The Days Between

CHAPTER EIGHT

Monday, March 27

Emmy

Just beyond the squat stone wall that enclosed Emmy’s school, Max leaned against his car, his hands pushed into his shorts pockets. When Emmy spotted him, her breath caught in her throat, and she paused at the top of the stairs, letting the mass of students move around her. He’d shown up, as promised.

The walk across the pavement took an eternity, with Max’s eyes watching her approach, a grin splitting his face. Emmy’s palms were sweaty on the straps of her backpack, and she wondered whether she’d developed an awkward gait.

“Hey.” Max opened the passenger door. “You ready?”

Emmy slid into the leather seat and clipped her seat belt. “Thanks for picking me up.” Max’s Audi was spotless. The space still held its new-car smell but had also taken on Max’s scent, like sea salt, an ocean breeze on a warm day, with a hint of his bodywash she’d opened and smelled in the shower. Emmy didn’t know anything about cars, but she could tell by the interior Max must’ve custom-picked every detail. She rolled her eyes. Boys and their cars.

Max merged into traffic. His white sneakers were as immaculate as his car, and he wore a simple mint-green V-neck. “You don’t have to come get me, you know,” Emmy said.

“It’s no big deal. I’m not doing anything else, Emmy.”

It was like she’d never heard her own name before. It had never sounded the way it did when Max said it, like he was directing her to trust him with her own identity.

“How was your ride to school with my mom?” Max asked.

“Short, but awkward.” Emmy had woken to a single text from Harper, and a surge of hope had sprung into her chest. The message read: How are you?

That was all her mother had to say? It was just so ... Harper. Distant and infuriating. And Emmy again remembered the way Harper had backed her car out of the spot, had abandoned her, over and over, in words and actions, her entire life. Emmy left her mother on read, tossed her phone onto her bedspread, out of her own reach. When she’d climbed into the car beside Kathryn, she’d thought of asking questions. What had really happened between Kathryn and Harper that made Harper a shitty mother and Kathryn an attentive one? But Kathryn maintained her far-off look, visibly distracted, so Emmy watched the passing green lawns and said nothing.

At a red light, Max glanced over. “You hungry?”

At lunch, Emmy had picked at a dry bagel while leafing through her novel. She’d grown up with the pool of students from Delray Beach’s wealthy families, and she and her best friend, Maggie, had enjoyed an easy friendship that evolved from childhood. But when Maggie’s father had accepted a job in New York the previous summer, Emmy had found herself alone. She was hardly a pariah; her family was well respected, but she had no close friends. So Emmy dove into novels to battle the tedium of high school. Maggie’s texts first came in flurries, then tapered off as she made new friends, then found a boyfriend. With the culmination of high school and her impending move on the horizon, during her lunches, Emmy chose to read, ignoring the roar of the students behind her. “I’m starving.”

“My friend Javi is having some people over while his parents are in Colombia. I said I’d drop by if you want to come with.” Max’s face turned toward her, but he kept his eyes on the road. “We could grab a burger first.”

She’d been planning to put away a few bowls of Lucky Charms in front of a toxic yet addictive dating show, but the alternative Max presented seemed interesting. “I would kill for a burger right now.”

Max’s face came alive when he smiled, open and broad.

At the corner of a strip mall dotted with scrawny palm trees, Max looped around the narrow U of the drive-through and pulled up beside the speaker. With one arm resting on the open window, he called out their order. The attendant’s voice was garbled through the tinny speaker, and an amused smile crept across his face, and Emmy felt herself slipping—uncontrollably—into a bout of giggles.

Stop, Max mouthed, but it was too late. She pressed the back of her hand to her lips.

“Yeah, sounds good,” Max called into the speaker, and they rolled forward. “I guess we’ll get ... whatever we get.” He turned to Emmy, who’d slid down in her seat, her sides aching with stifled laughter. When Max pulled up to the window, the attendant eyed them with a raised eyebrow, and Max bit his bottom lip as he gathered their bags and parked under the shade of a tree. Emmy drew a steadying breath and settled into her seat. Max passed her her strawberry milkshake, the Styrofoam cup cool in her hands.

Max fished for stray fries at the bottom of the bag. “Jesus Christ, we ordered enough food for fifteen people.”

“I told you I was hungry.” Emmy peeled back her wrapper and sank her teeth into her burger.

“So is Harper’s husband the reason you wanted to get away?” Max pulled a pickle slice from his burger and flicked it onto his wrapper.

Emmy chewed. “Why do you say that?”

Max held a fry and shrugged. “I only met the guy once, but he seemed like kind of a tool. And if some random dude showed up in my mom’s life, I’d be pretty pissed.”

Emmy mulled this. “No. Joshua may be a tool, but he’s okay. He’s scared of Nora, so he keeps to himself. I could’ve been nicer when they first got together, I guess, but I was thirteen, so I made it my mission to make his life as miserable as possible. I must’ve done a good job, because he barely talks to me now. Like, he was my mom’s therapist; how gross is that?”

Max’s brows arched. “Wow, that’s pretty messed up. I’m sure it violates all kinds of doctor-patient rules.”

“I know. Ew. But he’s not the problem. It’s my mother. She chose him. She moved to the other side of the house. They have their own kitchen, their own entrance, so I don’t see her for, like, days or weeks at a time. She doesn’t give a shit about me.” Emmy let the cool milkshake melt on her tongue. “She’s nice to me when she’s in a good mood or when her meds are right, when she wants to take me to get our nails done and stuff. But she always gets depressed again. The higher the highs are, the lower the lows.”

“So what made you decide to leave now? Why not wait it out a few more months?”

“I tried to wait it out. My mom already paid for my first semester of college, so I tried not to make waves. But the other night, my mom and grandmother had an argument. Nora said I’m just a mistake from my parents’ marriage.”

“Shit,” Max hissed.

“I’ve always felt it, but it was different to hear the words, you know? And, worse, my mom didn’t stand up for me. I’m just, I—” A lump formed in her throat.

Max’s eyes locked on hers. “What is it?”

“I just—I thought my mom might try to stop me from leaving. I thought maybe if I did what she’s too scared to do—put my foot down to Nora—it might be the wake-up call she needed to get away from her, too. We could move. I don’t care if Josh comes, too. But I wanted my mom to choose me—” The knot was harder now, painful when Emmy pushed away the threat of tears. “Now I’m worried she’ll pull the plug on college. And then what?”

“Do you really think she’d do that?”

“I don’t know, but if she does, I’ll never talk to her again. And I’m going to move away, going to have my own life. I’m seventeen—I don’t even know if I want a husband, or kids—but if my mom doesn’t choose me now, she’s not going to be there for any of it—”

“Hey.” Max leaned in. “Breathe.”

Emmy hadn’t realized her words had gotten choked with tears. Max shifted and slipped his hand over hers, and when their skin met, his hand was gentle and warm, welcoming, and she let her fingers relax, let him slide his palm around them. His brilliant blue eyes held hers. “You don’t have to figure any of this out. She’s the parent. It’s on her.”

Emmy swallowed again and drew a breath, her heartbeat slowing. When Max withdrew his hand, she felt the warmth where his fingers had been. “I’m never going back there,” she said. “I can’t. I won’t.”

“You don’t have to. Kathryn might think I’m a demon spawn, but she thinks you’re an angel. She’ll let you be.”

Emmy cleared her throat. She felt her heart harden the way it did when she allowed herself to feel the pain of her mother’s absence. “I don’t give a shit if I never see any of them again.”

Max looped a finger around the steering wheel. “I wish my mom would show less of an interest in me. She wants, like, proof of life every few hours. It’s exhausting.”

“Don’t say that; you don’t want that. At least she cares.”

Max’s gaze returned to her. “I guess, but growing up, it felt like she was too worried about what everyone else thought about us. She didn’t let me do sports; it felt like she didn’t want me to go out. But, on the other hand, she goes wherever the hell she wants to. And one day I just snapped. I told her it’s my life, I can do what I want.”

They sat with his words for a moment. Emmy sucked her milkshake. “I guess what they say is true, the grass isn’t always greener.”

“I guess so.” Max gave a resigned nod, looking out the windshield. “Do you remember me from when we were kids?”

A spark of curiosity. Emmy hadn’t considered Max might be the source of answers to the questions that itched her. “Not much, I was too little. It feels like all of you—my grandmother, my mom, Kathryn—live in the ‘after,’ and I’m the only one who doesn’t remember the ‘before.’ Does that make sense?”

“It does,” Max replied gently. “I loved living with your family. That house, right there on the beach. It was sick.”

“Do you remember my dad?” she dared.

“Kind of.” Max was quiet. “You don’t?”

“Nothing detailed, just little things.” Like so many of Emmy’s memories, those of her father had an untouchable dreamlike quality; emotions attached to brief images. “It sucks, what happened between our moms. I mean, I don’t even know—it’s not like Harper tells me anything—but I can tell she’s sad about it. And who knows, maybe you and I could have been friends growing up.”

Max seemed to consider this. “Maybe. I think Kathryn’s sad about it, too. She’s too stubborn to admit it, though.” He swallowed. “Nobody explained anything to me, either.”

A twinge of disappointment in Emmy. Max wasn’t a source of answers.

“One day we just packed up and we were gone.” Sadness fringed his voice, and Emmy realized that at five, though Max had been witness to things too distant for her to remember, a collective shattering of all their lives, things he didn’t recall, the consequences were imprinted on him. By the time she’d formed memories, the shards had settled, but Max’s eyes held more than the words he spoke. Something in Max’s life had taught him to conceal this sadness artfully, and she wondered how she hadn’t noticed it before.

Max lifted his chin. “Moms, huh?”

“Yeah. Moms.” Emmy chewed her straw.

Max’s sadness was broken with a smile that chased away the shadow she’d seen before, and he leaned one shoulder into his seat. “So why didn’t you talk to me at your mother’s wedding? We were the only people there under sixty. I was bored as hell.”

Emmy recalled observing Kathryn at the table beside hers. She could still see Kathryn’s formfitting dress the color of cranberries, the champagne flute perched in her fingertips. It had occurred to Emmy this woman and her son held some significance in her life, had been close with her father, and she had watched Kathryn, intrigued. This woman who had known a different, unshattered version of Harper. A version Emmy was desperate to know. The seams of Emmy’s dress had itched her sides, and she’d squirmed in its confines the entire evening. While guests danced to a string quartet and the sun dipped behind the ballroom windows, the sky had surrendered to a deep midnight blue. A beautiful night for an unholy union, an angsty Emmy had mused. Beside his mother, Max had extracted a sprig of sage from the centerpiece. When he’d looked up, he’d met Emmy’s eyes for a moment, taking a long sip from a tumbler of amber liquid, and suddenly the room had been too warm.

“Well, I was in middle school, so at that age talking to a high school boy was ... terrifying.”

“Fair enough,” Max said.

Talking to Max was easy; he didn’t pry, just took in everything she said without judgment. “But I have a confession.”

Max arched a brow.

Emmy pointed at him with her straw. “I looked at you while everyone else was watching the fireworks.” She’d discarded her shoes, and she’d stood in the surf, watching Max’s profile come aglow with each burst that thudded inside her chest, the same thud she felt now, looking at his face.

Max leaned back in his seat and brought his straw to his lips. “So you were staring at me all night?” His face bloomed with a smile. “That’s not creepy at all .”

A giggle rose in Emmy, and the sting of her mother’s distance ebbed some, replaced with the warmth of normalcy, of laughter, a lightness she hadn’t felt in as long as she could remember.

After Max had gathered their stray wrappers and napkins, seemingly satisfied his car had survived their greasy meal unscathed, he cruised back to their neighborhood and pulled up to a two-story house two blocks from their own. Emmy followed him when he opened the front door and entered without knocking. “Javi!” Max yelled into the space. A group of people milled on the other side of the patio door, and one of them slid it open, the sound of voices spilling into the house.

“Maxwell!” The boy pulled Max into a side hug, and one of Max’s feet lifted off the floor.

“Javier.” Max motioned with his arm. “This is Emmy.”

Javi gasped. “Did hell freeze over—Maxwell Moretti brought a date?”

Max shot a playful glare at Javi, but Emmy saw his neck flush. Javi’s skin was deep and rich, his warm brown eyes pulled up at the corners, and his genuine smile set Emmy at ease.

The three of them stepped onto the patio, where four twentysomethings circled a table littered with red plastic cups.

“Everyone, this is my mostly hetero life partner, Max,” Javi said to the group.

“Mostly,” Max said with a wave, his expression not offering a clue to what mostly meant. Had she misread Max’s friendliness toward her? Was Javi Max’s boyfriend?

“And this is Emmy,” Javi said, then motioned to the group. “And these are the best coworkers in the whole goddamn world.” The group cheered, and Javi pumped the keg and filled plastic cups. Emmy took hers, foam rolling on her tongue at the first sip.

The group arranged a volleyball game, and Emmy opted out. She kicked off her sandals, weaving her toes into the rough grass while she watched the group organize into two teams. Max took a deep swig from his cup, then handed it to Emmy. The boys stripped off their shirts, and when one of the men served, they all dove after the ball. Javi was muscular with tattoos on his biceps, and was shorter and stockier than Max. The boys were tan, and their sun-bleached highlights told Emmy they spent a lot of time outdoors. The ball bounced over the net, making a soft, satisfying thump each time it met skin. With Max’s back to her, she took him in. She’d seen him shirtless twice in as many days, and she shamelessly noted his broad shoulders, and the controlled way he moved with athletic ease. He brushed his hair back and dove for the ball, sending it sailing over the net.

With her empty cup dangling from her fingers and the warm afternoon light falling between the branches, Emmy’s shoulders loosened. This group of people—she’d forgotten their names—didn’t look at her the way people at school and the country club did: they saw her without any expectations. Though she was just a few miles from her grandmother’s house, she was a world away. Is this what it was like to feel normal?

Emmy caught Max’s gaze on her, but they didn’t break away, he just smiled like they shared a secret from the rest of the world. Javi eyed the exchange, and his relaxed smile faded.

When the opposing team huddled, Javi tugged Max’s elbow and led him away, where they exchanged jagged whispers beside a hibiscus bush. Javi set his hands on his hips, and Max crossed his arms. Emmy struggled to read their lips when Javi pointed a sharp finger at Max. When the boys broke away and rejoined the game, their argument hovered over them, their movements lacking fluidity, and their team lost the match. Max snatched his shirt from the grass and tugged it over his head, then said something pointed to Javi. Javi had been so warm to her. Was he jealous that she was there?

But when everyone refilled their cups and gathered around the table, Max scooted his chair close to Emmy’s and leaned back, ankles crossed. Javi sat at Max’s other side. The group swapped battle stories of restaurant work. The end of March had ushered in the offseason, and their restaurant, like most in town, closed on Mondays for the summer, so they’d procured the keg to celebrate their first collective day off. It had been a long winter of serving nasty snowbirds—now flown mercifully back to their homes on Long Island.

The sun dipped and the beer flowed, and voices rose, filling the yard. Emmy hadn’t realized how heavy her limbs had become until she stifled a yawn. Max leaned forward. “Wanna get out of here?”

“Don’t go, we’re about to order pizza,” Javi said.

“We ate Good Burger before we came,” Max said. “Unless you’re hungry again,” he added, looking at Emmy. She shook her head.

“Wait—Good Burger?” Javi turned to Emmy, his cheeks flushed pink from the beer. “He let you eat in his car?”

Emmy’s cheeks warmed.

“Oh shit, man.” Javi turned back to Max. “You’re done for.” The crowd howled. “I swear to God,” Javi continued. “After we went surfing last week, I had like three grains of sand on my feet, and I thought he was going to make me walk home.”

Really, Max had allowed her to risk his immaculate car interior, but not Javi? This fact, and the beer, bubbled within her, warm. She shot Max a smug smirk.

Max stood and pulled Javi into a hug, and mumbled something that included the word asshole ; then Emmy followed Max out of the gate into the front yard. The noise of the group faded as they made their way down the driveway. The evening air was heavy and warm, the sky dimming with twilight. Max pulled Emmy’s messenger bag from his trunk and slung it over his shoulder before they walked toward the street. “I’ll come back for my car tomorrow.”

Emmy was tipsy, and she focused on the sound of their mismatched footsteps scraping the asphalt. As they passed houses, windows glowed in warm yellow, offering a glimpse of private lives: bright dining rooms, colorful flashes of TV screens. There was a sense of security, of trust, in the way newspapers rested against front steps and recycle bins were deposited at the foot of driveways.

“It’s cool to have you here,” Max said, breaking their comfortable silence. “And Javi approves, so I won’t have to kick you out.”

“Does he? He seemed kind of pissed.”

Max shook his head. “Nah. He’s just protective.”

Emmy thought back to the conversation she’d overheard between Max and Kathryn, and her stomach panged. Why was everyone so anxious around Max? “How long have you and Javi been friends?”

“Since first grade.”

Max’s romantic life was none of her concern. But their argument itched at her, and the beer made her brave. “Have you and Javi ever dated? Are you dating?” Then, a rushed “I’m sorry, that’s not my business.”

But Max’s smile was calm. “No, and no. Yes, Javi’s gay. But we’ve never ... Javi’s my brother.”

“But you . . .”

Max stopped and turned to face her. “Look. When I like someone, I like them, that’s all I know. Sometimes it’s when I first meet them, and sometimes ... when I haven’t seen them in four years.” With a wink, he continued walking.

Her pulse doubled, and warmth spread through her, a tickle of exhilaration.

“Anyway,” Max continued. He motioned toward Javi’s house. “I spend most of my time here. Javi’s parents are awesome. My mom worked a lot, and kept me on a short leash, so I practically grew up in this house.”

Javi’s house was familiar to Max, a safe space. This was his world, and he’d invited her into it. She smiled at the pavement, and for a moment their footsteps scratched in unison. When they turned the corner and their house appeared a few yards ahead, Emmy felt a tug of regret. She would’ve been happy to continue walking beside him under the yellow streetlamps, where it felt they were the only two people in the world.

“So,” Max said as they started up the driveway. “What are your plans after you graduate?”

“I’m starting college in Washington in the fall, but I want to leave on my birthday in June and wait until school starts.”

“Three months . . .”

“Two and a half,” Emmy said. “Well, eleven weeks and two days.”

“How many minutes? Seconds?”

She shoved him. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No.” Max’s grin was open and broad in the glow of the porch light as he punched his code and unlocked the front door. “I want to know how much time we have together.”