He swipes a cookie from the buffet and takes a big bite. Crumbs cascade to the floor in a display that’s horrifying in its irreverence. Still, I can’t look away. None of us can, which is terrible and unfair and absolutely ironic. I suspect this is exactly what he was drinking to avoid: forced togetherness, a less-than-joyful holiday gathering, families trying too hard to restore a normal that’s irreparably shattered.
Marcy holds out her hand. “Give me your keys.”
Max’s anger flares. “What?”
“Your keys,” Marcy says. “I want them.”
“Why?”
“Because your father and I trusted you to use that truck responsibly. You’re doing the opposite.”
“How the hell am I supposed to get around?”
“Figure it out. I refuse to watch you risk your future—yourlife. This household does not have the financial security to gamble on your poor choices. We can’t afford legal fees if you’re arrested, and we can’t afford additional medical costs if you cause an accident.”
Her open hand is steady and still in Max’s agitated face.
He yanks his keys, adorned with a leather football key chain, from his pocket. He fumbles momentarily before crushing them into his mother’s palm. Then he stalks toward the stairs, breathing heavily and grumbling faintly, so swollen with emotion I worry he’ll burst.
It hits me hard, the irresistible, idiotic urge to follow him, talk to him, hug him—something. Plaguing what-ifs have made his sweetness, his enviable zest for life, go rancid, but he’s stillMax.
I shoot up from my place on the bench.
“Jill!” my dad barks.
Max already has a foot on the stairs, but he pivots slowly to look at me, question marks blinking behind his eyes. He’s not inviting my company, but he’s not discouraging it.
“Sit down, Jillian,” Dad says.
The kitchen falls silent but for the sound of Oliver’s wheezy winter breath and the hum of the furnace. Nine pairs of eyes are trained on me, watching to see what I’ll do.
Max lingers, motionless, while I stand on legs that wobble with uncertainty. I want to go to him because, more than anything in the world, I want him to tell me he’s willing to try to get his life back on track. But I don’t think he is, and I won’t enable him—not like Becky. I won’t tell him it’s okay to drink and drive, to hurt his parents, to risk his future. I won’t let him use me as a diversion from everything that’s wrong in his world. I will not—cannot—trade my priorities, my values, my sense of worth, to be his second best.
I sit back down.
Max shakes his head, his gaze pinning me to my place on the bench.
He looks disgruntled.
He looks unmoored.
He looksbroken.
He releases a hefty sigh, and then he throws his fist through the wall.
15
I’M MISERABLE, SO TIME PASSES LIKE MOLASSESfrom a chilled jar.
Portland for Christmas: endless, tax-free shopping trips for baby clothes, baby gear, baby products. The long drive home: Dad and Meredith, silent but on edge, the aftermath of an argument I missed. The lull between Christmas and the new year: work at True Brew, work on my original chocolate chip cookie recipe, work on my English lit reading list. The highlight? Dad’s officially forgiven my Bunco binge. I’m no longer grounded, and I celebrate with an evening at the movies with Leah.
I spend the afternoon of New Year’s Eve working on my butter nut brittle recipe. Dad’s not home, but Meredith sits, uninvited, on a kitchen stool through several slightly flawed variations of the candy, taste testing and offering her candid opinions (“How about a tiny bit more vanilla extract?” or “Finely chopped pecanswiththe peanuts might be yummy!”). Her criticisms are mildly irritating, but it seems the leech baby has refined her palate; I hate to admit it, but her input proves more helpful than it has in the past.
We’re interrupted when Marcy calls and begs me to come over. She needs me to keep an eye on Oliver. I’m a breath from telling her I can’t (because little kids are frightening) when she launches into an explanation about how she’s watching him for Zoe and Brett, but she’s got to run to the pharmacy to pick up one of Bill’s refilled prescriptions, which can’t wait. “Max is on his way,” she adds. “If you could just sit with Oli until he gets here.”
Max. I haven’t seen him since he clobbered the wall just before Christmas. The distance we’ve been keeping feels all wrong, particularly today, because for as long as my dad and I have known the Holdens, Bill and Marcy have hosted a New Year’s Eve party that rivals my parents’ Bunco Night. When we were younger, Max, Ivy, and I spent the evening hanging out in the upstairs bonus room while our parents and the better part of McAlder celebrated a floor below. Just before twelve, we’d sneak down to sit on the staircase, eager to spy on the midnight kissing. Ivy got all giddy and sentimental, while I pretended to gag along with her brother, though even back then, a gangly preteen with braces, I wondered when I’d have my first New Year’s kiss.
“I’ll be right over,” I tell Marcy, because the likelihood of seeing Max somehow supersedes my child phobia.
