"No?"
"Connection isn’t special on Heaven. It’s expected. Caring and becoming involved in another person’s life, that’s what makes a connection meaningful. Earthlings are capable of that too. In fact, they’re better at it.”
"Really?” I wondered. “You aren’t just saying that?”
Frost almost smiled at me. “The only way to find out, I suppose, is to find out for yourself."
~
Lysander
The rehab center used generic clean scents for washing clothes and for the shampoo and soap they supplied to residents who didn’t bring their own. Max always smelled like cleanliness and art supplies, though his scent had taken on a new quality lately, something undefinable. I followed that enticing scent to the door as he knocked.
“Hey. Wasn’t expecting you tonight...” His face and the undertone of stale anxiety in his scent clued me in that this wasn’t purely a social call. “Is everything okay?”
"I’m not telling you everything," he blurted out either as an answer to my question or a confession.
"What?"
"I have a secret,” Max said. “Also I want sex with you. That’s not a secret, I don’t think, because of your nose."
"Uh, what?"
“Your face is very symmetrical and your hair looks so soft. You must smell what the whole Lysander package does to me, right?” He barely stopped to breathe, let alone give me a moment to answer. “Except there’s more you don’t know about me, and here we are being all romantic, and it feels wrong, me keeping secrets from you. That’s bad, right?”
“I…” I had no idea how to answer.
Mysteries always surrounded Max, though most of these were also still mysteriesto himtoo. I never even asked him to tell me everything, only what he felt comfortable telling me. Whether he withheld something he couldn’t tell meyetor found something he’d rather keep private, he completely deserved a few secrets. Especially as our relationship changed. Telling a neutral agent something was totally different than telling a boyfriend.
Max clearly felt guilty about whatever he withheld. Which left me trying to answer the questionis it bad you don’t know this thing you don’t know?What he held back could be anything from ‘I stole the pickle that came with your sandwich yesterday even though I told you I didn’t want it’ to ‘I just remembered that I’m a serial killer who left a trail of 14 bodies in 10 states.’
“I don’t have enough information to determine that,” I settled on. “For example, I’ll aways be keeping secrets from you, in one sense.”
“You will, in what sense?”
He looked both guilty and offended at the same time, causing me to fight a smile as I answered.
“With my job. Certain information is automatically considered privileged, and I wouldn’t share anything someone reveals in confidence anyway if it’s not mine to share.”
"Oh, you mean you won’t tell me all the dirty details about the next lunatic you meet on a case who decides to trust you.” Max nodded. “I get that."
I held the door open for him. “Would you like to come in?”
Max blinked and looked around to confirm he still stood outside in the hallway before rushing in and letting the words spill out. “This is personal stuff I’m keeping from you. I don’t even have a good reason for not telling you, I just, I can’t. That’s different, right? I suck, right?"
‘No,’ my instincts said. Putting on my best detective voice, I laid out the facts of the case.
"You aren’t ready to reveal something, but you don’t want to lie to me, so you’re letting me know there’s something you aren’t telling me so we don’t get closer while I don’t know there’s something you’re not telling me. At least if we get closer now I know there’s something I don’t know, I just don’t know exactly what I don’t know.”
Max nodded very seriously as I ran through it, then he frowned. "Okay, it sounds insane when you put it like that."
“Not really.” I might have teased him a little at the end, but his concern for me was genuine.
As far as he knew, nobody ever cared for him as much as me, that’s what he’d said. I was beginning to suspect the reverse was also true, that nobody ever cared for me as much as him.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me. "
"Is it really that easy?" Max asked.
