by Cara Malone
Someone knocked on the door and she called, “Just a minute.”
She couldn’t go back out there looking like this. Max reached for one of the towels to dry her face.
“It’s me,” came Ruby’s voice. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Max answered, as if the multitude of thoughts and worries running through her mind right now could be summed up in a few words spoken through a door. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” Ruby asked.
She saw through Max’s lie, but Max wasn’t about to tell her that she was worrying about her ability to hold Ruby’s interest through the summer already, and that her ex-girlfriend’s persistent presence in her life was one more worry added to the list. Not like this, anyway.
“Yes,” Max said, making her voice sound more reassuring. “I’ll be out in a minute. Go back to the party.”
There was a moment’s pause, and then Ruby said, “Okay, babe. Come find me when you’re done.”
Then Max heard the soft retreat of footsteps, and she turned her attention back to the mirror. She had to compose herself to go back outside because she really had no other choice. She took a few deep breaths, soaking up the solitude of the bathroom as if it could be stored in reserve for when she needed it later.
By the time she felt sufficiently prepared to go back out to the party, a line had formed for the bathroom. Jade was standing in the foyer and she ducked into the bathroom when Max emerged. She went back outside, hoping to find Ruby alone, but instead she was sitting in a group of two girls and a guy at one of the tables on the patio. She had a whiskey sour in her hand, which rankled Max a bit, and Max thought the people surrounding Ruby must be the high school friends that Lorna had mentioned earlier. They were all laughing and smiling as they vied for Ruby’s attention.
Max didn’t want to compete with them, and she wasn’t feeling energetic enough just yet to walk over there and let Ruby introduce her around. She thought instead that she would give Ruby a few minutes alone with her friends while she collected herself, and then later she’d go over and try to be a good girlfriend. For now, she was content to find a place to fade into the background and let the party occur around her.
Ruby didn’t look up as Max walked along the perimeter of the patio, scanning the rest of the back yard to figure out her options. Lamar was back at the grill, putting grill lines on a few dozen pineapple slices for dessert. Lorna was sitting at the second table with her friends, a half-drank glass of wine in her hand. Megan and Celeste had disappeared from the bar and were momentarily absent. There were small clusters of people who must have been Jade’s friends standing around the patio and at the bar chattering at each other and completely absorbed in their conversations.
Every one of them – down to a person – had a drink in their hands.
Max wasn’t opposed to alcohol, but she’d just never seen the utility in it herself – she’d taken a sip of her father’s beer a time or two when she was younger but hated the taste, and Mira convinced her to order a martini once. It looked like water, tasted like fire and pine trees, and she’d never ordered a mixed drink again.
It seemed like alcohol made all of this easier for most people, but being impaired made everything ten times harder for Max, so it was just another way that she stuck out in a crowd, and not in a good way. No one actually liked the designated driver of the group, as much as they needed one.
Max stopped by the bar and filled a tumbler with soda just to have something to do with her hands, and then she wandered over to the other end of the pool where the lounge chairs had been moved out of the way of the party. It was dark over there – Ruby and Celeste hadn’t bothered to hang string lights or lanterns on the far side of the pool – and Max thought it would be a good place to sit back and observe without the imperative to participate.
She sat down and watched everybody going about their business as if she was invisible, knowing exactly what to do at a party and how to act and what to say.
After a minute or two, Jade came back outside, but instead of rejoining the people at the table, she went over to one of the groups gathered around the patio. She threw her arms around some guy’s neck and assimilated herself easily into their conversation. They all laughed so effortlessly and talked as if they’d been here forever.
Over at the table, Ruby seemed to be participating in at least three conversations at once. Her friends’ voices carried across the water and Max was getting confused just listening to them – one of the threads was something about high school pranks and another was reminiscing about the cheer squad. Ruby was keeping up with them all, interjecting her thoughts here and there and following whichever conversation was most interesting in the moment. She was so effortless, so perfect, and the whole table seemed to revolve around her.
Max would never be capable of a feat like that, and the more she observed everyone, the more certain she was that she’d never fit into a social situation like this. She didn’t want to make small talk with those people, and none of them seemed to notice her watching them. They didn’t feel her absence any more than Ruby did, and they were all perfectly happy to let her find a place far away from them.
She was nearly finished her soda when Lamar came ambling around the side of the pool about ten minutes later.
“Need a refill?” He asked, and then added as he reached for the empty glass in her hand, “What are you drinking?”
“Coke,” Max answered, handing over the tumbler.
She watched him walk all the way back around the shallow end of the pool to the bar, where he refilled her glass and picked up a bottle of beer for himself, and then he returned and passed it back to her.
“Thanks,” she said, taking a sip.
To Max’s surprise, Lamar didn’t walk away immediately. There were at least a half-dozen more interesting, more engaging people on the other side of the pool that he could be talking to. Instead, Lamar sank into the second lounge chair beside her and twisted the top off his beer. He asked, “Did you get enough to eat?”
“Yes,” Max said.
She didn’t look at Lamar. Instead, her eyes were still fixed on Ruby’s table on the other side of the patio. Megan was just sitting down across from Ruby, and Max watched Ruby glance toward the house, probably wondering where she was and how she should react outwardly to Megan joining the group. Max wished she would get up and come find her, but she just stayed put.
“You sure?” Lamar asked. “I just grilled up some pineapple – goes great with ice cream.”
“I’m sure,” Max said.
She kept expecting Lamar to get up and walk away – most people would – but he just made himself comfortable and took a long pull from his beer bottle. She wondered if this was the moment she’d been waiting for all weekend, when she had a few moments of her girlfriend’s father’s undivided attention and she could ask the question that had been burning inside her all week. Had she done a sufficient job of getting Lamar and Lorna to like her? It didn’t feel like it, and she felt the anxiety building in her chest as she tried to work up the courage – and the words – to ask her question.
For all the time she’d spent worrying about it, it suddenly occurred to Max that she’d never prepared the words that she would use. She should probably have the ring when she asked, too, but it was upstairs in her bag.
“Party’s turning out nice,” he said. “It’s so strange to see my baby girls all grown up, though. Boy, I feel older every day.”
“You are older every day,” Max pointed out. “Everyone is.”
Across the pool, Ruby finally glanced up from her friends and noticed Max. She saw Lamar sitting in the lounger next to her and smiled at Max, then allowed Megan to pull her back into an animated conversation that Max couldn’t quite zero in on amid the other conversations echoing across the water. It only added another layer of anxiety to the moment. However hard it would be asking for Lamar’s permission to propose to Ruby, it would be ten times harder to do so while watch
ing Ruby smile and laugh with her ex-girlfriend twenty feet away.
“Right you are,” Lamar said, taking another drink.
Mr. Satterwhite, I love your daughter, Max rehearsed. She really should have done this in advance. Lamar, I want to ask for Ruby’s hand-
“They’re a couple of hams, aren’t they?” he asked, startling Max out of her introspection. Hams? He pointed his bottle across the water at Ruby and Megan, and he must have noticed the direction of Max’s gaze because he added, “Put either one of them in a room with a honey badger and a wolverine for twenty minutes and at the end of it they’d all be best buddies.”
Max looked at Lamar in utter confusion and he shook his head.
“Ah, I’m just saying they’ve both got that gift for making friends and putting people at ease,” he said. “Probably why they became such close friends in grade school.”
“Oh,” Max said.
“I mean, it only made sense. They were in the same classes together all the way up through high school,” Lamar added. “Kinda hard to get away from each other when that’s the case.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Max said, and she set her glass down on the table beside her lounger so abruptly that a couple droplets of soda wet the patio as well as her hand. This time it was a lie, but the more Lamar talked about Ruby and Megan, the more Max realized that there was no way she’d be able to get up the courage to ask the question she’d come to Chicago to ask.
She had to get away from him – and this conversation – before he voiced the fear that had been running through the back of her mind ever since Megan made a reappearance in Ruby’s life at the beginning of the week. If they were so alike and their lives were so entwined, then what chance did Max have against Megan this summer? She wouldn’t even be in the city to defend herself.
Max went around the pool and headed back inside the house because she didn’t know where else to go. Ruby looked up but Max was too near tears to make eye contact with her. She told Ruby she would make an effort at this party, but there was only so much she could take. She’d had enough of this party, of Megan, and of Chicago.
CHAPTER 9
Ruby was a little buzzed by the time she watched Max retreat into the house for the second time, and she was a little annoyed at the necessity of having to chase after her again. She told Max to come find her when she was done in the bathroom, and instead she’d apparently gone to sit by herself on the other side of the pool. Ruby would have joined her, but her father had sat down next to Max instead. She thought it was nice that her dad was keeping Max company, and it looked like everything was going well until Max suddenly ran back into the house.
Ruby wasn’t used to this level of diligence in making sure that Max was comfortable and enjoying herself, and she felt a little guilty – both at the fact that Max was obviously not having fun, and at the fact that she found herself irritated by this. She just wanted a chance to catch up with some people she hadn’t seen in a long time, and if she were with anyone but Max, that wouldn’t be too much to ask.
Before Ruby had a chance to extricate herself from the conversations going on around her, Lamar came over to the table looking bewildered.
“Hey, baby girl,” he said to Ruby. “I think I just screwed things up a bit with Max.”
“What happened?” Ruby asked.
This was not what she was expecting – usually it was Max who made the bad impression and had to apologize for things she didn’t realize were callous or inappropriate. Other people weren’t generally the ones apologizing for their interactions with Max. Ruby got up so that she wouldn’t have to have this conversation in front of everyone at the table.
“I think I touched on a sore spot,” Lamar said, glancing over at Megan apologetically.
“Oh, daddy,” Ruby said with a groan. “What did you say?”
“I was just trying to find something to talk about,” he said sheepishly. “She’s kind of hard to talk to and I may have started rambling a little bit. I told her how you and Megan have been friends for a long time, and I think I gave her the wrong idea.”
“I’ll go talk to her,” Ruby said with a sigh.
“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Lamar called after her.
Ruby gave him a half-smile and a shrug, letting him know he was off the hook, but he really would have been better off talking about anything under the sun instead of Ruby and Megan’s history. She went inside the house, thinking she’d find Max in the bathroom again and wondering how the night had gone so wrong so fast. When the party started, she had every intention of staying by Max’s side, being cordial but cool toward Megan, and making sure that Max was comfortable the whole time.
Then she had a beer, and then a whiskey sour, and then another one, and she remembered how nice it was to sit around and shoot the shit with old friends, and she forgot about being mindful of Max. She just wasn’t used to it, and the more she thought about it, the more suffocating it seemed to be constantly on guard and responsible for someone else’s comfort. She didn’t want to be Max’s keeper tonight. She wanted to hang out with her friends in that effortless way that she used to know so well.
Max wasn’t in the guest bathroom, or the living room, or Lamar’s office. She wasn’t anywhere on the first floor, and as she headed for the stairs, Ruby muttered, “Fuck.”
She hadn’t even noticed that Max was unhappy. She had been a shitty girlfriend tonight, and the resentment coursing through her was shitty, too, but she was powerless to stop the feeling.
Ruby realized just how tipsy she was on the stairs. Her legs felt heavier than usual and she had to use the railing to climb straight instead of listing toward the wall.
Why couldn’t Max just humor her once in a while? Nobody really liked small talk, especially when it was with strangers that they’d never see again, but everybody else just gritted their teeth and bore it.
By the time she got to the second floor, Ruby was feeling downright petulant. Max had so many different tricks and coping mechanisms she could deploy when she was uncomfortable, or when she didn’t know what to say. Why was it that every time it involved something Ruby wanted to do and Max didn’t, her reaction was to shut down and run away? Max hadn’t even been trying to win over Ruby’s parents this week, staying quiet through every family meal, and she hadn’t been all that enthusiastic about seeing the city. Now she was forcing Ruby to spend the night doing what they did every other night of the past year – hiding out while the rest of the world moved on without them.
She didn’t mind staying in and spending time with Max most of the time – she really didn’t. Ruby just wanted one night to show off her wonderful girlfriend to all of her old friends, and it turned out to be too much for Max. And the jealous streak with Megan – that had to end because Ruby didn’t know how many different ways she could say that she wanted nothing to do with her.
Ruby knocked on Max’s door, then opened it without waiting for a response.
Max was in bed, the lamp on the bedside table turned on as the last of the daylight was fading from the room. She had a blanket thrown across her despite the summer heat, and she’d used all three of the towels Lorna had set out for her as additional covers. She looked surprised to see Ruby as she came in and closed the door a little too hard.
“What are you doing up here?” Ruby asked, exasperated and ready to voice all of the frustrations that had been building inside her.
“I forgot to pack my weighted blanket, so I’m improvising,” Max said. “The towels aren’t very heavy, though.”
And just like that, all of the fight went out of Ruby. She looked again at Max, taking in the miserable look on her face and the sweat on her brow from all those layers. Max’s weighted blanket made her feel secure and calmed her down when she was upset, and Ruby couldn’t yell at her when she was feeling like this.
She sighed and went over to the bed, kicking off her heels.
“What are you doing?” Max asked, watching her approach.
&n
bsp; Ruby climbed onto the bed and laid down on top of the towels, wrapping her arms tightly around Max as she settled on top of her. She answered, “I’m adding more weight.”
“Oh,” Max said. “Thanks.”
Ruby laid her head on Max’s chest and she could hear her heartbeat. The room swayed gently as she watched the floor rise and fall each time Max filled her lungs.
“Are you okay?” Ruby asked for the second time that night. This time she was ready to actually listen to Max’s response.
“I’m feeling better now,” Max said. Ruby continued to ride on the rise and fall of Max’s chest, listening to her heart beating, and after a few minutes Max said, “I’m sorry you’re missing the party.”
“It’s okay,” Ruby said, even though part of her still wished she was downstairs instead of up here helping Max through her anxiety. After a pause, she added, “My dad said he may have put his foot in his mouth about Megan and I. You know it’s all ancient history, right? I told you that earlier.”
“It didn’t look so ancient from where I was sitting,” Max answered. Her heart was beating a little bit faster now.
“Max, I have absolutely zero romantic feelings for her,” Ruby said, sitting up so they could talk face to face. She needed to look at Max to make sure that her words were getting through to her, because she was sick of trying to prove her loyalty. “Megan and I grew up together. We were best friends for years before it occurred to us that we had feelings for each other. We went to grade school together, and then college, and we were in the same sorority. But we grew up and became different people, and then she broke my heart in the cruelest way possible. She just decided one day that she didn’t want the life we were building, and after I got over the heartache, I realized she was right and I didn’t want that, either.”
“If she broke your heart so badly then why do you want anything to do with her at all? Why did you have to talk to her tonight?” Max asked. She was still staring at the ceiling, refusing to look at Ruby.