Max snorted down the phone in reply, lying back on his bed at the boardinghouse while flicking through the channels on the wall-mounted TV. Carter had been whining for the last ten minutes about Kat and their damned wedding. Apparently, Kat’s incessant planning and organizing was slowly driving Carter beyond distraction.
“I love her,” Carter added. “Truly. I do, but I can’t cope with any more talk of being measured for a suit—which you still need to have done, by the way, don’t think you can escape this just because your ass isn’t here—flowers, and favors. Favors, Max! I didn’t even know what a fucking wedding favor is! Do you? I’ll tell you: it’s a gift you give to the guests. A gift! I mean, why the fuck am I giving gifts to people who attend my wedding? Where’s the fucking sense in that? It’s like, yay, you came, here’s a twenty-dollar gift for your troubles.” There was a thump as though he’d dropped down onto something and he sighed loudly. “I want it to be perfect and I want her to be happy, but I didn’t know that women could be . . . I mean, she’s just—”
“A fucking nightmare?”
“Yes!” Carter exploded. “Shit!”
Max swiped at the wet paint on his sweatpants. “Should have stayed single, man.”
“Right? What the hell was I thinking?” He quieted. “Thing is, when she gets excited about it all . . . man, her face—it’s just . . . makes it all worth it, ya know?”
“I’m sure it’ll be great.”
“Yeah.” Carter cleared his throat. “Anyway, enough about that, what’s new with you? You have a good July Fourth?”
“Yeah, the cabin was awesome.”
“I bet it was. It’s been too long since we’ve made a trip up there. Everyone good? Your uncle okay?”
“He’s really great. Still telling tales about me.”
“Lemme guess, the pesky front-fastener bra?”
“Asshole.”
Carter’s laughter grew louder.
Max grinned. “I had a good time.”
“Yeah, you sound chill.”
Max exhaled. He wasn’t too sure he agreed with his friend on that front. The trip to the lake had been great, of course, it always was, but his stress levels weren’t as low as they probably should have been after four days of doing pretty much nothing.
“Uh-oh,” Carter murmured. “That doesn’t sound good.” There was a beat of silence between the two men, the phone line buzzing with dead air. “You, um, you wanna talk about it?”
Max made a grunting, choking-type noise in response and threw the TV remote to his side, paying no attention to the people on the screen.
“You’ve spoken to Tate?” Carter prodded. “Or Elliot? Max, if you need something—”
“Carter, I’m fine. Honestly,” Max interrupted, his voice softened by his friend’s concern. “Actually, it’s nothing to do with any of that.”
“Huh. Okay. So what’s up?”
Max frowned trying to find a simple answer to a complicated question, but the only one he could come up with on the spot was Grace. Max wasn’t really sure if he wanted to talk to Carter about Grace because, frankly, he didn’t really know what there was to say and, besides, he didn’t want Carter to get the wrong impression.
Max’s interactions with Grace over Fourth of July had been great, but, admittedly, had also left his head in a bit of a spin. And despite their returning from the cabin three days ago and falling back into their normal working and running routine, they had yet to address the huge fucking elephant in the room every time they were alone together: they still hadn’t fucked.
He couldn’t remember ever having such a dire case of blue balls and he hated that his patience was fraying. Jesus, the girl had been through a shitload of heartache and Max understood her timidity, but Grace’s obliviousness to her own attractiveness had him wanting to throw her down on any nearby horizontal surface and make her forget why she was afraid of sex in the first place.
Since she’d tried to seduce him in her sexy red underwear and then proceeded to vomit up several dollars’ worth of alcohol, she’d seemingly taken a step back from him. She was still the easygoing, playful Grace whom Max had grown to know, but the caution he’d seen in her eyes the first time they’d met had returned. And, if Max was truly honest with himself, its appearance had hurt. He’d asked her if she was all right, if he’d done something to upset her, to scare her off, but she’d laughed and waved a dismissive hand at his concerns, telling him that she was fine.
Yeah. That shit was right. She was fine. Too damned fine.
He rubbed a hand down his face, noticing another brushstroke of blue paint on his palm. Yeah, he’d even started painting again in an effort to curb his salacious thoughts, to try to stave off the cravings he had for Grace, but it wasn’t working. His paintings were, as always, frantic and hurried in their creation, his frustration filling the canvases as quickly as he set them up.
Maybe this was why addicts were told not to start any type of relationships when they were first recovering. It would certainly make sense. Max’s desire to lose himself in Grace’s body was as strong as his need for coke had been when he first entered rehab.
“Shit.” He sat up, still holding the phone to his ear. “Look, man, I’m gonna go. I got some stuff to take care of.”