AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Maybe that’s why you love to be photographed so much now,” Trina sort of sneered. “Trying to make up for the attention you didn’t get?”
Their mother gasped, but I forced myself to smile. “Maybe. I know you teach drama, but maybe you should have majored in psychology. Seems like you might be on to something.”
Everybody laughed, even though I hadn’t really meant to be funny. Still, it was better because it set Hayley at ease. It was finally time for dinner. Amazingly enough, in a room of people being kind and nice, the only person I could focus on was the one who didn’t like me. Like she took all the air from the room and only she remained in it.
Max bent over. “Sorry about that. Trina is snarky.”
“No big deal.” I was good at faking happy. I’d lost my appetite, but I’d fake eating too.
Maybe I wasn’t cut out for being around big families.
The snow got worse,and we all left quickly after dinner. Max drove through it like it was no problem, and we were back at his place before I knew it.
“My family is a lot.” He told me after we’d settled inside. “You were great with them. Particularly when my father started grilling you at dinner about why you had never been out on a fishing boat. Handled that like a champ, although you should expect him to insist you go fishing with him this summer.”
I doubted I would be there by then. Certainly, Max couldn’t still be there. He had to get back to his restaurant. “Your family is amazing.” I meant that. Completely. “And they adore you.”
“Even in my bad moods. They’re used to them, I’m afraid. Everyone knows I’m just a little fucked up.” I stared out the window at the snow. Amazing how it felt like I was going up as I stared at it. I hadn’t noticed the optical illusion since I was a kid. Then again, I hadn’t really been focused on the snow. It was more like something that stopped me from doing whatever I needed to do and kept me stuck inside.
Max came up behind me. “Trina was intense tonight. She was there with me when—”
“I fucked things up,” I said, interrupting him. “Yes, I remembered that, and if I hadn’t, I would’ve figured it out fast. Don’t worry about it. Not everyone has to like me.” Even if I wished they did. Maybe she’d been right about my need for attention.
He put his arms around me. “You did well with it.”
“I’m not sure if I should say thank you. I didn’t know I was being judged.”
Max laughed. “Fair enough.”
“Why do you call yourself fucked up?” Maybe it was the snow making me brave enough to ask questions I should have kept to myself, but he said we were friends— currently my least favorite F word—and friends talked to each other.
He put his chin on my shoulder. “Lots of reasons. The nightmares. The bad moods. The fact that I absolutely hate the thought of the things that other people want.”
Well, that last one was a new piece of information. “Like what?”
“Like I don’t think I could get through a week if I had to do the marriage thing.” He stepped back and went into the kitchen.
I took a beat before I asked the obvious. “The marriage thing?”
“The wholewhat do you want for dinner tonight, honey?How would that even work? I’m cooking for hundreds of people. Or thewhere should we go on vacation?thing. Or theyou’re working too many hoursthing. Or theyou left the bathroom a messthing. Why does anyone want to go through their lives having to be accountable to someone else’s needs and wants? Whatever it is that makes someone want to do that, I don’t have it. Like us, for example. This is fine. It’s been actually fun being together. But if you wanted to go, you could go. You don’t have to check with me. I’m not in charge of you. If I took off tomorrow, there isn’t anything you’d say about it.”
Well…that wasn’t true. If he left me in the woods without him, I’d have something to say about it. That wasn’t, however, what I wanted to focus on right then. “Look I don’t have a lot of experience myself. My parents were unhappy, and I was a baby and don’t remember. Your parents seem happy. Your siblings seem like they’re in love. My sister has never been better than she is right now.”
“Right, I get it. That’s why I’m saying I’m fucked up. I don’t date or do relationships outside of friendship for this reason. There is something inherently missing inside of me. I don’t want that…whatever it is that makes people get married.”
I was pretty sure that Max was astute enough to know that the things he said hurt me, particularly because I wasn’t putting on my best fake happy right then. But if he was going to pretend this was fine, then I would too.
“I think that people get married for lots of reasons. Sometimes they get married for the wrong reasons.”
He poured himself a drink of whisky. “What are the right reasons?”
“I guess it would have to be that the very idea of living without that person day in and day out is so abhorrent that it creates such a void in your existence, you have to declare to the world that you are in it together forever. Because if you don’t, you’re not sure you can get through another day.”
He held up his hands and actually grinned at me. “It’s like you’re speaking a foreign language.”
His point was taken. Direct hit to my heart. We were friends. We were never going to be like his siblings and their significant others or his parents. Or Layla.
“I’m going to bed.”
