by Joy Preble
“Oh,” says Max, but the gentle upturn of his voice encourages me to continue down yogurt lane even as the sensible part of my brain is shouting, God. Please. Stop.
“There are exactly three types of frozen yogurt eaters, you know,” I tell him, counting off on my fingers. “The ones who eat it because they think it’s healthy, which if they ever really thought about it, they would know it’s just big vats of chemicals with a hint of milk product. Then there’s the subgroup of that—the ones who tell themselves it’s health food and therefore they can eat like a trough of the crap. You can get as many toppings as fit in the cup. So they ask for blueberries and chocolate and cereal and even that mochi stuff.”
“That stuff that tastes like pencil eraser?”
I smile. “Yeah.”
“What the hell is that, anyway?”
“Nobody knows. It’s part of the appeal.”
“You have a finely honed set of yogurt factoids, Leo Leonora.”
I think about telling him to stop calling me that. Then I think maybe I like it and keep my mouth shut.
“And the third type of person?”
“You don’t really want to know.”
“I absolutely do,” he says, and he sounds like he means it.
“Well,” I say, trying for dramatic.
“Worse than topping hoarders?”
“Maybe. It’s the guys on dates. We’re down the block from the Cinemark, you know. So guys bring their dates in for dessert. And you know they’re just pretending to like the stuff because . . . well, they’re just pretending. Because what boy walks into Yogiberry on his own? No one’s like, ‘Hey, the heck with hot wings, I want frozen chemicals in a cup with fruit topping.’”
Max snorts a laugh. A rustling sound, and in the near darkness, I see him sit up.
“But they think the girl’s going to like it, right? So you’re saying that’s bad?”
I feel myself blush, hope he can’t see. “I’m saying they probably hate it. So here you are on a date and you’re eating something you despise, only if the girl is honest, she probably doesn’t want it either. But she’s eating it because that’s what girls do, you know?”
“What?” he asks when I don’t finish. When I clam up because, for the love of God, how insanely boring am I?
“Doesn’t matter,” I mutter. “It’s yogurt.”
The heat in my face has spread to my neck. He’s going to think I am anti-date. Or anti-romance. Or anti-dessert, which I am not, but would be the least bad of the lot.
And then he says quietly, “You’re saying people lie to each other. Even about yogurt.”
Which is when I understand that this is exactly what I’m saying. To this boy I still barely know.
Maybe the truth is easier with people we barely know.
“I like avocados,” I say, just throwing it out there. “And old-school video games. And the beach. Also the mountains but not as much. Sliced tomatoes but not those little cherry ones. And breakfast. I’m a fan of breakfast. Especially waffles. And zombie movies, but I guess that goes without saying.”
“Of course.”
And because I don’t know where to go after that, I ask instead, “Do you miss Texas?”
There are two types of silence, one peaceful, the other not, and this time Max’s silence is of the second variety.
“Sometimes,” he says. “Yeah. Sometimes a lot. I was surprised. Houston’s not a place people line up to visit. But I grew up there. So yeah.”
The sound of his voice is even and calm and my stomach stops plunging from what had moved without my permission from yogurt babble to personal. The worry about Paris scuttles into a corner. For now.
“What do you miss?” I ask, wanting more than anything right now for him to keep talking.
“There’s this little grocery store a few blocks from where I grew up,” Max says, his longing bouncing off the angled windows and around the fake Egyptian décor, more authentic than anything in the room. “It’s been there since like the forties, maybe before that. If you live in my neighborhood, they actually let you run a tab and then send the bill to your house at the end of the month. When I was a kid, my buddies and I would ride our bikes and get Cokes or ice cream or candy and I would say, ‘Put it on the Sullivan account,’” he says, shaking his head. “I thought it was the greatest thing in the world.”
He drifts off, the silence surging back. “What kind of candy?” I ask.
“Pop Rocks,” Max says immediately. His voice brightens in the darkness. “I used to eat packages of the stuff.”
In my head I see the market and a little version of Max—still with crazy, stick-up hair—tossing a bunch of those thin black Pop Rocks packages on the counter and invoking the Sullivan account. Only here’s what my brain keeps coming back to: He lived in the same house near that funky little store for his entire life until he came here. Same house. Same store. Same parents, as far as I can tell. Probably he doesn’t even think about this.
But here he is anyway, with me, running from whatever he’s running from.
What happened in Max’s world that was so bad that he left it behind?
Max is still talking about Pop Rocks. The notes and silver Sharpie messages float behind my eyes, and the crap in Paris’s room and Tommy Davis running a finger down my arm and my mother looking at me and all the rest of it, mixed and jumbled, my brain sorting and sorting.
I usually don’t let myself feel sad. I mean honestly, what’s the point? Because really, no one wants to be around sad people, at least not for very long. I’m more of a “pick yourself up and get on with it” type of girl.
“Leo?” The sound of my name startles me. On the ceiling above me, a little security light blinks green.
“Leo?” Max says again. He eases off the bed and crosses the short distance between us.
My heart goes crazy.
“You’re crying,” Max says, and I realize that tears are trickling from the corners of my eyes.
“Keep talking,” I say, the words catching in my throat, traitors to my attempt to pretend that I am not a whiny crybaby. “Pop Rocks, right?”
“What’s wrong?” Max is sitting on the edge of my bed now. “Are you okay?”
Nothing is worse when you are not okay than someone asking if you are. Because suddenly you’re even less okay just because they cared to ask.
“How could you leave all that?” I blurt. Max’s face is pale in the tiny sliver of light. The shadows play on his jaw and cheekbones. I’m not the only sad person in this slanted-windowed room.
“Yeah, I know. Who would leave Pop Rocks, right?”
He doesn’t explain, and I don’t ask him to.
Instead, he clicks on the lamp, a warm golden glow that breaks the gloom, and opens the drawer of the nightstand.
“Bible?” I say, wondering. But this is Vegas. He extracts a deck of cards and, with a flourish of his fingers, starts to shuffle it.
He doesn’t ask if I want to play, just begins dealing: two cards to me. Two to him. I guess he knows we’re not going to sleep any time soon, either. Everything is too wound up.
“Hold ’Em,” Max says, a declaration, not a question. I think of Tommy Davis, who plays poker and has not been winning. But I breathe in, remembering how Max held me when I panicked, pulse tangling my veins.
“We don’t have chips.”
Max taps the side of my head gently. “Just imagine,” he says.
We ante up our imaginary chips, two for him, two for me.
“So you know the game?”
I shrug. Of course I do.
Our cards lay between us on the bed, facedown.
“I’m dealer. You’re the small blind,” Max tells me. Blinds are bets you make before you see your cards. Before you know if you have any chance in hell.
We shove more imaginary chips into the imaginary pot.
Then we peek at our cards. He’s dealt me a queen of clubs and a ten of diamonds.
“So here’s m
y secret,” Max says, even though I haven’t asked him. He burns a card, then places three cards up on the white striped satiny comforter. A queen of spades, a jack of diamonds, a king of hearts.
Good for me. Maybe. I wait for him to impart his secret advice. Size up your opponent. Don’t bet more than you’re willing to lose.
But he says instead: “If you wait for premium cards, you’ll be blinded off.”
“So you bet with crap?”
“That’s the trick.”
“That’s it?” He has not looked at his down cards since the first glance. His eyes have been on me.
We shove imaginary chips into the imaginary pot, raising our bets.
“Like I told you, Leo Leonora. It’s not about being lucky. It’s about making the other guy think you are.”
He burns a second card. Deals the turn. Two of clubs.
We raise more bets with our imaginary chips.
Max’s long fingers are agile as he burns the final card and deals the river, the last common card. Queen of hearts.
Both of us can now claim the pair of queens.
“If you go all in against a more powerful player,” Max says, and his face is absolutely serious, “it’s one of two things. You face death or you weaken him.”
He gestures to my cards, facedown still on the bed. “What say you, Leo Leonora?” He smiles and it’s a real smile, warm and genuine, bright as the sun.
I push the rest of my imaginary chips into the invisible pile.
“All in,” I say.
“Call,” says Max.
We show our cards.
Max has a seven of spades and an eight of diamonds.
My queen combines with the two queens for three of a kind.
“Gotcha!” I say, waving my arms in a seated victory dance.
I don’t plan on kissing him, and I don’t think he plans on kissing me. But he pulls me to him and our foreheads touch and then our lips and then he pulls me closer.
He tastes like fries and Coke and I think the pickles from the burgers. I am glad we had them hold the onions. His chin is scruffy because he hasn’t shaved in a while, but I don’t mind it. He cups my face with his hands. My heart beats like a tiny bird, flapping its wings inside me.
“Leo,” Max says, his voice deep. His skin smells warm somehow. My breath dips like a roller coaster. “Leo,” he repeats, voice rougher now. His mouth hovers near mine, not kissing again, but close.
Then he’s pushing away, edging back fast like I’m dangerous or on fire. He blinks, twice, like he’s surprised to see me.
“Leo,” he says a third time. “I don’t think . . . Shit. I shouldn’t have . . . I mean, things are crazy. . . .”
He’s off the bed now and pacing the room, and my heart is bumping for a million reasons including the one where I want him back against me.
“Your mother must wonder where you are,” he says.
I shrug, not trusting my voice. I kissed him and now we’re talking about my mother? God.
“You shouldn’t be here with me, Leo,” he says, sounding like a stranger. “I should take you home.”
“What? Why?” I can still taste his lips on mine. “I—”
Max paces some more. “Do you really think your sister is in some kind of trouble? What was she mixed up with, anyway?”
“I, um. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. Nothing.”
“But she took all your money.”
“Well, yeah, but she wouldn’t—”
“Of course she would. People do what they want, Leonora.”
“Not Paris.”
“Why not? Your sister is no different from anyone else. You either. Or me.”
His words are like a slap. My brain freezes, trying to reconcile this cold Max with the Max who came to get me, the Max who tells physics jokes. The Max who just kissed me.
“People do all sorts of shit, Leo. They’re not always nice. Including me. And not just because I would lie to you about liking frozen yogurt.”
I’m standing now, too, even though I didn’t notice that I’d gotten up. Everything in me is running fast and then faster. Would Paris have taken my money for herself? Why?
“It’s not that much money, anyway,” he says, and it’s this last one that stabs me hardest.
“Fuck you,” I say because it seems the best—the only—response at this moment. “I didn’t force you to help me.”
Tears sting my eyes and I turn my head so he won’t see.
He sees anyway. I turn back and watch him register that he’s made me cry. He scowls.
“I didn’t mean to—” he says.
“Yeah, you did.”
“You . . . Leo . . . you.” Max shoves his hand through his hair hard. Then he does it again. He walks to the door. “Stay here.” The door thuds quietly behind him before I can say another word.
THIRTEEN
I AM AN IDIOT. BECAUSE ONLY AN IDIOT TRUSTS A BOY SHE MEETS WHEN she brings him a piece of pie. A bigger idiot kisses him.
And then gets left in a hotel room.
My hands shake as I try Paris’s cell again using Mom’s phone. She doesn’t answer. I call my own cell. She doesn’t answer it either.
I try not to panic.
I fail.
“You can take a bus,” I tell myself aloud. “Buses run to LA.” Talking to myself just makes me feel more stupid. “You can take a cab home and steal the keys to your mother’s car.” Of course only if she’s still asleep when I get there and not at work.
I shove my feet in my shoes.
Stay here, Max told me. Does that mean he’s coming back? Do I want him to come back? No.
What the hell have I been thinking?
I tell myself to sit down at the little table and think. Breathe. I am no worse off than I was, right?
Nope. I run out the door instead. It closes behind me before I realize I do not have a key card. Great. Now I am in the hallway of a hotel. Alone. With my stuff locked inside the room. My mother’s phone, at least, is in my hand.
I am officially the stupidest girl in Las Vegas, and believe me, that is saying something.
Then from down the hall I hear, “You didn’t take the extra key card, did you?”
Max Sullivan is striding toward me, long legs pistoning fast, boots slapping the carpet.
I don’t know whether to smack him or laugh. Or maybe cry except I absolutely don’t want to cry in front of him again. Because then he’ll kiss me and then push me away and we already did that, right?
“You came back,” I say.
“I said I was coming back.”
“You said, ‘Stay here.’ Then you stormed out the door.”
Max heaves a sigh. “Stormed is a bit strong. But . . . this isn’t working, Leo.”
This time the heat starts in my stomach and surges to my cheeks. He is infuriating. Only, looking at his expression, I guess I’m doing the same thing to him.
“I’ll catch a cab,” I say. “Just let me in for my stuff.”
“What? No. I mean, you’re not a girl who should be hanging out in a hotel room with me. Or anyone. I mean . . . Shit, Leo. I know what we planned. But you don’t belong here.”
“I said I’ll get a cab.”
He holds out his hand. “Not what I mean.”
I duck out of reach. “Just let me in.”
“Leo, I—”
“Let. Me. In.”
He shoves his hand through his hair. Opens the door with his key card. Because of course he remembered to take one.
“Did you even get on the elevator?” I ask, pushing by him. “Inclinator. Whatever.”
He laughs. “No.”
“So this is funny?” I am so furious at him and all of this that I feel like I am going to explode. I grab my things, even the mushroom cloud T-shirt.
Max puts a hand on my arm. “Leo. I left my duffel bag in the room. I was obviously coming back. Calm down.”
I yank my arm out of reach. “Don’t touch me. And do not tell me to calm dow
n.”
He heaves another sigh. Looks up and down and then finally back at me. “I was going to the truck. To get the SAT prep book I have in there. But then I—”
“You . . . what?” My heart gives up rattling and just sits there. It seems as surprised as I am.
More hair shoving. More sighs. The scar over his brow waggles around and despite everything, it still does something quivery to my belly. What is wrong with me?
“C’mon. We’re going,” Max says, reaching for his duffel that’s sitting by his bed. He does not unzip it to see if I’ve rifled through it in the approximately five minutes he was gone.
This time when he reaches for my hand, though, I let him lace his fingers with mine. His palm is warm and only the tiniest bit sweaty.
We walk together to the elevator. Ride on an angle down to the lobby.
“Do you think we should call it a downclinator now?” he asks, and even though I tell myself that I am planning on walking to the taxi line as soon as we get off this thing, I smile. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with me. Maybe it’s him.
What is the deal with you, Max Sullivan?
In the cavernous lobby, crowded and bustling, Max leads me across the vast marble floor, past palm trees and Egyptian statues, the floors above us angled inward, narrow swaths of light where rooms are. He is still holding my hand. I am still letting him.
“Sit,” he says when we reach a black leather couch on the edge of one of the lounges.
I narrow my eyes. “I’m fine.” I tug my hand from his. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Leo,” Max says, his voice quiet yet somehow loud enough over the din of people and casino and music. “We’re not ready to get on the road yet. But taking you up there was . . . Sit.” He folds himself onto the couch slowly, like if he doesn’t demonstrate I won’t know what he means.
I keep standing.
“Let’s say we had a lottery to select who got to stay in the most expensive room in this hotel for free. There are one hundred men, one hundred and fifty women, and two hundred couples whose names are placed in the hat. Each man’s name is entered three times, each woman’s name is entered two times, and each couples’ name one time. What is the probability that a man’s name will be chosen?”