I’m also afraid to stay in this car with Max, because if I do, then it feels like I made a choice. And what if that choice is Max?
What if I’m supposed to be with you?
As if Max hears me, his smile falters. He swallows hard.
“You know what you need to do, Ada.”
I think back to when I pulled him out of the veil, back in that haunted house that feels like eons ago, when he said maybe this is your destiny.
For once, I wish I believed in it.
Would make every choice that much easier.
I shake my head, tears climbing up my throat, tears that refuse to fall.
“No,” I tell him, my voice a hush. “No. I think we should leave.”
“Are you sure?” He’s watching me closely, trying to pry me open with his searching eyes.
I nod. “Yes. I think…this would be a mistake. I think I’m not supposed be here. That I should just let things be. He made his choice. I’m the one who has to come to terms with it. There’s nothing I can do to change things anymore. If he wanted to be with me, we would be together already. He knows where to find me. He knows what I want.”
Or what I wanted.
Max looks past me at the house. “I almost feel sorry for him.”
“Feel sorry for him how?”
He gives me a soft smile. “Poor boy doesn’t realize just what he’s giving up.”
Then he starts the car and we turn around in the cul-de-sac, roaring down the street, leaving the blue house in the desert dust.
Fifteen
“I go missing, no longer exist. One day I hope I’m someone you’d met.”
– I Appear Missing
Days go by in a flash.
We left Tucson with the sun setting and didn’t stop until past midnight, where we rolled into a roadside motel outside of El Paso, Texas. At that point I was half-asleep and way too tired to protest, and luckily the motel was fairly clean, the beds comfy enough for one night.
Then the next day we did twelve hours from El Paso to Houston. That was boring as shit.
And now we’re at the end of our five-hour drive from Houston, coming into the outskirts of New Orleans.
“It’s funny,” I muse to Max, as we pass by swamp after swamp. “I always thought you were a full-on Cajun swamp boy through and through. Your accent, your swagger, your…predisposition to plaid. Now I realize that it’s all ruse. You don’t even have that accent half the time. You belong as much here as you do in the Pacific Northwest. You could have been a lumberjack this whole time.”
He tilts his head. “What can I say? I’m a man of the world.” He takes in a deep breath. “Though, I have to admit, this place still feels like home to me. Maybe because it’s where I built so many memories. The ones that really mattered.”
“Maybe you’ll just build new ones in Portland and that will start to feel like home too,” I say, trying not to sound too hopeful.
His eyes soften, becoming the same mossy green as the land outside. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
But there’s something in his voice, something that makes feel anxious and on edge and I don’t really know why.
The last few days we’ve returned to the same normalcy as at the beginning of the trip. We’ve had our own beds in the hotel rooms, we’ve eaten out at shitty restaurants, we’ve gotten drunk and watched TV. We’ve talked and joked and listened to music on these long stretches. When you have someone like Max with you, there really is no boring conversation. Sometimes he’s insanely quiet and trapped in his head, but most of the time he’ll talk your ear off if you prompt him enough.
As for me, well, I haven’t forgotten that we kissed. Twice. I haven’t forgotten that he was okay with being my rebound before completely dropping the conversation. I haven’t forgotten the dirty things he said to me. I don’t think I ever will, to be honest. He said there was a thin line he didn’t want to cross, but he doesn’t realize that he crossed it. And that I pulled him over.
But there’s also a lightness inside me that wasn’t there before, a weight lifted off my shoulders. While I still worry about Max, about his psyche and his soul and what this journey into NOLA will bring us, what Rose will do to him, I think not seeing Jay helped me immensely. Maybe that was the closure I needed. Not for him to change his mind. But for me to change mine. To walk away and leave it in the past.
We haven’t seen any demons either, which has been a relief. I’m sure they’re just lurking around the corner, and New Orleans seems like a place that would have a ton of them, but I’m grateful that none of my clothes have been ruined since we left San Francisco.
The closer we get to New Orleans though, the more that Max seems on edge, kneading the steering wheel, his jaw tight. I can’t blame him. This is the climax, the crescendo, the point of the whole trip. Everything hinges on this, even the things I don’t understand yet.
“So, what’s the plan, Stan?” I ask Max as we head up the wrought-iron stairs that lead to the third floor of our hotel on Royal Street. He’s carrying both suitcases with ease, thank god, because the staircase is narrow as hell and totally open, going up the middle of an inner courtyard.
“Well,” he says, going to our door. “First we get settled and I might want a nap.”
I step inside the room after him. It’s large, bright white brick with a window overlooking the street below, a horse and carriage passing underneath. It’s by the
