Chapter 39 Max
THIRTY-NINE
MAX
Knock, knock!
I pounded on the door to Brielle’s apartment.
Knock, knock!
I had left her a message, but Bri didn’t call or message me back.
Knock, knock!
I heard the jangle of the chain to the deadbolt.
“Who is it?” my sister asked.
“Your brother.”
The door popped open and Bri stood in the doorway. “And what do I owe this pleasure? I thought you forgot where I lived.”
“We need to talk,” I said, walking passed her and into the apartment. The living room was tidy and decorated in reds and golds, the same color scheme our mom had always favored. Books were scattered over her coffee table and a notepad and pencil on top.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” she said, sitting on the cream sofa and tucking her legs under her. “My job is sending me to school for ‘advanced education.’ I’m not a fan of studying, as you well know, but they’re paying for it.”
I crossed my arms. “I need your help.”
“I know what happened,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “You and Kari really had Sam going crazy.”
“We had her going crazy?” I laughed in disbelief. “It didn’t take any pressing to get her there, I’ll assure you.”
Bri’s eyes went wide. “Listen to yourself! You don’t even care that she came here crying her eyes out? Do you not have a heart?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that the Max I know never would’ve let her drive away so upset! She could’ve been in an accident and that’s not to mention the fact y’all were so mean! She was just trying to help and you went off—”
“What?” I bit out, not sure what the hell I was hearing. “What the hell did she say to you?”
“That she went to your house to warn you guys about Blaine. She thinks he’s dangerous or something, that he wants Kari back and will stop at nothing to get her.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, that’s not what happened. What really happened, little sister, is that your friend came over and tried to imply that I messed around with her. That I wanted her and not Kari. She threw it up in Kari’s face that she came to get me that night I was drunk.”
“Well, she did,” Bri said, crossing her arms across her chest. “She’s not lying.”
“She is lying!” I roared. “You both came to get me—that much is true. But I didn’t want her or call her or mess around with her by any means.” I sat down, shaking with fury. “I have no interest in Sam like that, Bri. None. Not a bit. And she’s trying to make it seem like I do.”
She tilted her head, considering what I said. “Sam thinks that you do.”
“I don’t give a shit what she thinks!” I growled. “I’m engaged to Kari because I asked her to marry me. If I wanted someone else, do you think I’d get engaged? No one pressured me to do that.”
“Sam said Kari gave you an ultimatum...”
“What? That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard yet! I’ve asked her a million times and she finally said yes.” My breath was coming in jagged waves.
Bri nodded, chewing her bottom lip. “So, I’m going out on a limb here and saying that you didn’t do anything with her the night we picked you up?”
“No!”
“I know Sam took a picture of you that night. I didn’t see it because, well, that’s gross. But she said she took one of you as a souvenir or something. So I assumed...”
Things were finally starting to make sense.
“You assumed wrong. When you assume something—”
“It makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’. I know,” she said, finishing my sentence of one of our dad’s sayings.
“This is just really crazy. Sam’s made it out to seem like you didn’t really want to be with Kari, that you and her had something going on.
It just...” A dark look crossed her face.
“It makes me second guess everything she’s ever said. ”
I rested my elbows on my knees, watching Bri work through something in her head. She put her feet on the floor and looked uncomfortable. Her eyes looked around the room, at anything but me, for a long time. Finally, her gaze landed on my face.
“Sam has always been something of a white liar. Just white little lies here and there, you know? Dumb stuff. But lately, I’ve been catching her in other stuff. None of it really mattered and I haven’t called her out on things, but I’ve noticed she’s been more...brazen.”
She took a deep breath before going on. “I haven’t called her out on anything because she gets so emotional. She cries and gets so depressed and it’s just easier to let her go than to deal with it. But I’ve noticed it.”
We watched each other for a few minutes, neither of us saying anything, both of us knowing that the rest of the conversation could change the way we’d always interacted. Finally, I took a deep breath and asked, “Why don’t you like Kari?”
Her head shook a little as she grabbed the glass in front of her and took a sip.
“Sam always made it seem like she was manipulating you. That you really wanted to be with her and that Kari was just botching everything.” She shrugged.
“I’ve always thought it would be awesome for you two to be together and Sam’s always acted like you two had this.
..thing. So Kari was the enemy, I guess. ”
“She’s not the enemy, Bri. Don’t you get that? She’s my fucking life!”
Bri blanched as the words, more crass and louder than my usual tone, bounced off the walls. Her face flushed. “I see that now. I feel bad, Max. I just...I don’t know. I’ve known Sam forever and she’d always said the same thing. I never thought to question it, but I do feel stupid right now.”
“You should. And you owe Kari an apology.”
She nodded, biting her bottom lip like she did when she was a little girl and in trouble.
“Do you have a silver bracelet with a little heart? It has a little blue thing that dangles from it?” I asked.
“What? No. All of my jewelry is gold...what little I do have,” she said. “Why?”
Motherfucker!
“Kari had a bracelet go missing a long time ago. Well before Sam moved in there. It just showed up in Sam’s shit yesterday at work after she left.”
“And?” Brielle prompted, not getting it.
“And I think she was going into Kari’s house. I know it sounds crazy, Bri, but Kari’s door kept blowing open awhile back. That bracelet went missing around that time and Sam had it. How else you gonna explain it?”
“Holy shit,” she said, wide-eyed. Her face went white and she looked sick. “I need to tell you something, Max. And I’m not really sure about it one way or the other, but I think you need to know.”
“Well, go on,” I prompted Brielle when she failed to continue.
She just looked at me for a long time. Her mouth would start to open and then close again. I cocked an eyebrow, getting the feeling that whatever she finally said was going to rock me.
She got up and paced the room nervously. “Look, before I go into this, I want you to know I never really believed it. But after all this stuff, I do. Or I might. If it’s true...”
“What?”
She took a deep breath. “When we called you that night and you ignored us—”
“Bri, I love ya but I don’t want to rehash that again, alright? I’ve lived with knowing that you were mauled and Sam was raped because of me for years and I-”
She shook her head. “No. Listen to me,” her eyes were pleading.
“When Sam called you that night, she wanted to convince you to come see her. You had come home from college the weekend before and stayed at Mom’s.
Sam said you guys stayed up late one night talking and she really believed that you liked her. ”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Who the hell knows if it’s even true? But that night, she wanted to get you to come back to the house.
She thought you were this close to...I don’t know.
Saying you loved her? It’s all just dumb at this point.
Anyway, you told her no and she was in disbelief.
She said you were at a party and you told her that you weren’t coming home to see her or anyone. ”
“That part is true.”
Brielle nodded. “Anyway, she went outside for a while after she hung up with you. I thought she was going to go cry or something because she’d never let me see her cry.
I knew she did about her parents and all kinds of stuff, but I never actually saw it.
Anyway, she came back in a little later and her demeanor had changed.
She said it was fine and she wanted to go for a drive. So we went.”
I watched Brielle walk around the room, telling this story, lost in her own memories. It was like she was narrating a book or something, not necessarily to me, but aloud to herself.
“We drove for a while and ended up in Apache Junction. Sam was pretty quiet during the drive, not singing to the radio and stuff like we normally did. We just drove around and eventually she pulled off the road and said she heard something wrong with the car. Like a flat tire or something.” She turned to look at me then, her eyes narrowed.
“Now, keep in mind that we were in the middle of nowhere. There was no way I was getting out to look at it.”
“Sam gets out and gets back in and says we have a flat tire. Neither of us knew what to do, so Sam calls you.”
I buried my head in my hands again. “And I didn’t answer.”
“So she tries again and gets angry. She was really mad that you didn’t answer. She just kept saying how you were out having fun and we were stranded. Dad was in San Diego for work—remember how fast he got back? Anyway, we didn’t know who to call. We sat there for a minute and Sam kept trying you.”
“And I kept ignoring her.”
Brielle nodded. “Finally she just kind of cooled way down. Got really calm. She got back out of the car and made some calls. I heard her talking but I don’t know what she said. I wasn’t getting eaten by a coyote.”
“Why didn’t you call Mom?” I asked.
“Because I wasn’t supposed to be gone! And if I got caught, she was going to ground me for a year or something.”
“You idiot,” I groaned. “If you would just have kept your ass at home, this would all be different!”
“Screw you, Max Quinn! Listen to what I’m going to tell you!”