His gaze is intense, trained right on me. “After Bunco, the mistletoe, you said it didn’t matter, that we should forget about it.”
“And you were on the same page. You said it shouldn’t have happened.”
“Jesus. I said it shouldn’t have happenedthe way it did.” I’m having a hard time processing his words, their implications, and I can’t believe it when he steps closer. He reaches out to thread an errant lock of hair behind my ear. “Do you really believe it didn’t matter?” he asks, and in this moment, he’s so veryMax. “’Cause it mattered to me. I came to the coffee shop to tell you, but the whole thing went to hell and…”
He leans forward, tilting his head, and I realize—holy crap—he’s going to kiss me. This is not a part of the planat all, but I want him to, and I don’t want him to, and my mind’s twirling in circles, like he and I used to do when we were kids. Only, we’re not going to fall to the ground, laughing while the world whirls above us. We’re going to kiss,again, and even though I know it’s the absolute wrong thing to do, I’m not sure I have the willpower to stop it.
I put my palm on his chest with the intention of pushing him away because,yes, I can do the right thing, but he misreads the gesture and covers my hand with his. The tiny bit of conviction I found melts like butter as his other hand finds my cheek. I tip my chin up—say it, Jillian, tell him to back off. His cinnamon breath sweeps across my skin, and my eyes fall closed.
His phone begins to ring again, like an alarm—like a freaking air horn—and that’s it. I push him away.
My face is sizzling.Becky, Becky, Becky… God, I wish she’d disappear.
Max silences his phone, vexed, and I wonder: Is she his fallback?
AmI?
“Jilly,” he says, his voice low, abraded, like he’s nearly used it up.
I shake my head. “I can’t. Not like this.”
A shadow falls over his face, but he says, “Yeah. Okay.”
There’s an elephant tromping around the kitchen, a resentful, ginger-haired elephant who wears Becky’s face and swings its trunk with wrathful intention. “Look,” I start, because I can’t ignore it—her—anymore. “I don’t understand why, but you’ve stayed with Becky through thick and thin and all the bullshit in between. Even though you cheated on her, she still wants to be with you. Honestly, I think you guys are terrible for each other, but for whatever reason, you’re hanging on. At the risk of sounding like a shrink, I feel like you need to do some serious thinking about what you want from her. It’s not fair otherwise.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” he mutters, staring at his shoes. “You’re on her side?”
“Hardly. I just don’t want to be the reason you do or don’t stay with her. While you guys are whatever you are, you and I… can’t.”
He looks up, his eyes wide and earnest. “But you said we were friends.”
“Friends don’t kiss, Max.”
His mouth turns up, a hint of a smile. “They don’t?”
“Nope. Friends hang out. Friends talk. Friends are there for each other.” I offer him my hand, cheesy but appropriately platonic. “I want that for us. I really do.”
He nods, shaking my hand. “I want that, too.”
17
MAX AND I DON’T SEE MUCH OFeach other at school in the following few weeks, but we make plans to hang out after: coffee (for me) and soda (for him), long drives in the truck he recently earned back, and homework sessions spent at the library (because I’m laying the groundwork for future scholarship applications and he’s playing catch-up). We don’t talk so much as absorb each other’s company, but that feels okay because it’s not a strain on our fledgling friendship. Also, I meant what I said about him and Becky: He should think about what he wants without my influence serving as a distraction.
Things haven’t been great between them, according to gossip courtesy of Leah and Kyle. Becky decided Max should quit hanging out with the guys so much, and Max decided Becky didn’t get to dictate his social calendar. Other tidbits I’ve heard: Her parents hate him (a legit possibility), his mother hates her (despite Becky’s friendship with Ivy, that’s likely now true), and recently, after a particularly ferocious fight on the quad, the two of them had make-up sex in an empty biology classroom (God—gross).
When I’m not hanging out with Max, busting my ass in class, or tacking extra hours onto my shifts at work, I’m helping Meredith with baby preparations; she can’t lift anything heavier than a grocery bag, which means I get to assemble the crib when it’s delivered on a rainy Saturday morning, the last day of January. In the nursery, she sits in this special chair she bought—she calls it a glider—and tries to make sense of the multiple pages of instructions, pointing out pieces of whitewashed wood that need to be fitted together.
Later, after the leech baby’s crib is standing straight and sturdy and Meredith’s shown me an app she recently downloaded—a contraction timer, of all things—Max rescues me with a text:Movie at my house tonight?
Somehow, this proposed activity strikes me as more intimate than anything else we’ve done lately. I mean, it’s not sex in a biology classroom, but me plus Max plus a movie viewed in a dark space seems more like an equation equaling trouble than two friends hanging out.
I call Kyle for his opinion.
“But Max told me he was going out tonight,” he says. “Couple of guys on the basketball team are having a rager, and Becky’s dragging him along.”
“Not anymore,” I say, wondering at the catalyst for his change in plans. “He just texted me.… Do you think I should watch a movie with him? I mean, it could potentially get… weird.”
“Jelly Bean, surely you two can sit through a ninety-minute film without your libidos getting the best of you.”
