Chapter 19
When I wake up, my head pounds, and I remember the poor decisions I made last night.
I flirted with Max. I watched Linden flirt with Carter. And worse, I told everyone else I wasn’t going to the lake house.
Did I do something last night that changed time again? Were the ripples too big?
My eyes are barely open when I call my mother. She answers on the first ring. Grandee answers on the fifth. Linden is still here. I know because she walks out of the bathroom wrapping a scarf around her neck. The blues and greens and golds that shine against her blond hair were knit by her mother.
Linden’s eyes catch mine. “You’re awake.”
I notice the weekender bag already packed by the door. “Yeah.” I stretch like I wasn’t just frantically making phone calls to make sure people still exist.
“You sure you don’t want to come?”
The war between wanting to keep everyone I know exactly as they are and the desire to never see Carter flirt with my cousin again feels all-consuming.
But everyone is alive this morning.
“I need to stay,” I say, sitting up.
She frowns but nods like she understands. “You’ll be fine?”
“Yes.” She spent all last night trying to convince me to go to Carter’s lake house cabin. “It’s only until Christmas.”
“You don’t have to try to catch up, you know.” She looks at me honestly. “No one else is. You don’t have to be the perfect legacy.”
“That’s not the only reason.” It’s not, but I give her the one that means the least to me. “I feel like I’ve been playing catch-up this whole time.”
Which is true, but also, I can’t go to Carter’s cabin.
We spent all of winter break cuddled by the fire and turning into raisins in the hot tub. We hosted dinner parties like grown-ups, and I pretended that Carter and I would get old and know each other in the way only people who’ve spent a lifetime together do.
“Ugh, I just don’t want to leave you alone on campus. It’s not safe.”
I laugh. “Don’t say that in front of Grandee or she will lose her mind.”
She rolls her eyes, but when she kisses my cheek and leaves, I let out a deep sigh afterward, knowing that I’m finally alone.
Not in a lonely way but the kind of alone that feels still and unrushed.
Something I haven’t felt since before Carter died.
I lie down on my bed and stare at the bare branches out my window.
Everything in my life feels just a little off. A little wrong. And Carter going to his family’s cabin without me feels that way, too.
For dinner, I grab a to-go soup from the cafeteria and a bottle of water. At the studio, I sign in to the log that Doc set up and stare at the empty room. The silence here feels weird, like the ghosts of people can be seen sitting at tables and standing over canvases.
Eventually, I wander to where Max sits. His space is chaos with unfinished projects and loose papers.
My sticky note sits on the edge of his desk, and I smile as I run a finger across the edge.
I walk back over to the table I normally work at and pull out my sketchbook.
I stare down at the series of faces I’ve done for the mural so far, a mix of exaggerated emotions bordering on cartoonish. Nothing feels right.
Today’s face is tearstained, and I’m trying to capture longing. Which is not going well.
I’m completely in the zone when the door creaks open, and I look up to find Max walking in. In his hands are two cups, and he sets them on a table and rubs his hands together. “Fuck,” he says. “It’s cold.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Bringing you tea.” He points to the cup.
“Tea? Why aren’t you with everyone else?”
“I don’t ski.”
Yes, he does. He won a gold medal in fifth grade that he displayed in his childhood bedroom until Benji teased him so much he took it down.
Maybe in this reality he doesn’t? Maybe flirting with him changed that?
I don’t know why that makes me sad, but it does. It’s like something that’s been forgotten. A version of Max that’s disappeared.
I add it to the tally of things that have been lost.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, moving the tea on the table closer to me.
“Nothing.” I take a sip. Peppermint, my favorite. Linden must have told him. “Did my cousin ask you to come here?”
Max gives me a patient look. “Has no one ever done something nice for you?”
Not you, I don’t say. Never you. “She was weird before she left. Worried that I would be alone and die or something.”
Max shakes his head. “Honestly? I’m bored. Everyone’s gone.”
Now I really laugh. “No, you’re not. You could go bother a hundred different girls or play Call of Duty.” As soon as I say them, the words feel wrong. I can’t remember ever seeing Max with a girl, and I’ve never seen him bothering them.
I wait for him to say something about it.
“Are you saying I’m lying and I just wanna hang out at the studio? The place I hang out every day?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” He feigns annoyance. “Hand me a paintbrush.”
“A brush?” I give him a look of mock surprise as I pull it off the back counter and give it to him. “Do you think you can manage that kind of power?”
“Probably not, but I’m going to risk it. A little paintbrush roulette.” He takes an old paint palette and spins it.
“Is this what you do when no one’s here?” I ask as his brush comes down and lands on the color green.
“Ah.” He looks a little disappointed. “I wanted brown.”
“You can go again,” I tell him.
“No, that’s not how it works. I have to use green.”
“Green’s great,” I tell him, handing him a tube that says FOREST on it. “The color of growth and change and health.”
He takes it from me. “Says who?”
Grandee. But I don’t say that. I just shrug.
I close my sketchbook. “You don’t have to babysit me.”
He looks hurt for a brief second. “I’m not babysitting you.”
“Listen, I know Linden told you to keep an eye on me—”
“That’s not why I’m here.” He cuts me off, not leaving room for me to say anything else.
Max works quietly as time wanes around us. Sometimes he shares his annoyance with the committee or something one of his roommates does that drives him insane, but for the most part, the two of us are comfortable in the silence.
The clock reads eleven, and I stretch my arms over my head. “I’m gonna head back.” He starts to pack up his things, and I tell him, “You don’t have to go. I’m good.”
“I’ll walk back with you. Better two than one.”
I pack up my things and grab my bag, ready to go, but Max stands at the door with a serene look on his face.
On the other side of the glass hallway is the quad. And—
It’s snowing. White clouds drift down from a silent sky, and under the lamppost, it looks like confetti falling.
We just stand in the doorway staring at the snow.
Eventually, he asks, “Should we wait till it lets up?”
I shrug, because this feels like a moment I don’t want to break. So, we sit on the floor, leaning up against the wall next to the studio door.
I decide to bring up the one thing we can talk about safely. “I can’t make the faces work.”
“Faces? For the mural?” he asks. His voice is low.
I pull my sketchbook out and hand it to him. A noise at the back of his throat has me wondering what exactly he means by it. And I wish I could read his mind.
Max grabs a pencil from the front pocket of his bag and starts sketching. A hush falls over us, and it’s peaceful, only the eerie quiet of the snow and empty quad and the hum of the soft lights complementing the deep break of his pencil on paper to keep us company.
I don’t speak; that’s not what this moment calls for. There is something about Max that makes spending time with him without words feel right.
I think about the last time we were together like this. Our bodies pressed against the wall of the hospital, shifting on the bench seat as we waited to hear if Carter would make it or if …
Max cried quietly next to me, and I didn’t have the courage to reach out and grab his hand. To share his pain.
He loved Carter so much.
I wish I had. I wish I had been more generous with the spaces my grief consumed, but instead, I fought it so hard that I couldn’t see the one person who understood my pain.
Open your eyes.
I lean over to look at what Max is drawing, but he holds out his hand to stop me. “No peeking. I’m almost done.”
Moments later, he turns the page toward me. It’s not anguish, or pain, or any intense emotion. He’s only sketched it, but it’s worse than all of those. It’s a sad resignment.
The subtle way it’s clear she knows there’s no hope makes the ache in me feel like I might never survive.
“It’s a sad song.” I don’t know why I say it. It sounds insane. It’s clearly a sketch and not music.
But he says, “Yeah.” Like he understands.
I run a finger over the sketch. I could never capture this. This is Juliet knowing that she’ll never be with Romeo. She’s not angry or broken. Her pain is the kind that doesn’t have peaks or valleys. It’s the kind that sits with you like a cloak across your shoulders.
“You want to do something like this for the face. Something that shows the impossible.”
“I’m—” I clear my throat. “I can’t draw this.”
He takes a deep breath. “Yeah, maybe.”
“This is personal.” I wonder who made him feel like this. What girl he did love impossibly. I don’t remember Max ever dating. “Who was it?”
He doesn’t ask what I’m talking about, but he looks like he’s not going to answer me. “Just a girl.”
“Just a girl?”
“From a dream.” He seems to have realized that he’s said something odd and shifts next to me. “What about you? Why are you struggling to draw love?”
“I’m not.” But I am. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve forgotten what it feels like.”
“Is that why you’re not interested in Carter? Some other guy you can’t remember?”
I laugh. Carter is the guy. “It feels like a dream. Like none of it was real. My boyfriend died, and I don’t know if that’s something anyone gets over.”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s okay. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering the good things because all I can focus on is the grief.”
He nods. “Were there good things?”
“Of course,” I answer automatically, but I’m not sure. There are a lot of things I don’t know if I would go back and do again. But what were the good things that I would?
“Now I know why you didn’t jump at Carter when he was flirting with you.”
I shake my head. “I don’t like Carter.”
As soon as those four words leave my mouth, I want to take them back. I do like Carter. I love him. But why don’t my words feel like a lie?
“You’re the first girl I’ve ever met who doesn’t.”
I look at Max, and I can see the shadow of Carter that’s been cast on his life. Carter is always the one who everyone loves. He’s the one who gets the girl, he’s the one who is the committee president, he’s the star. And Max is the friend.
Max doesn’t ask me about the boyfriend I’ve never mentioned before. He doesn’t question my grief or my feelings. He doesn’t push me to say more or less. He lets me give exactly what I’m comfortable giving.
“You’re great, you know?”
His brows pull into a frown.
“I mean it. The way art speaks to you. The soft and slow moments that you draw. And you’re funny and a good person and…”
I’m looking at Max Emerson; his eyes are the brightest green, and I can’t help it. My gaze moves to his mouth, and I feel it in my chest.
I want to lean in, and I want to see what Max tastes like. I want to press my lips against the soft parts of his neck and feel his pulse there. I want to feel his sigh on my skin.
Max’s lips part, and I watch them. “I…”
He stands abruptly. “We should go.”
He holds out a hand, and … I don’t know what just happened. Was I going to …
The two of us walk back in the snow. It falls gently around us, sticking to our hair and clothes. It’s like glitter in Max’s dark hair. When I slip on the ground, Max holds out a hand to steady me with a sweet smile. I hate the fire in my belly.
We take the elevator in Founder’s Tower, and I hold my breath in the small space. And as he waves bye as he steps onto his floor and the doors close, I wonder why I keep seeing this different version of Max.
This one that feels like a fairy tale.
I can’t help but wonder if this Max would even recognize the old Nieve. The one he hated so strongly.
I make a promise to myself to avoid him the rest of the break, because I can’t walk around with my heart like this. Raw and falling for Max.
Especially when he’s drawing pictures of another girl.
One he clearly loves.