Oliver nods. He’s still a little pale, but he’s looking at his uncle with fascinated admiration. The uninformed would never guess he just spewed apple juice—a good thing, since Marcy won’t be long.
“Thanks for cleaning up,” I say. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been here.”
Max is gazing absentmindedly at Barney, who’s moved on to warbling about farm animals. “You’d be sitting in puke.”
I smile. “Well, then, thank God for you.”
“Yeah, thank God.” He glances at me, and there’s a glimmer of warmth behind his eyes when he says, “How was Oregon?”
“Okay. My dad worked remotely, Meredith obsessed over the baby, and we hung out with her parents. A lot.” And then I ask a question I want to gobble right back up: “How was your Christmas?”
He stares at me, his face falling like a soufflé. His Christmas was awful—it must have been. It fell only two days after he was nearly arrested for drunk driving, and it was the first since his dad’s stroke. He likely spent the holiday staving off his parents’ crestfallen looks while icing his bruised hand.
He leans in a little, like he has a secret, and my heart gallops in anticipation. Very quietly, very coolly, he says, “Christmas fucking sucked.”
Max, forever an asshole when he’s upset.
I recall, suddenly, the beach vacation of three years ago, when I paddled out too far and lost control in an undertow. Max swam to me like an Olympic freestyler, plucked me from the ocean’s frothy waves, and paddled for the beach like he performed water rescues daily. Coughing and sputtering salt water, I expected him to fawn over me, but after dumping me unceremoniously on the sand, he tossed up his hands and yelled, “Damn it, Jillian! Do you have a death wish?”
Later, when I’d tearfully recounted the rescue and subsequent shouting to Marcy, she explained that some boys are afraid of their emotions, her son especially, and watching me thrash among the whitecaps had probably scared him. Instead of owning up to it, he yelled. That was hard to swallow at the time, one of those things mothers say to make kids feel better, so I convinced myself that Max was just a jerk. I shadowed Ivy for the next two days, until Max hunted me down and convinced me to walk to town with him. There, he bought me coconut ice cream on a waffle cone, his stunted-boy version of an apology.
I don’t foresee any ice cream apologies in my future.
He closes his eyes. The half-moon shadows beneath them are prominent. “I’ve got Oli,” he says. “You can go home.”
I rise from the couch, shocked by his dismissal. I’m too hurt to muster genuine anger, but a frustrated sense of helplessness sloshes around in the pit of my stomach. This was a stupid idea, coming here. I should’ve known I wouldn’t be able to fix things with a single impromptu visit. I should be in my kitchen, baking, or in my room, cataloging scholarships. I should be far, far away from Max Holden.
I shuffle out of the living room and into the foyer. I’ve got a hand on the front doorknob when traitorous tears begin to fall.
I can’t go home—I don’t want Meredith to know I’m upset—so I duck into the Holdens’ powder room to pull myself together.
God. I can’t believe I let him get to me. I’m crying over a boy who won’t dump his shitty girlfriend, who’d rather sulk than grow a pair and get his life together. I look at myself in the mirror and find my face blotchy and tearstained—pitiful. I don’t like the Jillian who looks back at me. She’s changed alongside her parents and her neighbors, and not for the better. She’s a glimmer of the savvy, determined girl she was last spring.
So what if her college funds disappeared? So what if her parents argue almost as often as they breathe? So what if she’s about to become the world’s most reluctant big sister?
So what if the boy I care about most in the world has become intolerable?
What sucks is that I don’t even know what I want from Max. My feelings are jumbled. Ever-altering. Infuriating. I wish, not for the first time, that I could forget all about him.
I whirl away from the wimp in the mirror and blot my face with a bit of toilet paper. I straighten my spine and lift my chin, then march out of the bathroom, straight to the front door.
I don’t allow myself to look back, but I know Max is sprawled across the couch as sure as I know my shadow trails behind me. I know he’s tuned into preschool programming with the nephew he adores. I know today’s crossness is a product of last week’s rebuff.
And I know, somehow, that he can be the old Max, thegoodMax, again.
***
On New Year’s Day, True Brew cuts back its hours of business, which means Kyle and I get to openandclose.
Leah comes in midafternoon to hang out, which is perfect because the holiday’s making for a slow shift. She stands opposite the pastry case, sipping the Honey Lavender Latte (today’s special) I made for her.
“My new favorite,” she says, licking a bit of foam from her lip. “So? How’d we all ring in the New Year?”
Kyle whistles a cartoony downslide. “I played Parcheesi with my parents. Hopefully last night’s not an indicator of how this year’s gonna pan out.”
“I baked,” I say, omitting the part aboutwhyI baked: to pull myself out of another case of Max-inflicted doldrums.
Leah smiles dreamily. “Jesse and I had dinner and saw a movie, and then we went back to his house. I hope he’ll always be my New Year’s kiss.”
