by CL Walters
But it’s Max. Max, who I care about. Max, who’s my friend.
I pull away.
Her eyes open.
I take a step away and gulp my feelings because my impulse is to go the other direction. I don’t trust my impulses. My brain is telling me that I need to preserve what I have with Max at all costs. Don’t ruin it. Don’t ruin it. Don’t ruin it because that’s what you do, Griff. But my heart is slamming around in my chest, trying to get my feet to close the distance between us.
“Oh. I wanted–” she starts.
“I’m sorry–” I say at the same time.
Whatever she was going to say dries up, and she looks down at her feet. “I guess I hoped–”
“Hoped?”
“That maybe you might be–” She pauses, looks away, turns away, cuts me out with her body language. “Forget it.”
“Max–” I fold my arms and fist my hands to keep from reaching for her.
“It’s okay. I get it.”
“Get what?” I ask.
“I’m not your type.”
“Max. No. That isn’t–” I want her to turn and look at me.
“Please. Don’t say something you don’t mean.”
“I’m not. It’s just I care about you.”
Her head shifts so she can look at me, and her eyes narrow. Then her head tilts. “What? I’m confused. You care about me. You just don’t want to kiss me?”
I don’t admit I do want that. I can’t. It would cross a boundary, and I ruin things. I can’t ruin this. “You’re my friend.”
Her mouth does that sideways thing I find adorable, but in that moment it’s terrifying. Her eyes narrow, and I don’t want her to look at me anymore. “So, let me get this straight. You have four rules about getting with nearly any girl that moves as long as she isn’t drunk and is willing. Is there another rule you skipped?”
When she says it like that, I hear how terrible I sound. “No.” I groan in frustration and run my hand through my hair, turning away. “I don’t sleep with girls I care about.” That sounds worse and isn’t what I’m trying to say at all. I sigh. “I’m not saying this right.”
“You think that’s supposed to make me feel better? That it sounds better? And who said anything about sleeping together?”
All my thoughts feel jammed up in my head like when all the logs meet in the river and stop things up. “I just don’t want–”
“Yeah. I get it,” she interrupts. “Me. You don’t want me. It isn’t you, it’s me, right?” She grabs the salad bowl and lifts it, dumping the sudsy contents into the sink. I can tell by her clipped movements she’s angry.
“Max–” I start, but I’m not sure what to say. How to make it better.
“Just—please, don’t.” She smacks the bowl into the drainer. “I think you should go.” Her voice catches in her throat.
Is she crying?
I can’t move toward her to check. I don’t trust myself. And she’s asked me to go. “Max. Please don’t do this–” I say.
She twirls around, her eyes swimming again with tears. “Go! Please.” The last word is barely audible as her chin quivers, and she covers her mouth with her hand.
I back away from her stunned, hurt, and filled with regret, but I listen. I do what she asks because not only is it one of my rules, but also what are friends for?
* * *
1
I miss Max and replay what happened the night before she left over and over like a scratched record. I replay it from the beginning, then skip about, dragged toward the center where white noise is the only sound.
What’s the point?
2
My breath is steel in my lungs caught, sharp, and cutting up my insides with rusty edges. I squeeze the edge of the open door with my hand. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel, staring at my father who I haven’t seen since I was eight. He looks at me with such earnest hope I feel like I might vomit my rage.
“What are you doing here?” I keep the screen door between us.
“I got out. I thought you knew.”
“Yeah. I heard. What are you doing here?” I repeat the question because he has no fucking right to be here. I’m glad Mom isn’t here.
He’s standing at the bottom of the concrete steps. His hands are in the pockets of his black pants. He looks down, shakes his head, then swipes one of his hands over his shorn hair. I can hear the bristles against his palm and feel them against my own like tiny needles injecting me with animosity. “I wanted to see you and Phoenix. Your mom. I’m over at a halfway house in the city.”
“Your other family wouldn’t take you back either?”
His eyebrows shift over his eyes first with surprise, then with what resembles regret. He draws his eyebrows together, and I’m struck with how much older he looks. I remember him—a tower over me—smiling like he held the secret of life behind his teeth, and he only had to tell it to me. Now, though, I can see the truth. The fade of his eyes, the lines in his skin. He’s got a tattoo climbing up one side of his neck leaking out of the collar of his white t-shirt. I don’t remember that as a kid. His body—always muscular—is now wiry with it, lean and sharp.
“I’ve seen them,” he says. “I’d like a chance to explain.” He takes the first step toward me.
“No. I don’t want to hear it.”
He freezes.
“Phoenix isn’t home. I’m leaving.”
“Your mom?”
“Moved on.”
He nods with acceptance. “Yeah. I just–” he stops. His eyes assess me. “You’re so grown.”
“What did you expect? I’d still be a little kid playing with fucking Legos?” The memory of the cops moving through the house to arrest him, the Lego kit I’d been playing with upended into the shaggy carpet of the house comes to mind. It had been my birthday.
He looks away, his jaw sharpening into strong points.
I step back into the house. “I have to go to work.”
He stops me with his voice. “Griffin. I just wondered if we could talk. Maybe meet or something. Coffee? Breakfast?”
“To what?”
“I’d like to get to know you. Catch up.”
Catch up. Like he’s been away on vacation in the fucking Hamptons.
Tears sharpen to points in my eyes like nails along with a great gust of anger so strong it becomes a tornado inside of me. I want to release the storm, but I can’t open my mouth afraid the tears will be a torrent as much as the dangerous debris I will throw at him with my words. He sees it, takes a step backward down the sidewalk away from me.
“It doesn’t have to be today. Or this week or anything. I’m just putting it out there. I’d like to–” he pauses.
And I finish his sentence in my head: Be your dad…
Which enrages me further even though he hasn’t said that.
“–I’d like to be a part of your life,” he finishes.
“Don’t.” I hold up a hand and step back. “Just–” I shake my head. “You need to leave.”
“Please, son.”
“Don’t you fucking call me that!” Each word feels like a nail shooting from my mouth like Cal’s nail gun.
He takes a step back to avoid them, hands up in acquiescence. He nods, eyes lowered. “Okay. Okay.”
I push the fading thought of Max’s relationship rules away, deciding that the rules only apply to relationships in which both parties are mutually invested. I am not invested in this man. I shut the door in his face.
I lean my forehead against it, breathing hostility, and weeping resentful pain.
He didn’t write.
I didn’t write or visit either.
We are built with silence.
Here’s the thing about silence; it bounces around between you like an echo looking for an end, but there isn’t one. The echo just keeps going, seeking a landing spot. The silence from my father is bouncing around, echoing a story that I wasn’t worth the bother. I wasn’t worthy of his time. His
words were silence, and now, when I’m old enough to answer, it’s the echo I’m giving him back.
3
First, I think of calling Tanner to tell him about my dad. Then I think of Max. I don’t reach out to either.
What’s the point?
4
TEXTS FROM JOSH:
Don’t forget Danny’s swearing in on Tuesday.
Griff?
* * *
You’ll be there right?
* * *
It will mean a lot of Danny if you’re there.
* * *
TEXTS FROM MAX:
Thanks for helping my dad.
* * *
Are you alive?
* * *
Several days later, Max texts again:
Dad says you’re coming to work so, I’m making assumptions that you’re still on the straight and narrow…
* * *
no SK activities.
* * *
It’s okay here. So far.
* * *
I’m still showering.
* * *
Griffin?
* * *
Several days after that, Max texts again:
* * *
Are you okay?
* * *
I’m sorry about getting mad.
* * *
You were right, and
* * *
I shouldn’t have put pressure on you.
* * *
I’m sorry (see! I’m following my rules).
* * *
I don’t answer her, so she texts again a few days later.
If you don’t answer me back this time, I’m
going to spam your phone with emojis.
* * *
Would you like to test me on this?
* * *
The flatlining of my heart beeps back to life, so I text her back.
5
I can’t get what Max said about relationships out of my head. The rules: trust, talk, share, accept, and forgive. The catalyst is my father showing up at my door. As much as I hate him, I can’t get her voice shouting those damn rules out of my mind. I have no intention of using them with my father, but I wonder if I can try and start with my friends. I decide to go to Danny’s swearing in. Truthfully, I’m terrified, knowing now that I’m the one who broke up the band.
The room is compact. A small space set up in an office over a strip mall in the middle of town, so even if I’d wanted to hang out in the back and remain unseen while Danny swears in, it isn’t going to happen. The moment I walk in, Josh sees me, and it seems like relief hits his features because they relax. He offers me a grin and waves me over. That’s when I notice Tanner standing next to him.
My step falters a moment, and I consider turning around. I’m not angry, but I’m shaped by shame, regret, and guilt. I haven’t seen Tanner since that night when we’d both been drunk and stupidly rolling around in a parking lot fighting one another with misguided punches and mean words. I don’t want to not be friends anymore, but there are so many words I’d like to say and no rules for how to carry that out.
I think of my dad and wonder if this was how he felt standing at the door the other day.
I release the thought into the void. Our crimes aren’t comparable.
Tanner offers me an acknowledgement with his eyebrows and a slight rise of his chin. I slide back to one of the many times when all we had to do was look at one another and everything we needed to say was communicated by a look. Now, though, the clairvoyance isn’t calibrated anymore.
I offer him the same in return.
He returns to watching Danny, who’s standing with two other guys in the middle of the room, his back to us.
It isn’t more than what any acquaintance might offer another, but I don’t blame him.
I take up a spot next to Josh.
He leans toward me. “Glad you’re here.”
I’ve missed him and regretted the Quarry. So many things I wish I could fix, but I just offer him a nod. That’s the most I can do, unsure of who I am in that moment: Pre-fight Griff or Post-Max Griffin?
There’s a 99.9% chance I’m about to screw this up somehow. I don’t know how to be anymore. It feels easier to just stay rooted to what’s familiar even if it goes against one of Max’s rules.
Flags in stands outline the opposite side of the room from where I’m leaning. A small podium is set between the guys swearing in and those flags. A man wearing fatigues faces them, and us, and leads Danny and the two other guys through the ceremony. The Air Force inductees repeat the oath, and suddenly the ceremony is ending. Danny shakes hands with the two others and the recruiting officer. Then he turns, smiling. He hugs a man—his dad—and a younger girl, who I assume is his little sister. Then his eyes slide to us, and to me. His eyebrows jump but he smiles, surprised, though joy colors all the spaces on his face.
I’ve missed Danny, too.
“Griff,” he says, walks over, but instead of shaking my hand or offering a fist bump he wraps me in a hug.
I tense.
He draws back and says, “I’m glad you made it.”
I give him a half-smile and nod again as words catch in my throat. I’m so glad, suddenly, that Josh pressed the issue, that I asked Cal for the afternoon off, that I took the risk to be here. This wasn’t about me at all. It was about Danny. This awareness feels giant in my body, pressing outward, and threatening to tear me apart. I want to retreat.
I remember his anger at me. You’re the one who broke it, Griff.
I don’t know how to repair it. Cal’s offered lots of lessons in building and fixing tangible things. Max has given me rules for relationships that seem to work with her. I don’t know how to marry the two things. How does one repair a relationship you broke? Especially when “sorry” doesn’t seem like enough.
Danny shifts to hugging Josh, then Tanner, and there is banter between them that feels familiar. The sound, the rhythm, and the laughter, but now I feel outside of it as they talk.
“What about you, Griff?”
I look up from the floor where I’d been studying the flecks in the linoleum. “Huh?”
Josh’s eyebrows are high and coaxing me to participate. “Ready for school?”
“When have I ever been ready for school?”
They all laugh. Even Tanner smiles, his eyes warm with familiarity. The sound of laughter is a little forced. I have the sense none of us know how to be together anymore, though I can tell the others have moved forward together. Just not me. True to Josh form, he’s trying to build a bridge between us because he takes us down memory lane about the night before the first day of school senior year when I decided to throw a party at Tanner’s pool. I’d gotten so drunk I’d missed the first day of school, nursing the hangover of all hangovers.
I glance at Tanner.
He isn’t smiling and is staring off at something unseeing, hands in his pockets.
I feel embarrassed, and my defenses rise like walls around me.
“Are you moving to the city?” Josh asks me, changing the subject.
I shake my head. “Commuting to school. Working.”
“Tanner, isn’t that what you’re doing too?” Danny asks.
I glance at him.
“Yeah.” Tanner isn’t looking at any of us. His tone of voice is tight, and his jaw works over the words.
I notice Josh glance at Danny and recognize this for what it is, an intervention. It’s so obvious they’re trying to fix whatever is broken between Tanner and me. Except they can’t. As much as I want things to be like they once were, I don’t want the same either. I don’t know how to do it. I just feel inadequate and lost and less than each of them which makes me feel broken, ugly, and wild. As soon as those insecurities creep up on me, I’m angry and defensive. I feel the cracks erode, widening, and the tension bubbles up through me.
I need to go.
“What happened with that girl?” Josh asks me.
I know he’s talking a
bout Max and the night out at the Quarry, but I play dumb. “What girl?” I don’t want to talk about Max; there’s too much of the real me invested in that relationship which feels tentative and dreamlike. She’s gone, and I’m beginning to think the better version of me when I was around her is gone too. My edges are sharpening, and I’m worried I’m going to use them.
Tanner’s eyes slide to my face, a questioning quirk of his brows as he takes measurement of me. I want to smirk back like I used to—the unspoken words passing between us like the old days—but I can’t.
“From the Quarry?”
“Nothing.”
Tanner doesn’t look away, and I have the sense he can read me like a book since he does so much fucking reading. I don’t know what my story is telling him, however. He tilts his head, curious, but I also see the wounds riding his features, a tightness in his gaze that feels like an accusation.
I set my jaw.
“She must have forgiven you since you look like you made it home.” Josh laughs.
Tanner still assesses, observant and knowing. He does know me best, after all, but I’m not sure he can read between the lines of my story to the truth anymore. The Griffin I was with Max wasn’t the Griff I’d ever been with him.
My defenses are jagged now, and while I logically know that Josh’s comment isn’t disparaging of Max, I feel the insinuation under my skin because of all the history wrapped up with my friends. It feels like he’s made a joke of that night, of her, of me. They know how I was, and maybe I’m kidding myself that I can be anything different.