by Maxene Novak
Gabby and Max placed all the clothing Izzy wanted on the counter and Gabby swiped her card, thanking the man up front for all the help he’d given them when they’d first walked in. The three of them then headed out of the mall and across the street. Max and Izzy picked out the table while Gabby ordered a few items for them.
“So, Izzy, which shirt are you gonna wear first?” he asked. She tapped her chin and thought over all the items she’d picked out.
“I wanna wear the green one with the green blobs on it.”
Max chuckled at her word choice. He’d found the camouflage shirt to be as cute as she did. “That sounds really cool. Are you gonna wear it with your tan skirt?” She nodded her head enthusiastically. “Good, I bet that’ll be pretty.”
Gabby returned with their food and handed it out. She cut up pieces of chicken so that Izzy could eat them safely, and Max watched happily, twirling his fork around in the lo mein noodles. Izzy picked up a piece of chicken and popped it in her mouth, giggling as Gabby scolded her for not using her fork. Max winked at her mischievously.
Gabby and Max talked about the dolls while they ate. He was quite curious what they looked like and how they were going to be packaged. She informed him about everything, from the deliberately gender neutral packaging to the items most of the dolls came with. Even Izzy, though she wasn’t all that big on dolls in the first place, was excited to see the married couple that both worked at the fire department. Gabby started to tell her about some of the concept ideas as well when her phone rang. She pulled it from her bag and made a face.
“Drew never calls at this hour,” she said aloud. She answered the phone curiously. “Hello?”
“Gabby, are you with Max and Izzy right now?” Drew sounded frantic. Gabby’s blood ran cold instantly. Something was wrong.
“Yes, yes, I have the both of them here right now. What’s wrong?”
“I need you two to come home right now. I’ll explain when you both get here.” He hung up the phone leaving Gabby stunned. She froze for a moment before closing up the foam container of her Chinese food.
“We have to leave, Drew says he needs us home,” she explained. Gabby helped put away Izzy’s food while the girl pulled on her jacket. Max followed the two of them back to the car, unsure what the hell was going on. The look on Gabby’s face told him it was something quite serious. He hoped nobody was hurt.
Gabby drove back to the house faster than she’d ever done. She sped through a stop sign, cursing when she realized what she’d done. She pulled into the garage and scrambled to get Izzy out of her car seat. Max didn’t even have enough time to ask what was wrong before he was following after Gabby. She burst through the front door and hurried to the kitchen when she caught sight of Drew pacing back and forth.
“Sweetheart, go to your room and place for a little bit, okay?” Max said softly. Izzy could sense the urgency and nodded, hurrying off to her bedroom. Max watched her go before he stepped into the kitchen with the others.
“Drew, just tell me what’s going on. You’re scaring us all half to death,” Gabby pleaded. Drew stopped pacing and looked between the two of them. He was reluctant to speak at first, but finally he said,
“They fucking lied to me. They told me that I of all people was safe. I wasn’t on anyone’s radar. I was just stressing ‘for no real reason.’ And yet they fucking lied to me. I don’t have a job anymore, Gabby. I don’t have a job and they told me I would.” He ran his hands through his hair, struggling to keep it together.
Gabby stepped forward and placed her hand on his shoulder. She rubbed him tenderly, shaking her head. “Calm down, Drew. Take a breath, okay? We’re gonna be fine. You’re one of the highest rated professors in the state. You’ll have another job in no time.”
Drew looked at her skeptically. “That’s not why I’m freaking out, Gabby.” He glanced at Max as if he wanted to lower his voice and talk in private. “I’m worried about Max.”
“What about me?” he asked. He stepped up to the island in the kitchen and leaned against it. He couldn’t imagine why Drew would be worried about him when he’d been the one let off today.
“The plan that we worked out with the company that sent you here… We signed a two-month plan. Every two months, we pay for you. The bill is due at the end of the month. I should have gotten paid in two days, and that would’ve covered the last of the bill for this month, but even if I put forward all of my paycheck, it won’t be enough. I’ve already looked through our finances, and there’s literally no other way to keep you here.”
Max felt the floor drop beneath him. This couldn’t have been happening. He’d already gotten used to staying with the Nobles, and to think that he’d be sent back without completing the other four months of his service broke his heart.
“There’s – there’s nothing you can do?” Max asked, his voice fragile. Drew bowed his head.
“No, we’re not done that easily,” Gabby said. The determination in her voice was almost enough to make Max forget about his worry. She looked more confident than he’d ever seen before. “We’re going to figure this out, Max. We want you here with us. We’re not going to let this one minor setback ruin that all for us.”
He nodded, picking at his nails. He wanted to believe them, but he wasn’t sure if he could. Drew had said it himself. They couldn’t financially support themselves and keep Max here. At the end of the day, he was a luxury. He wasn’t something they needed to have by their side if they could no longer afford him.
Sitting in the kitchen listening to Gabby rattle off ideas on how they could come up with some money, Max’s fear became something else. He was no longer afraid of what might happen if he didn’t come up with that money because there was no other option but to come up with it. He didn’t care what it took, he was going to stay here with these people he’d come to care so much about. The wheels in his head turned slowly, picking up steam until he was sure of his own plan.
“I have to go make a call,” Max said. He excused himself from the kitchen and headed up to his room. He dialed his mother’s number and waited for her to answer. For a minute there, he’d considered asking his mother for money, but when Drew explained that they were a little over a thousand dollars short, he knew that was no longer an option. His mother made end’s meet like everyone else.
“Hello, dear,” his mother said happily. He smiled.
“Hi, Mom. Listen, I need you to do me a huge favor.”
Sixteen
Sleep had been hard for Max. He couldn’t put his head down and clear his mind long enough to go to bed. Every time he tried, he thought back to what Drew had said. If they didn’t come up with the money in eleven days, they were going to lose Max for good. They couldn’t afford him, and he was going to end up flying home without enough time to say goodbye. These thoughts kept him awake until Max could no longer keep his eyes open. He passed out for a few hours, grateful that he didn’t have to think about the impending due date.
That following morning, he called Louisa and asked her to come over after she dropped her kids off at school. Drew poked his head in the room to say good morning, then took Izzy to school. With the house to himself for a bit, Max bathed and used up more hot water than he normally would have with everyone else getting ready for their day. With only Gabby working, he didn’t have to concern himself with conservation.
Max put on a pair of black joggers and his favorite Henley tee, dressing more for comfort than anything else. If he was only going to be here for less than two weeks, he wanted to be cozy in his outfits.
He padded downstairs just as Louisa and Drew entered. Drew dipped out of the way and went back to his room. He hadn’t talked to Max much since last night’s conversation. Max reasoned that he probably felt ashamed of what had happened. Drew was never the sole provider of the family, but he could imagine that in a two-person income household, unwillingly downgrading to one source of income might hurt anyone’s ego. He tried not to think too hard about what Drew was
feeling. He had a mission to discuss with Louisa.
“So, what’s the emergency?” she asked, sitting at the counter. Max grabbed two bottles of water and leaned against the island.
“Drew lost his job. Normally that wouldn’t be a bad thing since Gabby makes enough money to take care of a lot of the bills as well, but he’s not going to make enough money to keep me here for as long as we’d hoped. If he doesn’t fork over a thousand dollars in eleven days, I’m on a flight back to France.” Max opened his spiral notebook and looked down at the number he’d written last night. “Drew says his paycheck this week is around seven hundred dollars, but that’s before he has to take money out for a few things around the house.”
“You would think college professors made more than that,” Louisa murmured.
“They’re seriously undercutting him.”
“Well, I’m not letting that stop you from staying here, Max. You’ve already helped me through so much, there’s no way in hell I’m letting you get away that early.”
Louisa’s support was almost enough to bring Max to tears. He’d liked when Gabby and Drew said it, but it was different when Louisa did. She wasn’t his employer. She didn’t get any kind of service from him like the Nobles did. She was just his friend, and she wanted to help him.
“I was thinking of things that I could do to stay here, and I talked to my mom. We’re going to need to make five hundred dollars—”
“I can ask my family for the money. The Graysons are seriously loaded.”
“No,” Max said, shaking his head. “Gabby considered asking her friends for some money, but Drew didn’t like that idea at all. As stupid as it sounds, I’m sure you know how the social game works here. If the Nobles are asking around for money, it’ll look bad. On top of that, they already have a reputation. Nobody wants to be considered poor and slutty.”
Louisa cracked a smile. “Fair enough. What’s your plan?”
“You remember the brownies I made a few weeks ago?” he asked.
“Oh my god, do I remember them. They were amazing.”
“Good! I was thinking, I could do a bake sale or something to make up for the money that we’re missing. It wouldn’t be too hard, either,” Max said. He flipped through his spiral and opened up to the printed out papers he’d stuffed inside. “I asked my mom for all the recipes that she wanted to include in her cookbook but didn’t. A lot of these are family secrets that she wanted to share with the world, but she never got the chance. She gave me that brownie recipe. All of her food is on that level.”
“But I don’t see how a bake sale is any less ‘needy’ – for lack of a better word – than asking for money.”
“I’m glad you brought that up.” He flipped through his spiral again. “Here it is. We’re going to be donating seventy-five percent of the earnings to the school. They can use that money to fund some more anti-bullying programs like Claudette and Shelby were talking about, plus it looks good on the Nobles for giving so much money to the school.”
Louisa nodded slowly and reached for the book in his hands. He handed it over, waiting impatiently for her approval. “By doing a little math, you’re gonna need to make at least two thousand dollars at this bake sale to have five hundred left over. Do you think you could do that?”
“Wait until you taste some of the things she makes,” he said. “She used to make these cupcakes that would never last in the store more than an hour. They’d be gone so fast that she started releasing them as limited edition cupcakes and upping the price. Sales went up even higher.”
“What are you waiting for then?” Louisa said incredulously, “Whip up some of these France-famous cupcakes and let me be the judge of that!”
“That gives me a great idea,” he said suddenly. “What if I made a little bit of all these recipes and had the Nannies decide which ones they like the most? We can get them excited to start buying some when we get everything set up.”
“Did you go to business school?” Louisa asked.
Max smiled bashfully. “Nope, I’ve just been hanging around with two business-oriented people lately.”
“Speaking of businesses, I’m gonna ask Vanessa if we can use her bakery to prepare the items to sell. She even has a few gluten-free recipes that I can snag away from her that you can put in your recipe book.”
“Louisa, that would be amazing,” Max exclaimed. He’d been worried that the Nobles’ kitchen wouldn’t be big enough for him to get a good amount of items cooked in time for the bake sale. Having an entire kitchen tailored to preparing copious amounts of treats sounded like the perfect place to set up shop.
Max rounded the island and pulled Louisa into a big hug. She returned the gesture, squeezing. “You’re not going anywhere, Max. We’re gonna make sure you stay right where you belong.”
Drew poked his head into the kitchen cautiously, unsure whether he should bother grabbing something to eat or wait until it was empty before he stepped inside. The level of embarrassment and shame he felt for not being able to confidently say that Max was staying with them was almost enough to send him back into his room. His rumbling stomach, however, was much stronger. He cleared his throat and entered the kitchen.
“Hi,” Max said softly. Drew put on a small smile and slipped around him to get into the fridge.
“Hey. Nice to see you again, Louisa.”
“You too, Drew. I’m sorry to hear the bad news,” she said. Drew nodded solemnly.
“It’s alright. I’ll get another job.”
“That’s the spirit! With you looking for a new job and Max planning this bake sale, I’m sure things will get back on track in no time,” she said enthusiastically.
“What’s this about a bake sale?” Drew put down the milk on the counter and turned to look at the other two. Max shrugged and flipped through some of his pages.
“I was kinda planning a bake sale so that I could stay. I want to stay here with you guys longer than what I’ve been given, and it’s only fair that I try and work to make that happen.” He shrugged, glancing up at the man to see what his reaction was.
“You shouldn’t have to do extra work, Max,” Drew sighed. “The only work you’re required to do is take care of Izzy. Not bake to keep your job here. Me and Gabby will handle it.”
“You don’t have to,” Max said indignantly. “If you guys want to help in any way, help me do this sale. Help me put together this thing in under two weeks and I get to stay. You guys get to keep your au pair. I get to keep all my friends.” Max hadn’t ever used this tone with Drew, and in a way, he was amused to hear it. Max was normally so timid and soft-spoken. Ever since that fight, Drew had started seeing a different side to him. A side that turned him on just the slightest.
“The least we can do is help you, Max,” he said. He poured himself a bowl of cereal and took a seat beside Louisa. “Tell me how this thing is going to work.”
Max launched into his business plan again, this time making sure to answer all of Drew’s questions before he could ask them. He caught him up to speed on everything, from the flavors of cupcakes and cookies they’d be making to the location of Vanessa’s bakery. Drew listened intently and proudly, surprised to see such a straightforward and no-nonsense version of the younger man. The passion that drove Max was clear as day.
“This sounds like something we might actually be able to pull off,” Drew said, leaning back in his seat. “It’s gonna take everyone’s help, though. Are you sure you want to do this, Max? I can swallow my pride and reach out to some friends…”
“No, this is the best way. This is how you keep your reputation intact. This is how I get to stay here. This is how I give back to the school and make sure everyone has a positive outcome in all of this.”
“Then we’ll do this,” Drew smiled. “I’m gonna pick up groceries and supplies for this, plus I’ll help you bake if you need and help with—”
“Yes,” Max said instantly. “I’m gonna need all the baking help I can get.”
&
nbsp; “Perfect. We’ve got a plan.”
“This is going to be amazing,” Louisa smiled.
When Gabby came home, Max also caught her up on the plan and what they were doing. She didn’t hesitate like Drew had. She jumped right into it, offering to start scouting locations where they might be able to hold the sale.
“I’m going to get in touch with one of my graphic designers, too. I’ll have her come up with some flier designs for use to hang up.” She jumped up from the couch and started to dial the number when she spun around to look back at Max. “I meant to tell you when I got home, but the clients loved your idea. They completely agreed with you about how the dolls needed to be treated like they were nothing special. We’re casting kids for the commercial next week.”
While Gabby made the call to her designer, Max sat back on the couch, a warm smile glued to his face. He couldn’t make it disappear, even when he tried thinking about the possibility of leaving. People involved in the business world liked his idea. They agreed with him and his ideas, and were even implementing them. It was almost surreal how much he’d done since he got here. He’d helped Drew with all of the work he’d been putting off. Louisa was now out of an abusive relationship and much happier. Gabby wasn’t as stressed at work because of him. And if they could pull off one last great feat, Max would truly feel satisfied.
After dinner, Max made his way up to his room and sat down at his computer. He opened up a new spreadsheet and began going through all the recipes, inputting each of the ingredients he’d need for the recipes he was considering making. He included the amount as well as the price of each item. In under an hour, he’d created the first draft of his grocery list. He looked at the total and made a face
Three hundred dollars for ingredients sounded like a lot, but when he started mentally adding price tags to all the things he’d be making, the cost of supplies didn’t seem like that big of a deal. If they sold everything they had, they’d make their money back – and then some.