by KT Morrison
The implication of that potential truth was hurtful and something that had sent him running from them in the first place. Cole may have real feelings for Maggie. It was so obvious though, wasn’t it? Lips pursed, a tremor possessed his jaw, fighting the urge to yell, You came on my fiancée’s face! What was Cole’s game? Humiliation, sex, domination ... or, worst of all, was his friend falling in love with Maggie?
They looked at one another for a long moment, both faces set hard, then after a long moment, Cole’s features loosened, tension easing away and his eyes softening. He nodded, sniffed, said, “Max, I’m sorry I punched you.”
“Yeah?”
“I am. Really.” Cole continued to nod, affirming to himself that apologizing to his friend was his noble duty.
Max nodded too. “What I said was pretty shitty. I didn’t … I didn’t even mean it, you know?”
“I get it.”
Max tugged and squeezed his earlobe, chasing away a tension that looked to twist his insides. “The day … when I came in the room, the day I, you know, took the ring … I was coming to apologize ... because I said … what I said … and I didn’t mean it.”
A reluctant smirk picked up the corner of Cole’s mouth. “Things got really fucked up, huh?”
Max said, “I fucked up.”
“You did. So did I.”
“Yes, you did.”
But that was all Max would say, and it seemed it was all Cole would say too, and now sitting next to him like this, watching the side of his handsome head as he looked away from him again, both of them unwilling to look into one another’s eyes for too long, he felt anger return. Hands clenched on his thighs, he stroked them up and down like he was straightening his pants, shifting uncomfortably in his seat as he did.
After a deep breath and a quick exhale, he said, “You ever go with your buddies to Brattleboro? … Beat up Jay …”
Cole shook his head no, eyes lost and mesmerized by the fire. Then he looked up to the ceiling, expression somewhat brighter, raising his eyebrows like he considered some thought. He huffed a silent laugh, said, “I didn’t need to.”
“Didn’t need to …?”
Now Cole looked to him, eyes meeting, a certain sparkle there, not mirth, not happiness, but something that made Max’s stomach uneasy. Cole said, “Maggie took care of it herself.”
“Took care of what?”
“Jay. You didn’t know that?”
He shook his head no. “Know what?”
A somber expression returned to Cole, and he looked away at the fire, that sparkle extinguished, replaced with a measured dolefulness. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.
“How did she take care of it?”
“She doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s sensitive.”
“She told you?”
Cole nodded.
Max said, “I’ll ask her.”
“Don’t make her go through it again.”
“What? …”
“It was really tough on her.”
“So tell me.”
Cole looked at his hands for a while, watching his thumbs as they rotated around one another, his eyes narrowed like he was contemplating judiciously. “Okay,” he sighed, straightened in his chair with intense preparation for what he would reveal. “So she went to—this was the day after … uh, Monday …”
“Yeah?”
“She went to Professor Carmichael, you know, Jay’s dad …”
“I know she did.”
Cole paused, looking at him, taking a minute to understand how Max would know that. Did Maggie know he’d followed her that day? Did she know her creepy boyfriend was watching from the shadows once again? And if she did, in the aftermath of what happened in The Twilight, did she lament to Cole, her handsome lover, all of Max’s transgressions?
Cole continued, “She went to see Carmichael; made an appointment with him, he likes her, sees her right away thinking she wanted help getting into Harvard or something …”
“Yeah.”
“Maggie tells him she’s there to talk about Jay, and he’s, like, oh, okay. But he saw her already out somewhere with Jay one time—”
“Yeah. Wrestling expo at State,” Max said, eager to be a step ahead of the story.
Cole nodded, eyes narrowed. “Okay,” he said, looking like that was something he didn’t know and it made Max feel oddly superior, at least for the moment. “Carmichael knows Maggie is engaged to you, but sees her with Jay. So in his office, like he’s anticipating what she would say about his son—like even he knows his son is a fucking asshole—he puts it on to her.”
“What do you mean: puts it on her?”
“Starts alluding to her leading his son on.”
“Leading Jay on?” Max said, a ghost of his own voice echoing in his hollow mind, telling Maggie he wanted to watch her make Jay fall in love.
Cole continued: “Doesn’t even know what she’s going to say and already he’s putting up a defense.”
“A defense?”
Cole nodded. “Making it sound like whatever she’s going to say is …” he searched for the right word “… I don’t know, overstated … hysterical.”
“Maggie did this?—confronted him?”
“And she didn’t back down. Carmichael acts like Maggie’s some campus slut throwing herself at his son, like his son is a big deal. And …” now Cole smiled, “… Maggie just looks him in the eye, lays it out, all the shit Jay did to her alone in her dorm room,” his eyes were misty and distant.
“She did?”
“Said to me she was so scared, but, like, she knew she was right. Knew what she wanted.”
“What did she want?”
Cole looked at him, shaking his head with disbelief. “Told me she wanted to win.”
A knot tightened around his viscera, picturing his Maggie that morning in The Twilight, riding Cole’s cock, an act Max had allowed, her reaching out to her Max, happy, telling him she won, not seeing what doom Max was about to bring her. “Win what?” he said, a sad tremor pinching his voice.
“I don’t know … Just to beat him. Beat Carmichael.”
“So … what happened?”
“Maggie challenges him. Says she’s engaged, yes, Jay also knows she’s engaged—whatever thing they did together was complicit. Like, lessening his argument against her. He says women will say things like lies and half-truths, you know, and they don’t think the words have weight and like, how they can hurt men …”
“What?”
“This is what she told me. Maggie tells Carmichael what Jay did to her, alone in her dorm room—her clothes ripped off …”
“What did he do?”
While Cole had been eager and engaged with his retelling, this element seem to be one that still troubled him. Expression resuming its sober frankness, he said, “He didn’t … you know … didn’t …”
“He didn’t? …”
Cole shook his head, eyes gleaming wet. He sighed, cleared his throat, went on: “He didn’t. Scared her so bad, for real. She really did think … thought that maybe it … it would be worse.”
“Worse?”
“She was really scared.”
Max sighed and rubbed his face. This was something she’d alluded to the day he’d come home from San Diego to find her room abandoned. Reunited on the bed in The Twilight, she let him know how scared she’d been, but using words that evening, telling details, had been too difficult for her. “Fuck sake,” he moaned.
“Yeah,” Cole said, then brightening, picking up the trail of the story, he said, “but then, because he didn’t hurt her, Carmichael is really dismissive. Like what happened was no big deal. Asks how much she wants.”
“How much? …”
“For property damage. What an asshole.”
“Property damage?”
Cole hemmed, looking for the way he wanted to say something. “Maggie was wearing my shirt and Jay ripped i
t off her and tore it up.”
“No,” Max said, horrified, though he knew it already, but now he could see it again, his scared naked Maggie, and now with the added revelation she had worn another man’s shirt, like some sort of sense of belonging, ownership. She once wore Jay’s shirt and Max knew exactly the hurt that could deliver to a man’s heart.
“And, um … a drawing.”
“What drawing?”
“A drawing of me. Jay saw it and ripped it up.”
Max could see it. See the drawing done in Maggie’s distinctive hand, only in his mind’s eyes the drawing was the secret one he’d seen of Jay, hidden in Maggie’s sketchbook. The pain that drawing delivered had brought them all here to a cabin in the Adirondacks, lost in the snow. “Okay,” he said, trying to hide a whimper from his voice.
Cole smiled warmly now, Max realizing the hard parts of the story were over. Eyes wistful again, looking somewhere over Max’s head, Cole said, “Flashback to that Monday morning—”
“Yeah?”
“Maggie wakes up and her phone is charged. Looks. Finds a video …”
“Of what?”
“When Jay was terrorizing her—when I went to get fucking pizza—” his hands clenched in shaking fists, “—he sat on the bed, his back to her, and Maggie’s phone was under her, she takes it, God, she said she was so fucking scared …” He paused to shake his head, continued, “She tried to call 911, wanted to, but was so afraid.” Now he held a tight fist over his mouth, blinking his glistening eyes, trying to get a breath that sought to become a sob. Max felt it too, his chest tight as a drum. Cole sighed, cleared his throat, said, “Couldn’t do it, too frightened to think what Jay would do if he caught her. Tucked it back under her. Didn’t know she’d swiped the screen to camera, left it on video …”
“What?”
“Didn’t even know it happened. So boom,” he said, lightly but deliberately thumping his fist on the padded leather arm of the chair. “She puts the phone on Carmichael’s desk. There’s no video, the phone was facedown on the bed but she said you could hear Jay, how angry he was, how … how scared she was … and Jay goes on this crazy rant. He doesn’t threaten her or anything, not really, but it’s this long wild misogynistic complaint … Like, she said he sounded crazy.”
Max rubbed his face again.
“And Jay says … said something bigoted about her.”
“Bigoted?”
“Chinese,” was all Cole said.
“Did you hear the video?”
Cole shook his head. “You crazy? She said she can’t even hear it again. I swear, she didn’t even want to tell me any of this. Not the bad parts … Just how … she won …”
“So what happened?”
“Jay is on this rant and Maggie watches Carmichael get more and more uncomfortable seeing his son’s future go…” Cole held a thumb and forefinger up and brought them slowly together, a narrowing aperture, until they closed together. “Then, from the phone … boom,” Cole said, slapping one fist into a palm. “And Maggie looks straight at Carmichael, says: That’s where he punched a hole through my wall.”
Max was seized with disbelief. “Maggie did this?”
Cole shrugged, showed his palms, smiling, saying, “She did.”
It was crazy. Crazy that it happened. Crazy she ever slept with that guy in the first place, crazy she was with Cole on that weekend, terrorized by Jay, then she recorded him? … Max had proposed in the spring to her, and they were to be married. Everything was supposed to be so simple. So straightforward. So sedate. Most unbelievable was his demure fiancée rising from the terror, seeking some sort of victory. And how the hell did she find the tenacity to face such an enormous confrontation? It was bewildering.
He said, “What did she win?”
Cole shook his head in a mirror of Max’s own disbelief, smiling wider now. He held up a fist, flicked his thumb out, said, “Written admission of what Jay did,” now his index finger flicked out, “Jay is not to contact her ever or in any way after the letter, and three,” now his middle finger extended too, “Jay is never to set foot on Farmingham campus while she’s a student there.”
Max stared at Cole’s hand, waiting for number four. When it didn’t come, he said, “That’s it?”
Cole gripped the armrests, raised his eyebrows, said, “Jay didn’t hurt her. Just scared her. Can’t punish him for what you thought he was going to do. He’s, like, the NCAA Golden boy, he’s got scholarships. The things he said could be trouble, but … Everything else is hearsay. He’ll write Maggie a letter, probably more like an apology. Saying I’m sorry you took it that way, blah, blah, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he waved his hand, rolling in circles, indicating further non-incriminating platitudes.
“And you think he’ll never come to Farmingham?”
“Really doubt it,” Cole said confidently.
They both stared into the fire for a while. That was winning. That was what she’d accomplished on her own, and if this was true he was so proud of her. Only, all he could think was how it was revealed to him: retold to him by another man.
He said, “When did she tell you this?”
Cole scoffed. “Why?”
“She didn’t tell me,” he said toward the floor, more in disbelief, more to himself than to Cole.
“You went in exile,” Cole said.
“She told you on the ride up here?”
“That’s what you’re worried about? How long ago she shared this with me?”
“She didn’t talk to you after the hotel?”
“What? … No, she didn’t. Refused to talk to me. Max, she bawled like a baby when you took her ring.” He tried to keep a firm face but there was a gleam in his eye. “It hurt her so bad she couldn’t even look at me. But I was around. I watched out for her.”
“Watched out for her?”
Cole looked away, shaking his head. “Dude, you left her alone, not knowing if Jay would come back, if he was still angry …”
There was a knock behind them, a double rap on one of the enormous logs that framed the entrance to the main living room. They turned to see Maggie hanging off it, smiling sweetly but anxiously. “Pizza’s ready, guys,” she said, waving them to follow her into the kitchen.
8
White Lies
Saturday, November 4th
Fresh from the oven, Maggie put the hot pizza on a wooden block an inch-high and half a foot broader than the extra-large Stewart’s pie. Lucky to find a pizza cutter, she lifted it from the counter and offered Cole the honor.
“Ah, a-thank you,” he said with flourish, spinning the board on the counter, eyeing up his subject. Max joined them now, coming in from the living room with his hands in his pockets, face drawn and morose.
“How’s it going?” she asked him.
Chin lifting, eyes tracking to find where she stood on the far side of the marble top island next to Cole. He smiled weakly, then came around to join her. As Cole rolled the wheel through the center of the pie, Max’s arms came around her from behind and he held her.
“Fine,” he whispered, rocking her.
She tilted her head, let Max press his cheek to her neck. Her hands came up to grip his forearms where they crossed over her.
“Maggie?”
“Yeah?”
He whispered, “I let you down. I’m sorry I went home. Sorry …”
In front of Cole was not where they should have this talk. She said, “It’s okay, Max. We’ll talk.”
“I have a lot to say,” he told her.
“We all do,” she said now, twisting out of his grip and facing him. She cupped his cheek. He was warm, but his color pale, waxen. She frowned.
Still holding her sweet Max’s face, she said to Cole, “How did your talk go?”
Cole finished carving the pizza into eight slices, placing the wheel down on the wooden block, saying, “Yeah, fine.” Then looking to Max, he said, “We talked.”
Max nodded, and she ran her thum
b over his cheek, below a sad, trembling eye. “What’s wrong?”
“I told you. I’m sorry I let you down.”
“How’d you let me down?”
“I should have stayed. Not gone home. Worked this out, too. I don’t know why I ran away …”
She didn’t answer. It was a lot they’d gone through. The removal of her engagement ring had been devastating. Max wasn’t to blame for that, not entirely, acting from pain, hopefully not manipulation. Running away wasn’t always a reaction to pain, it could to be to fear. Was Max afraid he was losing her—or was he afraid of the things he’d done?
“After we eat, we’ll talk. Agreed?”
“What do you want to talk about?” Max said fearfully, and she could see him sickened at the possibilities. Max worried what she would say—worried it would be something final.
She said, “I love you,” in an effort to quell his disquiet. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he returned.
“Not a bad pizza,” Cole said behind her, and she turned to catch him already putting the point of a slice in his mouth. He set it down, slapped his hands, pointed at Max, and still chewing, said, “Max?—beer?” Without an answer he was already in the fridge pulling out two cans and setting them on the counter.
Even Cole wanted that worry removed from Max, and if he and she were both compassionate, there was hope.
“Me too, please,” she said.
“All right,” Cole said uproariously, pulling a third can from the fridge. When he turned, he popped the top for her, looking up around the high ceiling of the kitchen and all the antique armoires that had been converted to kitchen cabinetry. “This place is unbelievable,” he said.
She nodded and took a sip of the beer. The house might be too big. Thirteen thousand square feet gave them all plenty of places to go off and hide from each other. She said, “Can we play a game?”
Max sat next to her on a high stool and pulled his plate of pizza over. He didn’t look like he would eat. He said, “Like what?”
She said, “Maybe something like truth or dare.”
Cole sipped his beer, said, “Uh-oh.”
“Only: No dares, just truths.”