Time to sit in the car for a long hour and a half with Maverick. I’m too tired for this shit. My body is sore, my arms aching with the burn, my neck. All over is hurting. Inside, outside. There isn't a part of me that feels okay.
The first twenty or so minutes of the drive is tense and awkward before Maverick decides to break the silence.
“We didn’t think he was going to do it. It didn’t mean anything to him at first, especially with you hating him, but when he wiped that slate clean and got to know you, he never talked about the dare.” His eyes never leave the road, not even to spare a single side glance. “While you were in the bathroom he told us he liked you.”
“Well, maybe if he wanted to talk about this, he should have waited until I wasn’t around,” I snap.
“I know. I’m not trying to justify what we did or what he did, but I’m just trying to tell you that it’s real. Despite how it started, it means something to him. Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”
I turn my head, looking at the profile of Maverick’s face. His nose is smaller than I’d ever noticed from the angle. He finally turns to look at me, giving me one of those fake smiles that you give to people passing in public.
“He got everything he wanted, Maverick. He made me fall and broke my heart. It doesn’t matter what it meant to me.”
“Cla-”
“Stop. Please just stop.”
Once we arrived back at campus, the car barely stopped before I got out of it. Maverick had nothing to say and respected my wishes of being left alone.
I’m sitting in my dorm now, beating myself up for letting myself get into this mess. I warned myself over and over, but ignored it every time I tried to talk myself away from Maxwell. I never should have let him into my life. This is his fault, so why doIfeel guilty? Why is the hurt across Maxwell’s face there every time that I close my eyes?
Stop calling me Maxwell. I can’t stand the way it sounds; it sounds like hate.
You’re real to me. I fell for you, okay?
His words run through my mind like a CD stuck on a scratch. Replaying. It feels like there is a hole in my chest. A Maxwell sized hole.
A knock at my door pulls me to real life, out of my head. I consider not answering it, but there the sound is again. Going to the door, I open it and Maxwell stands there. His hair is pushed back with thatheadband he loves to wear. The same one that he had the first time we studied together. The same one he had when we played capture the flag a couple weeks ago.
He wears it so often and it’s my favorite part of his outfits. The way that it shows his face, facial features and that delicate skin of his.
Maxwell holds up a bottle of aloe. “We were supposed to stop and get you some aloe,” he whispers, voice raspy and weak. “It’ll help with the inflammation,” he says if I don’t know. As if we aren’t going to be in the same field of work when we leave here.
“I’ll get my own,” I say.
“Just.. take it, please,” he begs. I grab the bottle of aloe and go to close the door. Maxwell puts his foot out, stopping it from closing. I push harder against his foot and I can hear him wince from the other side.
“Can we talk about this?” He asks.
“There’s nothing to say.”
“You like me. I like you. Isn’t that enough?”
“You betrayed me, Maxwell. My trust. Our friendship. Me.”
“I was telling them that I was done with the dare. That I wasn’t going to do it.”
“Do you not see the fucking problem?" I bark out, harsh and unrelenting.
“No.”
“I thought you were smarter than that,” I stated.
He looks at me, eyes rimmed with redness that I hadn’t noticed before to show me he’s been crying. His face is splotchy and red like he had an allergic reaction. I believe him when he tells me that the dare wasn’t his intention anymore. I believe him when he tells me that he likes me because the truth is in all of his actions.
What I can’t do is forgive him because all I can think about is what his intentions were.
“Goodbye, Maxwell,” I say and close the door in his face. Instead of using the aloe he just gave me, I throw it in the trash can and fall onto my bed.
