by DW Cee
That last sentence broke my heart. “I don’t think I’m disappointed in you because of what happened in high school. I’m upset because...Max, I need to gather my thoughts and think through what happened tonight. I don’t want to say anything that will hurt you even more than you are hurting already. I’m sorry I can’t be here for you right now when you’re struggling, but I need to take care of myself first.”
Was that selfish of me to want to nurse my confused heart, first? Max’s face truly broke my heart. I could feel the tears wanting to form, but I wasn’t going to give in to them.
“All right.” He said in a defeated and somewhat angry voice. “Call me when you’re ready to talk.”
His body turned back to the steering wheel and it was as though he was dismissing me. How dare he dismiss me? That pissed me off so badly, I slammed the door and didn’t look back. By the sound of the car peeling out of our cul-de-sac, I wouldn’t have had time to even look back. Jerk!
I walked straight to my brother and sister’s house to get some answers.
“Is it too late to come knocking?” I was an uninvited, unwelcomed intruder in my brother’s opinion, from the moment he let me in.
“Yes,” Jake answered. “We were in the middle of a movie.”
“Jake,” Emily warned. “How’d it go tonight?” She patted her hand on a cushion telling me to sit next to her on the gigantic sofa. I chose to sit in an armchair across from them.
“Emily, do you know who Hannah is?”
Emily shook her head, no.
“Max dated her in high school?”
Emily still shook her head, no. “Max never told me about a Hannah. I just know about Jennifer, the girl he dated after me.”
I relayed the Davis family story hour and Emily’s eyes bugged out with each layer of drama.
“You need me to check you over? I can’t believe you fainted.” I actually shocked my brother.
“Me neither, but I feel fine right now, I think. It was a good thing Garret was right next to me when I did my head plop. I’ve never fainted before. From what Max told me, I was only out for like a minute. Once I woke up, Max did a thorough check-up and drove me home.”
“Did you ask Max about him and Hannah?”
I shook my head no to Emily, and just sat there for a few minutes.
“I’m not upset about Max getting Hannah pregnant. It was stupid but whatever.... What upsets me is that we talked about Hannah and their relationship on Friday, at the rehearsal tea. Max didn’t want to talk about it, but I forced some information out of him and not once did he hint at the fact that Hannah was a huge part of his life. That’s what upsets me. He lied to me.”
“Jane, I don’t think he lied to you. It’s not easy to tell anyone, especially your girlfriend, that you knocked up a girl in high school.” My brother was actually defending Max. That was a change.
“What else would you call someone who doesn’t tell you something that important?”
“How long have you two been dating?”
“Three months.”
“And have you told him everything about your past?”
“What’s there to tell? If there’s anything important, I have no issues telling him.” I didn’t know why Jake was picking on me. I wasn’t the one who knocked up a former girlfriend and didn’t tell his current girlfriend about it.
“So you’ve told him about the loser that you practically lived with in law school?” Jake challenged me. “That same one whose ass I had to kick to the curb when we figured out that he was stealing from you?”
“That’s hardly the same level of secrecy. Plus, I wasn’t trying to keep that a secret. It just never came up.”
Jake was doing the quirking of the eyebrows. “And you told him about the other loser you dated in undergrad? The one you almost got married to in Vegas, but came to your senses at the last minute? That one too...not the same level of secrecy?” He imitated my voice.
Now my brother was just irritating me. This wasn’t about me. It was about the fact that Max purposely kept Hannah from me even though she was back in his life. He should have chosen to tell me all about his past.
“NO! It’s not the same as not telling me about a baby.”
“Don’t be a frickin’ hypocrite. I know Max wasn’t your first. You could’ve ended up pregnant just like Hannah. You just happen to have been more careful, or maybe just damn luckier. Give the guy a break. He’s got a bitchy mother, an almost mother-of-his-child ex who jumps back into his life, and a girlfriend who won’t give him any peace. Give it a rest, Jane!”
I just stared at him, dumbfounded. How did I go from indignant to admonished all within a few minutes?
Emily tried to soften Jake’s blow by adding, “Max was such a lost and private person when I met him in college. He rarely talked about his parents, though he adored his brothers, and he didn’t go home unless he had to go home. I was always happy to have him with me, and a part of me thought he stayed around for my sake, but deep inside I knew something was terribly wrong with his family life. The few times I spent the holidays with the Davis family, I thought I’d go bonkers with all the tension between Max and his parents. If it weren’t for Garret and Josh, I don’t think I could’ve withstood those holidays.”
“I hate the fact that you were alone for so long, Emi.” There goes my brother. One minute he’s berating me, and the next he’s waxing poetic about his wife, when his sister was the one alone right now. Hey brother! How about some love for your only sister?
“I wasn’t alone. I had Max and Sarah and Charlie. They were my friends and family till I got my chance with the illustrious Dr. Jake Reid,” she laughed.
Even in the midst of my pain, Jake and Emily were...being Jake and Emily. I had to laugh and roll my eyes at them.
“Ahem...hello! My issues...not your past issues, please!”
“Sorry.” Emily pushed herself away from my brother’s embrace. “Max hides a lot of pain in his heart, and he’ll keep it hidden away till he’s confronted and has to fess up. But, he loves sacrificially and unconditionally. You must know this by now, Jane. Look at how he broke up with me. Of course he didn’t tell me at the time why he broke up with me, but he did it to send me off to a better life. He was so lost in undergrad that he didn’t want me to wander through life with him, searching for his meaning in life. He thought I’d suffered enough with the loss of my parents. If it hadn’t been for his sacrificial love, I would’ve never met your brother.”
“Max sacrificed for you, but I don’t see that same kind of love for me.”
“Really Jane? Come on. Do you not see how patient he is with you? Do you really not see how much he’s trying to make your relationship work? Do you think he likes seeing you waver between him and Donovan?”
“How’d you know about that?” Are there any secrets around here?
“I see the way you look at him. And I, too, admit...he’s a handsome man—especially when he dresses up, like he did for Gram and Roland’s wedding.” I could see Jake’s body stiffen. “Max sees it too.”
“If he sees it, does that mean he doesn’t care enough to confront me, he doesn’t have the balls to confront me, or he just figures let life fall where it may?”
“He’s never confronted you?” Emily questioned.
“Okay, he has confronted me a few times...I guess I keep breaking my promises to him.” I confessed. “It’s not like anything happened with me and Donovan.”
“I think Max loves you, despite your faults and if you told him you wanted to go to Donovan, he’d probably let you go if he thought Donovan could love you more and give you what you needed, better than what Max could give you. This unconditional love that he has for you is not a weakness. I think it’s his strength.”
“Listen to Emily, Jane. She makes sense and if anyone knows what’s going on in Max’s head, it’s probably your sister—though it doesn’t thrill me that she knows another man so well.” He turned his wife’s body towards him to add
ress his next beef. “What did you say about my best friend? You find him attractive???” Jake emphasized the last word in horror. “I’m gonna go kick his ass the next time I see him dressed up.”
“Perhaps you should go shopping with him,” Emily teased. “That outfit he wore to Gram’s wedding was pretty hot.”
“Damn it! Don’t ever look at him again, Emi.”
Emily placed her hand on Jake’s cheek and gave him an adored look.
My brother and sister gave me a lot to think about and everything they said made sense. The last look on Max’s face still haunted me, and it was wrong of me to leave Max to nurse my own pain, when his mother had purposely hurt him so viciously. It was late, but the call was overdue.
“Hi,” I cautiously said when Max picked up his phone.
“Hey.” He sounded cooler than I would’ve liked.
“Can we talk? I’d like to talk tonight if that’s all right with you.”
“I can’t tonight.”
What?
“Why not? You just left here saying you wanted to talk to me, and that you didn’t want me to go dark on you.”
“Yeah, but I’m busy right now.”
I had a sinking feeling I wasn’t going to like the answer to the question I was about to ask.
“What are you doing that makes you so busy at midnight?”
“I’m with Hannah right now.”
Shit! Shit, shit, shit! I calmed myself down before uttering another word.
“That’s where you went after you dropped me off?”
“Jane.” Now he had the gall to sound exasperated. “You didn’t want to talk to me.” He stated simply. “I tried to explain my side of the story, but you told me you needed to take care of yourself first.” The asshole was using my words against me. “I’m letting you take care of yourself, first. I’m here with someone who’s willing to share in my pain. As you said earlier to me, ‘I won’t go dark on you but, I probably won’t call you or answer your calls for a few days.’ I’ll be in touch later.” He hung up.
SHIT!
March 25, 2013 Aaargh‼!
Max, the jerk, did not call me or answer my calls for the last few days, as he threatened. Sometimes I hated myself for saying things that came back to haunt me. I was a ball of nervous energy since my last conversation with my boyfriend, if he was still that. I finished all the documents that needed to be finished before my psycho boss asked for them, I cleaned out my cubicle of an office, and I even went home and cleaned out my entire room. I also started looking in the papers for a place to live. I was twenty-seven and living at home. Enough was enough. It was time to fly the coop.
“Any word from Max?” Emily asked when I went over to her house after work.
“No,” I answered while helping her seat Ellie and James in their bath chairs.
The twins were seated in this contraption that looked like a low-seated chair that suctioned into the farmhouse sink in the kitchen.
“I have to do it this way because of my burgeoning belly,” Emily explained as she turned on the space heater, created a gigantic bubble bath in the oversized porcelain sink, then proceeded to strip each child and place them in their seats.
“Which seat belongs to which child?”
“James always likes to be on the left side, closer to the door and Ellie prefers the right seat.”
Weird!
“Dadadadada...” James called out calmly as he saw my brother’s car fill into the driveway. Ellie didn’t catch on till Jake actually walked through the door.
“DA!” She screamed.
“Does this girl have only one decibel?”
“Hello my precious babies!” Jake called out, kissing and blowing raspberries on each child. The twins were in heaven.
Ellie kept calling out “Mmmmm.”
“What’s she saying?” I wondered.
“I think that’s her way of asking for more.” Emily told the both of us.
“You want more?” The babies giggled and hollered with glee, as Jake kept kissing and blowing raspberries all over their bodies.
“Are you home for good tonight?” Emily asked her husband when he finally got around to kissing his wife.
“No. I only came home to put the kids to sleep since I didn’t see them this morning, and then I’ve got to go back out,” he answered Emily then turned his attention to me. “What are you doing here little sister?”
“I’m just trying to fill time; I came by to see my niece and nephew; and I came by to hang out with Emily.”
“Why don’t you go to the hospital with me after this is done? Max gets off in a couple of hours.”
“I think I’ll just wait till he calls me,” I answered sadly.
“Be ready to leave in 20 minutes. The twins go down pretty quickly after their bath,” Jake commanded.
Jake gave me lots of brotherly advice during the short ride from home to the hospital. I was more nervous than I thought I would be about facing Max.
“He’s up on the fifth floor in pediatrics. Go make up with him. Apologize and tell him that it was wrong of you to leave him the way you did. Trust me when I say this is the man for you, Jane.”
“All right,” I answered reluctantly.
I walked along the hallway of the fifth floor and headed towards the student lounge area. That was where I was told I could find Max.
“Jane, what a nice surprise!” Psycho greeted.
“Hello Joyce,” I answered politely.
“How are you?”
“Well, and you?”
“I’m super!” This woman was so mental! “I assume you’re here for Max?”
“Yes.” I’m definitely not here to have a conversation with you!
“He’s been in the lounge area with a friend from Michigan for the past half hour.”
Crap! She was here. What is she doing here? I didn’t have a very good feeling about what was going on between Max and Hannah.
“The lounge is over there,” she said as she pointed down the corridor.
“Thanks...”
When I got to the door, I was afraid to open it. What if they were in some compromising position? What if he had been leaning upon her the past few days rather than calling me? Aargh!!!!
I opened the door to find Max and Hannah seated next to each other, but in a perfectly acceptable situation.
“Jane.” Max looked surprised to see me. “What are you doing here?”
What the hell do you think I’m doing here? No, I did not say that. I was good and I just gave them a nice smile.
“I was hoping to talk to you?”
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Hannah said, and got up very quickly. “I’m very sorry about the other night Jane. It shouldn’t have come out the way it did. I hope you’re not too angry with me or Max.”
I didn’t answer her, but I gave her a nice smile as well.
“I’ll see you later?” Hannah gave Max an affectionate touch on the arm.
“Sure. I’ll see you soon. Don’t worry, Hannah. Josh, Garret and I will help you bring back all of your stuff.”
“All right...” she looked at him one more time before heading out the door.