by V. T. Do
I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.
Lizzie was the daughter of an Irish immigrant father and a Japanese-American mother. She looked mostly like her dad, with pale skin prone to freckles, green eyes, and red hair. But she also had a few features from her mom as well, with her slight stature and almond-shaped eyes.
Today, she had on a pale-green jean jacket and muted pink shirt: a combination I never thought would go together, but on her, it worked.
She shot me a small smile when she spotted me, sympathy filling her green eyes. “Hey,” she said softly, as if I were breakable. Max had been using that very same tone with me all weekend. I wished everyone would stop treating me like a porcelain doll. It made my mom’s actions so much more impactful than they should be. I just wanted to move on. I wanted to stop hurting every time I thought of her, but that wasn’t possible when the two people I loved most in this world kept looking at me like that.
“Hey, you.” I tugged at a strand of her long red hair. “How was your weekend?”
“Uneventful. What about you?”
“Very eventful.” I smiled to let her know I was okay.
She smiled back and hooked her arms around mine. “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, especially with so much going on now, but the production of Cato’s Rapture is a no go.”
“Really?” I asked, my shoulders sagging in disappointment. I was so sure Mrs. Newman would say yes.
“Yeah. It’s sucks.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“Disappointed. But it’s not like I was putting all my hopes into making this story into a high school production. There might be a better opportunity elsewhere.”
I smiled. Lizzie was right. Seeing as there was barely two months left before school ended, we wouldn’t have been able to bring this production to life anyhow.
Lizzie and I were theater kids through and through. I worked mostly backstage, mainly with directing, while Lizzie was a screenwriter and actress.
She wrote Cato’s Rapture, a brilliant story about a man in his mid-thirties who struggled with drugs and relationships. It was hard to get the approval we need from Mrs. Newman, the head of the theater department, for us to do the show, mainly because she didn’t think the school would approve of high school students making a production that revolved heavily around drug use.
As if high school students were so naïve when it comes to topics such as this. We lived in Chicago, and the school was smack-dab in the middle of one of the richest neighborhoods in the city and one of the poorest. This meant we had all kind of kids attending from different backgrounds.
The rich kids that went to this school were a special kind of rich kid. They were the kind that had been expelled from some fancy private school before, and was therefore forced to attend public school. That made them an exceptional kind of mean.
And the class disparity among the students here was almost comical, if the reality of the situation wasn’t so harsh. The rich students were in some sort of rivalry with the poor ones. I had always belonged in latter group, though I tended to keep to myself.
I didn’t care for school rivalry, being perfectly content living my life within the shadows. And most of the students usually left me alone, especially since I had never shown any reaction to the name-calling or any other bullying tactics they used to provoke a response from me. That, and the fact that Lizzie was a feisty redhead with a mean temper to match.
Despite the rivalry, there was one thing these students all had in common: drugs.
Specifically, the poor students were selling drugs to the rich students.
It wasn’t hard to figure out who was selling and who was using. That was the thing about kids my age. We did stupid things all the time.
“How are you and Max getting along, by the way?” Lizzie asked casually. I knew she liked Max since the first time she met him back in middle school. I always thought it was a silly adolescent crush that would go away with time, but it never seemed to happen.
If anything, her crush seemed to grow each year. I wasn’t sure I how I felt about that. Lizzie was only a year older than me, since she had to repeat kindergarten, which meant there was a fourteen-year age gap between them. Max wasn’t the kind of man who would pay attention to Lizzie, mostly because she was still in high school, but also because Max loved my mom for most of his life. I was always afraid Lizzie might get hurt in the end.
“It’s good. You know Max. He’s always there.”
“He’s a good man,” Lizzie said.
I nodded. There wasn’t a doubt about it.
3
Olivia
When I got home, Max was waiting for me. I stumbled a little in my steps, surprised he was even here. Max usually wasn’t home until much later on Mondays. He was the CFO of Kinsley Financials, a thriving lending company that opened its door a decade ago. It was where Max started working with an internship when he was still in college, and he quickly rose up the ranks. He had been with the company since they opened.
I hadn’t expected him to be there when I got home from school because he usually wasn’t. Which meant he was here for me.
“Hi,” I said, taking off my backpack and placing it against the back of the couch.
“Hi, sweetheart. How was your day at school?”
“It was okay. Cato’s Rapture isn’t happening, but Lizzie seems okay with it.”
Max’s smile disappeared. “And what about you? Are you okay with it?”
I shrugged. “I’m fine. Disappointed, but fine.”
“It’s good that you’re not letting it get to you. Besides, senior year is supposed to be about having fun and slacking off. How could you do that when you’re playing director?”
He tugged at my hair and I scrunched my face. “Playing?”
“Sorry. Wrong word choice.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t like I was getting paid for the part.
“Do you know why they didn’t say yes?”
“The school didn’t like the play.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“Cause it’s an inappropriate topic for high schoolers.”
“What? Drugs?” Of course he’d read the play. Unlike my mom, Max always put in an effort to take interest in the things that were important to me. As busy as he was, I couldn’t remember a school play I’d been in that he had missed, even if I had only worked backstage.
I nodded. “And there might be a kissing scene or two.” And a sex scene. He knew that, because he had read the play, but I wasn’t going to mention it. That would be awkward.
“That’s stupid. As if high schoolers aren’t doing much worse. Hell, when I was in high school, I had already…” he trailed off, as if he just realizing he was talking to me and not one of his friends. He cheeks tinged red, and I rolled my eyes.
“I’m not little kid, anymore. I know exactly what high schoolers are doing these days, and what you were doing when you were in a high school, like, a gazillion years ago.”
He raised an eyebrow in mock offense, and I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. “A gazillion years, huh?”
A small laugh escaped my lips then, and Max’s expression softened. “What are you doing home?” I asked.
“I live here?”
I rolled me eyes at that. “No, I mean, why are you home at this time. You don’t usually leave the office until eight.”
“I wanted to take you out for dinner tonight. I don’t think it’s fair I make you eat dinner by yourself on your second night here.”
“Thank you,” I said, and meaning it. If anyone could help me get over my heartbreak, it was Max. “Where are we going?”
“Do you feel like eating Italian tonight?”
I nodded eagerly. I had a weakness for Italian food. “That’s sounds great.”
“Good. We still have two hours before we need to head out. What do you want to do in the meantime?”
“Ooh, can we watch the new Netflix movie that just cam
e out?” I had been meaning to watch it, but it was almost the end of my senior year, and between school and work, I didn’t have a lot of spare time.
“Sure. Why don’t you turn it on while I get the popcorn?”
I grabbed the remote, and when I turned to Max, he was slowly getting up from the couch. “What are you doing?” I asked, poking the outside of his thigh with my foot.
“I don’t want to move too fast or I might break these brittle, old bones of mine,” he said in an exaggerated croaky voice.
I let out a tiny laugh, trying to shove him off the couch. It wasn’t as if I could. Max had a foot on me, coming in at six-foot-three and weighing at least two hundred pounds more than I did. He was a big man who played ice hockey in his college days, and even a decade later, had never lost the physique of a professional athlete. If anything, he seemed to have bulked up since that time, his features more refined with age, making him one intimidating-looking dude.
“Come on, old man, I might get gray hair by the time you come back with the popcorn.”
He winked before moving off the couch and I shook my head, smiling so hard, my cheeks ached.
Weeks passed and a routine was established. I’d take the bus to and from school and work, because that was what I did when I was still living with my mom, except for the days when I worked late. Max insisted on him driving me home those days, and since it was a safety issue, I didn’t argue. When I didn’t have work, Max would be home early, and we would watch a movie or a TV show before dinner, and after dinner, we either did work by ourselves or in his office.
Max did everything he could to make sure I was happy living with him. I knew that. He’d completely changed his entire schedule so that it could sync up with mine. He was always there when I needed him, and though I was happy, I felt guilty.
Max was single and only in his early thirties. Men at this time were dating and having the time of their lives, not stuck at home trying to provide a good life for a teenager. But my need for him went beyond my guilt.
I didn’t think I could take it if Max left me, too. He was the only family I had left. In a way, he was like my older brother. In another way, he was like my parent. And after spending so much time with him, I could see that he was my friend as well.
I needed him.
There were nights when I couldn’t sleep, and I would walk to his room and sit down just outside his door, listening to him sleep, to the way he breathed, and even to the occasional snore that came out.
My mom left during the night, while I was asleep thinking everything was going to be okay. Unreasonably, I was afraid Max would leave me during the night as well.
I didn’t need a psychologist to tell me I had abandonment issues. I knew I did. I just hoped I hid them well from him. But sometimes, I would catch him staring at me with this concerned look on his face, and I didn’t want to think too much on what that might mean.
Could he see my issues? Did he know about some of my nightly visits outside his door? Could he see the desperation I tried so hard to hide? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.
After living with him for a month, Max informed me that he needed to go away on a business trip for the next four days. I panicked, and I couldn’t hide it in the tone of my voice, no matter how hard I tried.
“Do you really have to go?” I asked, my lips trembling. This was ridiculous. I knew I was being ridiculous. Four days wasn’t a long time, and most teenagers would be happy to hear they’d have the house to themselves.
But I gripped the throw pillow on my lap, trying to keep from reaching out to him. The panic I felt at the thought of him going away was almost too much to bear. Suddenly, I was shaking, and I didn’t know how to stop. I didn’t want Max to see me like this.
He swore under his breath, and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pulling me in. “Shh, sweetie. It’s okay. You know I’m not leaving you, don’t you?”
I nodded against his chest. Yeah, I did know that. Yet, I couldn’t stop from feeling like he was.
“I promise I’ll call every night. And you can have Lizzie come stay with you while I’m gone.”
Yeah, I guessed Lizzie could stay with me. She would get my mind off of his absence. “Can’t I come with you?” I asked instead.
Max pulled back and looked at me. He looked like he was seconds away from saying yes, but at the last moment, shook his head. “Ah, sweetheart. I would take you with me everywhere if I could. I’d put you in my pocket and carry you around. You’re tiny enough for it. Surely, you would be safer that way.”
My lips curled up in a small smile. I was only five-foot-three. I knew I was tiny compared to a lot of people. And Max was joking, trying to make me feel better. His eyes lit up when mine did, and my smile widened.
Then he sobered up and looked at me with serious eyes. “Listen to me, Olive, and listen well. I will always be here for you. Until my dying breath, I swear it. I won’t leave you. And I’m sure you’ll get tired of me soon enough.”
“Never,” I said vehemently.
His lips twitched. “One day, you’re going to meet a nice boy and fall in love. And he’ll want to marry you, because, look at you. You’re kind and sweet and smart. And he’ll want to take you away from me. But even then, I’ll always be here. Always watching. I’m not going anywhere.”
I shook my head. Who said I wanted to get married? I wasn’t even dating anyone. I’d stay here with Max forever if he’d let me. “Maybe I don’t want to meet a nice boy and fall in love.”
He shot me an amuse smile. “You might not have a choice in that matter.”
Max got this faraway look on his face then. I knew he was thinking about my mom. If he had a choice, would he have chosen to not fall in love with her?
He looked back at me, and his eyes cleared. “I’ll only be gone for four days. And I promise, I will come back to you. Besides, four days is nothing. I bet you won’t even notice I’m gone.”
“Doubtful.”
He grinned. “And anyway, how else are you going to throw a party if I’m always home?”
I frowned. That had never even crossed my mind. “I don’t want to throw a party.” Me and parties don’t mix. I went to one at the beginning of my junior year with Lizzie. By the end of the night, I had to carry Lizzie home because someone had put roofies in her drink. Thank God she had never left my side that night.
He tugged at my hair, unaware of the dark thought swirling inside my brain. “We’ll talk every night, okay?”
I nodded, because, really, what choice did I have. “Okay.”
“Good girl. And when I get back, I want us to go to family therapy together.”
I stiffened. “Therapy? There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Of course not,” he said with conviction, his arms tightening around me. “You are absolutely perfect, just the way you are.”
And I knew he meant it. Max really was delusional if he thought I was perfect. If I were, both of my parents would still be here. “Then why do I need to see a therapist?”
He shook his head. “We need to see a therapist. We both have gone through some pretty big changes and are both affected. As for me, I can’t have you out of my sight for long, afraid something might happen to you.”
“Then don’t leave,” I begged and wished I could take it back immediately.
He shook his head. “I think it’s important that we try this. Okay?” His large hands grasped my shoulders, and I resisted the urge to burrow into his chest.
Putting on my brave face, because Max was looking at me like I was the bravest girl he’d ever met, I nodded. I couldn’t stop my lips from trembling though.
His smile widened, even as I saw how his eyes looked watery too. “That’s my Olive-girl. Now, why don’t we put on a movie before dinner? I’ll even let you pick.”
Again, I nodded, and while I went to pick out a movie, Max got up and made some popcorn. I tried not to stare at him. I failed.
On the day Max was due to le
ave, I woke up a little earlier than I normally would and watched him do his last-minute packing while I sat on his bed in my pajamas. My hair was a mess and my eyes were barely open.
I focused my eyes on Max’s hockey memorabilia from his college days to keep myself from falling asleep.
He had an early flight and, despite having gone to sleep much later than me the night before, Max was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed perfection. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when Max was anything less than put together.
I think this was what attracted Lizzie to him in the first place, aside from the fact he was insanely attractive. He was steady, dependable and solid. He took me in when most men in his position wouldn’t. Some, who had the same resources Max did, would probably have paid someone to do it for him.
But Max was still as involved in my life as he’d been when I was still living with my mom, if not even more so now. And he was leaving for the next four days…
A thought occurred to me then. “You’ll be gone on your birthday,” I said, sitting up a little straighter.
“Ah, it would be my last day there. However, I think I can get all of my work done early and take the afternoon flight home. I’ll be home in time for dinner, and perhaps we can go out? Somewhere nice.”
“But you’ll be gone for most of the day.” I had his birthday celebration planned for months. A lot of it included spending the day together. Since it was on a Friday, I was going to skip school and work and take Max to some of his most favorite places in the city. Now that wouldn’t be possible.
He took my hand and squeezed it affectionately before letting go. “We can spend the whole day Saturday celebrating as well. How about it?”
“You’re trying to comfort me about having to spend most of your birthday in another city? And I’m being a brat about it, aren’t I? I’m sorry.”
“Hey, you’re not being a brat. You just want to celebrate my birthday with me.”