The flimsy paper plate on my lap teetered dangerously, threatening to dump my chicken Alfredo all over the carpet.

I glared down at the pasta until the plate settled, and then shoved my fork back into it. I chewed slowly, looking between my roommate Nick and his girlfriend, Macy.

They had thought ahead to put real plates underneath their paper ones, so that their food wasn’t trying to fall in their laps. Macy’s crossed legs took up half of the small couch, so I had been relegated by her pointed glance to the armchair across from them.

“And another thing,” I said, taking a gulp of water. “Max is the absolute worst at spreadsheets, and yet! Yet! They keep letting him make the monthly rundowns. It’s—you know what it is? It’s nepotism.”

Macy arched an eyebrow. “Nepotism is getting ahead because of family connections.”

“Fine, favoritism then.”

“Are you going to talk about Max all night, or just during dinner?”

I flushed and frowned, digging the toes of my socks into the carpet. “Not sure yet. I’ll keep you posted.”

Nick chuckled around a mouthful of pasta. He grinned at Macy. “Didn’t you miss Luke’s I Hate Max Radio Hour?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s like we never even graduated college.”

I shoved another forkful of food in my mouth. It wasn’t like I talked about Max that much. He didn’t matter to me, even a little bit. He was just—

“Frustrating!” I said, pointing my fork at Nick. “It’s frustrating and, more importantly, unfair. I work twice as hard as him, and then he comes strolling in late, clearly hungover, on a Monday. A Monday!”

“A Monday?” Macy sat straight and looked between Nick and me with wide eyes. “He was late on a Monday!? Well, fuck, man. Why didn’t you start with that?”

Nick laughed, tossing his head back. I mumbled a quick screw you and ate the rest of my pasta silently. I could still feel the words and frustration bubbling underneath my tongue, but managed to hold it in.

I knew I talked about Max a lot. It was, admittedly, one of my faults. But the guy just got to me. He rubbed up against me in an entirely invasive, unpleasant way—like no matter what I did, I couldn’t manage to actually scrub him out of my thoughts.

It would be easier if we didn’t have a history. Hell, half the guys at the office were assholes, and I managed to ignore the rest of them well enough. But something about Max—his dumb, easy smile, the way he could manage to trick nearly everyone he’d ever met into thinking he was a good guy, the way he never really had to try hard to get where I was frigging killing myself to be—dug at me, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t dig him out.

It was more Nick’s worried glances than it was the physical feeling of my knees bouncing up and down that had me realizing how jittery I must’ve looked. I ignored his heavy look in favor of slowing down the bouncing and twisting my face into a casually interested expression. The effort involved in that meant that I didn’t actually hear half of Macy’s story, but, hey, at least I looked the part.

I only made it another ten minutes before I begged off.

Macy and Nick cried out in protest, but I waved them off, grabbing all our dirty dishes from the coffee table and putting them away. I could feel Nick’s worried stare on the back of my neck even as I scrubbed the creamy pasta sauce out of the pots. Hot water suds were climbing up my forearms with every harsh scrub.

I knew that things were getting to me—Max was getting to me—worse than usual, could feel the annoyance bordering on real anger burrowing right beneath my skin. It wasn’t him, not really. Sure, Max genuinely was an asshole and genuinely did suck, but it was more than that today.

It had been fifteen years. Fifteen years since my dad died—longer than I’d even known him. My dad hadn’t even known me at fifteen. He’d died a month before my ninth birthday.

It was almost my birthday. Today, it was the anniversary of my dad’s death.

Logically, I knew an anniversary didn’t matter. Logically, I knew that my dad wasn’t any more dead today than he had been yesterday or would be tomorrow. An anniversary shouldn’t have any sort of hold over me.

But still—the anger burned beneath my skin, and I let it. If I fought against the rage, I knew the only thing I would do was guarantee the release of the grief.

I dried the dishes and escaped back to my bedroom before Nick or Macy could try to convince me to stay with them. I wanted to burrow under the covers and feel the anger and fight the grief, and tomorrow, I wanted to go to work and make Max Stephens regret every time he’d crossed me.

I shucked off my work clothes, carefully hanging up the slacks and jacket so they wouldn’t crease. I pulled on a pair of old, worn sweatpants and threw myself on the bed. I grabbed my phone from where it was charging on the nightstand and sighed. Two missed calls from Grandma.

A flash of hot guilt swam through me. As hard as today was for me, I knew it was worse for Grandma and Grandpa. My mom had died when I was just a baby, some drunk who’d crashed into her. Dead on the spot.

When Dad followed her a few short years later, it was his parents who picked up the pieces—picked me up.

I called her and listened to the slow ringing, chewing on my bottom lip. I let it go with a pop when the phone went quiet, followed by Grandma’s quiet, unsure “Hello?”

Talking to my grandmother, the woman who’d raised me, was an experience of contrasting urges. The urge to fall to her feet, thank her, give her anything she wanted was on the surface—that was the one I tended to indulge. She was a good, honest woman, the most formative person I’d ever met. I hoped every day that my life honored her, even when I knew there was no way I could ever repay her for taking care of me.

But the other part of me—the quiet, hidden, selfish part—wanted to run and hide. Talking to her or Grandpa curled into my stomach all wrong, made me feel a little sick. Not because I didn’t love them, but because I did—because I knew that with a single wrong word, a single accident, everything they wanted me to be would disappear in an instant.

I was barely moving up in the company, after they’d worked so hard to get me into a good college, and I knew how much it would mean to them to see me succeed. I hardly ever made it over to the house for Sunday dinners anymore, even when I knew Grandma was already disappointed that I didn't come to church anymore. And I wasn’t settling down with anyone and starting a family.

I couldn’t tell them why I couldn’t do these things—I couldn’t tell them who I really was, couldn’t risk it.

I blew out a breath and shakily said, “Hey, Grandma.”

The quiet was gone in a half-breath. “Oh, Lucas! Luke, I was so sure I’d missed you when you didn’t answer. Your grandfather, oh—Bill! Bill, get in here. No—no, I said GET in here, Bill! It’s Lucas—LUCAS, Bill, your grandson—oh, Lucas, Luke?”

“Uh, yes?”

“Oh, good. Grandpa wants to say hello.”

I nodded and then rolled my eyes at myself. “Okay, Grandma.”

“Well, if he ever gets in here,” she grumbled. I could see the pinch between her brows and the way she’d tap her foot impatiently on the kitchen linoleum as she waited for Grandpa to come in from the living room. After his hip replacement last spring, he moved just slowly enough to ignore his wife of fifty years.

“How are you, Grandma?”

She sighed heavily. “I’m good, sweetie. Don’t you worry about me.”

Fat chance, I thought. “Okay. Tell me about the ladies at Daniella’s. And your church groups?”

Grandma didn’t hesitate this time, going on about the various ladies and what those ladies were doing, and their kids and grandkids, and did I know that Melanie Anderson, oh, I remembered her from Sunday school, didn’t I?

Well, did I know that Melanie was single now—divorced, bless her, but single, nonetheless, and if I wanted, Grandma would pass along to Melanie’s grandma that I, too, was single.

Grandpa finally got fed up listening and snatched the phone from her. I nearly thanked him.

“Lord, woman, let the child breathe,” he snapped at her, the sound barely muffled as he directed it away from the receiver. “Lucas.”

“Grandpa.”

Grandpa was a man of very few words. My dad had been more like Grandma, from what I remembered. I was always closer to her for it. But Grandpa—there were some moments when he was the only one I could talk to.

Or, as it was lucky, not talk to. We sat quietly, the phone as heavy as our breathing as we waited for the other one to break.

As usual, it wasn’t either of us that did it. Grandma hissed from the other side, Bill, say something! And then Grandpa sighed and asked, “You doin’ okay?”

“Yes,” I said quickly, nodding. I didn’t stop even after I remembered he wouldn’t be able to see me. “Yes, I’m doing great.”

“Good,” he said gruffly.

We waited a half of a beat and then, “How about you, Grandpa?”

“Oh, I’m good, boy. No thinking about me.”

I told him a bit about work, and he invited me fishing, the same as we did every time we spoke. I hung up before he could give the phone back to Grandma and she could keep me talking another hour.

When I plugged my phone back in, I could still hear Nick and Macy shuffling in the living room, the TV playing some reality show that they always watched together. It was hardly late enough to be ready for sleep, but I still got ready for bed anyway.

There was a billowing sadness in my chest that I ignored. It was heavy, a low-hanging weight that promised a more sinister fall, but I pushed it down until holding it was exhausting enough that I fell asleep.

The next morning came much too quickly. My alarm—a blaring, angry, seven a.m. wake-up call—startled me awake, my hands flying in a sleepy, uncoordinated effort to slap it quiet. I normally woke up ten full minutes before my alarm, but even with the extra bit of sleep, and having gone to bed early last night, my head felt groggy and my limbs ached from exhaustion.

I wanted to go back to bed, burrow under the covers and sleep until my head stopped ringing. But sleeping in wasn’t an option—people who slept in were people who were late to work, and people who were late to work weren’t the people who got promotions.

I needed that promotion—I needed to get the hell out of bed.

By the time I rolled out, it was seven-fifteen. Nick was already in the shower, and I knew from experience that there would be nothing but ice-cold water left—that was why I always woke up at six, to beat him to the punch. We were out of milk for the coffee, and I spilled the last cup of black coffee all over myself, ruining the light-gray pants and blue button-up I was wearing.

I made it to work with five minutes to spare, but I was unwashed, hungry, and wearing casual jeans on a friggin’ Tuesday.

Then, right when I thought the day couldn’t get worse, I stumbled into Max.

Literally, crashing into the guy. On instinct, I reached out, grasping onto him to keep myself upright.

His hands clenched, one around my upper arm, the other around my waist. He steadied me, eyebrows rising as he gave me a quick once-over.

I froze, not even managing to glare. Instead, I just blinked at him in surprise.

His eyebrows fell and his lips twitched. “Luke.”

His voice, like nails on a chalkboard, woke me right up. I wrenched away, feeling my face flood with embarrassment when I realized that my own hands had been knotted up in his shirt. “Max.”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Whoa, watch the venom there. You know, you fell into me.”

I glared at him and clicked the elevator button again. Or maybe for the first time. I had to start getting up earlier—I couldn’t stand it if Max and I kept having to ride the elevator together.

Already it was two days in a row. I was being punished.

“Just—get out of my way,” I muttered.

Max rolled his eyes. He did it obnoxiously, slowly, as if he was trying to make sure I’d catch it from the corner of my eye. I gritted my teeth to keep from saying something—didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“Wait a second, are you wearing denim jeans at work right now?”

The elevator pulled up, the doors opening. He jumped in front of me, slowly backing up into the elevator to give me a wide grin. “Oh my god, you are wearing jeans.”

Even though it was infuriating, I could feel my cheeks heat up by him pointing it out. I stepped into the elevator and jabbed the floor button hard.

Max kept talking like I hadn’t been ignoring him for five years. “This is so exciting. Best-Dressed Wilson is slumming it like the rest of us mortals today. And he was late yesterday.”

Max started laughing, a delighted peal that made my skin itch. I tapped my foot against the rising floor, counting to ten over and over again as I tried not to say anything unnecessarily rude—not that anything was really unnecessary where Max was concerned. It was all well-deserved.

The doors opened, and I launched forward.

Max’s arm flew out and curled around my elbow, holding me still. I spun around to him. He was still grinning, face bright and eyes laughing at me.

“Sure hope no one reports you for that.” He patted me on the elbow before letting go, winking. I yanked my arm away and glared at him, feeling my face heat up.

I guess I deserve that.

He strolled past me, whistling as he went toward his desk.

I watched him go, a fleeting sense of envy bubbling up in my stomach. God, I could practically taste how easy life must be for Max—how simple and casual and calm it must be to be a guy like that, without a care or worry in the world. Life was a breeze for him.

I slowly stepped off of the elevator and walked to my desk, letting the bruising jealousy ease out with every step. I might not have as easy a life as Max, but I was not going to let that stop me.

I was going to have just as good a life as Max Stephens, even if it killed me.