EXCERPT FROM AVA ENTERS THE GROUP CHAT #2
In the end, Max strode away with the team thanks to her superior law firm and a well-played trump card: irrefutable proof of multiple affairs, scandals Joe absolutely did not want publicized.
When Max finally offered up what looked like a concession—her full stake in the hotel chain they purchased early on in their fifteen-year marriage—Joe begrudgingly agreed.
He probably consoled himself thinking he got the better financial end of the deal, as though Max had made a miscalculation, choosing pettiness over profit. The hotels had always done well, while the team had been struggling for years.
But Maxine Knies doesn’t miscalculate. She chose to be petty and to profit.
The signatures on the paperwork were barely dry when Max fired the team’s general manager and head coach, replacing both in a move commentators on ESPN called either wildly bold or—more likely—impossibly stupid.
Max ignored the criticism and ushered in a new era of success, culminating in a Super Bowl win last season.
Though their star quarterback retired with his ring, they picked up some new talent Max won’t stop talking about.
I’m pretty sure he’s most of the reason she threw this party tonight.
The Inferno hopes to keep riding the wave of success with this new, young quarterback whose disastrous rookie season will be forgotten before Thanksgiving, according to Max.
Meanwhile, without her at the helm, the hotel chain had massive layoffs, and stock prices plummeted. Max prints out articles talking about its downfall and hangs them on her fridge—her version of children’s school photos or a trophy wall.
“You’re missing the party,” Max says now.
“Am I?”
She smiles. “Perhaps I should amend my word choice. You are absent from the party, not missing it.”
My phone buzzes again in my lap. For a moment, I forgot about the group chat. The urge to check the messages has my fingers twitching, but I resist. “You know how I feel about parties.”
Or any gathering with lights and loud music and more than ten people. Especially if I know only a handful of them. Most especially if more than half of them are famous.
And if that party happens to fall on the hardest day I remember in a long time—well, then, you might find me hiding in a giraffe barn.
Max smiles. “I hoped a whole team of handsome football players might change your mind about parties.”
“Did you really think that?”
Of the small circle of people who know about my family history, Max understands more than most why I am not interested in someone with a job in the public eye. She is also the one person who would challenge me on it. Because it’s what she does: pushes, prods, provokes.
But this is one area in which all Max’s efforts and all the contractual obligations to be in proximity to football players won’t bring about change. My tombstone is a prominent feature on this hill because I’ve already died on it.
“I suppose I thought any of them might be an upgrade to your last boyfriend.”
I groan. “Probably. But that’s a very low bar.”
My most recent ex, Brett, is the latest in a string of men so utterly forgettable that I refer to all my exes as whatever the most recent one’s name is.
Right now, they’re all Bretts. I am starting to doubt my taste in men or my judgment generally.
And I vehemently disagree with Jessa’s theory that my taste isn’t the problem; she thinks it’s my propensity toward self-destruction and self-isolation.
“Maybe you’re not giving them a chance. Some of them aren’t too stupid or too . . .”
She wrinkles her nose, searching for a word. As sharp as Max’s tongue can be, she has no use for cursing. At least out loud. There are times I’m certain she’s silently swearing like a sailor.
“Indiscriminate,” she says finally, seemingly pleased with this word choice. “And the thighs on them!”
This earns a full laugh from me. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Maxine tsks. “How could you not? They have to get suits custom made to cover the circumference of those quads. Far too young for me, but in the perfect age range for someone like you. When you stop wallowing and come back to the party, just take a quick gander.”
Inexplicably, a few stray tears appear at the mention of wallowing that have nothing to do with any of my Bretts and more to do with why I’m actually here.
I push my glasses up and wipe my cheeks before Max can see, thinking of the nearly twenty-four straight hours I spent in this room eighteen months ago attending my first—and, so far, only—giraffe birth.
Judi almost didn’t make it, needing the vet’s and my help to stand so she could latch on and nurse for the first time.
I was sore for days afterward. It’s no easy task helping a one hundred forty–pound baby giraffe stand up on gangly, newborn legs.
But it was totally worth it and created a special bond with Judi.
And as of this morning, she’s gone.
It was inevitable, and I knew from the start that Max couldn’t keep Judi, whose full name is Dame Judi Dench.
Giraffes, like many animals, don’t know not to mate with their offspring.
A gross but true animal fact. It was only a matter of time before Judi’s sire, Ben Kingsley, showed the wrong kind of interest.
Max said I didn’t have to be here when the exotic transport service came to pick up Judi, but I couldn’t not be here. I’m glad I was, even if watching the oversized transport drive away with Judi inside this morning was harder than I thought it would be.
“I know they aren’t pets,” I say, repeating Max’s mantra about all of her animals. “But it’s hard not to get attached.”
The last words are spoken over the lump in my throat I swear wasn’t there a moment ago. I work to swallow it down. I don’t cry in front of people.
In a much steadier voice, I say, “I’ll be fine,”
And I will be. Later. But today I’m like one big bruise.
“You are very good at your job, Ava.” Max’s words are a golden thread, warm and full of light as they move through me.
Now my throat is tight for another reason altogether.
Then Max says, “Your sister drank too much to drive home.”
Stepsister, a petulant part of my brain corrects automatically. But I ignore the little voice. Because I’ll never stop feeling that way about Presley if I can’t stop thinking that way about her.
“She can stay with me tonight,” I say, pushing my glasses down to massage the bridge of my nose. “Presley and I can . . . bond.”
Patting me on the shoulder, once, Max rises to her feet in a steady, fluid motion, clearly done with my sad-sack behavior and with sitting on the floor in a dress that was probably several thousand dollars. The white silk flutters back down her lithe frame perfectly.
“Well, in that case,” Max says, “I’ll give you five more minutes. Then I expect you to rejoin the party, keep your sister from getting any drunker, and take detailed note of some football players’ thighs.”