The job. I’d gotten the job.
The first rush of adrenaline hit me so hard I thought I might faint. I actually had to plant my hand on the counter to keep my knees from going out from under me. But right on the heels of that excited jolt was another realization. Life was not what it had been when I applied for the job. I looked out of my kitchen window and wiped the pear juice from my mouth.
Now, my life was with Max.
There was no question that asking him to go with me was absolutely ridiculous—as silly as asking a lion to go live in Antarctica or a polar bear to move to Cairo. He hated cities, and he always had. Once I’d dragged him to New York for a concert. I’d babbled on about MOMA and public transportation and Mexican candies in bodegas in Washington Heights. But it had sucked the lifeblood right out of him, like a dying trout on a hot dock. He hadn’t complained, but afterward, he was so clearly soul-drained I promised I’d never drag him to New York again.
New York, where my dream job was waiting.
What in the world was I going to do?
I watched him sling the rope up over a branch parallel to Julia, but it got stuck on a broken offshoot, and he had to yank it back down to try again.
A little paw scratched my leg. I looked down to see Cupcake, at attention. Hello. I’d like some, please!
She ogled the pear and pressed her paws together on the top of my foot. Smells really good!
I bit off a piece and let her sniff it. She jerked her head back at first, shocked by a brand-new smell. Then she licked it, tentatively, and took it from my fingers. She carried it over to the corner of the kitchen and dropped it on the wood.
Again, I looked out at Max as he gave the bundle of rope another lob over the branch. Missed again, and he pulled off his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. The broken heart glinted in the sun.
Two weeks ago, I’d have known what to do. Now, I realized, I still did. But it wasn’t the same thing at all.
41
Max
Standing outside in the muggy heat, being eaten alive by mosquitos, I tried to lob the rope over the branch just above Julia, and I waited to hear Rosie squeal when she got the good news.
But she didn’t.
The loop on the rope got stuck on a branch, and I yanked it down to try again. Meanwhile, Julia made noises I’d never heard outside of a horror film. Minutes passed. The cicadas screeched. The clouds passed. I looked back at the house and saw Rosie through the kitchen window, washing her hands at the sink.
With every passing instant, I became more certain that she’d learned she’d gotten the job and that she wasn’t going to tell me.
She was going to pass up the job for us. She was going to give up the dream for me.
It was one of the things I loved most about her—loyal and stubborn. But this, this was so fucking different. This was the big dream. This was the thing she wished for when she blew out her candles.
I wouldn’t let her miss this chance.
At last, the goddamned rope made it over the branch, a thick and solid one just above where Julia was clinging on for dear life. I anchored the free end of the rope around the trunk and used a second piece to tie the door to the cat carrier open. I opened up the tin of SPAM and put it at the back of the carrier, and then I hoisted it up slowly toward Julia so I didn’t spook her. It was like a low-budget inverted Coast Guard rescue operation, except it wasn’t a human at the end of a basket in the water, it was a cat. So I was going to have to be patient, wait for the wind carry the scent of the SPAM to her, and let her addiction to nitrates do the rest. The wind shifted infinitesimally, and Julia turned toward the carrier and twitched her whiskers, but she was still hanging on to the branch so hard that bits of bark tumbled down like crumbs. I sat down on the bench under the magnolia and reached for my phone. I didn’t have it because it was inside on the counter, waiting to be charged. In its place, I felt the ring box.
Julia began the slow negotiation of turning herself around on the branch, one paw, one half inch at a time. I waited and waited. But still, Rosie didn’t squeal.
Twenty minutes later, Julia made a flying leap into the cat carrier, and it swung in the air like a wrecking ball, but I felt like shit because Rosie still hadn’t said anything about the job. As I lowered the cat crate down, I indulged the delusion that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t know yet and she wasn’t keeping it from me. Because Rosie was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a liar. She was as honest as the day was long, and I just couldn’t let myself believe that she would keep this news from me, all for the sake of us. To me, she was more important than any of it. Even this feeling that had changed everything in my life.
Gently, I let the crate come to the ground and looked inside. Julia was gnashing huge mouthfuls of SPAM right out of the tin, like a wild and starving scavenger. I reached in to take it because by the looks of things, she’d already eaten my daily sodium allowance, and if I didn’t stop her, God only knew what would happen next. She’d shrivel up like a salted cod or something. As my hand entered the carrier, she hissed and bristled. But I wasn’t buying it. “Knock that shit off, Caesar,” I growled back at her. She froze with a piece of SPAM still clinging to her whiskers, looking at me in pure astonishment. Ears flat. Eyes wide.
With the carrier door closed, I made the seemingly endless trek to the house. One hundred yards to the moment of truth. I could see Rosie through the kitchen window, looking down at something. Her phone, I figured. But she didn’t look up and say, Max! I have the best news! She didn’t say anything at all. Instead, as I walked through the front door, my worry was confirmed: she looked like she’d just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, and she dropped her phone into her apron pocket. “Oh, hi!” she said with an embarrassed blush. “You did it! My hero! I locked Cupcake in the bathroom with a soup bone. Coast is clear.”
Holy, holy shit. She was lying to my face. I knew it—I could feel it, like the temperature had changed. She knew, and she was going to pretend it hadn’t happened. I slid the can of SPAM across the island and glanced at the still-illuminated screen, visible through the fabric of her apron. “Everything good?”
Rosie blinked a few times and smiled her sweetest, most wholesome smile. “Yep! All good!”
Still, I told myself, it was possible that she didn’t know, just possible that she wasn’t looking me right in the eye and lying to me, so I didn’t jump to any conclusions yet. “Say, did you ever apply for that job at wherever it was?”
Her eyes moved up toward the ceiling. “Umm… ReadyMadeLogos.com?”
The screen on her phone went dark in her apron pocket. I noticed that now my phone was plugged in where hers had been earlier, next to the bananas. “No, at the publisher. Gray Moose.”
“Oh!” She made a don’t be ridiculous face. “No. I’d never have had a chance. I didn’t apply.”
“You had your portfolio all set.” I knew that for sure; we’d spent a whole afternoon going over illustrations of crickets that played their legs like violins and illustrations of Randy the Raisin, in his purple Converse, exploring the dust jungle under an old refrigerator. “I even proofread your cover letter.”
She swiped her hand through the air. “Yeah, but who needs the stress?” she said. “Not me!” The smile was a good one, but I could see that on the edges it was a little bit…forced. It wasn’t the easy-breezy toothpaste commercial smile she flashed at me all the time. This one was pained, like she’d had to hold it for someone to take a photo.
I gave her a long stare and waited, willing her to tell me. To come clean.
But still, she didn’t. Instead, she smoothed her hair and tightened her apron strings. “So, handsome. What do you want for lunch?”
Inside my chest, my heart fucking split in two. She was doing this for me, for us, standing in front of me, lying to my face and pretending everything was the same as it had been half an hour ago.
Which it was not. It most definitely was not. “I’m going to give the dock a
call and see what’s up with my boat.” I woke up my phone and saw it had enough juice now to make a call. Without another word, I headed up to her bedroom to put Julia Caesar somewhere out of Cupcake’s line of sight.
“Max?” she asked as I made my way up the steps. I paused with my foot about to hit the tread where her ass was that first night. I turned and looked over my shoulder.
Now or never. Say it, beautiful. Don’t lie to me.
“You okay?” she asked. Her pretty painted nails sparkled against the dark wood of the newel post. She twisted her left foot back and forth on its tiptoe so that her flip-flop swished against the hardwood below. “Everything all right?”
Not all right. One thousand percent not all right. I would not let her give up her dreams for me—no fucking way. Never. She was bigger than this and bigger than me, and I wouldn’t make her choose. Never. “Yeah. I’m fine. It’s just the heat.”
Through my phone, Rich from the docks hollered, “Got some structural damage to the keel, son! Real pisser!”
I heard Rosie open the bedroom door, but I didn’t turn to face her. Instead, I grabbed my duffel from under the bed. It was a first-rate, class-A douchebag move, and I knew it. But I was too pissed to talk it over with her—too frustrated to be reasonable. I wanted to protect her future more than I wanted to put myself in the way of what she deserved to have. “Sounds good, Rich.”
“Son! I think there’s a problem with this line! I’ll say it again! Keel is fucked! Time to sell her for salvage!”
“Thanks for all the hard work. I knew you guys could get it sorted out.”
The door squeaked closed, and her soft footsteps came nearer. I turned away from her as I grabbed my socks from the bottom drawer. The mattress squeaked softly as she sat down on the bed.
My ear was full of the sound of Rich tapping the phone with his finger, and I thought it was going to bust my eardrum. I turned down the volume with a few presses of my thumb. “You hear me? Son? Not livable! Sell her for parts!”
“That’s less than I figured it would be,” I said and grabbed my boxers. “I’ll pay in cash. I know that’s easier for you guys.”
“What the hell’s going on here, son?” Rich boomed. “We having two different conversations? Someone splice this line? Christ! I’ll spell it out for you! Sierra! Alpha! Lima! Victor! Alpha!”
Before he could spell out salvage all the way, I told him, “Thanks, man, be there soon,” and I zipped up my duffel. I ended the call and put my phone into my jeans. I’d let her hear what I needed her to hear, and I steeled myself as I hoisted my duffel bag over my shoulder and turned to face her.
Rosie’s eyes were wide and stunned. “You’re…leaving?” She fidgeted with the edge of her nightie and blinked like she was fighting back a rush of tears. “Why are you leaving?”
“You’ve got stuff to do, and Julia can’t live with a dog.” I did a thing I never fucking did and actually shrugged. It was as douchebag as I could possibly get. I was one pair of loafers and some ladies socks away from being that guy Rosie had iced at the Anchor Nurse. Number one asshole. That was me.
“But, Max,” she said, standing slowly. “I don’t want you to leave.” She reached out and put her hand on my forearm. It was fucking electric. It was everything, it was every dream, it was every hope. It was everything I’d ever wanted, right in front of me.
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep her moored to shore. I would be her friend, but I wouldn’t be her ball and chain. I wouldn’t do it to her, I would fucking not. But I couldn’t resist one last kiss on her cheek—one last sweet, perfect kiss, on the perfect face of the perfect woman. She smelled like heaven. She was heaven, in the flesh. “See you when I see you.”
I closed her bedroom door behind me and jogged down the steps, taking a last big step over a baby gate that Rosie had put up as an extra line of defense. Cupcake came up on two legs to greet me, whirling around in her adorably weird little dance. I scooped her up in one arm like a football, keeping her close. From the hook by the door, I grabbed her leash and her harness and snatched her hedgehog off the sofa. Without looking up at Rosie’s window, I packed up the truck. I put Cupcake in her basket, buckled her up, and started up the engine. I floored it down Rosie’s long driveway with my goddamned heart breaking in two, while U2 hit me with the death blow from the mixtape I’d made myself. “With or Without You.” Fucking Bono. Bastard.
42
Rosie
I was absolutely stunned. I listened to the gravel fly from under his wheels, and I sat down on the edge of my bed very, very slowly. I tried to focus on real things—the birds chirping, Julia’s purring, the texture of the piping on the edge of the mattress under the fitted sheet. But none of it seemed real. This had to be a nightmare. Max couldn’t have just left, without a word, without an explanation. In shock, I stared at the open, empty drawers of my dresser, at the place where his socks should have been and his boxers and his soft T-shirts. At the little square of space I’d cleared out for his boots and flip-flops. He was gone. He was really gone. I put my hand to my lips, which were trembling, but I was too stunned even to cry. What had I done? What had I said? How could this have happened?
With my knees to my chest, I curled into a ball on the side where he slept, pressing my nose into the place where his head had been, the place that still smelled like him. With my eyes closed and my face against the cotton, I tried to make sense of what had just happened, but I absolutely could not understand it. It was like I’d been watching a movie and had to run out of the theater to pee, making me miss that one important scene. I felt so lost, I felt so confused. One second, he was fine—texting me about something better than donuts, beaming at me as I stood in my nightie out in the yard, then sitting down with my computer to figure out how to save Julia. And then the next second, it was like everything had changed. Like he’d discovered something that…
Oh, no.
I sat up in bed and fumbled to get my phone out of the pocket in my apron. I opened up my mailbox. I scrolled past my daily pollen update and yet another sale from Zulily, why, oh why, and there I found it, the email, which had arrived at 11:02 a.m. I tried to pinpoint when Max had sat down to check on how to get Julia out of the tree. Or what time I’d woken up. Or anything at all. But being with Max was like being in an endless midsummer afternoon—time meant nothing when we were having such fun. An hour took a day. A day took a minute. Everything was jumbled up in a world of long stares and caresses. Time didn’t matter when we’d been so busy falling in love.
But if he’d seen the email before I had, if he knew about the job, and I hadn’t mentioned it…Shit. Shit.
I had to be sure. I needed proof. So I launched myself off the bed and hustled downstairs, with Julia thundering after me like a little buffalo. I grabbed my laptop from the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the couch. Julia assumed her position on the tattered sofa arm. I pecked at my keys to wake it up and then had to enter my password three times because I was so flustered. Maxmat, maxmak, mazmaz. Jesus! Finally, I got it right, and my desktop appeared, with a background photo I’d taken a few days ago of Max kissing Cupcake. I moved my cursor down to the dashboard and saw that unusually for me, all my browsers were closed. I never closed anything, ever. But now it was all tidy and shut. It was the first bit of proof that something must have happened to spook him—normally, he’d leave his stuff open next to mine so that my tabs would read, Which way do the spirals on a snail’s shell go? and How much does a raisin weigh? followed by Mitered bevels oak baseboard and Stihl power drill replacement battery.
But not today. Today, Chrome was closed up like a bad mussel in my proverbial questionable paella. Bad business. Very bad. Half to myself, half to Julia, I said, “Moment of truth.”
I held my breath and opened my browser, guiding my cursor to the History tab. The stupid beach ball waiting thingy spun at me for a while, and I pecked at some more keys. Finally, the list populated. At the top of the first column, I saw it:
How do you get a cat out of a tree?
Time stamp, 11:01 a.m.
My heart took a tumble through my chest. The timing was exactly right. But what had he seen? I pulled my phone from my pocket and sent myself an email. In the subject line, I typed: Please… In the body, I typed out my biggest fear. And then hit the little paper airplane.
A heartbeat later, my computer dinged. The ominous gray box popped up in the corner.
Please…don’t let this be what happened.
But it had.
43
Max
I drove to Fletcher’s, planning to lick my wounds while I watched World War II documentaries and drank Miller out of a can like a real man, but that’s not what happened. What happened, unfuckingfortunately, was this:
I got to Fletcher’s and didn’t explain anything when he opened the door, except grumbling, “Man cave.” I shouldered past him and dropped my bag in the front hallway without letting myself look at a photo that I knew was on the wall of Rosie and me, with Captain, on the beach from last summer. Christ. I’d headed straight down into the dark, posh basement with Cupcake and Captain, who were obviously so much in love that it made me want to man-cry and pretend it was an eyelash. Still, though, I kept my shit together and turned on the cable box. As if the cable gods set it up, the first thing I saw on the screen was Legends of the Fall. It sucked me in like a dinghy into a whirlpool, and before I knew it, it was an hour and a half later, and I was watching Brad Pitt confront that goddamned bear, with tears streaming down my face.
“Dude, you okay?” asked Fletcher from the top of the steps.
Christ. I pressed my T-shirt to my eyes. Awww, fuck it—there was such a thing as a bro code, and Fletcher was pretty good with that shit when it came down to it. “Legends of the Fall,” I said, my voice all dark and baritone, like I’d just woken up or been punched in the balls. “Bear scene.”
So Good (An Alpha Dogs Novel) Page 21