SEVENTEEN
Lauren
It's Friday — the last night of what I've been privately calling vacation week — and we're in Max's SUV headed to dinner with his oldest friends.
“Tell me who'll be at this dinner. Any old girlfriends?”
I hear the words come out of my mouth and cringe inwardly. I'm not the jealous type — or I didn't used to be — but something about this week has turned me into a person who notices things. Who pays attention to the way Max laughs with his family, the way he checks on me without making it a production, the way he saysbabein a voice so natural and unhurried it sounds like he's been saying it for years.
And every time he does, I melt.
“We’re headed to Jonathan’s,” Max says. “He’s been my best friend since we were twelve. He’s a day trader, works from home, genuinely one of the smartest people I know. Met his wife Maya in college, and she's expecting their first. There will be four other couples, and a few you might recognize from the wedding.” He pauses. “And yes. Jonathan's sister Cara will be there. I took her to prom.”
“I knew it.”
“What?” He's impossibly endearing when he shows his dimples.
“That eventually we'd hit a high school situation.”
“Cara and her wife Amy have been together for eight years. I think you're safe.” He takes a right off Cypress Grove's main street into a neighborhood of small bungalows with front porches and old oak trees, the kind of street where someone's always just mowed their lawn and a dog is barking pleasantly in the distance.
Something tugs at me as we drive slowly down it. The houses are lit warmly from inside, and through one window I can see a couple moving around a kitchen together, and through another a lamp burning beside a bookshelf. Ordinary, specific, entirely lovely.
What would it be like, I think,to live on a street like this?
He pulls into the driveway of a craftsman bungalow with a wraparound porch strung with white lights, a pot of something blooming by the front door, and cuts the engine. The Florida evening is warm and soft.
“Ready?” he says.
“Ready.” I reach for the door handle.
“Don't move. I'll get it.”
I've stopped arguing with this particular habit. It started at the hospital and has continued without ceremony ever since, and I've decided it's one of those things that would be foolish to fight.
He comes around, opens my door, and scoops me up before I've fully swung my legs out. I loop my arm around his neck.
“You know I can hobble a few steps on my own,” I say.
“The path has a step and the porch has three more.” He carries me up without breaking stride. “You can walk inside.”
Jonathan opens the front door before we reach it, a tall blond man with a wide smile.
“Maximus.” Max sets me gently on my feet and embraces his friend. “Jon, this is Lauren. Lauren — Jonathan. Inseparable from age twelve, insufferable from about the same time.”
“What happened to your ankle?” Jonathan asks. “Did the Hastings family involve you in a bar brawl?”
“Close. Limestone ledge at Paradise Springs,” I say. “A couple of days before Damien's wedding.”
Jonathan ushers us in. The bungalow is warm and cluttered in the best way — bookshelves on every wall, a dog bed in the corner, mismatched frames of photos and art. The kind of home that's been lived in and loved. Nine pairs of eyes turn toward us when we reach the kitchen.
“I saw Max carrying you up the porch. He’s always been a gentleman,” a woman's voice calls. “Good to see nothing's changed.”
Cara finds me within minutes and installs me on a kitchen stool with a glass of white wine and the obvious intention of chatting. She's warm and direct, and within three minutes she's told me that Max has never brought anyone to one of these dinners, not once, not in all the years she's known him.
“His last girlfriend,” she says, “we never met. Every time he visited, she had an excuse not to come.” She tilts her head. “You're different.”
“I broke my ankle at his brother's wedding and couldn't leave,” I say. “Very romantic origin story.”
