can you get up?”

Behind me, I heard Howard’s voice. “Drew? What happened?”

“This customer tripped on the curb,” I said, offering a tiny bit of the truth, eyes fixed on Max to see what he would say.

“That’s right,” Max agreed, straightening enough to look past me at Howard. “I’m okay, though.”

“We have a big first-aid kit inside the store,” Howard said. “But perhaps you should call a paramedic.”

“No.”

“You’re bleeding. Look at your hand.”

Howard was right. Max’s right thumb and index fingers were smeared with blood. Max stared at them. “Huh.” He patted the back of his head and came up with more. “Well that sucks. This shirt‘s a Brunello Cucchinelli.” Turning to me, he raised an eyebrow. “Andrew, can you check the back and see if it’s stained.”

What am I, a mirror? I’d been something like that too long.

I didn’t move, but Howard fluttered his hands. “Drew, please, can you convince the gentleman he should get medical help?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Max, can I convince you to do anything you don’t want to? Or not to do something you do want to do?”

Max frowned.

“Is he a friend of yours?” Howard asked.

“I used to know him, long ago,” I said.

“Well, I’m going to clock you out,” Howard told me. “It’s only ten minutes to the end of your shift. I’ll wait so you get the full day’s pay. Can you please take care of your friend so he doesn’t come back and… cause problems for me.” I figured Howard had censored sue my ass off at the last moment, so as not to give Max ideas. He didn’t need to know Max had those ideas when he was ten.

I bristled at the idea of being forced to spend any more time with Max, but I couldn’t say no in the face of Howard’s worried, hand-wringing anxiety. “I’ll make sure he’s fine.”

“Good man.” Howard looked back and forth between us, then as a customer walked by with a curious glance and headed inside after her.

I folded my arms, so I wouldn’t reach out to Max. “Can you actually stand up?”

He pushed to his feet cautiously and hobbled a couple of steps. “Nothing broken. Gonna have some good bruises.”

“Are you sure?”

He shot me a look from under his mussed hair. “I have plenty of experience. So yeah.”

That statement edged right up to things we’d never discussed out loud. It shouldn’t have made a little ache swell in my chest. I focused on how he was moving. “Right leg, huh? And your head.”

“And my fucking elbows.” He raised his arms to inspect skinned areas on both arms through torn sleeves.

“Blood’s gonna be the least of that shirt’s problems.”

“Right. Fuck.” He limped a couple more steps. “Okay, heading home.”

“Do you need that plunger you were carrying? Or the step stool?”

Max sighed. “The stool can wait, but fuck, the plunger.”

Not even for you. The old quip died on my lips. “I’ll fetch it.”

“Let me get my card.” Max dug in his back pocket.

I waved him off. “Employee credit will run to a nine-dollar toilet tool. Wait there.”

Going inside the store was good. In there, I was surrounded by my new life, not face to face with the ruins of my old one. Howard had rearranged the shelf unit and was stiffly picking up bags of chips. Max’s stepladder and plunger were stood up against the wall. I tossed my apron under the counter, picked up the plunger, then grabbed the ladder too. “Hey, Howard, I’m going to bring these out to that guy who got hurt in the parking lot. Put them on my account?”

Howard looked up from the register. “I’ll comp them to him for free. We don’t want any lawsuits about our curb.”

“No, don’t do that,” I said. “On my dime, please.” I didn’t explain why I wanted Max to owe me, even if it was a measly thirty-five bucks.

Howard hesitated, then said, “Sure. How is he?”

Stubborn. Obnoxious. Terrible. Still heartbreakingly beautiful. “I think he’s fine.”

I carried the items out into the lot. Max had crossed to a new Lexus but stood leaning on the open driver’s door, flexing his right leg. When he spotted me, he stood up fast and I heard him hiss as he shifted his weight.

“Hurts, huh?” I carried the ladder around to his trunk. “Want to pop this?”

He pressed the fob in his hand, and the lid opened smoothly and silently. The inside was tidy and still smelled fresh. I didn’t look over at my own 2007 compact car. The ladder fit in the trunk with a bit of fiddling. I added the plunger and slammed the lid, harder than strictly necessary.

“Thanks,” Max said. “I’ll be back and pay for them later.”

“Taken care of,” I told him.

He made no move to get into the car. I didn’t head back to the store. Our staring contest hit the third minute before he said, “Don’t you need to work?”

“I’m clocked out.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t you need to drive back to your luxury condo?” Oops, way to out myself for stalking him. But it’d been a long time since I checked Max’s social media, seeing shots of the fancy apartment he rented after signing with McClosky, Wellburton, and Royce, and the condo he bought 3 years later.

I was over you. Why’d you have to show up now?

“I have a house,” he said. “A fixer-upper. Hence—” He gestured toward the trunk.

“Must not need much fixing if a plunger’s all it takes.”

“I have a DYI starter kit at home. Without a plunger.”

“Go you.” I folded my arms and eyed him. He still showed no sign of getting into the car. A trickle of blood ran down his neck and bled into the collar of his stupid-expensive shirt. I realized he wasn’t bearing any weight on his right leg and his forehead was furrowed with pain. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I strode toward Max. As I neared him, he flinched back just enough for me to notice. Sure he straightened an instant later, but what the fuck? “Are you seriously worried I might punch you?”

“You’d have every right,” he muttered.

“Oh, hell, no,” I snapped. “We’re not doing that here and now.” Or ever, if I have my way. I held out a hand. “Give me the keys. I’m driving you home so you don’t ruin someone else’s day the way you did that poor woman in the SUV.”

He jerked his chin higher. “It’s keyless. And I can drive.”

I swiped at that drop of blood, pretending I didn’t care that my finger touched Max’s skin for the first time in eight years. I showed him my fingertip, then wiped it on the front of his shirt.

He shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“I’m not letting you drive. Go round to the other side and get in, or I’ll stand behind your bumper and call the cops.”

“Who do you think you are?”

“The guy whose seen you burn precious things down, because you can’t say you’re wrong.”

I’d have taken more satisfaction getting that flinch from Max if he hadn’t been wearing his I have the headache from hell frown.

“Go on, get in.” I gestured.

I fully expected more argument, but after a long breath, Max rounded the car and opened the back door instead of the front.

Is he feeling crappy enough to have to lie down? If so, he was getting a ride straight to the ER. “What are you doing?”

“I may‘ve ruined a thousand dollar shirt, but I’m not getting blood on these seats.” He pulled out a folded blanket and draped it down from the tan leather headrest over the passenger side.

“You spent a thousand bucks for that shirt?” I got in, sliding the driver’s seat forward to fit my shorter legs. “You got ripped off.”

“Fuck you.”

“These seats are nice, though.” A little spark of the immature twenty-four-year-old I’d been wanted to scrape a fingernail down one. Luckily, thirty-two came with a bit more sense. I buckled up and put the car in gear. “Click it or ticket, bozo.”

Max snapped his belt too.

“Which way?” I eased the Lexus backward out of the parking space.

“Left on Grand.”

The drive passed in silence other than his terse directions. I felt unbalanced, caught between the past and the present. For our last eight years, I’d sat beside Max in one car or another— the first beater I bought from my uncle, the pickup of his brother’s that Max slaved a whole summer for that only ran on alternate Tuesdays, the car we went halves on in college, though it was in his name. Most often he drove, because Max hated giving up control even to me, but sometimes I had, and the echoes of driving city streets with Max a foot away made every hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I was more than ready to escape when he said, “Beyond the big tree. Pull into the drive.”

As I bounced us up the too-steep curb of a small rambler, he leaned over to push the door opener clipped to the driver-side visor. The garage door rolled open. I drove forward since it would be stupid to stop in the driveway. The second stall was empty. The big door rolled down behind us at Max’s button press.

I switched off the ignition. Then, there we were in a dim garage, illuminated by the Lexus’s cabin lights and headlights.

Max twisted to look out and up, and swore. “That opener keeps blowing bulbs. I’ve put in two already.”

“Might have a short,” I said, as if Max was just another customer in the hardware. “Better get an electrician to check it.”

“I’d never have thought of that.” For a moment, the sneering curl of Max’s lips was cuttingly familiar, then he slumped. “Sorry. Thanks for the ride.”

He wasn’t welcome and it had been a problem, although in ways I was not about to explain. So I said nothing.

Max just sat there, not opening the car door, and for some reason, I did the same, staring out the windshield at the cinder block wall ahead.

Then Max cleared his throat. “For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry.”

“Uh–huh.” A bubbling pit of fury I could drown in woke inside me. Silence was safest.

“I walked into that hardware store and… well, I never expected to see you again, and certainly not there.”

“Uh–huh.” I was giving him a rope long enough to throttle him with.

“That’s why I… I was shocked. You were always so confident, so good at getting through obstacles, I never imagined all these years later, you’d be a lowly cashier in retail. I didn’t think it would matter that much. I’m sorry.”

Fury and disbelief broke free as laughter, a wave of barking, gasping hilarity that I couldn’t hope to control. I slapped the leather-bound steering wheel and threw my head back, my eyes watering.

“What?” Out of the corner of my blurry eyes, I could see Max staring at me.

I wanted to shout and set him straight and more, but then I saw the blood on his collar and remembered he was hurt. I gasped down to the realm of speech. “Never mind, Max. You’re home. Stay put, watch for signs of a concussion, heal up, and stay away from me.” I’d waited eight years for this moment, but I’d never been able to punch a guy when he was down.

“No way.” Max grabbed my arm. “What the hell was so funny?”

“Forget it. Go clean up and rest.”

“Fuck that.” He hadn’t let go and he shook me, his grip tight around my forearm. “Do you have any idea how hard I find it to say sorry? You can’t just laugh me off—“

“Watch me.” I yanked my arm free.

“You ghosted me,” he said as if that put him in the right. “You owe me.“

“I don’t owe you a fucking thing.”

“An explanation, at least. That much.”

“For laughing?”

“That’ll do as a start.”

“You did me a big fucking favor when you made me quit law school.”

“I didn’t make you. And what favor? You’re broke and working retail, at the mercy of Karens who’ll ask to speak with your manager if you tell them you don’t have a left-handed screwdriver.”

He wasn’t wrong about the Karens, but… “You know nothing about my life. I work four days a week at the hardware, yeah, and sometimes customers suck, but my boss is great, and he gives massive employee discounts, which is how I paid for your step stool, by the way.”

“I didn’t ask you to—“

“You’ll take it and like it.” Crap. That was something I’d said to Max as a joke, in a very different way, all those years ago. I ignored the memory. “That job helps pay some bills, but when I’m off, I’m off and then…” I dug in my pocket for my phone, scrolled through to my website, pulled up a page with prices, and shoved the screen in front of his face.

He steadied my hand, peering closely. “Is that your artwork?”

“Yep.”

“And you’re selling it?”

“Yep.”

He glanced at me, the quirk of his eyebrow deadly and familiar. “Anyone buying it?”

“I make forty grand a year off the art, mostly for book covers and promotional pieces and websites. That’s chump change to you, but with the hardware paychecks, it pays all my bills and I love what I do. Can you say the same?”

Max squeezed his eyes shut.

I pocketed the phone and charged on. “I’d have been miserable as a lawyer. I only went to law school—” Because you were there. Things I wouldn’t say. “—because it seemed like a way out of the poverty trap. But it’s just a different kind of trap. If you hadn’t fucked me over, I’d have wasted another year, and a bunch of loan money, on something I hated and was mediocre at.”

“You weren’t mediocre.”

This laugh was more bitter. “Right. Grades in the middle of the pack, cramming all day every day, while you cruised through right at the top, Mr. Law Review editor.”

“Well, I had the motivation. You might’ve been looking for a way out of our neighborhood, but I was looking for a hell of a lot more.”

“I remember. You were going to become a prosecutor, step up to the plate and make the users and abusers pay. How did that go over with the high-powered defense firm of McClosky, Wellburton, and Royce?”

Eyes still closed, looking pained, he flinched.

“Never mind.” I wasn’t going to feel sorry for Max, ever, and I needed to get out of there before I did something I regretted. “Come on, show me you can stand up on your own.” I swung myself out of the car, went around to his side, and yanked his door open.

Max eased out of the car slowly, clutching the door as he stood. His first step away from the car, his right leg crumpled under him and only my fast grab kept him from hitting the concrete. We muttered, “Fuck,” together.

“Look, just leave me be,” Max said. “I just stiffened up. I can make it inside all right.”

“Not a chance. You’ll fall, hit your head, and sue me for reckless endangerment.”

“Screw you.”

“You have. Many times, in many interesting ways. Didn’t seem to make any difference, did it?” The tightness of my throat caught me by surprise.

Max said nothing more as I helped him hobble to two steps up into the house. I braced his elbow as he unlocked and led the way in.

“Couch is that way.” He pointed down a narrow hallway.

That seemed like as good an answer as any, and I helped him over there. He was walking better than those first few steps, but not steadily, as we reached the living room, which looked like half furniture showroom, half construction project. The couch was a big deep sectional. I led him to it and paused at the last minute, hanging onto him and he tried to slump down. “Wait, blood on upholstery.”

“Crap.” He swayed in my grip. “Drop cloth.” In the direction he indicated, I saw a roll of plastic sheeting.

“Right.” I fetched it, draped an end of the couch, and lowered him onto it. Echoes of all those memories, a thousand moments from seventeen years together, made me think of fetching him pain pills, water, a washcloth. But those moments had burned to ash in what he’d done. I stepped back, “There. I hope not to see you around.”

“Andrew?” Max’s voice came thin and low. “I’m sorry. I was, pretty much right away. Texted you to say so a dozen times, called you.”

“I’d blocked you by then.”

“I figured. And when I got home, you’d ghosted me.”

“You deserved it.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

Despite the way it’d worked out for the best, despite how unhappy I’d have been by his side at McClosky, Wellburton, and Royce, I had to ask, “Why, Max? You knew that legal externship was special, only offered to a few applicants. Ms. Spence gave me the application link as a gesture of how she felt about my writing. Her friend the justice had quirky criteria for selection, referral only. You stole that information, stole my chance.”

Max had closed his eyes again. “You said it yourself, though. There was pretty much no chance you’d have been selected. Your Write-on score was good but not great, your grades the same, Ms. Spence liked that you could think outside the box but the application essay wasn’t aimed at your strengths.”

I gritted my teeth. I did not need to be thrown back into those days of massive self-doubt. “I guess we’ll never know.”

Max barreled on, “If you weren’t going to be chosen, then what difference did it make if you lost out to one of the other applicants or to me?”

“Difference? The difference of knowing you took something I told you in confidence, something I was excited about and that made me feel good about myself for one fucking moment, and you stole it and made it about yourself.”

Max pinched the bridge of his nose a moment. “Okay. Yes. I did know you wouldn’t like it.”

“Wouldn’t like it?”

“Would be mad. But I didn’t think I’d come back from the interview and find you gone. The apartment empty. All your stuff. The U said you’d withdrawn. You’d blocked me everywhere. Blocked Jamie and Kelsey and Mark too.”

“You told Jamie and Kelsey and Mark our personal business?”

“No. Of course not. Just, you were gone. That wasn’t a secret. So I asked casually if they knew what you were up to online, and they said no.”

I wondered idly if they’d given him a hard time, my “roommate” who had no clue where I’d vanished to. We’d kept our relationship under wraps, but there had to have been some of them who’d guessed. I didn’t much care, though. In that cutthroat atmosphere, none of my classmates had been worth keeping in touch with.

I turned away so I wouldn’t look at Max, at his cut-glass cheekbones and strong hands and that dark hair with a little blood now matting the back. “Why?” I meant to shout, but the word came out barely a whisper. “You were a shoe-in for any opportunity you wanted. Why go after the one thing where I had a chance?”

“Except you didn’t— Fuck,” he said at my involuntary sound. “Andrew—“

“I go by Drew now.”

“Drew. Honestly, you know you weren’t going to win that one. And if so, then why did it matter if I did?”

“If you don’t understand—“

“I might’ve but I was so obsessed…” I heard Max shift position, the plastic wrinkling under him. “My dad was awarded parole that week.”

“What?” I didn’t turn, but my muscles tightened. “I thought there was no chance he’d get out for years.”

“Shouldn’t have been, but I don’t know. Overcrowding, some pastor who claimed dear old Dad found Jesus. I should’ve gone and done a victim statement again, or convinced Mom to, no matter the excuses she always made, but it was supposed to be a formality. Next thing you know, he was scheduled to get out on the streets.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“We had midterms. And I wasn’t sure how to feel. It didn’t seem real.”

“That’s still not an excuse for what you did.” Although perhaps a reason. Max’s father had shaped him in all kinds of agonizing ways. Even before we were lovers, I’d spent nights in his bed telling him that his dad wasn’t walking through the door.

“No, I know. I just felt like I needed to be more, do more, have everything. I needed a plan and proof I could make it and this externship fell in my lap—“

“Was stolen out of my desk drawer.”

“Just the link. I put in the time, did the essay, did the interview.”

“Did you get it in the end?” I’d always been curious, and refused to let myself look. Had Max destroyed us for nothing?

“Yeah. Was great. Intense, which was good because I was a zombie any time I wasn’t working. I kept thinking I saw you around campus, all the way to the end of the semester, hearing my phone chime and it wasn’t you. I imagined you’d come back. The externship let me bury myself in work.”

I wasn’t sure if I was glad, or furious he hadn’t been taught a lesson by cheating and then losing.

“If you had come back to our apartment, to school, I’d have begged you to forgive me. Knelt on the carpet and offered to let you kick the crap out of me.”

“Because that’s a healthy way to apologize.”

“I was a little screwed up back then.”

Or a lot. We’d both known that. “But would you have given up the externship if I asked?”

He was silent for several breaths. “Probably not. Probably I’d have thought that wasn’t reasonable for you to demand.”

“Wouldn’t have fixed how you got it in the first place, anyhow.”

“No.” The plastic crinkled under his ass again. “I’m glad I have this chance now to apologize right. Can I say I’m sorry?”

You already have, several times, none of them enough. I said, “I guess.”

“Andrew— Drew, I’m so, so sorry I took advantage of having access to your things to steal information given to you. I’m sorry I applied for something you wanted, knowing I almost certainly had a better shot. I’m sorry I put winning at the lawschool game ahead of you.”

I nodded a few times, staring at the half-painted wall in front of me. Max never apologized straight up, never admitted he was wrong, except with a sideways look and an ambiguous phrase. I guess he’s grown up since then, too.

“It’s taken me a lot of time to get my shit together.”

“You call running out into the road in front of a car together?”

“Hah. Probably not. You were the one last unfinished piece, the huge regret I couldn’t fix, and then there you were and I panicked.”

“You’re four inches taller than me. I was hardly going to beat you up in a hardware store.”

“No. But you were looking at me like I was disgusting and could fuck right off. And some last little hope in me died.”

“Hope? Seriously?’

He chuckled and it sounded wet. “Stupid, right? But there was never anyone like you. No other guy who would call me on my shit and make me like it. No one else I wanted to be a better man for.”

I’d spent a lot of time in the first couple of years post law school dreaming about meeting with Max and either slapping him in the face or having him kneeling and begging for forgiveness. Then those dreams had faded, but yeah, there’d been hope in them too. I’d been disgusted with myself, wanting Max, but some habits are hard to break. “Okay. Apology delivered. You said last unfinished piece. Is this like a Twelve-step thing?” Max had liked his booze back when, but he’d never let it get out of control. Control meant safety to Max, and he’d held himself to rigid standards.

“No. It’s a fix-Max’s-life thing. Remember when you asked about McClosky, Wellburton, and Royce? Well, I quit two years ago. I’m with the prosecutor’s office now.”

I did turn at that. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.” Max gestured at the work-in-progress room. “Thus the fixer-upper, not the condo.”

“Well.” I blinked. “I’m glad you followed your dream.” I held back better years late than never because I’d always known how to hurt Max and I wouldn’t do it now.

“Me too. I’m in therapy too. Unpacking a lot of childhood shit.”

“Oh, I am glad.” This time I could say it wholeheartedly.

“I’m probably always going to be a little screwed up.”

“You’re working on it. That counts for a lot.” I had to ask, “Your dad? Did he ever come sniffing around you or your mom?”

“Nope. I got her a restraining order and a panic button, that called to her brother since she never wanted me all up in her life, but Dad didn’t ever show. Completed his parole and vanished. I spent a few years jumping at shadows but it’s getting better… I’m afraid he’s got some new family to victimize, and yet I’m so glad it’s not us. That’s pretty awful, right?”

“That’s pretty human,” I told him.

“Mom moved in with her brother Nate. He’s a dickhead, but he’s tough and he has tough friends. She’s safer there.”

“Isn’t he the one you said hated gay people?”

“Yeah. Doesn’t matter. I don’t visit her often and we go out to eat or something.”

I thought it did matter that his mom was living with someone who’d put Max down every day, but I no longer had the right to comment. “I’m glad she’s okay.”

“Yeah. I’m trying to get her to go into therapy too, but she doesn’t listen to me.” Max ran a hand over his hair, then winced and looked at his fingers. “Crap, I’m a mess. You should go do whatever you do after work, and I’ll get cleaned up.” His eyes met mine. “I’m glad I saw you today, and glad I got to finally say what a jerk I was, and how you deserved better.”

I deserved you. Max hadn’t been able to give me all of him back then, but he’d never have been able to say half of what he’d told me tonight either. This Max wasn’t the man who stared at me when I said, How could you do that to me? and earnestly replied, Well, someone’s going to win and if it’s not going to be you, why shouldn’t it be me? The sadness in the depth of those blue eyes marked a lot of water under the bridge.

I walked away from Max, but not out the door. His kitchen yielded a glass of water, his bathroom a couple of damp towels, a bottle of pain relievers, and first aid supplies. I brought my haul back to the living room and set them on the low table in front of Max.

He stared up at me. “Thanks, but why?”

“Because.” Because neither of us is the man we were back then, but that’s not a bad thing. I’d never found another man I felt the same way about, not even close. And at my most angry, I’d still ached for the Max I once knew. I told him, “Give me your phone.”

He unlocked and handed it over. I had no idea if that was the same number I’d eventually deleted. Didn’t matter. Moving forward. I punched in mine and sent myself a text. “There. Now I’m going to get a Lyft home. You get yourself cleaned up, get some rest. Text me hourly for the next several hours, so I know you didn’t develop a brain bleed or something.”

Max’s blue eyes lit up. “Aw, you still care.”

“Aw, I don’t want a cutthroat lawyer suing poor Harold.”

“And if I survive the night? Can I text you tomorrow.”

“I guess.”

“And ask you out?”

I pulled in a long slow breath. I’d put a lot of time and tears and anger into missing Max, and I wasn’t sure that could be erased. But as he sat there, not pushing me, just waiting, his lush lips parted and his gaze steady, I knew I’d hate myself if I walked away again. “For coffee. Or lunch. No booze, no sex, no assumptions.”

“All right.” Max raised his chin. “Thank you. I’ve got a lot of regrets for someone who’s fucking thirty-two, and that betrayal was a big one, but I’ve never regretted loving you.”

I couldn’t say the same. But I could also remember how it felt to be part of me-and-Max, and for all the joy I took in my art, and all the friends I’d made and fun I’d had, nothing had come close to that. For a shot at that gold ring, I was willing to take a chance.

As I headed toward the front door, I told him, “Texts. Hourly. Call me tomorrow and we’ll go from there.”

I wasn’t going to look back, but as I pulled his front door open, I couldn’t resist a turn of my head. Max had his water glass in hand and when he saw me look, he raised it in a toast toward me, before washing down a couple of pain pills. “Thanks, Drew,” he said. Then his smile quirked. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to plunger my toilet before you go?”

A grin split my face. “Not on your life. With all your experience stirring shit, that job’s right up your alley.”

Max nodded and said softly, “I missed you.”

In that moment, my head still spinning from the last hour, and Max’s blue eyes on me, I had to give him the truth. “I missed you too. So damned much.” Then I stepped outside, let the door close on my past. I hoped that the buzz of my phone in my pocket heralded a better kind of future.

####

 

 

—