“Yeah. You’re good enough.”
14
Marcos
As I suspected,my dad thinks therapy is a waste of time. He tells me I need to go outside more, as though the hours I spend playing baseball each week isn’t enough. I promise to do so, and don’t bother putting up a fight about the therapy sessions. I don’t have a leg to stand on. Not unless I tell them the exact reason why I need it, or foot the bill myself. Neither option is appealing.
When Max gets home, I’m still sitting on the living room couch even though the call with my parents is long over. His face falls the second he sees me sitting here without the TV on. I realize how it looks a second too late. Now he’s going to think something is wrong.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asks, stepping into the room and squinting at me.
“Yeah.” I hold up my phone. “Just finished talking with my parents.”
“Oh.” His face relaxes into a smile. “How are they?”
“Good. How was practice?”
“Did they say anything about the behavioral therapy appointments you’ve been going to? Or the meds?”
Damnit. “Yeah. They aren’t able to cover the extra cost, so I won’t be able to do any more.”
“Shit.” Max sits down and faces me on the couch, back against the armrest and one knee cocked at an angle. “Well, you can’t just stop. We can figure something else out. We can get jobs at Luke’s diner.”
He nudges my knee with his foot when he says this, making certain I know it’s a joke. I try to laugh, but can’t quite get it up.
“It’ll be okay. I probably don’t need to go anymore.”
“Really? You’re feeling better?”
I frown, thinking. I’m mainly attending sessions to help with the touch aversion, which has definitely been getting better. I was lying naked on top of Nate only a few days ago, and if that’s not a testament to success, I don’t know what is.
“Yeah, a bit,” I reply slowly. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely better, but it would make Max sad to say it out loud.
I shrug. Max bites his lip and looks away across the room. It feels like he’s working himself up to saying something. I wait for him to meet my eyes again before raising an eyebrow in question.
“Marcos, I’m sorry. I was a really crappy friend after everything happened,” he begins. “I felt like shit and I didn’t know how to talk to you about it, so I just pushed you away instead. I wasn’t mad at you or anything, but it felt like things were different between us and I just wanted everything to go back to how it was before.”
“Max,” I say, shaking my head as my stomach bottoms out. “No, just…no. You weren’t?—”
“Yes,” he cuts me off firmly. “I was. All I did was shut you out when you tried to help. I was selfish and I’m sorry for that, because I think you needed help too and I blew it.”
“Max,” I repeat, trying to stem the flow of words. He talks over me.
“Which is why I don’t think you should give up on therapy. I told you before, I have money in my savings from my parents and I hardly ever use it. We need to…” He stops, thinks for a second and continues. “We need to stop giving Theo and Cruz our time. They don’t deserve it.”
Max’s voice cracks a little bit on Theo’s name. It’s one of only a handful of times I’ve even heard him say it. As always, fury and guilt are my immediate response, as my brain supplies images of what probably happened to my friend in that bedroom. Across from me, Max deflates a little bit, having said what he needed to say. He’s right. Once more, we’ve invited Theo in and let him shit all over us. Enough.
“You’re right,” I tell Max, looking at him and seeing the glimmer of the ghost he was last year. “You’re right. I’ll talk to my mom again. I do think the therapy has been helping, so I’d like to keep going if I can.”
“I just want you to be happy,” he says sadly. “You weren’t happy before and I missed it. This time, I’m going to be better.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Max.” He nods, still looking a great deal less joyful than he was when he first got home. I hate it when I’m the reason he’s unhappy. I love him so fucking much; I’d do anything in this world to take away his pain. I gesture between us. “When you hurt, I hurt. It’s as simple as that.”
He takes a deep breath. “I know. I’m still sorry, though. I felt like I was…wandering around lost in a fog, but I never meant to leave you behind.”
“I’m still here.”
“Yeah. Thank God for that. Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you—remember Coach’s barbecue? I told Vas about what happened when we were on our way there.”
