Don't Say Goodbye

by Bridget Essex

  A desperation gripped Max, a desperation no one could ever know or see, looking from the outside--but, God, it raged through her. It was all consuming.

  Max fumbled, groping over the coffee table, upsetting the carefully stacked papers until she’d found the pen she was looking for. She held it at an angle, clicking the roller ball out, and wrote inside of the card:

  Thank you so much for the cupcake, Fiona. It was wonderful.

  She paused after that. How should she sign it? Should she write more? She’d written the words in such small print that there was a block of empty space at the bottom of the card that looked conspicuous. She sighed, and wrote at the very bottom in big, looping cursive: Sincerely, Max.

  It seemed so impersonal. So…bland. It was just like her. Max rubbed at her face and chewed on the end of the pen, willing something better to come to her, but there was nothing more she could think of putting. She’d already addressed the envelope to Fiona with the stolen address from her work spreadsheet, so there was nothing left to do but put the card in the envelope, lick the envelope, slap a stamp on it and send it.

  But Max waited. She stared down at the open card in front of her and continued to chew the pen thoughtfully. Then, before she could stop herself, in the bottom left, she scribbled: P.S. There. Now she had to put something else.

  The last remaining warmth of the wine made her feel like things were better than they actually were. It made her feel a little braver. She hesitated for a beat, then put down in hasty, almost unreadable print: It was the best cupcake I’ve ever had.

  There. Not too sappy or desperate or anything other than being simply grateful for a wonderful, free cupcake. Good. She shoved the card into the envelope and had to concentrate on the flap for a long moment before she figured out where she should lick. She sealed it, peeled a stamp off of her sheet of them, and placed it a little crookedly on the top right corner.

  Max left the envelope on her counter overnight, and in the morning, along with the murderous hangover (she always got migraines after drinking too much wine, but still—she always drank too much wine), she had the terrible decision of whether she should still send it. She hadn’t remembered exactly what she’d written last night, but she did remember feeling pleased with herself. The card probably looked terrible because of how drunk she’d been, but it couldn’t be helped. She’d made it, and she should send it. And anyway, it wasn’t as if Fiona would know she’d made it. She’d probably think Max had bought the card off a second grader at a church craft sale.

  So Max mailed the card, tossing it down the chute in her apartment’s outgoing mail slot.

  And for all she was concerned, that was that.

  Or it should have been. But all Saturday, all Max could do was nurse her debilitating migraine, sit in her darkened bedroom, and think about Fiona.

  On Sunday, she wasn’t feeling much better, but actually decided she might like breakfast. She popped in her copy of Miracle on 34th Street into her DVD player, and watched the television screen without really seeing it.

  On Monday morning, she looked like she did, in fact, have an incurable disease. When she walked past Sam’s cubicle on the way to her own, he stuck his head out, and then followed her all the way down to her cubicle, his full coffee mug in hand and his mouth open in astonishment.

  “Oh, my God, Max, you look dead,” he said helpfully, pulling out her office chair for her and peering into her bleary eyes. “Are you all right? What the hell happened to you?”

  “Migraine. It’s going to probably stop tomorrow. Or today. I’m hopeful,” Max muttered, peeling off her coat and unwinding the scarf from her neck. She blinked under the bright fluorescents. “I probably should have stayed home, used a sick day, but I already requested off the days after Christmas, and I was actually granted them, so I don’t want to piss off management.” Max sunk into her chair, pillowed her arms on her desk and set her forehead on those arms as her computer booted up. “How are you, Sam?” she asked, her voice muffled.

  “Good. Great. Wonderful.” He sank down to one knee beside her, his eyes wide beneath his glasses with concern. “I’m serious, Max, I don’t think you should be here. I can’t believe you actually drove here. You look terrible. You need rest! Don’t all those commercials about migraine medicine say you should rest?”

  Max groaned. “I did rest. I haven’t moved from bed for two days, so I figured I’d mix things up a little, be miserable and in intense pain at a desk for a change,” she muttered, wiggling her mouse as the screen came to life. “Look, Sam, I’m all right, I’ll be fine. I’ll just keep popping ibuprofen, and eventually I’ll look less human. I mean more human, more human,” she muttered, Sam’s eyes widening.

  “Look, I don’t—” he began, but he was cut off by Max’s desk phone ringing.

  “It’s probably a client,” Max muttered, slipping on her headphones and wincing as she glanced up at the lights again. “Sam, I’ve really got to take this.”

  “I am coming back with coffee,” Sam muttered, snatching up her clean coffee cup from her coaster. Max nodded with appreciation and pressed the big green button on the phone.

  “Maxine speaking,” she muttered, doing her best to sound professional and not half-dead. She wasn’t exactly certain she pulled it off. “How can I help you?”

  “Max?”

  The voice was bright and soft and warm. And familiar. So familiar.

  It was Fiona.

  “Fiona?” whispered Max, putting her aching, pounding forehead in one hand and squeezing her eyes shut, hoping that without the light, her headache would stop trying to kill her. Fiona was calling her.

  Fiona.

  “How did you, um, get this number?” said Max, hoping she didn’t sound like a jerk. Fiona’s laughter, warm and rich on the other end of the line, made her relax a little.

  “I hired a private investigator,” she said teasingly, and then her soft laughter made Max actually smile, something she hadn’t done in days. “But no, seriously, I had it on my caller ID from Friday. Hey, I wanted to tell you that I just got your card!”

  “Wow, that was fast,” said Max, breathing out. Her heart was beginning to pound too quickly, and coupled with the migraine, it was making her breath come a little short.

  “That card is just beautiful. It’s just…it’s such a sweet gesture, Max. I really appreciate it.” Her voice had softened, and it was too much for Max to take.

  Max chuckled, and it sounded awkward, even to her own ears. “Are you actually thanking me for my thank you card?”

  Fiona laughed, too. “I guess I am! It’s just the prettiest thing I think I’ve gotten in my mailbox in years. My mailbox is always so sad--it’s only ever filled with bills, so it was just…the nicest thing to get this,” she said, trailing off, her voice hesitant. Max shivered a little, looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. Fiona cleared her throat on the other end of the line. “Hey,” she said, voice brightening again, “where did you get the card?”

  That surprised Max, and she groaned a little. It probably looked terrible, and that’s why Fiona was asking. Great. “Well,” she muttered, scraping at an ink stain on her desk with her thumbnail. “I made it.”

  “Oh, my God, seriously?” asked Fiona, her voice practically squeaking with excitement. “That’s amazing. Max, seriously--it is so beautiful, ridiculously beautiful, really. How long have you been making cards?”

  Max opened and shut her mouth. That hadn’t exactly been the reaction she’d expected. Warmth rushed through her, and coupled with the pounding of the migraine, it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling.

  She gulped. Fiona had asked her a question. But she couldn’t even remember when she’d started making them. “I, um…I honestly don’t know.” Great, Max—just great. I sound like a real winner.

  “Look, I know you’re at work, and you can’t probably talk very much,” said Fiona, her voice dropping low again, “but…I did a thing. And it involves you. I really hope you won’t be ma
d at me.”

  Mad? At Fiona? Never. But Max couldn’t tell her that. She swallowed, uncertain. “Um, what…” she said, trailing off.

  “Well, I got the card the very first thing this morning. At, like, seven. They deliver the mail to the businesses early around here. And right after I got the mail and got things set up in the shop, I had a meeting with a client for her wedding cake at eight, and I had the card with me. You will never believe this, and I really hope you won’t be mad at me, but she asked me if I knew anyone who could do handmade details for weddings. See, she wanted everything to be local and handmade and eco-conscious—she had a long list of all the things her wedding had to be--so I gave her some names of florists and caterers and decorators…stuff like that. But then she asked for the name of someone who could hand make invitations for her. She seems really interested. I showed her the card…I hope that’s all right. She completely fell in love with it, Max. She wanted whoever made the card to do the invitations for her wedding. So I told her I’d found out who did it...But she wants you to do her wedding invitations, Max.”

  Max blinked slowly, not exactly sure if she’d heard Fiona right. She didn’t say anything for a moment, long enough for Fiona to ask uncertainly: “Max, are you still there?”

  “Yeah, yeah I’m here, Fiona,” murmured Max, pressing her fingers to her eyelids so hard that purple squares began to erupt behind her eyes. Fiona had shown the client the card excitedly. Fiona thought it was good...and so had the client. “That was…that was really nice of you,” said Max, completely uncertain what else to say, or really, what else she could say without betraying the fast beating of her heart, the trembling in her hands, the way her heart had leapt so strongly when she’d realized what Fiona had done.

  Max swallowed. “That was so nice, Fiona,” she said again, and then, before she could change her mind or the tiny scraps of courage she’d found could leave her, she murmured:. “But it’s above and beyond...” She tried to search for the words. “It’s too much trouble...”

  “Oh, honey,” said Fiona’s voice softly on the other end of the line. It was so warm that it made Max’s breath catch in her throat. “I…” Fiona stopped speaking, and then it was Max’s turn to wonder if she’d dropped the call. But no. Fiona’s voice was soft and low, and she said: “You…you touched me. At the diner. You’re this incredibly smart, articulate person, and it’s so…so obvious how much fire you have in you. How much passion.”

  Max couldn’t be hearing this right. She must be imagining it. But no.

  Fiona continued: “I’m sorry you haven’t found what you thought you’re meant to do yet, but when you said you thought you might not be meant to do anything…I knew that wasn’t true. Knew it as well as I know my own name,” she chuckled then, the intensity of her words lessening. “I wanted to help you. You deserve to be happy, Max.”

  You deserve to be happy.

  Max held the microphone attached to her headphones tightly, the world seeming to swim beneath her.

  “If…if you could tell the client my number, that’d be great,” Max said then, her voice betraying her shaking, but there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it. She rattled off the number for her cell phone, and she could hear, on the other end of the line, Fiona scratching down the numbers, just as the oven timer went off.

  “I’m sorry,” said Fiona, and she absolutely sounded like she meant it, her voice small and sad. “But I’ve got cupcakes in the oven…and Stella, she’s my assistant, she’s not in yet…I’m sorry…”

  “It’s all right. I just—I can’t thank you enough,” said Max, biting her lip.

  Fiona sounded surprised. “You don’t have to thank me. It’s the least I can do. I have to run—bye, Max.”

  The phone went dead. Max shrugged out of her headphones, eyes wide.

  “So, what exactly was that?” asked Sam, plunking down a steaming cup of coffee on Max’s coaster. It was black, just the way she liked it, and despite how hot it was, Max picked it up in shaking hands, and downed the contents in two gulps. Only then could Max look up at Sam, standing over her, his eyebrows knit in concern.

  “That was Fiona,” said Max smoothly, evenly then.

  “Fiona,” Sam repeated, blinking. “I’m sorry, did I miss something? Did you get lucky this weekend?”

  “You’re a jerk,” Max reminded him, and he nodded, completely agreeing with her as he dragged the chair out from the unused cubicle next to her, and sat down in it, his face still pinched as he tried to figure things out.

  “So that was the lovely Miss Fiona on the phone. If you didn’t get lucky, what the heck is she doing calling you?” he asked, spreading his hands on his knees. Max opened and shut her mouth, breathing out.

  “She was…she was calling,” she said, all in a huff, still holding the hot, empty coffee cup in her hands. “She was…” Max trailed off, biting her lip. She didn’t really have a succinct answer to that question, because it would then involve the fact that Max had gone to Fiona’s place Friday night. And, for some reason, she didn’t want to tell Sam that fact. Not yet.

  For right now, she wanted to keep it to herself.

  “So, when was the last time you heard from Jo?” Sam asked out of the blue, smiling as he leaned back in the chair.

  Max stared at him with wide eyes. She felt like she’d just been punched in the gut. “That doesn’t have anything to do with what we were just talking about,” she muttered.

  “No, but really. Inquiring minds would like to know.” He raised his eyebrows.

  Max sighed. “The last time I talked to Jo was night we had dinner.”

  “So, your best friend’s girlfriend is talking to, interacting with and seeing you a heck of a lot more than you’re seeing your best friend. Doesn’t this seem strange to you?” he asked, raising one eyebrow in mock triumph. “Doesn’t it seem that Fiona, in fact, kind of has a thing for you if she goes out of her way to interact with you?”

  Max’s heart, unbidden, began to beat much faster. God, she needed to lay off so much coffee. She shook her head, swallowing, feeling the thud of her tell-tale heartbeat hammering away beneath her shirt. “That’s ridiculous—” she spluttered.

  “Then why was she calling you?” asked Sam, crossing his legs at the ankles and taking a sip of his own coffee. He looked almost triumphant, like he was a lawyer, and had just made such a water-proof argument that no one could question it.

  Max sighed, pillowing her elbows on her desk again, and her forehead on her arms. She had to tell him the story, because he was obviously starting to see things about the situation that weren’t there. She took a deep breath. “I sent Fiona a thank you card I made. She...invited me to come to her cupcake shop to see it on Friday and give me a free cupcake,” she said, all in a rush, “and Fiona was really impressed by that thank you card, so she showed it to one of her clients and talked me up. And now that client wants me to make her wedding invitations.”

  “Ah,” said Sam. Max could tell he was gloating, even though she wasn’t looking at him. She glanced up. Yes. He was definitely gloating, like a cat who’d eaten an entire pet store’s worth of canaries. “So—I just want to make sure I’m following,” he said innocently, sketching a halo over his head as he grinned at her. “Your best friend’s girlfriend received a thank you card that you made for her. Which, by the way, haven’t I always told you how lovely your cards are?”

  Max nodded with a sigh and a tiny smile.

  “And then she showed this lovely thank you card to her client, and her client decided, then and there, that she would just love to have you make her wedding invitations, which are—arguably, of course—the most important bit of mail you ever send in your entire life?”

  “Yeah. I guess,” said Max, sitting back in her chair and shaking her head. “But you can get that look right off of your face, because you haven’t met Fiona—you don’t know her. That’s just how she is. She’s super nice, Sam, and she would have done this for anybody.”

&
nbsp; “Anybody,” Sam repeated, his brows up as he sighed. “Oh, Max…”

  “Hi, Tom!” someone called with exaggerated volume from down the aisle. Tom State, their boss, was making his Monday morning rounds to make certain everyone was in their place, working their tail feathers off. Sam’s eyes went wide, and he mouthed “later,” before scurrying out of her cubicle. Max turned and brought up her spreadsheet just in time as Tom stomped by.

  But even as the automatic dialer began to cycle through the numbers, even as her first phone call of the day began to ring, Max was a million miles away. Because as much as Sam could be ridiculous and sarcastic and funny and really (most of the time), not to be taken seriously at all...in this instance? He kind of had a point.

  Max had been right when she’d said she thought Fiona would do that for anyone. But showing the card to her client, on top of everything else that had happened…were these some sort of signs that Max was oblivious to? Or was it just because Max was completely and hopelessly attracted to Fiona, that she saw what she wanted to see?

  You deserve to be happy, Fiona had said.

  Max closed her eyes, the phone ringing a million miles away.

  All she could see was Fiona’s smile, Fiona’s warm hand and fingers as they slid over Max’s mouth.

  All she could see was Fiona.

  Chapter 5: Deal

  Every Monday night, for as long as Max could remember, she and Jo had met at their favorite diner, the Malibu, and gotten dinner. No matter the craziness that had gone on in their week, they always made the time for that weekly rendezvous, no matter what. It was like clockwork, decades of this weekly meeting under their belt, and Max looked forward to it often as the highlight of the week.

  But for the first time in, well...ever, she didn’t want to go that night.