“You made a mess,” Oliver says, pointing at me. I want to disagree, but I’m sort of tongue-tied. Also, it might be juvenile to argue with a toddler.
Max rounds the couch and sinks down next to his nephew. He musses Oliver’s hair in this sweet, devoted way that makes my heart turn over. “Oli, be nice to Jill,” he says, and as my name leaves his mouth, he looks at me. His perusal holds for a second—my naked face, my sloppy ponytail, my baggy fleece—before he gives his head a little shake and props his feet on the coffee table. He focuses on Barney and his gaggle of dancing kinder-friends, as if I’m not standing five feet away.
When I can’t tolerate the silence any longer, I fill it with mindless prattle. “So, um, your mom’ll be home soon. In a few minutes, probably. You know, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.” He turns to Oliver. “Whatcha drinking, buddy?”
“Juice,” Oliver says.
Max regards me. “Did you dilute it?”
“Dilute it with what?”
“Water. Zoe’s a freak about Oliver and juice. He can only have it if it’s diluted, and then only, like, half a cup.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I feel a twinge of guilt, which is stupid. It’s just juice.
“Two,” Oliver tells Max, displaying two chubby fingers.
“Two what, buddy?”
Oli holds out his empty cup. “Two juice.”
Max chuckles. “Oh, man. You better not tell your mommy.”
With that, Oliver groans, clutches his stomach, and throws up all over the floor.
I gasp. Max hollers, “Shit!” and yanks his feet out of the line of fire. Oliver starts to cry.
Max recovers with impressive speed. He runs to the kitchen while I sit next to a sobbing Oliver, my hand pressed over my nose and mouth to block the pungent stench of toddler puke. I should probably comfort him or something, but I cannot bring myself to move closer to the vomit. My eyes are watering as it is.
Max returns with paper towels and all-purpose cleaner. He blasts me with an incensed glare before kneeling to wipe the hardwood.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my apology muffled by my hand.
He scrubs, grumbling, “Dilute the juice next time.”
When the mess has been handled—with zero help from me—Max carries Oliver out of the room to clean him up. I sit stiffly, trying to get a grip on my gag reflex.
They return a few minutes later, Oliver in a fresh outfit, sitting atop his uncle’s broad shoulders. I catch a welcome whiff of soap as Max lumbers past, dumping his giggling cargo on the couch.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I really didn’t know.”
“It’s my mom’s fault. You don’t like kids; she shouldn’t have left him with you.” Because you’re heartless, not to mention hopelessly inept, he might as well tack on. He plops down next to Oliver, giving his bony back a thump. “You gonna be okay, buddy?”
Oliver nods. He’s still a little pale, but he’s looking at his uncle with fascinated admiration. The uninformed would never guess he just spewed apple juice—a good thing, since Marcy won’t be long.
“Thanks for cleaning up,” I say. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been here.”
Max is gazing absentmindedly at Barney, who’s moved on to warbling about farm animals. “You’d be sitting in puke.”
I smile. “Well, then, thank God for you.”
“Yeah, thank God.” He glances at me, and there’s a glimmer of warmth behind his eyes when he says, “How was Oregon?”
“Okay. My dad worked remotely, Meredith obsessed over the baby, and we hung out with her parents. A lot.” And then I ask a question I want to gobble right back up: “How was your Christmas?”
He stares at me, his face falling like a soufflé. His Christmas was awful—it must have been. It fell only two days after he was nearly arrested for drunk driving, and it was the first since his dad’s stroke. He likely spent the holiday staving off his parents’ crestfallen looks while icing his bruised hand.
He leans in a little, like he has a secret, and my heart gallops in anticipation. Very quietly, very coolly, he says, “Christmas fucking sucked.”
Max, forever an asshole when he’s upset.
I recall, suddenly, the beach vacation of three years ago, when I paddled out too far and lost control in an undertow. Max swam to me like an Olympic freestyler, plucked me from the ocean’s frothy waves, and paddled for the beach like he performed water rescues daily. Coughing and sputtering salt water, I expected him to fawn over me, but after dumping me unceremoniously on the sand, he tossed up his hands and yelled, “Damn it, Jillian! Do you have a death wish?”
Later, when I’d tearfully recounted the rescue and subsequent shouting to Marcy, she explained that some boys are afraid of their emotions, her son especially, and watching me thrash among the whitecaps had probably scared him. Instead of owning up to it, he yelled. That was hard to swallow at the time, one of those things mothers say to make kids feel better, so I convinced myself that Max was just a jerk. I shadowed Ivy for the next two days, until Max hunted me down and convinced me to walk to town with him. There, he bought me coconut ice cream on a waffle cone, his stunted-boy version of an apology.
I don’t foresee any ice cream apologies in my future.
He closes his eyes. The half-moon shadows beneath them are prominent. “I’ve got Oli,” he says. “You can go home.”
I rise from the couch, shocked by his dismissal. I’m too hurt to muster genuine anger, but a frustrated sense of helplessness sloshes around in the pit of my stomach. This was a stupid idea, coming here. I should’ve known I wouldn’t be able to fix things with a single impromptu visit. I should be in my kitchen, baking, or in my room, cataloging scholarships. I should be far, far away from Max Holden.
I shuffle out of the living room and into the foyer. I’ve got a hand on the front doorknob when traitorous tears begin to fall.
I can’t go home—I don’t want Meredith to know I’m upset—so I duck into the Holdens’ powder room to pull myself together.
God. I can’t believe I let him get to me. I’m crying over a boy who won’t dump his shitty girlfriend, who’d rather sulk than grow a pair and get his life together. I look at myself in the mirror and find my face blotchy and tearstained—pitiful. I don’t like the Jillian who looks back at me. She’s changed alongside her parents and her neighbors, and not for the better. She’s a glimmer of the savvy, determined girl she was last spring.
So what if her college funds disappeared? So what if her parents argue almost as often as they breathe? So what if she’s about to become the world’s most reluctant big sister?
So what if the boy I care about most in the world has become intolerable?
What sucks is that I don’t even know what I want from Max. My feelings are jumbled. Ever-altering. Infuriating. I wish, not for the first time, that I could forget all about him.