The December sun glistened down through his office window as Durango sat behind his desk, racking his brain about what to do. What could he say to make Max understand his intentions? He’d surely planned on telling him sooner, but every time he thought the right moment arrived—he’d been robbed of the opportunity. He couldn’t count on one hand how many times he tried. Luckily for him, Durango’s brother John stole Gage for the entirety of the day, that brisk Christmas Eve. Gage expressed his interest to go shopping without his daddy, so he could pick out a present to give him. As any loving father would do, he embraced the opportunity to afford his son the ability to learn the elements of giving during the holidays. Especially since he was at the appropriate age to start learning the reasons for the season.
While the afternoon presented him with the chance to do some personal conflict resolution, Durango couldn’t help but feel exhausted after the last couple days of catching minimal sleep. He paced out toward the living room, clutching to his cellphone in the hopes Maxwell would call. It had literally been a full two days, and the worry inside him intensified as each hour progressed. However, being the dutiful psychologist he was, this was clearly a situation which he needed to give Max just a little bit more time to have the opportunity to reach out first. Durango’s optimism wasn’t lacking, as he continued to hold onto the hope for this whole fiasco to come to pass.
He slid the flip phone onto the surface of his coffee table while inching down into the cushions of his sofa. His exhausted riddled eyes shut momentarily, and it took no convincing him to keep them shut as he whisked away into an instant slumber. Maybe, he hoped, just maybe when he awoke, it would have been to the sound of a phone call or Maxwell hovering overhead, jolting him awake. The truth was, Max already had a copy of his housekey. He knew Max would take the step to reach out, it was just a matter of when. But it wasn’t without some disconcerting small level of doubt. It tuns out, when he called his brother from Canada, John hadn’t heard anything about going to pick up gage from Maxwell’s place yet. It wasn’t until he retold the horror of what happened a couple hours before his call, when John apparently sped across the city to fetch his son and bring him home with him until Durango could get back into town.
***
“Maxie?” Lily peeked her eyes around the heavy master-bedroom door, finagling her tiny body through the wedge.
As Maxwell opened his eyes, he spotted Lily sitting by his side, looking straight down into his eyes, holding a half-eaten sugar cookie which was at one point in the shape of a candy cane.
Maxwell rubbed his eyes to fully awaken from whatever long nap he’d taken. “Hi munchkin,” he greeted her.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” she smiled, continuing to allow the crumbs of the cookie she was devouring to fall freely onto his chin. “Isn’t Santa coming tonight?”
“It is?” Max questioned, attempting to sound shocked and play into her excitement, but the truth was—he was genuinely surprised. “Well then,” he added, while looking at the time on the alarm clock on his nightstand behind Lily. “Oh yep, it’s four thirty. I bet you he’s somewhere over in Europe right this minute.”
Lily gasped, allowing even more cookie debris to sprinkle down. Maxwell propped his backside up to the headboard and leaned over to disconnect his Apple Watch from its charging dock.
“Why don’t you go start writing your letter to Santa, sweetheart?”
She nodded, “I was waiting to do that with you.”
The warmness of her response sank into his heart, as he embraced in the fact this was actually the first year he’d be doing this with her. Usually, Brogan would be the one who sat down with her, perched on the barstools at the breakfast counter. This also brought on the rushing thoughts and feelings about what happened just a day or so earlier with Durango at the resort in Vancouver. He wasn’t entirely capable of measuring time in this current moment, but he figured he’d been sleeping off the effects of his bender. And what must have Melanie thought? Or Lily? Does Durango know?
Lily scooted off the bed and hurried back through the bedroom door, where Melanie quickly replaced her niece’s presence inside the room. Only this time, Max wasn’t greeted with an innocent seven-year-old princess smile. Rather, a long distressed look of what seemed to be fear, concern, and confusion all in one extremely dramatic display. He rubbed his head at the fact he couldn’t recall an entire portion of time, from the moment he finished his first drink that night until he came home. He vaguely remembered stumbling into the master bathroom to relieve his full bladder. But everything else… not a thing.
Melanie found a spot on the side of the bed to sit, dangling her legs off the edge. “Ohhh, got a bit of a headache do ya?”
Max sighed, which converted into stifling a yawn instead. “What happened?” He asked. “I mean I know what happened and yes I feel so bad about it. But I fuckin lost it, Mel. I lost everything,” the tears returned and he planted his face back into the palms of his hands.
“So you remember trashing the room, breaking the window, wishing Durango,” she held out her fingers for air quotes—“a merry fuckin Christmas.”
“Oh dear god, you know about the whole thing,” Max winced, not only feeling the sorrow for completely throwing away ten years of sobriety, but making an entire fool out of himself over something he should have been more even keeled about. And now Melanie knew every detail, at least what happened at the resort, he supposed.
Melanie reached her hand out to console Max with her finger against the sides of his eyes. “I’m disappointed, yes,” she paused. “But this isn’t anything which can’t be repaired.”
Max looked plainly into his twin sisters concerned eyes. “Even my dead husband’s broken heart?” He cried out, realizing just how ridiculous that sounded. After all, it was an oxymoron, even if it was the absolute truth.
“Yeah,” she replied, lowering her head in agreement. “I know about that, too,” she affirmed, “but I’m willing to bet it’s not broken.”
Max sat up in horror at the retelling of what happened. Listened to her explain how worried she was about him when Durango’s brother arrived to pick up Gage, completely unaware anything at all was wrong up until that very moment. How lucky it was that she’d already gotten the kids to sleep, so Lily didn’t have to witness a single bit of it. Especially since she didn’t hear her and John step into the room, so he could kneel down and scoop his somnolent little nephew into his arms. Melanie told him that for the next four hours after, how she kept trying to reach him on the phone and text message, worried that her brother flew off the rails and did something irrational, or worse—wasn’t going to be returning home at all. Then, when a matter of a few more minutes passed by, she jumped at the front gate alarm which jolted her from a half-slumber. And when she replied through the speaker, the rush of relief she instantly felt when a confused and seemingly irritated cab driver attempted to buzz through, hoping he’d gotten the correct address after driving around town picking up on his broken speech and clues.
“Technically Max, he told me, he wasn’t even supposed to take you home, because you were so trashed, it posed a liability on their company.”
His eyes widened at the thought of his twin sister—a full figured woman with shorter arms—attempting to carry her inebriated brother, halfway up the stairs before her back gave out. Hearing this was not only a punch to the gut, out of absolute disgust he’d been three sheets to the wind to the point he couldn’t even walk straight, it made him feel incredibly guilty that she had to deal with that sort of scenario to begin with.
“So,” she added. “This will all get worked out, I’m confident, boo.”
“How can you be so sure, Mel? I fucked it up. I have no idea how this could be repaired.”
She reached out her arms, reeling Maxwell in for a tight hug. “Heyyy, we’ll get through all this. All is not lost. I promise,” she assured him, rubbing his back gently with her left hand.
“I don’t know, sis. I just don’t.”
Melanie pulled back slightly and made eye contact with him. “Look, why don’t you get a shower? Mom’s flight is gonna be here in less than an hour.”
As Max sent Melanie off to pick up their mom from the airport, he asked her to drop by the drugstore to bring him some Pepto and electrolytes in the form of some beverage like Gatorade or Pedialyte.
“I’m also gonna bring ‘Lil so you can take a shower and get your bearings,” she offered, stepping toward to the hallway. “I love you, Max. It’ll be okay, you’ll see.”
Max stretched his entire achy body once his feet met the coolness of the hardwood floor. “One day at a time,” he replied, closing his eyes in disgust—or dread. “All the fuck over again.”
His sister left the room and he wasted no time pacing into the bathroom to take a hot shower. He realized he had a lot of thinking to do, and while it was a very minute possibility, he wondered if indeed Melanie was right. Perhaps this was repairable. As Max glanced into the large bathroom mirror, he saw two emotions. The first was dismal and scraggly. The second however, was the determination he saw in his reflection ten years ago, years before Lily was even conceived. It was time he started making some changes and working on himself in the process. And through the entire shitstorm, Max realized he hadn’t technically finished working through the grieving process for himself. Certainly, that was going to be paramount in the revolution he’d finally, in this moment, convinced himself he was ready to jump feet first in.