“I told you, just leave me alone!” I shout at Trevor, loud enough that a few people in the park turn to look at us. “It’s not enough that I came back here apparently. You still just want to try and control me. Well, I want more than just this stupid, run-down life in this stupid little town. I want to go back to the city!”
“You can’t go back to the city now, it’s too late for that!” Trevor shouts back at me. “If you didn’t want to come here then you shouldn’t have come to begin with. You just should have stayed in the city.”
“I can go back whenever I damn well please!” I yell. “In fact, I think I might go home right now and pack my bags.”
“Do whatever the hell you want!” Trevor hollers back at me. “Just don’t expect me to stand by and watch you leave again. I won’t do it athirdtime.”
It’s a convincing argument. So convincing, in fact, that a random woman in the park asks me if I’m okay. I tell her that I’m fine and that I just broke up with my boyfriend. Then I walk slowly back to my car. Trevor is nowhere in sight. He is making it look like he has stormed off and isn’t coming home. It will look like I’m heading home alone. Our very loud and very public breakup has for sure gotten Max’s attention and so I know that every move I make between here and the house is being watched.
On my way back to the house, I stop at a liquor store to buy a bottle of “post-breakup” wine. It’s not at all necessary since we have plenty of bottles of wine at home, but it buys Trevor time to get where he’s going without Max seeing him. Max is too busy watching me, or at least that’s what we’re counting on him doing. I engage in a little bit of small talk with the cashier and tell him that I am going home with my bottle of wine to have a drunken pity party. He chuckles and tells me to have fun and be safe.
When I get back to the house, I go inside, pop open the bottle of wine, and pretend to sit down on the couch and cry with the neck of the bottle still in my hand. It’s only a matter of minutes before there’s a knock at the door. When I go to open it, there stands Max. As expected.
“Max?” I say, acting surprised to see him here. “What are you doing here?”
“I just happened to be in town on business,” he lies. “I was coming to apologize to you in person about our previousmisunderstandings, and I happened to stumble upon your very awful-looking breakup with Trevor in the park. So I thought I would come by to make sure that you were okay.”
I play into the part of post-breakup sorrow and turn to walk back toward my living room, leaving him welcome to follow if he wants. When I reach the coffee table, I pick the bottle of wine back up and take a swig straight from the bottle. I’d made myself cry enough that my mascara was already starting to run down the top of my cheekbones.
“I’m sorry that you have to see me this way,” I cry dramatically. “I just really thought that I had finally found happiness, you know? And it seems like that’s not something that I’m ever going to have.”
“Don’t say that,” Max says as he tries to cozy up alongside me on the couch. “You’ll find happiness. It just wasn’t supposed to be with that guy. I tried to warn you from the start that Trevor was a loser. I was trying to help you get away from him from the moment you first came here.”
“I know,” I say innocently. “And I should have listened to you. If I would have listened to you right from the beginning, then I would have seen you for the man you truly are.”
“What do you mean?” Max asks. There is a hopeful arrogance in his tone and on his face. He thinks this is the part where I’m going to suddenly choose him and we’re going to ride off back to the city together.
“I mean,” I continue, “That if I would have listened to all the comments you made to me from the very first day we met, then maybe I would have realized sooner that what Trevor said about you was true.”
“What did Trevor say about me?” Max asks with disdain in his voice.
“I said that you were an asshole,” Trevor says as he steps out from where he had been hiding in the other room.
8
Trevor
“What the hell is going on here?” Max shouts as he stands up abruptly from the couch as soon as he sees me walk into the room.
“Looks like you’ve been outplayed for once,” I chide.
As soon as Max realizes he’s been set up, he is furious. But I can tell by the tightening of his jaw and the slight shaking of his hands that he is also scared. He tries to get out his cell phone and also tries to make it to the front door, but I prevent him from doing both of those things by grabbing him by the shoulder and throwing him to the ground, where he lands on his back with a thud against the floor.
“Stay down and listen to what we have to say,” I warn him.
But it’s obvious that Max isn’t going to cooperate willingly. So, I take this very opportune moment to rough him up a bit in order to get him to sit down and start listening and answering our questions. I don’t think that Ava particularly liked seeing me beat him up, which I don’t think had anything in particular to do with him; I just don’t think she liked seeing me fighting. Eventually, though, it serves its purpose and Max lifts his hand in surrender.
“Okay, fine,” he says as he spits a mouthful of blood onto the ground. “What do you want?”
“I want to know what the hell is wrong with you,” I growl. “Why won’t you leave Ava alone?”
Max scowls and glares between first me and then Ava before finally answering.
“I was the one who recommended that Ava be hired with the firm to begin with. I’m the one who gave her the shot in the city and took her under my wing, And, once I started working alongside of her, I wanted more. But we didn’t have a chance to be together before you came into the picture. She would have stayed with me if it wasn’t for you.”
“But I never would have wanted a relationship with you, Max,” Ava says. “Even if I hadn’t come back to Fairport and gotten together with Trevor.”
“You left me, and you turned your back on everything that I ever did for you!” Max screams like a crazy man. “How do you think I’m supposed to deal with that, huh? Am I just supposed to throw my arms up and say okay? Well, I’ll tell you right now that Idon’tlose. That’s just not the kind of guy I am, and if I can’t get you back, then I’m going to make sure you regret ever having left. If you think that making up charges and accusations or following you into bridal stores and watching you through windows is all that I can do, then think again.”
