1
THE POUNDING AT MY WINDOW COMES LATE, and it scares me shitless.
A second knock quickly follows, rattling the glass in its pane and my heart in my chest. There’s such force behind the rapping, I’m half expecting a bloodied, glass-encrusted fist to poke through my curtains.
Our house is silent and inky dark. The last of the trick-or-treaters have called it a night. My parents have stowed the leftover Snickers bars and checked the locks; they’ve been asleep for hours.
Another knock. More subdued, but still resolute. There’s comfort in its persistence. Someone with deviant motives would be sneakier, more cunning. Fear gives way as curiosity blooms, and my stuttering heart resumes a steadier beat.
This knock, his knock, is familiar.
It’s been years since Max visited me at night. Years since I let him crawl through my window and sprawl out on my carpet and talk himself gruff until early morning. It’s been ages since we’ve talked at all, really, but I can’t ignore him. It’s not in his DNA to give up—he’ll keep knocking and eventually he’ll make enough noise to wake my dad, who’ll come to investigate. Max is little more than a peripheral figure in my life these days, but Dad’ll be pissed if he finds the neighbor boy lurking outside my window like a creeper.
I flip on a lamp and slip out of bed, straightening my skewed pajama pants as I pad across the carpet. I catch a glimpse of my disheveled reflection in the mirrored closet door and pause to adjust my tank top and smooth my ponytail. I jump when he knocks again, an agitated pummeling of the glass, like he’s sensed my ill-timed vanity.
He’s there as I draw the curtains back, peering up at me from the poorly lit side yard. The sad slope of his shoulders and the hard set of his jaw do terrible things to my heart.
Max Holden used to be equal parts zesty and sweet, like lemon meringue pie. Bright and jovial, so brilliant I once had to squint when I looked at him. Now, his dazzle has dulled, flattened like a biscuit that refuses to rise. Still, I can’t help but hope for his once-trademark grin, the one that says, I knew you’d come.
Of course I’ll come. He’s Max and I’m Jillian, and that’s how it’s always been.
But he doesn’t smile—he barely makes eye contact. He looks tired, defeated, and deeply unhappy.
I unlock the window and push it up. I don’t officially invite him in, but he braces his hands on the sill and hurdles through the opening like a cat burglar. He stretches to his full height—several inches taller than my five-seven—and I look him over, one eyebrow lifted in unconcealed shock: I’ve never seen him so eccentrically unkempt.
His feet are shoved into tattered moccasin-style slippers—castoffs of his father’s, probably—and he’s thrown on faded McAlder High sweats, ratty things he wears to wash his truck, another hand-me-down from Bill. His torso is draped in a blousy white shirt with a black, jagged-edged vest over it, a skull and crossbones embroidered over his heart. His dark hair is spiked in every direction, like he recently ditched a too-tight hat. He runs a hand through it when he notices my scrutiny. And his eyes, a gray-blue so deep they’re capable of drowning the unsuspecting, are rimmed in liner, thick and black and smudged.
Max isn’t a makeup kind of guy.
I stare, perplexed. I look away. Then, because I can’t help myself, I peek again.
“What?” he asks.
“Um. You’re wearing makeup.”
He shrugs. “And you’re not.”
“It’s the middle of the night, Max. What are you doing here?”
He sinks wearily—and without answer—to the floor. He leans against my bed, unfolding his long legs across the eggshell carpet my stepmother, Meredith, had installed a few years ago. His eyes fall shut. His breathing is shallow, disturbingly irregular.
I stand over him. Now that his eyes are closed, I regard him again, turning over the facts I’ve collected. He’s likely drunk. He went to Linebacker Leo’s Halloween party, like the rest of our school’s population, and from what I heard, his girlfriend, Becky McMahon, accompanied him. Who could blame him if he drained a keg to tolerate her presence?
A draft eddies in from my open window. It doesn’t appear to bother Max, but I’m cold in my thin pajamas. I’m also self-conscious in my thin pajamas, which is absurd. It’s not as if he hasn’t seen me dressed for bed. We’ve been neighbors for ten years and our parents are close. When I was thirteen, I spent a week with the Holdens while my dad and Meredith honeymooned in Maui. But this—this—is different. We’re seventeen, and we’re alone.
The air suddenly seems gelatinous. Does he sense it? Probably not. He’s slouched against my bed, eyes still shut, features pinched in a scowl. He looks seconds from sleep in his wacky getup.
My brain cranks into overtime.… Max Holden is in my bedroom, shouldering an air of gloom like heavy armor. The gloom isn’t implausible or even surprising, but what is surprising is that he’s come here. Though I’ve tried plenty of times, he hasn’t willingly engaged with me—with anyone, as far as I know—in months.
Shivering and desperate for practical action, I step over his idle legs and push my window shut. He’s staying, at least for now.
He opens his eyes to the quiet click of the window latch, gazing up at me from beneath heavy lids. “You let me in,” he states thickly, as if he’s just now realizing.
“You didn’t give me much choice. You would’ve woken my dad if I’d left you out there beating the glass, all drunk and disorderly.”
He smirks. “You’re glad I’m here.”
He doesn’t deny the drunk or the disorderly, I notice. “You think so? I was in bed. We have school tomorrow, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Is that why you weren’t at Leo’s? ’Cause it’s a school night?”
Leo, a huge middle linebacker whose father owns the Chevrolet dealership in town, is one of Max’s closest friends, and I wasn’t at his Halloween party for a variety of reasons. First, I hate the limited selection of costumes available to girls my age (slutty nurse or skanky angel … no, thank you). Second, I hate social gatherings that include more than my core group of friends (Leo invites half the school over anytime his parents go out). Third—and probably most significant—I hate watching Becky paw Max like he’s a scratching post.
I don’t feel compelled to explain any of this, though. Max and I may have been close in another lifetime, but I don’t owe him anything now.
“Leah missed you,” he says, folding his hands behind his head. The toothed edges of his vest ride up around his ribs.
“I’m sure she had a fantastic time.” Leah goes out with Jesse, another of Max’s football buddies. I helped her with her peacock costume, an indigo leotard we glued iridescent emerald and violet feathers to. Though she and Kyle, my best friend and McAlder’s All-District quarterback, did their damnedest to convince me to go to Leo’s, I didn’t get the impression my absence would have much bearing on their fun meters. Besides, there was no way I was going to squeeze into the black cat “costume” Kyle pointed out during our trip to the local party supply store.
I eye Max’s attire, lips pursed in contemplation. “Don’t tell me … Jack Sparrow?”
“Nah. Just your general parrot-toting, sword-wielding, beer-guzzling buccaneer.” His words are perfectly pirate-slurred.
“Sounds like all you got right was the beer guzzling.”
He sneers. “Becky was my wench.”
“Speaking of your better half, where is she? Oh! Wait! Did she walk the plank? Was she swallowed by a giant squid?”
His laughter, low and uninhibited, surprises me. It’s the sound of my childhood: leisurely afternoons spent tossing a football back and forth in the street between his house and mine, gross-out comedies in the Holdens’ big bonus room, dripping fudge pops devoured on summer evenings. His bloodshot eyes crinkle at the corners and his head tips back. A small, selfish part of me is flattered that he’s here, with me, sharing a chuckle at Becky’s expense.
But when his laughter dies, he looks uncomfortable, like he might feel guilty at having experienced even the tiniest bit of joy. He studies his watch, a vintage thing on a worn leather cuff that belongs to his father. Bill has no use for it these days; Max is the one who wears it unfailingly.
He shakes off the memory he fell into and says, “Becky went home.” He makes a swilling motion, as if throwing back a drink. “I might’ve had one too many. Think I pissed her off.”
“You think you pissed her off?”
“I spilled beer on her costume. Maybe in her hair. But yeah, she’s definitely pissed. She made a big scene and then she left, which was shitty, because she’s the one who begged me to go to Leo’s in the first place. ‘Blow off some steam, Max.’ And then, poof”—he swoops an imaginary magic wand through the air—“she was outta there.”
“Wow. Some girlfriend.”
“Right? For all she knows, I tried to drive home and ended up in a ditch.”
I blink away the image of Max’s F-150 mangled on the side of a dark road. “She really left you without a ride?”
“Yeah, but Ivy brought me home.”
Of course. Ivy Holden is a year older than Max and me, a grade ahead of us in school. She and Becky might as well be affixed at the hip, but that doesn’t keep her from watching out for her brother. “Does Becky know you’re here?”
He snorts. “What do you think?”
Honestly, I don’t know what to think.… He ticked his girlfriend off, caught a ride home with his sister, then stumbled across the street to my house. How scandalous. Yet there’s something right about his visit, even after all this time. I shiver again, though the window’s sealed tight. Sure, Max is blitzed, but he came to me.
He captures my gaze, inhaling like he’s preparing to admit something of utmost importance. He’s so serious, so un-Max-like, I stoop down to give him my full attention. Quietly he says, “I don’t wanna be at home, Jill. I hate home. I’ve hated it since…”
His voice shrivels, but I know what he intended to say: since my dad’s stroke.
He pretends to be impervious. He slogs through his classes, working just hard enough to maintain a GPA that’ll keep him on the varsity football roster, then boozes it up with Becky on the weekends. He acts like he’s fine, like he’s handling it, but those of us who know him, really know him, see how much he’s changed.
It’s been almost six months since Bill Holden—patriarch, football fanatic, and my dad’s longtime friend—collapsed while pushing his mower across his front lawn. Max, the only other Holden home at the time, found him unconscious in the grass. He called 911, and then he called my father. Dad and I stood in the yard with him while Bill was loaded into an ambulance, an experience profound in its gravity. Poor Max—he was a little boy all over again: scared, sorry, close to caving under the weight of my dad’s hand on his trembling shoulder.
Later, at the hospital, we learned that Bill had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, the result of an undiagnosed cerebral aneurysm that burst and caused bleeding in his brain. The damage is, for the most part, irreversible. He’ll never again be the vital, active man he was, no matter how much his son drinks. No matter how desperately Marcy, his wife, prays. No matter how often his daughters—Ivy and Zoe—act out or micromanage.
The impact of Bill’s stroke was instant, and instantaneously unraveling.
Since my dad’s stroke … It’s there, loitering in the air, ominous as a storm cloud.
Max’s jaw is clenched and his eyes are inflamed and I’m horrified. He’s had too much to drink, and now he’s battling emotion he’s kept corked for months. I should let him say what he needs to say. Just spit it out and fall apart and be done with it. But the idea of tears trailing down his face guts me.
I reach toward him, brushing my fingertips along smudged charcoal liner. He exhales, but stays still. There’s beer on his breath. Something warm and spicy, too—cinnamon—and it’s inexplicably appealing. I have the briefest, most inappropriate thought ever: I wonder what he tastes like?, before I remember how damaged he is. Tonight he needs a friend, not a neighbor with indiscriminate hormones.
My fingers shake as they skim the kohl line of his eye. Touching him tangles my emotions—surprise snarled with self-awareness, embarrassment twisted with wonder. We’ve barely had physical contact over the last couple of years, but I committed the velvety quality of his skin to memory long ago.
He sighs, and I come to my senses. The last thing I want is to disrupt the trust he’s instilling in me, but there’s only so far I’m willing to go. Max has a girlfriend, one who’d breathe fire if she knew I was touching him. Besides, in the morning, after hours spent anxiously obsessing, this whole experience will seem dreadfully bizarre.
As my fingers drop away, he opens his eyes, catching my hand as it falls. I try not to fidget as he stretches it open, holds it close to his face, and studies my palm like he’s reading my fate. My fingertips are stained an odd carrot color because I spent Halloween the same way I spend most evenings: baking. The orange food tint I used to color marzipan for pumpkin cupcakes is evidence. Layered over the orange, accentuating the dips and valleys of my fingerprints, is the black liner I lifted from his pirate makeup.
He folds my palm into the web of his and drops our knotted fingers to his lap, like the two of us holding hands is the most ordinary thing in the world. “Why are you being nice?”
“I’m always nice,” I say, distracted by the heat of his hand against mine.
“Remember when we were friends?”
“Max. We’re still friends.”
“Not like we used to be.”
“Nothing’s like it used to be.” The admission makes my chest ache.
“Remember when you used to hang out with me, not Kyle?” There’s a sharpness to his voice that’s alien, not to mention confusing. There’s no reason to be jealous of Kyle, and Max knows as much. But if Kyle’s not the issue, what is? Is he trying to provoke me? Has his never-ending series of fights with Becky turned him mean?
Whether he intends to or not, he’s proving my point—nothing is like it used to be.
“Remember when you used to hang out with me, not your teammates?” I counter, tossing my ponytail over my shoulder. “Not Becky?”
Predictably, he ignores my rebuttal. “Why don’t I ever see you anymore?”
Because you’re always playing football, or partying, or out with your girlfriend, I want to say, but I sense those words won’t help. Instead, I tell him a different truth. “We grew up.”
“That’s such bullshit.”
All at once, I regret letting him into my room. I tug my hand out of his. The lost connection combined with the bite of his tone make my stomach roil. “Don’t put this on me,” I say. “A lot has happened, stuff I’ve had no control over.”
“What? You mean Becky?”
I mean his father, but the hurt he wore a few minutes ago flashes in my mind and I can’t bring myself to mention Bill, who’s had to leave his half of the Hatz-Holden Logging management responsibilities to Marcy. Bill, who’s confined to a wheelchair, who needs help eating, dressing, using the bathroom. Bill, who has a hard time communicating a simple hello.
I stand. The ghost of Max’s touch makes my palm tingle, but I feel better now that I’ve put some distance between us. I’ll go to my desk, littered with cookbooks and recipe cards. I’ll read my latest issue of Bon Appétit. I’ll get ahead on my English lit assignment. I’ll ignore Max until he sobers up, and then I’ll send him on his way. I’ll pay for these late hours tomorrow, but there’s no way I can get comfy in bed with Blackbeard acting all wasted on my floor.
I’m stepping high over his legs, fuming at his audacity—his idiocy—when he grabs the hem of my pants. I lose my balance, wobbling on one foot like a dizzy flamingo, until I’m forced to give in to the inertia of his pull. I drop into his lap, landing with an embarrassing oof. Judging by the look on his face—chagrin swirled with a generous dash of unadulterated amusement—he’s more shocked by my new seat than I am.
I’m mortified beyond words—beyond recovery, apparently—while he stares at me, biting his lip against what must be hysterics. “Jesus, Jill. What’d you drink tonight?”
I struggle to right myself. “Nothing, thank you very much.”
He’s snickering, and I want to smack him. “Really? Because that was—”
“You pulled me down! And shut up, would you? You’ll wake my dad.”
His laughter quiets. “Jake’s cool. Remember when we were in middle school and he caught us smoking the cigarettes we stole from Zoe? All he did was toss the pack and sit us down in front of a documentary about lung cancer.”
“Yeah, and neither of us smoked ever again.”
“My point is, he didn’t freak out. And I did not pull you down.”
“I was walking and you grabbed my pants!”
“I didn’t want you to leave.”
I whack his chest. “I was going to my desk, you moron.”
He rubs the spot where I hit him, as if I’m capable of causing him pain. When he’s satisfied there will be no bruising, his hand lands on my leg. It’s inadvertent, I think. A comfortable resting place, although his other arm is looped behind my back thanks to the way he caught me when I fell.
We must notice the position of his hands, my body, the close contact, at the same time because all the oxygen funnels out of the room. His attention flickers to my mouth, and heat floods my face. What the hell am I doing in his lap?
“Yeah…,” he says, shifting. Not such a cocky pirate after all.
I muster the little dignity I’ve managed to retain and prepare to push myself up. “Sorry. You’re okay, ri—?”
He tightens his hold.
“I’m okay.” He’s recovered his swagger—I’m sure the copious amount of beer he consumed earlier is helping—and his voice is low, throaty, familiar. It’s his flirty voice, I realize, the one he uses with Becky during their (infrequent) good moments. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I try again to leave his lap, but his hand glides up my spine, beneath my ponytail, and cradles the back of my neck. Now he is flashing me the grin, the one I was hoping for when I opened my curtains, the one that exudes confidence and promises fun. I want to hate him for teasing me. For using me. For being so freaking enticing.
I could never hate him.
“You don’t have to go anywhere,” he says.
“Max.” It’s a warning. It’s an invitation. With a smile and a stroke of his fingers along the curve of my shoulder, he’s drawn me in, and I’m losing the very fragile grasp I have on this situation. I study the stubble on his jaw to avoid his eyes, but then I want to touch it, feel its coarseness against my fingertips.
I give my head a shake and focus on my hands clasped in my lap. I breathe, in and out, but the beer, the cinnamon, the wintry-clean scent of the soap he’s used for as long as I’ve known him … I’m certain he hears my heart’s incessant pounding.
Softly, he says, “What were we talking about again?”
“How everything’s changed.”
“Jilly.”
I melt into him as he whispers the nickname that never fails to thaw me. “Yes?”
“If you tell me to go, I will.”
His declaration lets me see us from a distance, unencumbered by his scent and his warmth and his gentle touch. I’m a reasonable person. A smart girl. And Max is a mess, letting regret engulf him, anger consume him. Just last week I watched him shove a freshman on the quad because the kid accidentally bumped into him. And tonight he’s three sheets and looking for distraction. As much as I’d like to help him, I won’t be his no-strings-attached hookup, the other woman to his waning relationship with Becky.
I resolve to tell him as much—that he should, in fact, go home. That he should drink a glass of water and swallow a couple of Motrin before bed. That I’ll see him tomorrow at school.
But before I can utter a syllable, he’s charging forward, eyes glazed, lips parted. I’m so astonished, so stunned, I let him push his mouth against mine, and even though it’s heedless and utterly unexpected, I reciprocate. I can’t help myself.
I can’t process this frantic, feverish kiss, but it shoots straight through me, a streak of heat and want and, oh my God—it’s good.
Just like that, I forget all the reasons why kissing Max Holden is an awful idea.
Copyright © 2017 by Katy Upperman
