by DW Cee
Max stared at me expectantly and waited for me to start.
“Hi.” I said softly.
“Hi.” He answered back, with very little enthusiasm.
“Are you done with rounds? Can you talk?” He nodded his head, but didn’t speak. “Do you want to talk?” I actually stood in fear of his answer.
“I don’t know Jane. I don’t know if I’m done taking care of myself first.”
Fine, Jerk! Go ahead and hold a grudge. I felt my freakin’ nose tingle, my stomach did a little unhappy flip and the tears were forming behind my eyeballs. I quickly turned around. I wasn’t going to let him see me cry over him. I ran to the door and pulled it open as quickly as humanly possible.
“Get back here!” He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me into him.
I struggled and pushed him away. If he didn’t want me, I didn’t want him either. I was no crying missy waiting for her man to come back to her. I’d walk away first before I let him walk away from me.
“Do I actually see tears in your eyes?” Max started with a small chuckle, but soon grew into a guffaw. “Are you crying over me?” He severely exaggerated the me part, while putting his hands over his heart. That gesture gave me the chance I needed to get the hell out of here. “I told you to get back over here, Jane! You leave this room, I’m not coming after you. Our relationship, as we know it, will be over!” Was that a freakin’ threat? Unbelievable...but, kinda hot! (What was wrong with me? In this uber piss-me-off situation, I still got hot and bothered by Max barking out threats. Loser—that’s what I was!) Back to being mad—who the hell did this guy think he was, ordering me around? So what if he held the title, “Boyfriend.” No boyfriend treats his girlfriend the way he treated me just now.
I pulled the door open but wavered. Do I go...? Or do I stay...?
March 28, 2013 Dem Bones
“Are you staying?” Max taunted.
“No, Asshole. I’m not!” I yelled and opened the door, only to be bounced back into the room by my brother Nick.
“Sister! I can hear your damn voice all through the hallway. The kiddie patients are ringing in their complaints to the nurses’ station as we speak.”
“Shut up Nick, and get out of my way.”
I tried to push him away, but Nick grabbed me, turned me around and pushed me over to Max. Max then turned me around and pushed me back to Nick. They might as well have been singing, red rover, red rover, send Janey on over.
At this point, not only was I seeing RED, but I was also incredibly hurt that Max shooed me away. “Stop! I get it. You don’t want to have anything to do with me. You didn’t have to push me away like that...” The tears fell and I ran to the door.
“Come back here,” Max grabbed me and hugged me before I could get out. “God only knows why I love you so much when you drive me nuts 95% of the time. I love you sweet Jane and I’m sorry I made you cry. Your brother and I were having a little fun. I wasn’t pushing you away.”
“Ah Janey, did we hurt your girly feelings?” Nick walked over and sandwiched me from behind. “We’re sowry,” he said in a three-year-old voice.
“Shut up Nick, and get off me. I don’t want your hug.” I tried to shrug him off. He only held on tighter and laughed.
“Enough drama. Let’s go eat.” Nick pulled away, but Max kept his arms tightly around me. “Geez, Max! What do you keep doing wrong? My sister’s been royally pissed with you twice in one month. Tread lightly or you may get the ax.” Nick whispered the word “ax” while motioning his right hand across his neck.
Max and I cracked up.
“Have you had dinner?” Max asked, while kissing me by the ear.
I shook my head no. “I was going to have dinner at Emily’s, but Jake brought me over here before I could eat anything. We should probably see if Jake wants to come as well. He hasn’t eaten either.”
“Nick, can you make yourself disappear for ten minutes? Go find Jake and ask him to have dinner with us.”
“That’s all you need? ten minutes? You’re giving us men a bad name, Davis,” he said jokingly as he walked out.
Even though Max started the apology, I decided to get this guilty conscience off my mind, first. “I am truly sorry about Sunday night. I was in such shock. I feel really bad that I left you to deal with your mom by yourself. I should’ve been there for you.” There. It was done.
“Really bad?” He mimicked my words while kissing my lips, Max-style, with both hands on my face. “How badly do you feel?” This tone was doing things for me now. We’d stepped beyond what was proper in a public staff lounge.
“Very bad,” I joined in the banter. “I’ve been a really bad girl...” Oh, let the fun begin!
He backed up against the door for assured privacy, or at least a chance to stop what we were doing before anyone could completely open the door.
“You’re going to have to be punished.” Damn! Did he seriously say that? “Come here and kneel.” Hot damn‼ He did seriously say that.
“Yes Sir,” I answered submissively, but smiled wickedly.
Less than ten minutes later, “Jane...what the hell?” Max barked, as I left the room for him to deal with his not so happy ending. You didn’t think after all those days of making me wonder what the hell was going on between him and Hannah, that I’d simply kneel back into his life, do his bidding, and all would be hunky-dory, did you? We’re on the right track, but there needed to be a little pay back, Jane Sydney Reid-style!
“What are you cackling about?” Nick asked, trying to open the door to the lounge.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” I warned. “Let’s go to the restaurant.” I curved my arms around both Nick and Jake’s arms and pulled them toward the cars.
“What about Max?”
“Don’t worry, Nick. I’ll text him the location of where we’re going.”
With a strawberry margarita in hand, I laughed with my brothers as I told them how James was trying to feed himself a pea tonight, but ended up shoving it up his nose instead.
“We should have invited Emily, tonight. Shall I call her and see if she can come out?”
“I doubt it, Nick. She’s been dog tired these days since James started walking. Now she’s chasing after a baby, while carrying one in her arms, and another in her stomach. It’s been tough on her. In fact, I feel guilty being out with you guys, tonight.” My brother so loved his wife. “There’s Davis over there,” Jake pointed.
“Hey,” everyone called out to one another.
“Hello, Jane.” Max said coolly, with a hint of a threat.
“Hello, Max.” I answered back with laughter in my voice. “Everything, okay?”
“No!” he whispered, curtly.
I whispered back, “You seem grumpy. Couldn’t you finish on your own?”
“Why should I when I have a girlfriend who’ll finish me off?” He added suggestively but resolutely.
“Am I still your girlfriend? Last I checked, there was another girl sitting by your side.” I questioned his beliefs.
“You two gonna whisper to one another the whole night?” Nick pretended to be annoyed with us. He could be such a pain in my ass at times.
“Later.” The sound of his voice and the look on his face was definitely contrite and penitent.
After an enjoyable dinner, the four of us headed back to my house. Jake came in briefly to say hello to Gram and our new Gramps, who were back from their mini-honeymoon in Carmel. But he soon went off to his own family. Max, Nick and I sat with the elderly folks and enjoyed talking to them.
“Where will you set up house, Gram?” Nick asked.
“I think we’ll stay here till Roland and I decide where we will live.”
“What do you mean? You’re not living in LA?” I asked, shocked that they’d even consider living away from us.
“Roland still has to show his presence in London since his home office is there. I don’t know. We shall see, Janey.” She then turned to Max, “Will you be s
pending the night, Monsieur Le Duc?”
“No, Gram. Jane and I need to discuss a few things, and then I’ll be gone. I’ll see you again, soon?”
We said our goodnights to everyone and Max and I went into my room.
“Shall we talk?” We sat on the chairs because we knew the bed wouldn’t be the best place for a talk.
“Sure.”
“Let me go first?”
I nodded yes.
“I’ve told you about my parents and how I felt that they never loved me enough. Hannah came from the opposite where she grew up in an overprotective home. Her parents hovered, helicoptered, and got in her nose about everything. We were both ripe for rebellion.”
Max pulled me onto his lap and continued his story.
“We were young, we thought we were in love and we were definitely stupid. We started having sex on my seventeenth birthday, but didn’t protect ourselves every time. We thought it wouldn’t happen to us, and a few months into being sexually active, Hannah got pregnant. I was scared shitless. We tried to hide it from her parents, but she got so sick every morning, her parents figured out what was wrong and demanded we get married immediately.”
“Oh Max...” I felt so scared and sorry for him.
“My parents refused to allow me to get married at seventeen, Hannah’s parents practically forced us to the altar, and somewhere during that time, Hannah miscarried. What my mom said was true. She, my dad, and Hannah’s parents overwhelmed us—especially Hannah—and she lost the baby.”
Max stayed silent for a long while. I just sat and held him.
“I was so relieved; I didn’t have time to be sad that a baby died. I didn’t think of the baby as our baby. I just thought of it as a nuisance and a halt to my future. But Hannah thought exactly the opposite of what I thought. She looked at me and the baby as her future, and she went through a bout of depression when she lost the baby. I tried to comfort her, but in all honesty, I was too relieved to empathize or sympathize. Shitty of me, huh?” He asked quietly.
“Max, you were seventeen. Who wants to be tied down at that age? What you felt was normal. I would’ve felt the same if that had happened to me. You can’t blame yourself for being honest.”
“I blame myself for pulling away from Hannah when she needed me most. After she lost the baby, I tried not to be, but I was a bastard, and I shirked away from my responsibility as her boyfriend. Her parents saw my actions as a blessing in disguise and they uprooted their family to Michigan. That’s how it really ended for us.”
“Poor Hannah.”
“Baby...please don’t be upset with Hannah. She’s a sweet girl, and she’s down on her luck right now. I’d like for you to be friends with her, if you can, and treat her like a sister or a cousin. You’ll like her.”
Just what I needed...another one of Max’s ex as a sister...GROAN!
“I was really lost when I got to undergrad. I think the pregnancy scare along with my parents’ severe disapproval from that point on, sent me into a senseless rebellion. If it wasn’t for Emily, I would’ve been a serious lost cause.”
“Is that how you stayed a ‘virgin’ with her for four years? I always wondered about that fact.”
“Yeah. My brothers called me a born-again virgin.” We both laughed. “As much as I wanted to further our physical relationship, I was relieved more than anything when she told me she wasn’t going to have sex with me.”
I gave him a skeptical look. “You mean to tell me you never tried to get Emily in bed with you?”
“Well, I didn’t say that...in any case, let’s not talk about a woman who’s your sister, a mother of three, and Jake’s wife. If he had any inkling of this conversation, I’d probably end up hospitalized.” That brought out another round of laughter. “I woke up and grew up after I let Emily go. That reality check was like an ice bucket to my face. It was then that I decided to go to med school, study pediatrics, and help kids who didn’t have any help. I guess this is my way of apologizing to, and paying penance toward my unborn and unwanted child.”
“Okay, I understand and accept what happened to you in high school, but what was the deal with you going straight to Hannah after you dropped me off here on Sunday?”
Max’s snickering did not sit well with me. I stood up from his lap, only to be pulled back into his body.
“Sorry. I was being a bit of an asshole to you that night. You turning away from me that night hurt, so I wasn’t exactly truthful about why I went to go see Hannah.”
“Oh...” Guilty feelings got to me again and I hid my face in his chest.
“It’s all right, Babe. I understand why you ran out of my car as quickly as you could. I wasn’t honest with you from the start, the atomic bomb my mom dropped on you was beyond acceptable, and you just needed time to process all the information that was handed to you in one night. Once I cooled down from being pissed at my mom, I saw the light and understood why you did what you did.” He put his arms around me and held me tight, showering kisses upon my head.
“And Hannah?”
His chuckling reverberated from the bottom of his chin to the top of my head. “Of course...Hannah. My green-eyed monster wouldn’t be my gem if she wasn’t most curious about another woman. I went to see Hannah...”
He stopped and made me wait...made me super nervous.
“Hannah...!” I got impatient.
“I went to see Hannah for several reasons. I wanted to make sure she was okay after what happened at the dinner table. She was probably just as surprised as the rest of us. Once she told me that she was all right, I proceeded to clear the air with her about her and me, and about you and me.”
I stared at Max expectantly.
“As for her and me, I explained that there was no her and me. We ended back in high school. I didn’t rehash the past, but I did explain about my future.” He paused again. I think he was doing this for effect. Asshole! He knew I was pissed again. He laughed briefly, then stole a kiss from an unwilling me.
“I told Hannah that you are the reason I smile these days, laugh these days, argue these days, want to tear my hair out these days, and want to lock myself in a tug-of-war in bed with you these days.”
“You did not say that last part, did you?”
“No,” he chuckled. “Just because I didn’t say it, doesn’t mean I don’t mean it.”
“In so many words, I told her that you are my everything these days.”
“Your everything, with whom you can go days without resolving these issues?”
“My everything, with whom I was embarrassed to have to explain about my dysfunctional family. Your family is ideal. How could you possibly make sense of mine? That’s why I stayed away. If you want to know about my mom and dad, I’ll tell you, but it’s not pretty, and it’s not something I enjoy explaining.”
“We don’t have to talk about your parents if you don’t like talking about them. After Sunday, I can see why they’ve never been a topic of conversation. But...this everything wants to know why you threatened to let her go, back at the hospital.”
“You couldn’t just be happy with me telling you that you were my everything, could you? You had to bring up my threat. A threat that I wouldn’t have been able to keep because there was no way I was going to let you go, my precious gem. Do you still not understand what you mean to me?”