I trudge out and sit on the bench outside the building, letting the winter sun warm my face.
“Mia.” A familiar voice. I look up, shading my eyes.
“Parker,” I say. “Did Max tell you—”
He sinks down beside me. “What the hell?”
“How is he? Is he…okay?”
“Jesus, Mia, no. What were you guys thinking? Who even does that.”
“I thought he’d called me there to mock me or something!”
“Max would never mock you.”
“I know I screwed up. So bad.” I press my palms to my eyes. “Reconnecting with Max has been everything.”
“Well, he’s pretty angry now,” Parker says. “It’s partly my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten involved. I just always thought you two belonged together. You were enemies for so long, but nobody got him going like you.”
“We do belong together,” I say.
“Bring Max Hilton to his knees chart? Darts?”
“What can I do?”
He squints out at the scaffolding over the pizza place. The green and red slice showing through in parts. “Maybe another ten years.”
“No,” I say.
24
Believe in yourself. Shoot for the stars.
~The Max Hilton Playbook: Ten Golden Rules for Landing the Hottest Girl in the Room
* * *
Mia
Meow Squad may be barred from the building, but I still have allies there.
I take the day off from work, and just before lunchtime, I buy him an amazing lobster roll sandwich. I put cheesy puffs in the bag along with it. I include a note. A picture of a heart. Underneath I write, I’m outside the building and I won’t leave until you come down. Because I love you.
I see a woman from the seventh floor I used to deliver to; she’s heading in with a coffee. I beg her to deliver my bag to Max’s assistant. She seems a little bit bewildered, but she agrees.
I wait outside on a bus bench. After a half an hour I’m shaking—not from the cold, but from the fear that he might not come out. I don’t even peek at my phone. I’m waiting for him. I want him to see that.
People come and sit by me, waiting for busses, and then they’re gone. Three hours into it, the same busses come by again. I wonder if the drivers recognize me. Some of the busses have Max’s face on them, ironically.
The sun goes behind the building at around four, and it gets cold. But still I sit there.
Kelsey comes at four thirty and brings me warm soup. I drink it right from the Thermos. She even puts on my hat and waits in my place while I pee at a nearby Starbucks. Not that the hat switch would fool Max, but we decide it’s like a placeholder for me.
“Guess what else I brought,” she says, when I come back. She pulls out my cross-stitch project.
“I’m not going to sit out here doing a cross stitch,” I say. “I want him to see that I’m focused on him.”
“He’s not going to come out,” she says after a while. “I saw his face. That chart. God, why did we leave it up?”
“And the darts,” I say.
“All this time he seemed like the kind of guy where everything rolls off his back,” she says. “You look at his pictures. It’s like nothing matters. But after what he confessed at The Wilder Club, it’s really the opposite, isn’t it?”
I stare up at the tower that I so impudently gave him three stars for. “He didn’t create the Max Hilton persona because nothing matters to him,” I say softly. “It’s because things matter too much.”
I tell Kelsey about Annette. His nanny who died in a crash after bringing sunshine and song into his life. Is that what he meant about history repeating itself? That sunshine comes, but it always goes?
Kelsey slides closer. “You don’t mind if I sit with you, right?”
“I’m glad you’re here.” I lay my head on her shoulder and tell her things I’ve observed about busses.
At around six, the lights in his twenty-fifth floor office blink off. We both sit up.
“Does he come out the front?” she asks.
“No, his car gets him below ground.”
“But maybe not today.” She stands. “I’m going to get a bagel over on the corner, and I’ll take a really long time. But I’ll be here.”
She goes off. I wait, hoping he sees that I’m serious. Five minutes go by. Then ten.
Nothing.
A few black town cars pass by. Those sorts of cars tend to look alike—clean and shiny with tinted windows. But I don’t think he was in any of them.
Somehow, I feel him watching me. I feel him near. Is he coming out the front door? My heart nearly jumps out of my chest when my phone dings. A text.
Kelsey: can I come back?
Me: Not yet.
I put it away. Twenty minutes after his lights went out, a black car slides past my bus stop. I can’t see Max in the window, but I feel him. The feeling of him is an ache so intense, I want to double over. I don’t know how I came to my feet, but I’m standing, watching his taillights disappear. Empty.
A bus slides up and I’m face to face with fake Max, smile full of secrets. Ferrari-and-liquor-cart Max Hilton.
Me: Let’s go.
The next day I can’t get off of work, but I pull together another great lunch—a Korean fried chicken sandwich with spicy dressing that has some of the buildings abuzz. I pair it with cheesy puffs.
The note I include is longer. I talk about the night we sang on the couch to Carousel. I just tell him what he looked like to me—how soft his eyes got. And the glint he’d get when he’d hold a note nice and long, or hit one just right. His goofy, friendly half smile that will never appear on an ad. The point where he tangled his fingers into mine and I felt like I’d never get higher. How hard it was not to just lean in and kiss him. How I wanted to stay there forever. How bad I want to tell him that I love him to his face.