But this was just ridiculous, all of this. Max pulled out the seatbelt and buckled herself in and pressed herself back against the car’s seat and took a long, wavering breath that rushed out into the air, clouding her vision for a moment. It was bitterly cold in the car, but she was still warm from Fiona’s sweet little kitchen.
Still warm from how Fiona had looked at her, close enough to kiss.
Max took another deep breath, started the car. The engine rumbled to life, and she pulled out onto the empty road. It was past midnight and the streets were deserted, the sidewalks of the normally bustling little artsy district completely quiet. The snow fell in perfect, large flakes that made it look like a snow globe had been energetically shaken, and all was hushed and still.
It seemed, for a moment, that there was no one else in the world but Max.
But as she drove past Florabella Cupcakes, she glanced out the window at Fiona, who was exiting the front door, locking it carefully behind her, her red hair spilling out over her pretty red coat. She didn’t see Max as she bent to her task with her keys at the lock.
And as Max caught that single, sweet glimpse of Fiona, her heart skipped another beat.
Max knew how desperately she wanted Fiona. She knew that by wishing so much she was reading far too much into things that should never be read into in the first place. She knew, in that moment, then, that all of her imaginings were simply that. Imaginings. Fiona had simply lost her balance and had tried to right herself. She had not been about to kiss Max.
And whether Max believed that or not…well.
She wasn’t very good at lying to anyone but herself.
Chapter 7: Intervention
“’Tis the season to be merry, and you’re not even close,” said Sam with finality as he stared Max up and down the next morning. True, her slacks weren’t ironed, and her shirt was mis-buttoned, but she’d managed to put her boots on the right feet and remembered to wear a hat to cover her extremely messy hair. What more could the world expect from Max when she was this miserable?
“There’s no law in December stating that anyone has to be merry,” she grumbled, dropping her purse on the ground beside her desk and savagely shoving the button that turned her PC on. The computer tower made a strangled noise and started to beep.
“You’ve become the Grinch, congratulations,” muttered Sam, one brow raised. He lifted his half-empty coffee mug to his lips and took an exaggerated sip. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Max?” he said quietly then, when Max said not another word and flopped down into her desk chair.
“Nothing,” she said with a very long sigh, shoving her fingers through her hair under her hat and leaning her elbows on her knees. She took a long, wavery breath and closed her eyes.
“Max, sweetheart, talk to me,” said Sam with genuine concern as he wheeled over the chair from the unoccupied cubicle. He plunked down in it, set his coffee cup on her desk and took her shoulders in his hands. He shook her very gently. “Are you okay?” he said slowly.
Max straightened, shrugging out of his grasp as she shook her head, tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. “No,” she said, swallowing. She refused to let the tears be shed, and she blinked them away, rubbing at her puffy eyes with the heel of her hand. “I’m not okay. I’m helping Fiona out after work until she gets her backlog of orders taken care of, which means that I’m with Fiona every day, and that’s not good, Sam, because I’m falling in love with her.”
She had to tell someone.
And she couldn’t tell Jo.
And there was no one else in the world closer to her, after Jo, than Sam.
Sam’s eyes became as wide as saucers, but to his credit, he didn’t say anything until he’d figured out something tactful. “Um. I think you need to take a day off from work,” he said then, slowly, steadily, as he stood. “And I’m taking one off with you. Family emergency. No arguments. I’m going to go talk to Tom.”
Max groaned and pillowed her forehead on her arms on her desk. Tom State, their boss, was notorious for not allowing people to take time off for major things, including funerals. “Sam, you know that I asked for the days after Christmas off. He’s not going to let me—”
“He will,” said Sam resolutely. “You put your coat back on and turn your computer off. I’ll be back in a minute.” He rushed off, even forgetting his coffee cup on her desk in his haste. Max stared down at it and sighed, clicking the big blue button on her PC without waiting for it to fully boot up. She shrugged back into her coat, picking up her purse, and by the time she’d turned around, Sam was practically sprinting down the narrow hallway between cubicles, an encouraging smile on his face.
“We’re leaving,” he whispered, snatching up his coffee cup. He gulped down the rest of the contents, and then he was trotting back to his desk to pick up his coat.
Max didn’t want to hash this out or talk about this or all of the million and one ways she could think of that Sam would try to “help” her with this incredible and private predicament. But Sam surprised her as he came back, inclining his head toward the door.
“We’re going to the bakery,” he said then firmly.
Chella’s Olde World Bakery was more than a couple of blocks from their office, and they could have driven. It was certainly cold enough to make the drive worth it. But Sam pulled his Boston Bruins hat down around his ears, shoved his hands into his pockets and began to walk resolutely in the direction of the bakery once they got past the big double doors and out and into the frigid cold of the morning.
Max sighed, pulled her gloves out of her pockets and followed him.
“Okay,” he said, when she fell into step beside him. “All of my terrible jokes aside...I was actually right? You really fell for Jo’s new girl? Like, actually fell for her? Like...love?”
“Fiona,” said Max quietly, sliding the gloves onto her hands and then shoving her hands into her pockets, too. “Her name’s Fiona,” she repeated when Sam cast a curious sidelong glance at her.
“Okay. You’re falling for Fiona.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” said Max softly.
Terribly, it didn’t feel better to confess it. The ache in her heart tightened. She’d been hoping for even the tiniest bit of relief to announce the truth to someone, anyone. But the relief didn’t exist. She hunched her shoulders against the piercing wind and put one boot in front of the other.
“So,” said Sam after a silent moment. “What are you going to do about it?”
Max stopped dead, turning to face him, her mouth open. “Do?”
Sam shrugged under the layer of his coat. “That’s the next logical question, isn’t it? You’re falling in love with her. Okay. So what are you going to do about it?”
“I can’t ever do anything about it,” she said heatedly, stomping ahead down the sidewalk. She swallowed, her breath coming too fast as she gulped down frozen air, trying to make the nervous pounding in her heart calm down.
“Max, seriously, hold up,” said Sam, trotting to catch up. “Don’t shoot the messenger, okay? This is a unique circumstance. It’s something you really have to think about, whether you’re going to--”
“Sam, I’ve thought about it,” she murmured, stopping again. The anguish came through clearly in her voice, and the tears threatened to spill again. And again, she would not let them, blinking them back. She touched her cheeks with the backs of her gloves. “Trust me, I’ve thought long and hard about every possible action and outcome, and I’m telling you right now that there’s nothing I can do. Fiona is Jo’s girlfriend. And Jo is my best friend. And I would never do anything to—”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Sam dismissively, his eyes piercing into Max’s. “You would never do anything to hurt her. I’ve got that. And I think you’ve probably repeated it so many times to yourself that you’ve got that pretty well, too. I know you’d never want to hurt Jo, Max. But what about you? What about not hurting you?”
“So you’re telling me is that I shou
ld go after Fiona, ask her to cheat on Jo with me, Jo’s best friend,” said Max icily. Sam held up his hands then, shaking his head.
“I’m not telling you anything. I’m just trying to help you.”
“Well, maybe I don’t need any help,” said Max, wrapping her arms around her body in her coat and squeezing tightly. There was no one else on the sidewalk with them. In the spring, summer and fall months, they’d often made the walk to the bakery together, but after only a few moments outside, it was beginning to feel like a very bad idea to walk all that way in December. The wind off of the bay was always so much colder, and it had a tendency to bring the worst snow, the nastiest ice and the most chilling weather. This day was no exception.
“Maybe. Maybe,” said Sam with another shrug as he buried his hands in his pockets again.
They continued to walk in silence.
Finally, Max sighed, huffing her breath out, and turned toward Sam. “I just…I just don’t know what to do,” she murmured then. She thought for a moment that he hadn’t heard her, that the chill winter air had snatched up her words and taken them away. But she saw his jaw working then as he glanced down at the ground.
“I’ve known you for a long time, yeah?” he asked her. Max nodded, watching her friend’s face as he considered what to say next. He cleared his throat, shrugged. “And in all that time, Max, I have to be honest with you: the only time I’ve ever seen you even close to being happy is when you’ve talked about Fiona.”
“Happy?” she whispered, considering the word. “No, that’s not true. I’m pretty happy—”
“I mean we’re being honest here, right?” said Sam, head to the side. She nodded. He grimaced and shook his head. “Then in that case, no. You know you’re not happy.”
“That has to do with my job more than anything,” she huffed out, hunching her shoulders against a sudden, insistent puff of wind.
“Okay, so your job’s got something to do with it, I’ll give you that,” said Sam as they both struggled against the increasingly harsh pelting snow as it pushed against them with a strong wind. The bakery was now only a blessed block away. Max kept thinking about how warm it would be inside. About how they sometimes served cider in the autumn. Maybe they’d have cider going right now, or hot chocolate. Oh, hot chocolate… “But you know that’s not the whole story,” continued Sam, leaning into the wind, bringing her back to the very cold moment. “You’re unhappy because you want what you don’t have, what you’ve arguably always wanted,” he said reasonably, squinting into the snow. “You want to be happy, and you want someone that can make you happy. And now you have her. Sort of.”
“Everyone wants someone,” said Max, shaking her head. “But I’ve been all right without someone for so long--”
“Yeah,” said Sam, then, casting her a sidelong glance. “But there’s a whole hell of a lot of difference between ‘all right’ and ‘happy.’”
Max could see the bakery, now, but even though it was utterly frigid out, even though the wind was biting right through her layers, in through her ears and seemed to be knocking around in her head, she stopped.
“Sam,” she whispered, her eyes wide, her voice catching. “I don’t know what to do. I mean...I love her. I know I love her. Or, I’m falling in love with her. Fiona…she’s amazing.” Her jaw ached from holding back the tears, but she took a deep, quavering breath. “She makes me smile, and she’s so funny and kind. And beautiful. And just this incredibly good person. I know that I’ve never met a kinder woman in my whole life. And she genuinely believes in me, you know? She thinks I can start my own business, and she sees something in me that I’ve never, ever seen in myself…” She trailed off, breathed out. “She sees something good in me, Sam.”
“Everyone sees something good in you, Max,” said Sam, his mouth in a line. “But for the first time in your life, you’ve met someone you believe when they tell you about it.”
Max considered that as they crossed the last little bit of sidewalk into the bakery shop. They stomped their boots on the worn welcome mat, and then they folded themselves into the wicker seats at one of only two narrow little tables in the bakery.
Amazingly, there was a little pot of hot chocolate brewing behind the counter.
Chella’s was run by its namesake, Chella, a little old woman who might have been Czechoslovakian, might have been Polish, but either way, was a wonderful little lady who spoke in a broken eastern European accent, and who would always give you a little something extra in your order as she dusted powdered sugar over your cookies with thick, worn fingers. She wore a chunky gray sweater that looked hand-knit over her stained apron today as she smiled happily up at Sam and Max.
“My favorites!” she gushed, all of the wrinkles on her face deepening as she grinned. She always called them her favorites when they came into the bakery, even if they came every day or once a month. “You like the usual?”
“And some hot chocolate too, please, Chella,” said Max, smiling in spite of herself and the weighty conversation she was currently embroiled in.
“I bring it to you!” said Chella staunchly. “Sit! Relax! Unfreeze!”
Max and Sam chuckled as they unbuttoned the top buttons of their coats and shook the snow off of their hats.
“Well, this is really cozy, but next time we should drive here when it’s that indecent out,” said Sam, glancing around before looking at Max again. The light tone of his voice faded. “Max,” he said quietly, plaintively, then. “What do you want to do?”
“I want what I can’t have,” she said simply, clearing her throat.
“Then you really need to stop torturing yourself,” said Sam, tapping the table with the palm of his hand. “You need to stop helping Fiona with…whatever the hell it is you’re helping her with. Cupcakes or something? You’ve not really told me many details,” he said, one brow up. “I think you’ve been keeping it from me,” he said with a mild smile.
“I can’t stop helping her!” muttered Max, shaking her head. “Her assistant quit, and she has a ton of orders for wedding cakes and wedding cupcakes, and the cupcakes for her shop... She needs my help. She can’t do all of the orders alone, and I already promised her. I’m not going to back out like that, not when she’s depending on me so much.”
Sam bit his lip. “Okay. Is telling her out of the question?”
“Tell her how I feel about her?” Max practically squeaked.
At that moment, Chella brought over two croissants, warmed and buttered, and two steaming mugs of hot cocoa with marshmallows floating on the top as she beamed down at Sam and Max. “Enjoy, enjoy!” she sang, trundling away after she set the battered tray of goodies down in front of them.
“No, tell her you think the moon landing was faked,” said Sam, rolling his eyes as he took a bite of croissant. “Yes, tell her that you have feelings for her! Just…get it out into the open so that you both can go forward with a clear understanding of one another,” he said, leaning back as his eyes rolled up. “My God, this is heaven…”
Max took a bite of her own croissant, but she was too distressed to fully enjoy it. “I don’t see how telling her how I feel about her would solve anything,” she said, chewing and swallowing the bite of flaky, warm pastry and butter without really tasting it. “It’ll make things awkward between us, and I don’t want to cause her distress. She’s got to keep her head in the game with all of that baking and all of those orders.”
“So...you’ll just be miserable,” said Sam flatly, shaking his head. “You don’t want to tell her, and you don’t want to stop helping her. So there’s only two solutions left.”
Max raised an eyebrow as she started to tear bits of her croissant on the little plate in front of her. “So what are those two choices?”
“Well, you can go on as you have been. Be perfectly miserable. Do you best to control all of those times that you want to sweep her up in your arms and tell her passionately and ardently that you love her,” he said, the wrinkles around his eyes t
ightening as he grinned at her. “Rita made me watch PBS last night, and they were showing Pride and Prejudice again.”
Max was too upset to even smile a little at him. “What’s the other solution?” But she already knew it. Even before he said it.
He paused and sighed, breathing out for a long moment. “You act on all of those wants.”
Max glanced down at the little paper plate that contained a slightly decimated croissant from how much she’d picked at it. She wiped her hands on a napkin, and then began slowly shredding the napkin in her lap, just like she’d done that first night when Jo had asked her to come to the Malibu and meet Fiona. That first night, when she’d heard Fiona’s beautiful, bright laughter for the first time, had seen how much her eyes sparkled, had heard that voice that Max was now convinced filled her every waking dream, and her sleeping ones, too. Max stopped shredding the napkin, rubbing her palms on her jeans. She felt so tired.
“I can’t,” she said then, softly.
“Then you have to bear it,” said Sam, his voice so sad. Max looked up at him. He was gazing at her with a mixture of sympathy and pity. “Max, you’re a really amazing lady,” he said quietly. “You deserve to be happy. I’ve been telling you that for years. And I don’t think it’s fair that you have to suffer through all of this. It doesn’t make any sense to me. You deserve to have a montage video made of all of the happy moments of you and Fiona getting together, set to a really sappy song. You know?” He blew on his hot cocoa, and the melting marshmallows began to swirl around on the surface. “What you really deserve,” he said then, simply, “is to be happy.”
Max wrapped her fingers around her own cup of hot chocolate. She stared down into the brown surface that curled steam up towards her. She said nothing in return. She didn’t honestly know if she deserved to be happy.
They ate their brunch while talking about everything else under the sun, carefully avoiding mention of Fiona again, until the very end. Max was deeply grateful for the fact that she had the day off. She’d wondered if she should feel guilty about it, but she really was having a sort of crisis. And she’d been working so much lately. Having an afternoon where she could go home, get some rest, sounded lovely.
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