“Alice was cool enough to have me over before the party tonight to play a little dress-up,” Celeste says, brandishing her arm candy once more. “Cool, right? Oh my God, Max, you should see this house. And her grandmother’s closet. It’s like that store I love, Second Time Around, but better!”
“Nice,” Max says, raising his brows as his eyes bounce from Celeste to me, trying to look happy but still looking panicked.
“What’ll it be, Wolfe?” Oliver asks.
Max blinks. “Excuse me?” he asks Oliver.
“What do you want to drink?” Oliver replies slowly. “It’s not rocket science.”
“Oh,” Max says, swiping a hand through his hair. “I’ll just take a Coke. I have a game tomorrow.”
“Bo-ring,” Oliver says. Then he turns to a tall kid with dark brown hair who is leaning against the fridge. “Jonathan, one Coke.” He holds up a single finger, and Jonathan obediently opens it and begins rummaging inside.
“As long as it’s not diet,” Max and I say at the same time, before glancing at each other uncomfortably. Max would rather drink acid than drink Diet Coke.
Celeste laughs. “That’s so weird! How did you know Max only drinks regular?” she asks.
“I didn’t,” I say quickly. “I just want one, too.” I clear my throat. “Um, Jonathan, one more, please?” I call out, and Jonathan tosses two cans from the fridge.
Celeste pulls Max to her and wraps her arms around his waist, leaning her chin on his chest and looking up into his eyes like a baby deer. My stomach starts to churn, and I feel like I’m watching it all in slow motion, like a violent scene in a movie I just want to fast-forward through. I thought I could handle this. I thought I was angry enough at him to show up, maybe stay long enough just to make him feel awful. But Max is smiling down at Celeste, and now he is smiling with his eyes.
You’ve never been good at hiding how you feel, I hear Sophie say in the back of my mind. It shows on your face like turquoise eyeshadow.
The can of Coke is shaking in my hand, and I know I have to get out of here.
In the grand scheme of things, I would say I’d rather be almost anywhere in the world than in an elevator. The definition of claustrophobia has never made much sense to me, because that’s like saying it’s the space itself that bugs you. Small spaces don’t necessarily bug me as long as I have a way to get out of them. I would rather be in a small room with an open roof than in a stadium with the doors locked. I just don’t like to be in a spot that I have no control over getting out of. It goes against my natural composition or something. I need to run free.
So I am already preparing myself for a heart-fluttering ride back to the ground floor as the doors to Oliver’s elevator slide shut, when a hand reaches in between them. Max gets on, his eyes boring into me, as I resolve to glare straight ahead. The only problem with this plan is that the interior of the elevator is completely mirrored, so when the doors shut, a thousand versions of me just end up looking back at him anyway.
“I offered to make an ice run,” Max says, and then pauses. “Are you okay? I know how you feel about enclosed spaces.”
I ignore him.
“Alice . . .” he starts.
But I interrupt him. “Don’t.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.” Max sighs. “I was going to say, this is hard for me, too.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I reply. “I’m sorry it’s hard for you. But have you thought about how it actually feels for me? To watch you with her?”
“I know,” Max says.
“And what about her, by the way?” I’m starting to lose my cool, which is exactly what I promised myself I wouldn’t do. “Because she’s great. I genuinely like her. But what would she do if she knew that when you go to sleep at night, you’re basically just switching girlfriends?”
“I know,” Max says again. The fact that he sounds remorseful only makes me angrier.
“Do you mean to?” I ask softly. “In our dreams. Do you mean to act the way you do in our dreams, like nothing has changed, when during the day I’m barely allowed to look at you?”
“I can’t help it,” Max says quietly. He meets my eyes, this time not through the mirror but in person, tilting his head slightly to the side to gaze down at me. “I know what’s right, and what I should want, but when I’m in the dreams, I can’t control it. The way I act, it just happens. You know that as well as I do. What happens in the dreams isn’t our choice.”
I break away from his gaze and stare at a corner of the floor, where I won’t have to meet his eyes again. I know he’s basically right, but it’s also not good enough. We ride in silence for a while, before Max finally speaks.
“You look different tonight,” Max says, even though he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the elevator buttons. “You did something to your eyes. It’s pretty.”
By now the doors have opened, and we’ve reached the ground floor, and my face is burning with rage. “Just because we can’t help the way we act in the dreams doesn’t mean what happens in the dreams doesn’t matter,” I say coldly as I walk out. “Especially to me.”
“I know,” Max says one final time as the doors close again.
SEPTEMBER 23rd