“Leah missed you,” he says, folding his hands behind his head. The toothed edges of his vest ride up around his ribs.
“I’m sure she had a fantastic time.” Leah goes out with Jesse, another of Max’s football buddies. I helped her with her peacock costume, an indigo leotard we glued iridescent emerald and violet feathers to. Though she and Kyle, my best friend and McAlder’s All-District quarterback, did their damnedest to convince me to go to Leo’s, I didn’t get the impression my absence would have much bearing on their fun meters. Besides, there was no way I was going to squeeze into the black cat “costume” Kyle pointed out during our trip to the local party supply store.
I eye Max’s attire, lips pursed in contemplation. “Don’t tell me … Jack Sparrow?”
“Nah. Just your general parrot-toting, sword-wielding, beer-guzzling buccaneer.” His words are perfectly pirate-slurred.
“Sounds like all you got right was the beer guzzling.”
He sneers. “Becky was my wench.”
“Speaking of your better half, where is she? Oh! Wait! Did she walk the plank? Was she swallowed by a giant squid?”
His laughter, low and uninhibited, surprises me. It’s the sound of my childhood: leisurely afternoons spent tossing a football back and forth in the street between his house and mine, gross-out comedies in the Holdens’ big bonus room, dripping fudge pops devoured on summer evenings. His bloodshot eyes crinkle at the corners and his head tips back. A small, selfish part of me is flattered that he’s here, with me, sharing a chuckle at Becky’s expense.
But when his laughter dies, he looks uncomfortable, like he might feel guilty at having experienced even the tiniest bit of joy. He studies his watch, a vintage thing on a worn leather cuff that belongs to his father. Bill has no use for it these days; Max is the one who wears it unfailingly.
He shakes off the memory he fell into and says, “Becky went home.” He makes a swilling motion, as if throwing back a drink. “I might’ve had one too many. Think I pissed her off.”
“You think you pissed her off?”
“I spilled beer on her costume. Maybe in her hair. But yeah, she’s definitely pissed. She made a big scene and then she left, which was shitty, because she’s the one who begged me to go to Leo’s in the first place. ‘Blow off some steam, Max.’ And then, poof”—he swoops an imaginary magic wand through the air—“she was outta there.”
“Wow. Some girlfriend.”
“Right? For all she knows, I tried to drive home and ended up in a ditch.”
I blink away the image of Max’s F-150 mangled on the side of a dark road. “She really left you without a ride?”
“Yeah, but Ivy brought me home.”
Of course. Ivy Holden is a year older than Max and me, a grade ahead of us in school. She and Becky might as well be affixed at the hip, but that doesn’t keep her from watching out for her brother. “Does Becky know you’re here?”
He snorts. “What do you think?”
Honestly, I don’t know what to think.… He ticked his girlfriend off, caught a ride home with his sister, then stumbled across the street to my house. How scandalous. Yet there’s something right about his visit, even after all this time. I shiver again, though the window’s sealed tight. Sure, Max is blitzed, but he came to me.
He captures my gaze, inhaling like he’s preparing to admit something of utmost importance. He’s so serious, so un-Max-like, I stoop down to give him my full attention. Quietly he says, “I don’t wanna be at home, Jill. I hate home. I’ve hated it since…”
His voice shrivels, but I know what he intended to say: since my dad’s stroke.
He pretends to be impervious. He slogs through his classes, working just hard enough to maintain a GPA that’ll keep him on the varsity football roster, then boozes it up with Becky on the weekends. He acts like he’s fine, like he’s handling it, but those of us who know him, really know him, see how much he’s changed.
It’s been almost six months since Bill Holden—patriarch, football fanatic, and my dad’s longtime friend—collapsed while pushing his mower across his front lawn. Max, the only other Holden home at the time, found him unconscious in the grass. He called 911, and then he called my father. Dad and I stood in the yard with him while Bill was loaded into an ambulance, an experience profound in its gravity. Poor Max—he was a little boy all over again: scared, sorry, close to caving under the weight of my dad’s hand on his trembling shoulder.
Later, at the hospital, we learned that Bill had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, the result of an undiagnosed cerebral aneurysm that burst and caused bleeding in his brain. The damage is, for the most part, irreversible. He’ll never again be the vital, active man he was, no matter how much his son drinks. No matter how desperately Marcy, his wife, prays. No matter how often his daughters—Ivy and Zoe—act out or micromanage.
The impact of Bill’s stroke was instant, and instantaneously unraveling.
Since my dad’s stroke … It’s there, loitering in the air, ominous as a storm cloud.
Max’s jaw is clenched and his eyes are inflamed and I’m horrified. He’s had too much to drink, and now he’s battling emotion he’s kept corked for months. I should let him say what he needs to say. Just spit it out and fall apart and be done with it. But the idea of tears trailing down his face guts me.
I reach toward him, brushing my fingertips along smudged charcoal liner. He exhales, but stays still. There’s beer on his breath. Something warm and spicy, too—cinnamon—and it’s inexplicably appealing. I have the briefest, most inappropriate thought ever: I wonder what he tastes like?, before I remember how damaged he is. Tonight he needs a friend, not a neighbor with indiscriminate hormones.
My fingers shake as they skim the kohl line of his eye. Touching him tangles my emotions—surprise snarled with self-awareness, embarrassment twisted with wonder. We’ve barely had physical contact over the last couple of years, but I committed the velvety quality of his skin to memory long ago.
He sighs, and I come to my senses. The last thing I want is to disrupt the trust he’s instilling in me, but there’s only so far I’m willing to go. Max has a girlfriend, one who’d breathe fire if she knew I was touching him. Besides, in the morning, after hours spent anxiously obsessing, this whole experience will seem dreadfully bizarre.
As my fingers drop away, he opens his eyes, catching my hand as it falls. I try not to fidget as he stretches it open, holds it close to his face, and studies my palm like he’s reading my fate. My fingertips are stained an odd carrot color because I spent Halloween the same way I spend most evenings: baking. The orange food tint I used to color marzipan for pumpkin cupcakes is evidence. Layered over the orange, accentuating the dips and valleys of my fingerprints, is the black liner I lifted from his pirate makeup.