“Can I get you guys anything else?” She holds our plates so her tits squeeze together, the tops rounding above the neckline of her shirt.
“I don’t needanything.” I smile, nodding to Max. “What about you?”
“Nah, I’m good. Thank ya, though.”
I’ve always considered predictability a bad trait—boring, monotonous. But the longer I live, the more I’m starting to appreciate it. Sure, I still like being spontaneous. Wearein fucking Vegas. But there’s a level of comfort, a feeling of being able to let your defenses down when you know how someone’s going to react to a situation. I always know how Max will react to things.
I just wish I knew how other people would react to certain things ...
“Wanna bring us the check?” I ask the server. She nods and flaunts off, swinging her hips for my benefit. “You about ready?”
“I wanna finish this beer first,” Max says, taking a sip from the bottle in his hand. “So you ready for everything?”
“Yeah. We’ve got everything nailed down, I think. Can you think of anything we overlooked? You made a schedule and a bid list and everything for this, right?”
“Yeah, I’ve approached this like any other project we’ve been on. We have a schedule, contracts, the whole shebang,” he laughs. “I think everything is covered, but it’s not like I’ve done this before.”
“Yeah, well, this may be your practice round, but that doesn’t mean you can fuck it up.”
“I won’t.”
We exchange a look, and I know he won’t. It’s Max, after all. He’spredictable. What’s important to those he cares about is important to him. And he doesn’t want me to kill him. That helps, I’m sure.
There’s a comfortable silence between us, the product of a friendship that’s spanned years. He’s seen me at my best and my worst, helped me make decisions, helped me bury my father. We’ve loved some of the same people, lost some of the same friends. Looking at what my life is now and what it’s going to become, he’s the only consistent part of my life both pre- and post-Jada.
“Who would’ve thought I’d be getting married before you? Man, life’s fucked up,” I say.
“It is.” He watches the television above my head. His jaw tenses, and the vein at his temple pulses.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re acting strange.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m fucking serious, Max. What’s up?”
He sighs and sets the bottle on the table, peeling the label back. He thinks about what he’s going to say. “Kari and I were watching television last night, and a commercial came on about a wedding package or some shit. I made a comment about getting married. I wasn’t even insinuating that we should get married here because you know I wouldn’t do that. I was just talking in general, and she completely balked. She put that wall up of hers and changed the subject.”
“You’ve said that before. She doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Yeah, man, she doesn’t. If she just would say, ‘I don’t wanna get married right now,’ I’d be okay with it. But she won’t even say that. She just gets pissed off or walks out of the room. And being here is making her even weirder about it. Like she expects me to drive her to a chapel and make her marry me.”
“Maybe you should.” I laugh. “It’d take the pressure off.”
“Yeah. She’d have my balls faster than I could blink.”
“What do you think is her problem? I don’t get it. She’s all crazyabout helping Jada and me get ours together. And youwantto get married.”
He shrugs, and I feel sorry for him. He’s a great guy. There’s no reason Max Quinn shouldn’t be married and having babies, except for the fact that the one girl he wants doesn’t want either thing. It sucks.
“We’ve all had time to run around, play the field. I don’t get what her hang-up is. She obviously loves you.”
“I don’t know. I can’t figure it out to save my soul.”
“So what do you do? I mean, do you just stick it out with her and hope she comes around? Or do you just call it quits and find someone who requires less work?”
