Chapter 11
I look up at Max’s flat. It’s in a modern tower block in Brixton with industrial, cell-like window frames.
A lot of other “struggling artists” live here.
When Max’s window is open I hear them hanging out on the roof smoking weed and talking about things like the evils of gentrification or Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence.
Anyone who lives in a flat like this in London usually prefers the illusion of struggling more than they are really struggling.
I know exactly which window is Max’s—third left, second from the top floor—but it occurs to me I haven’t actually been here very often, at least not in daylight.
We don’t generally go to each other’s houses.
Just hang out in Scintilla encouraging each other to drink to excess.
I guess because I live at home and he lives on the other side of London it’s just easier for us to meet in Central.
The last of the evening light has faded and I’m starting to feel cold.
Obviously, I’m still wearing what I thought was suitable attire to disembark in Bali (I really wish I hadn’t gone for tie-dye), and all my other worldly possessions are back at Mum’s.
I feel a flash of emptiness in my stomach as I think of Mum settling in with her evening peppermint tea and Grey’s Anatomy reruns before she has a brisk shower, phones Gavin, and puts herself to bed.
She’ll be worrying about how to make it into bed with her gammy foot in time for the alarm beeps, and probably thinking about what a letdown I am.
Right at this moment, I can’t say I disagree.
I’ve been hovering outside for a good twenty minutes, going back and forth on whether this is a good idea. I mean, it definitely isn’t a good idea, but I’m somewhat running out of friends.
I’m not sure whether I’m dithering because I think he might have read the letter or because I think he might have not read the letter.
When I think about him having read it I feel embarrassment, fear, anxiety, mortification, and sickness to the pit of my stomach.
When I think about him having not read it I feel flat and disappointed. Life returns to its usual dull gray.
Then I think of Angie and Dami and how neither of them is speaking to me right about now. What am I saying?! Of course I hope he hasn’t read it! I move toward the building and press the buzzer for flat 59.
“Hello?” That one word carries through the intercom and melts something inside me. “Becky?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I reply.
The door clicks and I push it open. I enter the stark, gray halls and various drunk memories start coming back to me in flashes.
Once I insisted I was sober enough to walk the entire way up to his flat but passed out on the first set of stairs, and Max pulled me over his shoulder and carried me to the lift.
Once I somehow lost Max, got the wrong floor, and tried to convince Max’s elderly neighbor to let me in. Once I threw up in that plant pot.
It looks different sober. Surely, I think, I’ve been here before when sober? Have I really only been here when wasted? In all the years that Max and I have known each other?
I’m still pondering this when the lift opens and Max is standing in front of it. He’s wandered into the hallway in his silk dressing gown that he bought as a “joke” but seems to spend a lot of time sitting around in while drinking whisky.
“Becky! You made it!” He raises the glass of whisky in his left hand. “Welcome to Max’s Home for Waifs and Strays. Sorry you had a bust-up with your mum.”
I instantly begin to analyze his greeting. The look on his face. The raised eyebrow. The smirk. The tone of his voice. Has any of it changed since the last time I saw him? Has he read it or not?
He puts his other arm around me and starts leading me toward his flat.
He smells so good and his badly done-up robe is revealing his chest. Ugh.
Calm down, Desperate Becky. Your mum fell down the stairs because of you and your friends aren’t speaking to you.
You are not allowed to think about sex at a time like this.
We approach the door and I quickly ask the question I’ve been dreading. “Are you sure I’m not interrupting? If you and Fran had an evening planned . . .”
He waves his hand to silence me. “Fran’s away. She won’t be back for a week.”
“Oh.” I try not to let the relief show on my face. “Where is she this time?”
Fran is away a lot because she works for a humanitarian aid company. It makes it inconveniently difficult to dislike her, so I don’t ask about her job unless I absolutely have to. To be honest, I don’t usually acknowledge her existence at all unless I absolutely have to.
“Uhhhh. Congo?” He grins. “I think?”
“It’s touching that you pay so much attention to your girlfriend’s job, Max,” I say, but I am secretly pleased.
He can’t tell me what country his girlfriend is flying to but he can tell me Ted’s top-five favorite episodes of 2 Broke Girls in order.
(Ted really likes 2 Broke Girls. Max is fascinated by this.)
“Ngeghhhh.” He shrugs. “I don’t know, Becky, she’s somewhere, we’re here.”
She’s somewhere. We’re here.
Are those the words of someone who has read a secret love letter from their long-term best friend and is about to declare their undying passion for them?
. . . Or just the words of someone stating a fact?
He closes the door behind us. And does not throw me on the floor and start taking off my clothes. Disappointing. Not that I really thought he was going to.
HAS HE READ IT OR NOT?
I follow him into the living room. It’s a large, open space with minimal furniture.
There’s a sofa, a dining table and chairs, a bookcase, and a plant, and that’s it.
Max likes to have a clear environment for creative thinking.
His bedroom is sparse too, and the other room he uses as a darkroom to develop his pictures.
I briefly wonder if things will change when Fran moves in.
Then I wonder when she’s moving in, but I don’t want to ask.
Will she still be moving in if he’s read my letter?
Shut up, Desperate Becky.
Max goes to the cupboard and brings out a bottle of tequila.
“The Becky bottle,” he says. “Just for you. Margarita?”
“Always,” I say.
He gets out a shaker. Max still prides himself on his cocktail-making skills. I could never even get an orange peel to twist in the right shape; it always ended up looking a bit mangled.
“I’ve got some pajamas here. And your toothbrush. Well, my toothbrush that you used once after vomming in the plant pot downstairs, so it’s your toothbrush now. I’ll even let you pick a terrible film.”
My heart liquefies. On some level I’m aware it was probably a bad idea coming here. On another, I knew I’d feel safe and looked after. I know I’ll always have a place with Max, whether it’s the place I want it to be or not.
As Max busies himself making us margaritas, I glance furtively around the room. If I were mail, where would I be . . . I twist around to see the bookshelf behind me.
Bingo.
There are a bunch of envelopes sitting on top of a stack of photography books.
I don’t have time to get up and investigate now because Max is already pouring.
Must. Not. Look. Suspicious. If Max hasn’t read it yet but catches me trying to retrieve it, I will only stoke his curiosity and he will 100 percent prize it out of my hands and tear it open in front of me.
And that would be unthinkable. Every cell in my body would just . . . stop living.
I’m going to have to wait for an opportune moment.
He sits down next to me on the sofa, proffering the margarita in a proper cocktail glass. I take it and start gulping.
He watches me for a moment, smiling. “So. Bad day?”
I glance at him from behind my half-empty glass. “You could say that.”
Max settles on his cushion and observes me. He always does that. He never pushes you to talk, just sits back and gives you the space to do so. I’m not sure if it’s my imagination, because I’m paranoid, but it feels as though he’s watching me more closely than ever this evening.
Because he now knows I’m secretly madly in love with him? Or as a regular concerned friend because I’ve shown up at his house out of the blue?
“So, I was sort of supposed to be in Bali right now.”
Max is taking a sip and chokes. “Bali?” He tries to recover his cool, but it’s too late. The coughing has given him away.
“Yup.”
“Holiday?”
“Erm. I was . . . moving? I think. It was a one-way flight, anyway.”
“Interesting,” he says, as though debating a philosophical theory, not receiving news that one of his best friends was about to move to the other side of the world.
Without telling him. As much as I know Max cares about me and is just bad at expressing himself, sometimes I wish he didn’t keep his cards so close to his chest.
“Interesting?” I repeat.
“Yeah.” He nods. “It is.”
“Is that all you have to say?” I goad.
He pauses for a moment, swirling the liquid in his glass.
“Well, for someone who’s lived in the same house her entire life and overthinks literally every single decision except buying Tequila Trollops, it is comment-worthy that person would one day up and leave to live on the other side of the world, no?
I mean, if you heard about it from someone else, you’d have a vague inkling of intrigue?
You’d remark upon it? You might go so far as to call it interesting.
” He looks up from his cocktail and grins.
I grin back because I can’t not. “I guess I would. It’s because Sara’s tarot reader told me I was going to die.”
I know he’s going to mock me endlessly, but I want a reaction out of him, and I know this will get it. Sure enough Max spits his drink out onto his dressing gown. “I . . . excuse me?”
I start shaking with laughter. “Yeah. I used the gift card from Sara and she said I was going to die. And yeah, I just . . . didn’t want to die here.”