“Hey,” I say, dropping the bags on the patchy brown grass in front of the porch. I sit down on the step next to him.
“Hey.”
I’m not ready to look at him. It’s hard to say if he’s looking at me.
I should have practiced this part. Rehearsed. I had plenty of time, lying awake in bed all night, researching ways to strip wallpaper off old plaster walls. I was too fixated on the practical side of this grand plan, not enough on the emotional.
“‘Rowman’s Hardware,’” he reads from the side of the bag. “What’s in there?”
“I thought we could… fix up the house a little.” I turn to face Max, but he’s still staring down at the bags. “Make a dent, anyway. I bought stuff to strip wallpaper and paint the walls. I figured we could maybe start with the living room? That is—only if you and Marlow want to. And if your parents say it’s okay. I just thought—”
I don’t remember what I thought. Max is looking up at me now and his eyes are endlessly deep brown pools that give nothing away. I had thought I knew him so well. There was so much to learn, though. There is so much to learn.
“Maybe it’s a stupid, insensitive idea,” I say, babbling to fill the gaping space between us, “and it is stupid, isn’t it? But I know you’re thinking about moving away. And I just thought that maybe if the house could feel more like a home, you would all stay. At least for now. But it’s not my business, and I’m probably majorly intruding. I just—”
“You what?” he asks, and his face is so damn blank it makes me want to scream.
“I just don’t want you to go, okay?” I stand up, because there is too much happening inside me to stay still, too much nervous energy. I walk in circles along the lumpy overgrown hedges. “For some silly reason I’m still fighting for us, even if you’ve given up. What happened and how it went down sucks, yes, a thousand percent. But the connection we had—it was real, wasn’t it? I want more time to figure out a friendship. And I want that with Marlow, too. I really want that. If you leave—if you leave, I’m afraid I might never see either of you again.”
I finish talking, but I keep pacing. Waiting.
After a few minutes, I start to wonder if I’m waiting for nothing. Maybe silence is the last thing I’ll hear from Max. He really is incapable of dealing with this. Us.
But then he stands up, too. I stop to watch him as he picks up the bags, one by one. There’s a pause, and I think maybe he’s going to hurl them into the woods.
“Okay,” he says finally. “Let’s do this. If Marlow puts on scrubs and helps, too. She doesn’t get to stay clean if I’m scraping down filthy old walls.”
“Really?” I ask, too stunned to follow him as he starts up the stairs.
“Really. My goodbyes don’t seem to work with you anyway. And I’m glad about that.” He stops on the top step and turns back to face me. “Marlow told me, by the way. That she’s talked to you.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t asked her this—if he knew.
“I didn’t love it when she first told me. I wanted to, I don’t know, protect her somehow. From all the baggage. But she seemed happy about it. About you. Happier than I’ve seen her since we left Philly, to be honest.”
“Really?” My heart ticks faster. “Did she say that?”
“No, but she didn’t have to. I can see it. And she asked my parents if we could stay. I’m pretty sure that’s about you.”
“I wasn’t trying to meddle,” I say, even though I’m glad I did, if that’s what it was, my conversations with Marlow.
“I know.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Do you? It didn’t seem like that. After our last conversation.”
He sighs and drops the bags on the porch. “I’m sorry, Calliope. I really am. That wasn’t my finest moment. As a matter of fact, none of our last few discussions have been. There’s a lot to be sorry about. I was angry, yeah. And sad and horrified and shocked and disgusted and, oh you know, everything. Pretty much every emotion in the book. But I shouldn’t have taken that out on you. You were right—none of this was anybody’s fault. And there’s nothing I can do to punish the universe, so I guess that’s that? Time to move past it all and see what’s next.”
“Just like that?” I ask, so much hope filling me up I feel woozy. Maybe he took a long time to get to this place. Too long. But he’s here now. That’s not nothing.
He nods. “Yep. Just like that. If you can forgive me, that is. Because it should have been me, making this kind of grand gesture. I should have come to you.”
“You’re not wrong,” I say, and I can’t fight the smile breaking out on my lips. “But if you stay, you’ll have plenty of time to make up for it.”
“Then come on,” he says, reaching down to pick up the bags. “I’ve got some serious work to do.”
The three of us peel and scrape and sand and patch up scrapes and dents.
Joanie watches silently, her mouth a thin, unreadable line.
I don’t notice at first when Elliot comes in. But I turn to get fresh sandpaper, and there he is, standing next to Joanie with an arm draped loosely around her shoulders. She’s angled away from him, their bodies making minimal contact.
They both disappear then, up the stairs, and we keep going. We only take a break to microwave frozen burritos and popcorn and spoon some ice cream into bowls, bringing it all back to the living room to eat as we work.
And then suddenly Elliot is
