by Meg Maguire
Fallon sucked on her lower lip and stared up into the stars.
“Oh, she has reached her capacity for earnestness.” Max tucked himself against her again. “Now we have to go back to fucking and talking about the weather.”
“Shut up,” she whispered.
“We can’t talk about what I want to talk about,” he said in a paper-thin imitation of levity. “We can’t talk about what happens after the statue is done. We can’t talk about the future or family or how much I’m bloody going to miss her—”
Fallon rolled out of bed and went to the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“To clean myself up,” she said evenly, and he let her escape down the steps.
Fallon padded through the dusty studio to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet lid for a long time, fists jammed into her cheeks like a four-year-old as the tears fell. After ten minutes she splashed her face with cold water and combed her fingers through her hair.
She crept back up the stairs and found Max exactly as she’d left him. His eyes followed her as she lay back down.
After a few moments he pulled her close. He pushed his face against her collarbone, and she knew he was asking to be forgiven. She patted his hair in a lazy, permissive way, telling him she wasn’t angry. He kissed her throat, light then seductive. His tongue lapped her dried tears as his hand cradled her head. He kissed her ear, her jaw, her mouth. He crawled on top of her and kissed her until the intensity was almost too much to bear. When she started to cry again he pulled away, but she tugged his face back to hers.
Max was hesitant but he gave in to her insistence. She cried softly as they made love, her climax punctuated by a body-racking sob. Her tears tapered off then, giving Max whatever permission he needed to take pleasure in this. He took her deep and slow and in near-silence and as he came he breathed her name against her temple, so quiet it felt like telepathy.
When he lay down she turned him to face away from her, sliding her body along his, a hand on his ribs and her face by his ear. She felt his breathing deepen beneath her palm, listened to the sounds as he swallowed and exhaled. Such a perfect machine, the human body. The one fact their two disparate fields might agree on.
She felt him drift off to sleep.
“Max?” she asked softly.
He didn’t stir.
“I’ll miss you too.”
Chapter Eleven
Things got worse over the next two weeks.
Max was unraveling so tangibly that Fallon felt as if she were watching time-lapse photography documenting his decline. He looked pale and exhausted by the end of each session, physically unwell. At first she thought he must have the flu. Then he’d come back to life by the time dinner was ready, that same strong, self-possessed man returning until the following morning when the next set of coffee mugs were set in the sink and the work began again. He seemed so defeated sometimes that Fallon didn’t have it in her to point out that it was mid-November, that the statue still looked ages from complete.
Two more days, she kept thinking. Two more days and she’d start making demands. Then two days later she’d look at his eyes, as dark and worn and haunted as those of a man approaching death.
Presently she adjusted herself. The final pose that Max had chosen was seductive but tasteful. It called for Fallon to recline on one hip, propping her trunk up on an elbow, the other hand draped on her waist. She liked this pose, though the elbow in question wasn’t quite so fond of it. She was lying across the worktable, her body on par with the marble that separated her and Max.
“Hang on.” She refolded the towel she’d been leaning on.
“Let’s break.”
“I’m okay.”
They had this exchange about five times a day. Max pushed her to take breaks, she pushed him to keep working. He had the momentum of a man trapped hip-deep in quicksand. Every effort he made seemed both desperate and futile.
“You look so frigging tired, Max.”
He met her stare and held the particle mask up for a moment to show her a weak grin.
She pushed herself to sitting and slid off the table. “I’ll make some coffee.”
He nodded.
“Are you sure you don’t have mono or something?” She was teasing him, but he could no doubt hear the fear just beneath the surface, as surely as she could feel it in her chest. She crossed her arms and aimed a tense, frustrated smile at him. “You worry me sometimes.”
Max set down his chisel and hammer and pushed the mask to the top of his head. His eyes were trained on hers as he freed his tool belt, a wickedness turning his expression dark in the most inviting way, bringing him instantly back to life.
“What?” she asked, still standing between the marble and the table.
Max wheeled the statue to one side. “Come here.” A growl.
She stepped slowly to meet him and let him draw her into a deep kiss, his mask falling to the ground. His clothed body against her bare skin felt like some delicious game, their no-touching-during-work-hours rule be damned. It felt too good, too great a relief, just to feel his energy return like this. She let his tongue do all those wonderful things that brought a blush to her skin, and he made sounds for her, firing up all her hidden synapses. His mouth drowned out the voices of protest in her mind, the ones nagging her about schedules and dates and the responsibilities she kept conveniently forgetting.
Max pulled away, grabbing the hand towel he kept in a bowl of water on the edge of the table and mopping the dust from his hands. He tossed it aside and pulled Fallon against him again.
“Wow.” He’d been rough in bed with Fallon at her request, but his approach had always been cautious before. Not now. It felt so right—this energy matched his face and his eyes and their dark promises. She could already feel her body priming for him.
He spoke against her mouth. “Christ, I want you.” His stare was fiery and urgent, his lips parted, fingers rough on her back. Behind all the seduction and intensity, Max radiated unmistakable happiness. He drew her into his kisses and walked them backward until the edge of the worktable pressed against Fallon’s butt. With strong hands still wrapped in their cotton tape, he lifted her and set her on the table, pushing his hips between her legs.
Fallon caught their reflection in the mirror on the bathroom door several paces behind him. She yanked his undershirt up and over his head and watched his back muscles as he pressed against her, studied his tattoos and the faint red scratches left by her nails the night before.
She fumbled with his belt buckle until he took over, releasing it and unzipping his fly, forcing his jeans down enough to take himself out. He entered her deep, no hesitation. The thrusts came fast and hard and frantic.
“Max.” He felt amazing—even better than before, if such a thing were possible. She glanced down, taking in his skillful, explicit movements. Divine. His bare skin against hers—
“Oh shit, Max—stop.” She grabbed his shoulders.
His hips kept pumping. “What is it?”
“Stop stop stop. We need a condom.”
“In a minute,” he said in a distracted, desperate voice.
“No, not in minute—now.” She pushed him away, hard, and slid off the table. “You know I’m not using anything. And I’m not looking to have your artsy French love-child, so suit up.” She ran a hand over her forehead, trying to collect herself. Having sex with Max was like being intoxicated, and he was a dangerously hard drug to sober up from.
He looked to be struggling with his composure as well. “Would that really be the worst thing in the world?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“What?”
“A child.” His flushed face was impossible to read.
“Yeah, Max, it would. A baby right now would be just about the worst thing that could happen to me. Or you. Or…us.”
“Why?”
Fallon’s eyes widened, and she took a step back from him, feeling naked, naked, naked.
“Why? Because w
e’re…we aren’t…anything, really. And we live hundreds of miles away from each other.”
He replaced himself and buckled his belt. “We aren’t anything?”
She faltered. “Sorry. We’re lovers, obviously. And friends, sort of. I think. But we’re not…you know. A couple. We’d never be normal. Not normal enough to have a frigging baby, at any rate.” She took a deep breath and considered a horrifying possibility. “You weren’t trying to get me pregnant, were you?”
He shook his head, looking somber, and she knew he was telling her the truth. “Of course not.” His eyes lowered and his jaw tightened perceptibly.
“Well, thank God for that.” She wanted this conversation to go away—for it never to have happened to begin with. “Anyway… Maybe we should take that break.”
He nodded, still not looking at her. He turned away and replaced his shirt and began sweeping the marble chips from the floor.
“Have I hurt your feelings?” she asked carefully.
He still didn’t turn. “No. My feelings are just fine.”
“Good. I mean, I wasn’t saying having your baby would be the worst thing ever, just a baby. In general. I don’t know if I even want children.”
“Oh.”
She walked to her clothes, dusted her butt off and began redressing. “I’d be a terrible mother.” She felt his eyes on her, that tingling in her nerve endings.
“Why do you think that?”
She shrugged. She yanked her thermal shirt on. Armor.
“You have never mentioned your own parents to me,” he said.
“No, I haven’t. There’s a reason for that.” Her tone made it plain that she didn’t care to share that reason. She buttoned her pants and tugged on a sock.
“I’m not allowed to ask, then?”
“You can ask, but I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Did they hurt you?”
Something in Max’s voice broke Fallon’s heart. There was such a sharp, genuine concern in his words that it made her breath catch.
“No. They didn’t hurt me. They weren’t there to hurt me.”
“You were neglected?”
“No, Max. I don’t have any parents. I grew up in foster care.”
“Oh.”
She exhaled, staring down at the floor. “I don’t like talking about it. It wasn’t the most traumatic thing ever, it just isn’t my idea of a fun conversation. I’m not like you. I don’t get off on bad memories.” She felt her cheeks heat with regret a second too late.
Max didn’t reply.
“I’m sorry. That was harsh. But I’d like to drop it, just the same. Please.”
“Your aunt, who you’ve mentioned…”
“I call her my aunt. Her name was Gloria. Gloria Engels. She was my foster mother, but not until I was fifteen. I felt like I was too old to call anybody ‘Mom’ by then.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Max…”
“Please.”
“Fine.” She sighed and leaned on the edge of the table. “She took in lots of kids. She and her late husband. They couldn’t have their own, so they fostered dozens of hard-to-place teenagers, for years and years. Her husband passed away well before I moved in there. Gloria must have been in her midsixties by then. She was amazing, like something out of a frigging Disney movie.”
He nodded. “And this woman, she has something to do with this statue, somehow.”
Fallon maintained eye contact but didn’t reply.
Max leaned the broom against the wall and crossed his arms. “Tell me. Tell me why we’re here together. Tell me now what Donald Forrester is giving you in exchange for this statue.”
She stared at the ground, feeling disembodied.
“Tell me or I won’t pick those tools up ever again.”
Her head jerked up sharply. “Don’t you threaten me.”
“Tell me about threats, Fallon.”
She glared. “Fine… Fine. He owns Gloria’s house now—her estate in Connecticut. We’ve been fighting with each other for years, since way before she passed away and he bought it.”
Max crossed his arms. “Fighting over what?”
“Environmental things. Over all these development projects of his, ones I’m always trying to get halted because they’ll ruin wetlands or pollute waterways or erode some piece of coastline. We spent so much time in courtrooms together, we were almost like friends. Friends who hated each other, I guess. We weren’t close, just…civil. Familiar. We saw each other all the time and ate lunch together in the middle of these really ugly fights.” She took a deep breath. “Then he asked me out one day, and I said no. Then again, the next day. He asked me about a hundred times, and I said no a hundred times, and I thought he was just being a pain in the ass. Then Gloria died earlier this year and I missed a bunch of hearings during my bereavement leave. He knew what she was to me. When I got back after a couple weeks, I found out he’d bought her estate. Then he made a really disgusting offer and I hit him. Then he made a slightly less disgusting offer and I accepted. Then he contacted you.”
“What does he want to do to her home?” Max asked, one eye narrowing.
“If he gets his statue, he’ll give it to me. And I don’t know what I’d do with it. If he doesn’t, the idea is that he’ll tear it down, make it into a strip mall or throw up some condos, whatever will turn a profit. He’s not picky.”
Max gaped at her, the color draining from his face.
“So that’s why I’m here. Your work is the price of preserving my aunt’s memory.”
“How on earth do you expect me to be a part of this sickness?”
“How is this different from you wanting to preserve Erin’s worst memory, or any of the other painful things you’ve immortalized?”
“It’s different in a thousand ways.”
Her voice rose. “How?”
He shut his eyes tight, as though fending off a migraine.
“How, Max? Tell me how this is different. And don’t you dare say you’re not going to help me save her home—”
His eyes snapped back open. “I assumed this was about money. About you getting something out of the arrangement. Not you being exploited—having your own grief, or your family, used against you. This is different because you’re asking me to let some man take away your dignity in exchange for a scrap of human decency!”
“Bullshit.”
“This is different because I’m bloody in love with you and I can’t. Do. This.”
He was deteriorating before her eyes, every muscle and nerve strained to its breaking point. He picked the chisel back up, clutching the handle as though it held the key to his very sanity. “I can’t reward some piece of shit, heartless old man with my work and your body and let either of you think this is okay.”
“Goddamn it, Max, you don’t get it, do you? This is my only chance to save the memories of the three happy years of my entire, lousy childhood. Three good years out of eighteen! That’s all I got, and it’s because of her—”
“You think I can’t understand that? You think I, of all people, can’t understand how it feels to have your childhood ripped from you?” His eyes were wild, skin flushed, hand trembling.
“It’s not your business, Max. Why can’t you just stop with the drama and do your fucking job? What you promised to do?”
“You let me be a party to this?” His voice rose to a sharp bark. “You let me help someone blackmail you? And now that you tell me, you just expect me to go along with this?”
“It’s not blackmail.”
“Oh! A thousand pardons. What then? Extortion?”
“What do semantics matter? I came here for your help. I could have saved her home, and now you’re fucking it all up.” The tears arrived, streaming down Fallon’s face and making her words come out thick and sticky. Through her stinging eyes she saw his nostrils flare, some tiny attempt to muster self-control.
“This is what you’ve been keeping from me? About your aunt? You
thought I couldn’t hear that? After everything I told you about my childhood?”
“I never twisted your arm—”
“Do you know how many people I’ve shared that with? In twenty years, under the influence of alcohol and drugs and infatuation and ego?” He grasped the neck of his T-shirt, as if fending off an invisible, strangling hand. “None. None until you! Until I came under your. Bloody. Influence.” The hand holding the chisel shook. He met her eyes with his blazing ones and with a lightning-fast movement he flung the tool across the room where it collided with a shelf and shattered some anonymous clay figure in an explosion of ceramic shards.
“Max—”
“Get out of my house!”
Fallon felt her eyes go wide and her mouth drop open. Her body shook as she grabbed her bag off the floor and strode to the door with affected calm. She dashed down the steps to the driveway, gasping for air. Behind her, the screen door swung back open and struck the side of the house with a reverberating bang.
“Get out of my head!” Max screamed, maniacal.
Fallon turned her head the smallest fraction, enough to see him standing on his front steps, his chest rising and falling so violently she could make it out from ten yards away. She hurried onward, clutching her bag like an infant, fleeing what felt like a house engulfed in flames.
She nearly reached the main road before she realized he’d said he loved her.
After Fallon was out of sight, Max crouched down on the doorstep and held his head in shaking hands. He hadn’t felt he was going mad like this in years. Not since his grandmother died. Not since he’d last lost the sole person left in the world who meant anything to him.
He hauled his quaking body back inside and grabbed a four-pound sledgehammer and went to his backyard, to his assembly of broken figures. He hissed at the loitering cat until it fled across the lawn.
He raised the hammer and brought it down, whacking the perfect white arm off the nearest statue. Then the shoulder. The crown of the head. A hunk from the second arm smashed through one of his rear windows but he barely noticed.
Systematically, Max destroyed each and every one of the meticulously hewn souls that haunted his garden. He destroyed all the evidence of this curse—this so-called gift—that had left his life empty, driven away any and all decent people and drawn the toxic ones toward him like moths. He worked until the bandages wrapping his hands frayed and his skin grew raw. He worked until no single marble finger or toe or lock of hair was recognizable, until white dust drifted over his yard like fog and all that remained were hunks of meaningless, anonymous rock. Finally he tossed the hammer aside, feeling his body for the first time in hours, feeling suspended somewhere between dead and brilliantly alive.