AT HOME, I PACE MY ROOM.
My dad’s yet to show; it sickens me to think he might’ve stayed with Mrs. Tate even after our confrontation. Poor Meredith must be bored, because she’s knocked on my door a dozen times, wondering aloud if I’m okay, if I need anything, if I’d like some company.
I know I need to talk to her, and I’m going to, but … not now.
Feeling alone and agitated and abashed, I wash my face and brush my teeth, then dress for bed in sleep shorts and the McAlder football T-shirt I snatched from Max last weekend. It’s threadbare and faded, but it smells like him.
Regret’s gnawing a hole through my stomach. I feel terrible about our fight, the events that sparked it, my suggestion that he doesn’t care.
I know he cares; I just worry that for us, caring might not be enough.
I’m seconds from falling into a restless sleep when an urgent rapping rattles my window, startling me out of bed. I stumble across my dark room and yank the curtains open. Max is standing in the side yard. His eyes meet mine, their sadness so exposed and acute, I feel it instantly, intensely, a knife of sorrow straight to the chest.
Being next to him is at once a basic, physical need, as crucial as oxygen.
I throw the window open. He puts his hands on the sill and hoists himself through, then pulls me to him. His lips touch my hair, my cheeks, my throat, a flurry of butterfly kisses. He’s clinging to me, shaking, his raspy breaths skimming my skin. I haven’t seen him this upset in months, since the night after Bill’s stroke. I’d tried to console him, a naive attempt at erasing his pain, but he brushed me off and went to Becky’s, where he drank himself stupid. Later, after she dropped him off at home, he got sick in his dad’s immaculately pruned hedges.
Tonight, he could’ve drowned his sadness in booze. Instead, he came to me.
I press my palms to his chest and lean back to look at him. He wipes his hands roughly over his face. I follow their path with my own, and find his bristly cheeks faintly damp. What’s left of my anger dies like a smothered flame. “Talk to me?” I whisper.
His eyes shine like silver coins. “How can you think I don’t care?” he says, holding my hand flat to his chest, atop his racing heart. “I care so much it hurts, right here, all the time.”
And then he’s kissing me, rashly, feverishly, insistently.
We stumble across my room until we’re a knot of limbs before my bed. He kicks off his shoes and falls onto my mattress, pulling me down beside him. Our kisses build, deep and eager, until he breaks away to pull his shirt off. I run my hands along the plane of his stomach, and across his strong shoulders. He hovers above me, working my top up and over my head, and I arch my back to help. His touch, his muffled sounds, the way his skin tastes equally salty and sweet—he’s all I can think about, all I can focus on.
I find the button of his jeans and fumble to open it. Rational thought is an elusive thing, but when he inhales a sharp breath and rolls away, I know I’ve done something wrong.
“Jilly, no,” he says, catching my expression in the weak light. His chest rises and falls in time to my nervous heartbeats. “It’s just—we shouldn’t. Not like this.”
I sit up, my face hot with the wretched sting of rejection. Suddenly very aware of my toplessness, I turn away and grope for my shirt, then yank it over my head.
Max sits up, too, behind me, freeing my hair from the collar of my top before pulling his own shirt on. “It’s not like I don’t want to,” he says.
I feel like I’m sitting under a broiler. I focus on my comforter, the carpet, the cookbooks cluttering my desk—anywhere but him. “It’s okay,” I mumble. “I get it.”
He runs his hand down my back, kisses my shoulder. Softly, he says, “I love you. You know that, right?”
My bedroom is a watercolor of streaks and smears. I’ve wanted to hear him say those words since I realized how deep my own feelings run. “Then why…?”
“Because I don’t want it to happen after a fight. I don’t want it to happen because I’m being impulsive, or because you’re trying too hard to right wrongs. I don’t want it to be careless.”
“Is that what you think I do? Try too hard to right wrongs?”
“It’s one of my favorite things about you,” he says, and there’s a buoyancy to his voice that tells me he means it. “But I think we’re both gonna have to learn to deal with shittiness. I don’t think we’ll have much luck avoiding it.”
I swivel around to face him. “I love you, too, Max. Of course I do.”
He waits a tentative beat before saying, “But?”
“But … are you sure?”
“Am I sure?”
“I mean, it hasn’t exactly been easy between us. Are you sure this is what you want?”
He scoots forward to sit beside me. “Jilly, I can’t lose you—not because of what happened tonight, not because of Becky or your dad, not because we may end up in different time zones one day.” He captures my gaze; his eyes blaze with resolve and, at the same time, longing. “I want to be with you, now and next year and after, for as long as we’re happy.”
He pulls me into a hug, and I bury my face in the warm place between his shoulder and his neck. His pulse thrums an unfaltering beat and for the first time in hours …
I breathe.
* * *
He offers to leave through the window, but I won’t let him. “The window is sneaky.”
“But what if your dad’s home? What if he sees us headed for the door?”
“He won’t be able to say a word, because he’ll be choking on hypocrisy.”
“Jill—”
“Max,” I say, taking his hand and leading him down the hallway. “If he doesn’t find out tonight, he’ll find out tomorrow. What was that you said about dealing with shittiness?”
Quietly, he laughs.
When we reach the door, I hesitate, standing woodenly with my hand wrapped around the knob. Saying good-bye, watching him walk across the street, gearing up to brave my messy, messy family …
Max brackets my face with his hands and says, “I’m sorry I acted like a dick when I should’ve been there for you. I’m sorry your dad’s made such a disaster of things. And I’m sorry Becky’s been screwing with you—that’s not gonna happen anymore.” He stoops down and kisses me, sweet and tender. “From now on, things are gonna be better.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” He nudges my hand from the knob and opens the door, stepping past me. He touches me once more, a warm hand on the back of my neck, a reassuring squeeze. “You and me, Jilly.”