Day 18 Burlington, VT （Day Off）
SAM
I’M GLAD I’M DRIVING, BECAUSE it means I don’t have to make eye contact with Max unless I want to.
Not that I don’t want to. I keep glancing over at him out of the corner of my eye.
He’s lounging in the passenger seat, bare feet propped up on the dashboard, flicking his hair out of his eyes from time to time, bopping his head along with the radio and grinning at me when he catches me looking at him.
That puts my eyes right back on the road.
I don’t know why I’m acting like a shy teenage girl at the homecoming dance.
I want to have sex with Max. I’ve been wanting it for — well, a long fucking time.
Like Max said last night, we’re not virgins.
And deep down, I know he’s not going to be an asshole about it, no matter what happens.
He’s my best friend and I know he cares about me.
But then there’s that other voice that tells me I know it’s more than that. Sex with Max won’t be anything like letting some stranger fuck me in the parking lot of a dive bar after a show. It’s going to mean something. It’s going to mean everything. And that scares the fuck out of me.
“Dude, are you going to turn here?” Max asks, breaking into my reverie.
“Oh, sorry —” I hit my blinker and steer onto the country road just a little too fast, drawing a hiss from Roxie in the backseat.
“Hey asshole, if we wanted to careen around corners because we weren’t listening to the GPS, we could have let Max drive,” she snaps.
“Fuck off,” Max tosses over his shoulder, but he’s laughing.
Fuck, he’s distracting. He’s been weirdly — I don’t know, attentive?
— all day. Carrying my bag out to the car for me.
Bringing me coffee. Offering to take over driving when we stopped for lunch, even though I was fine.
Beaming at me when I asked him to put Dookie on the car stereo a little while ago (okay, maybe I’m feeling a bit nostalgic, since we’re seeing Sage today).
He hasn’t mentioned what we talked about last night, but I can feel it in the air between us, like we’re sharing a secret, some bolt of electricity that we keep passing back and forth.
He says he’s going to come out to Sage this week too, and he’s going to tell her about me. As if I needed any more fucking pressure.
I better pay attention. We’re almost at Sage’s farm, just a few miles north of Burlington. She moved up here three years ago, right after she got married, and Max and I have made the trip a few times since then. I know he’s dying to see her today.
I spot Sage’s mailbox, and I ease the van down her long driveway, tires crunching over gravel as we make our way towards the house.
It’s a ramshackle wooden farmhouse with a deep porch and lots of rooms, sprawling across a neat farmyard.
There’s an old barn that Sage mostly uses as a performance venue these days and a handful of other outbuildings.
But as we get close, I can see that Sage is waiting for us on the porch, and I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing that matters to Max, because he barely waits for me to put the van in park before he’s out the door.
“Sage!”
I climb out of the driver’s seat in time to watch Max sweeping his sister up in a bear hug. He holds on to her for a long time, swaying a little as she pats his shoulder.
“Hey, little brother — hey now —” I hear her murmur.
When he releases her, they both look a little misty. “Missed you,” Max mumbles.
Sage turns to me, holding out her arms, and I give her my own hug. “Sam, you’re so handsome!” she squeals. “I will never forgive you two for being taller than me. Never.”
Things have definitely changed a little bit since Sage left home eleven years ago.
Back then, we were two skinny ten-year olds with skinned knees who worshipped her, with her purple mohawk and her nose ring and her encyclopedic knowledge of underground punk bands.
Now Sage is thirty, and a lot softer around the edges.
She still has the nose ring, but the purple has been relegated to a few streaks in the medium brown mop that would match Max’s if he wasn’t always dyeing his black.
And yet she’s still the same Sage, the only adult in either of our lives who ever gave us unconditional love and support.
She’s Max’s sister, but she’s also the cool aunt and surrogate mom that I always wished I had.
Roxie and Blake are coming up behind us, and Sage hugs them too. “It’s so good to see you guys! Roxie, I hope you’re keeping all these boys in line.”
“It’s not fucking easy,” Roxie grumbles, but I can tell she’s just as Sage-struck as the rest of us.
When we all file into the house, Sage’s husband Paul is sitting on the living room floor, building towers of blocks for baby Leo, who is cheerfully knocking them down.
I think Paul is in his early forties, a little grizzled at the temples, crow’s feet starting in the corners of his eyes — but I still would, if you know what I mean.
When Leo spots us, he freezes, a wooden block halfway to his mouth. His brown eyes go big, and his lip starts to wobble, but Sage is on the floor next to him in an instant.
“Oh, sweetie, it’s okay —” She motions to Max, who crouches down beside her. “Do you remember your Uncle Max? He loves you so much —”
“Hey, little dude! You’re so much bigger than you were at Christmas!” Max gushes. “How old is he now?”
“Fifteen months,” Sage says proudly. “And he can walk now — look —”
She gives Leo a hand up, and he takes a few sturdy steps towards Max. When Leo grabs Max’s hand, both of them break out into identical smiles, and I’m sinking down beside them.
“Oh my god, Max —” I breathe.
“Little man doesn’t have any of my genes,” Paul grumbles, but his eyes are twinkling.
“Oh, that’s not true!” Sage teases. “He looks like you when he’s grumpy.”
More words are said, and I think Blake and Roxie settle down on the couch at some point, the conversation flowing over our heads.
But I’m watching Max as he concentrates on Leo, and the thing that’s been living in my chest is so big that it’s pressing on my ribs, stealing the breath from my lungs, threatening to burst.
I don’t know how much longer I can hold it in.
SAGE
Laundry is done. The rooms are all made up for the kids, and we’ll be roasting hot dogs over the fire pit later, so I don’t have to worry about dinner.
Leo is outside with Max and Sam, and I can see the three of them in the backyard through the kitchen window.
Max is letting Leo chase him, pretending Leo is a monster, and Leo is shrieking with joy.
Then Max takes a dive, tumbling onto the grass, and Leo is all over him.
And Sam? He’s sitting beside them on the grass, holding his sides as he laughs his head off.
Am I really finished with everything I need to do? Can I actually go outside and relax?
Nobody told me that having a baby was going to be this hard.
I’m not completely alone — Paul is a great dad, and I get together a couple days a week with a group of radical moms from town.
We let the kids play in the dirt and bitch about breastfeeding and how tired we all are, and I look at the other babies and wonder if maybe Leo has already met his Sam.
But even if I have a whole village around me, nothing prepared me for how lonely some of it would be.
Long afternoons reading the same picture book over and over while I grind my teeth together in boredom.
Sitting bleary-eyed at three in the morning with a tiny infant and begging him to latch.
Seeing him through every childhood cold and virus, running after him to keep him from throwing himself off the porch and knocking his little brains out.
But it’s all worth it watching him now, his sturdy little legs pumping as he takes off after Sam this time. My baby boy, my little brother, and the boy who might as well be my brother too.
My three boys, just the way they should be.
I remember exactly what it was like, when Max was a baby.
I was nine and a half when they brought him home from the hospital, a wrinkly little red thing, bald as an egg.
Even then, I knew that Mom and Dad were useless, and that if anyone was going to protect this little stranger, it was going to be me.
I took one look at his squashy face, and I fell in love.
And it’s a feeling that has never left me.
Somebody had to take care of him. Mom and Dad were still in high school when I was born, and they were not ready.
One of my earliest memories is pouring out my own cereal and taking it into the living room to watch Saturday morning cartoons on the old black and white TV while they slept off whatever they’d been doing the night before.
And my other earliest memory is hiding under my bed with my two teddy bears while they screamed at each other.
Max came around during a period when there was a little less screaming, when maybe it seemed like we were going to be a real family.
But then Dad split when he was two, and Mom married Bill when he was six, and Max and I had to stick together.
I would do anything for him.
I push open the back door and step out into the yard.
Max and Sam and Leo are still running around, and far be it from me to disturb two boys who are tiring my little man out so much that he’s going to fall asleep like he’s been clunked over the head.
But Roxie is sitting alone on one of the lawn chairs underneath the big oak tree, the usual chip on her shoulder eased to something softer as she lounges in her lace cami, the filtered light dappling her porcelain skin.
She reminds me of so many girls I knew in my touring days, back when I used to — well, I’m with Paul now, and I’m happy. I head across the yard to join her.
She gives me a wry grin as I approach. “Your husband kidnapped my boyfriend.”