I can’t, either. God—Monday. That was the day Becky rammed into me on the quad. The day Max guzzled whisky at the river. No wonder he couldn’t call her for a ride—they broke up.
“Max didn’t bend,” Kyle tells me, swirling the tines of his fork through the caramel left on his plate. “He kept saying, ‘We’re over,’ and ‘There’s nothing between us.’ He wasn’t a jerk about it, but you could tell he’d had enough, you know? For the first time in a long time, I was really proud of him.”
“I’m so glad he finally cut it off,” Leah says. “Jesse is, too. Max is better off.”
“Agreed,” Kyle says.
I mumble my assent because in theory they’re right. But if Max is so much better off, why didn’t he tell me about Becky during Movie Night, or our forlorn walk through the neighborhood? Why’d he leave school to get wasted at the river?
You don’t know anything, he said when he called to ask for a ride. I countered with a diatribe about what an asshole he was. At the hospital he tried again, and I shut him down.
I blink, trying to make sense of it all.
“Max has a good heart,” Leah’s saying.
“He deserves to be happy,” Kyle agrees.
I nod, becauseyesandyes.
***
After my friends leave, Dad and I head out to pick up a late dinner. He suggests I drive, and I’m glad. When my hands and head are busy, it’s easier to keep from fixating on what he pulled the other night. We never did get to “talk later” like he promised, and while I’m hopeful he and Meredith are on their way to working things out, my worries haven’t gone anywhere.
“Chinese?” I ask, braking at a stoplight.
“Whatever you want.”
The quiet pulls thin. Dad fiddles with the heat and the defrost, then checks the glove box to make sure all the proper documents are there. A wall of discomfort stands between us.
It’s clear he senses it, too, when he says, “Thanks for being there for Mer at the hospital.”
“Where else would I have been?” I don’t mean it as a dig, but it comes off as one, and I don’t feel sorry. I stare straight ahead, unblinking, until the stoplight looks like red smears in an impressionistic painting. The wipers swish across the windshield, back and forth, back and forth.
“She’s still upset,” Dad says.
The light flashes green and I stomp down on the gas pedal. “Can you blame her?”
“I was working.”
I recall a drizzly afternoon several years ago, when Max and I discovered Bill’s old record player in the Holdens’ garage. Having never seen a record, we had no idea how to set the needle, but we got a laugh trying. The songs skipped and popped and jumped, and the two of us cracked up listening to phrases repeating.I was working—I was working—I was working.If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard Dad use that phrase over the last few months, well, I wouldn’t have to worry about how to fund my culinary education.
“What are you thinking, Jillian?”
That you’ve been really self-centered.
That there’s more to your “I’m working” story than you’re letting on.
That I’m too scared to ask the important questions.
“Nothing.”
“I love Meredith.”
I nod, because I have no concrete proof against his claim. I’ve seen their affectionate moments: Dad’s hand on Meredith’s previously pregnant belly, her brush of a kiss across his cheek as he rifles through case files. And I’ve witnessed their more significant gestures of love: Dad driving Meredith to countless fertility appointments, writing checks to chip away at mounting debt. And Meredith, managing the Eldridge household with zeal. Still, I’ve seen enough reality TV to know that love doesn’t stop some people from exploring other avenues.
“I imagine this is hard for you to understand,” Dad says, reaching over to pat my knee.
I cannot believe he has the audacity to be so condescending.
