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“I’m not luring you.”
“Good, because you suck at it.”
I shake my head, laughing. “You, my friend, have been hanging out with me for too long.”
“Can’t argue with that,” he says.
We drive for a bit, Max flipping through the local radio stations, me finishing the bag of chips and looking at my Instagram until we lose reception, heading into Humboldt Redwoods State Park.
Then my mind begins to tumble a bit, going down a dark rabbit hole of the past and the future and what everything means.
“Were you ever in love with her?” I ask, breaking through the comfortable silence with something decidedly uncomfortable.
His eyes go round. “With who?” He glances at me, forehead creased. “With your sister? The hell, Ada. No.” He shakes his head. “No.”
“You did care about her.”
“And I still do. Where are you going with this?”
“You didn’t love her, but you slept with her.”
“Sweetheart, please stop clutching your pearls.”
“I’m not clutching anything, I just want to understand why you did that to her.”
His jaw goes tight, brow lowered. “I’ve discussed this with her. And with Dex. It’s in the past. My only excuse is I thought I was doing the right thing at the time.”
“Took one for the team?” He shoots me a furtive look. “You used her, Max.”
“I never said I was proud of it.”
I mull that over, staring out the window. Seconds pass by, the car chugging along.
Max clears his throat. “Listen. Sometimes in life we do things that are wrong in order to make some things right. And sometimes those things fall apart and all you’re left with is everything that’s wrong.”
I crack open the bottle of Dr. Pepper, the sound of bubbles filling the silence of the car. I take a sip, feeling the sugar rush through me. “I used to think you were a villain, you know.”
“Oh yeah?” he says, glancing at me, brow raised. “And now what do you think? Still the villain?”
I give my head a tiny shake. “No. You’re just a man.”
“Well, good,” he says after a moment, bringing his attention back to the road. “That’s really all I want to be. There’s something to be said for being a simple person living a simple life.”
“You really think either of us are simple people living simple lives?”
He shakes his dead. “No, I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I can’t aspire to it. Think of all the towns we’ve driven past so far. Tiny little places in the middle of nowhere. Think about the people who live behind all those front doors. All these lives that don’t have to deal with a fraction of what we deal with.”
“If you think those people’s lives are easy, you’ve got another thing coming,” I tell Max. “You’ve been around for how long and that’s the impression you get from humanity? That living is easy?”
“No, darlin’, living is hard, it’s dying that’s easy. I finally know that better than anyone.” He pauses, kneading the steering wheel with his palm. “Doesn’t stop me from dreaming though.”
“And so, what does your dream look like? Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re not going to go ghost if I’m not around.”
“Do you have to not be around?” he says, smiling faintly, eyes pinning me in place. “Would make the dream much better if you were there.”
I swallow, feeling my stomach flutter. “Okay. So, say I’m there. Lurking in the background.”
“I don’t know. I’ve said the beach bar in Mexico would be a good start. Or maybe open a hotel somewhere. I want to be in a place where people are always passing through. A place where no one gets suspicious.”
“What would they get suspicious about? The fact that you gulp down scalding hot coffee like it’s no big deal?”
“Well, in the past, it was the fact that I don’t age.”
“Oh, right.” I sit back in my seat and pass him the Dr. Pepper. He takes it from me, fingers brushing against mine, creating a charge that makes the hair on my arms raise beneath my sweater. “Are you aging now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to?”
He sucks on his lower lip for a moment, eyes trained to the road. He nods. “Yeah. I think I do.”
I mull that over. About how long he’s gone without aging, only to die and come back and now he’s half alive and half dead and now he wants to age. He’s seen what it’s like to die and yet doesn’t want to live forever anymore.
The man is loneliness personified.
All the decades, all the centuries, having to keep moving on while leaving loved one after loved one behind. I’m starting to understand why he’d give that up for Rose. Because he didn’t want to live forever if he was going to keep being alone.
And that just makes me think about Jay.
That the lonely life is the life that Jay chose over one with me.
