Chapter Twenty-Two

On Thursday, I didn’t have to face Max and hear about his super-fun trivia night with Aria, because Paul and I attended an offsite technology conference at a venue a few blocks away from our office. I forced myself to listen to the speakers and to schmooze during the networking sessions.

When it ended I walked Paul to his Metra train stop and then turned north, crossing the bridge that would take me to the Merchandise Mart “L” stop. It was just after five, and night was falling. Daylight savings would happen in a few weeks, and then it would look like the middle of the night at this time. But right now, as I paused on the bridge and looked at the Chicago River, it still felt like twilight. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, enjoying the fresh air after a day of semi-claustrophobic conference rooms.

“I’m not technology-stalking you,” a familiar voice said. “I promise. I’m just headed to the Mart for the train and you happened to be on the bridge.” Max cleared his throat. “I’m very happy for the coincidence though.”

I opened my eyes. He stood a few feet away wearing a navy peacoat and light green scarf. “Oh. Hey,” I said flatly. Then, with one last look down at the water and up at the skyscrapers, I walked quickly toward the train station. My boots were flat today, and my stride ate up the ground quickly.

“Slow down,” Max called. “We’re taking the same train.”

Inward groan. He was right. We’d both take the Brown Line to Addison and then walk in opposite directions to our respective apartments. Unless, of course, he had to go take a pottery class or make homemade sushi with Aria. Who knew what shit they were into on Thursday nights. Bowling league, perhaps?

I hustled through the turnstile and up the stairs to the platform without looking behind me to see if Max was following. A train must have just come through, because the platform was almost empty. Quiet enough that I heard his footsteps and his exasperated sigh when he stopped to stand next to me.

“I was disappointed you weren’t at the office today,” he said. “Because I’d like to revisit that whole ‘real date’ conversation.”

Was he kidding me? For the first time, I turned and made eye contact. “That offer is now permanently off the table,” I said firmly.

A Brown Line snaked slowly into the station, and I hurried down the platform to get a space in the first car. Max followed me, his footfalls sounding heavier and angrier than they did a minute ago.

I jumped into the car and got the last seat. Ha! Undeterred, Max grabbed one of the handles hanging from the ceiling and stood right in front of me. “Why?” he demanded.

I glared up at him. Did he want to have this conversation in a jam-packed train car? “Do you really not know?” I hissed.

He glanced around and lowered his voice to a whisper. “If it’s about Aria, I promise you that there’s nothing going on there.”

I huffed out a sarcastic laugh. “You might not be having sex with her, but what’s going on is not nothing.” I said it loud enough that the dozen people in hearing distance all glanced over. Max’s face flushed scarlet, and his lips thinned.

Ignoring him—which was difficult because he was literally looming over me—I pulled my phone from my coat pocket and answered work emails for several minutes as the train left downtown and entered Lincoln Park. “This discussion is not over, Tess,” Max said. “But I’m not having it in front of the Jolly Green Giant.”

It was such a bizarre thing to say that I looked up, only to find that Max indeed was standing next to a man dressed in a head-to-toe Jolly Green Giant costume. Max’s nostrils were flared and before I knew it, I laughed too. Halloween was tomorrow, and at one of the stops, a large group headed for a costume party had entered the train. We were now riding with several Disney princesses, the gang from Scooby-Doo, and the cast of Stranger Things too.

Max was eyeing Velma’s orange dress and knee socks appreciatively. He cocked his head toward her. “Most guys like Daphne, but not me. I always had a thing for Velma. I think it’s her low voice and the way she talks to everyone else like they’re stupid. Reminds me of someone I know.”

I absolutely hated that I wanted to laugh again. Damn him.

And fine, our conversation was not over. If he needed me to hold up a mirror for him to see what was going on, I could do that. He liked Velma? Perfect. I could certainly talk to him like he was stupid.

At the Addison stop, we pushed past the party-goers and made our way down to the street. The wind had picked up, and I pulled a stocking cap out of my laptop bag to anchor my hair to my head. Before he could defend his beautifully platonic relationship with his ex-fiancée, I said, “Max, do you think that actions or words are more important?”

He narrowed his eyes at me, turning up the collar on his coat. “Is this some sort of test?”

“It’s a question.”

“Actions,” he said. “Always.”

“I agree.” You walked right into that one, dumbass. “So you say that you and Aria are not involved, but from what I can see, the two of you spend a huge amount of your free time together. That’s an action.”

I forced myself to soften my tone. “Maybe you got a little confused because you and I have fun and the sex was pretty good, but it’s obvious to me that you’re still in love with Aria. No guy chooses to spend all his time with an ex if he’s not still in love.”

I sniffed. It was the cold night air causing my nose to run and my eyes to stream liquid. Really. “It’s fine for you to be in love with her. It’s fine for you to spend all your time with her.” I swallowed down the bitterness that wanted to creep into my voice. “Honestly, she’s probably still in love with you too or she wouldn’t spend all her time with you.”

I took a step back and looked him straight in the eye. “But it isn’t fine to pursue me when you have a free evening or because you’re bored or because you need a distraction or because you want to get back at her or whatever.” A muscle in his jaw flicked, but other than that, his face was completely unreadable. I took a loud, shaky breath. “I might come across as a boozy Amazon, as Abigail so charmingly put it, and I’ve told you over and over that I can take care of myself, which is true. But I do have feelings and I can get hurt, and I don’t want you to hurt me.”

OK…that wasn’t the strong finish I was planning on, particularly since the last sentence came out as a bit of a sob. But at least I’d gotten across the important point. I was sure I’d given him a lot to think about. So I patted him awkwardly on the shoulder and turned east to walk home.

“I don’t spend all my time with her because I’m in love with her,” he called. I paused, looking up to the heavens. How far in denial was he?

“I spend time with her because I feel sorry for her,” he said, his voice lowering to almost a whisper. “I feel guilty.”

Huh? I turned back to face him. Why would he feel guilty if Aria dumped him? “I don’t get it. I thought she ended your engagement.”

The wind gusted around us, and I shivered. “You’re freezing. Let’s walk,” he said, gripping my elbow and steering us north up Ravenswood, toward my apartment.

A Metra train roared by, then another Brown Line. Finally, silence descended, except for the sound of my booted steps on the pavement. “Talk,” I warned.

“Aria did end our engagement,” he confirmed. “Eighteen months ago.”

“Were you surprised? Were you devastated?”

He smirked a little at my eager, bloodthirsty tone. “Surprised, yes. Shocked, actually. We’d dated for so many years, and we acted like an old married couple already.”

“Did she explain?”

He nodded. “She said we were too alike. That there was no real spark between us. That we’d mistaken easy friendship and lifestyle compatibility for long-term love. That she still wanted surprises and romance in her life.”

I pictured Aria calmly communicating all of that and felt an unexpected surge of respect for her. Of all people, I knew what it was like to want to end an engagement, and I’d had no idea how to do it with any sort of grace or even basic communication.

“Wow. So were you devastated?”

He squinted, thinking. “No. Devastated isn’t the right word. I think disoriented is better. I’d had my whole life figured out, you know? I’d picked a trusted partner, and I felt very settled. So when she gave me her little speech and handed back the ring, I felt like someone shoved me out of a moving car into an unknown place.”

He shifted uneasily, his eyes skittering away. “Like I said the other day, I was sad for a while. Angry. Rejection just sucks, you know? I did all the typical post-breakup stuff. I spent days without leaving my apartment, ate crap food, and drank too much. I went out to bars and hooked up with random girls.”

He looked down as if expecting me to get feisty. I held up my hands. “No judgment here. All sounds totally normal and justified to me.”

He relaxed. “Then one day, about four months after it happened, I had a sort of epiphany.”

I snorted. “An epiphany? Do tell.”

He gave me a playful shove. “It wasn’t earth-shattering. No clouds parted in the sky or anything. It was just a quiet moment where I was drinking a coffee and walking down the street, thinking about the week ahead. I suddenly realized I was totally content. I didn’t feel sad or lonely or scared. I felt the same amount of ‘happy,’ I guess you’d say, as I did when I was engaged. More, actually. Which made me realize that Aria had been right. We weren’t in love and meant to be together if I could feel one hundred percent fine without her. Also, I felt this great sense of anticipation, like exciting things were still going to happen to me, that my life wasn’t set in stone.

“She was right,” he said again, more forcefully this time.

My pulse began to beat faster. He sounded like he was telling the truth. “OK,” I said slowly. “Then why the guilt? Why do you feel sorry for her?”

He sighed. “Promise me you’ll keep this between us?”

I shrugged, eyes wide. “Of course.”

We turned right onto my street. “Six months after she broke it off, Aria came to my apartment crying,” he said. “She thought she’d made a mistake in ending things. She said she missed our life together and wanted our future back.”

Whoa. Holy shit. It was hard for me to imagine picture-perfect Aria as sniffling and sad. “Were you tempted?” I asked.

“Not even a little bit,” he said flatly. “Besides being truly happy on my own, I noticed something very clearly in what Aria said that night. She missed the life we had, the future we’d planned. It was a lot harder to meet new people at this stage in life than she thought, and she was very lonely. She missed being part of a couple.”

Ah. “She didn’t miss you,” I murmured.

His lips curved as he looked down at me. “Exactly.”

“So what did you say?”

My apartment building was only a block away. Max shortened his stride, walking slower. “I sat her down, got her a glass of wine. Told her that she was right to break off the engagement and that when she was less raw and lonely, she knew that.”

His jaw tightened. “She was so vulnerable and sad that night. My heart really did break for her. I mean, I still cared—still care—for her, just not in the romantic way. So I told her that we should still be close friends. That we should still spend time together. Just because we weren’t a couple didn’t mean we couldn’t hang out and do the things we always enjoyed doing together.”

Now he stopped walking altogether and put his hands on my shoulders so that we were standing face-to-face outside of my apartment building. “I know how it’s looked to you, but all of the time I’ve spent with her…it’s just been a mixture of laziness and me wanting to protect her. Neither of us was dating anyone, so we just fell back into old routines.”

He cleared his throat and cupped one hand on the back of my neck. “I told her last night that I was really hoping I’d be less available in the near future.”

I hesitated again. “She and I are really different, Max.”

“I know.” He nodded emphatically. “But that’s a good thing. Aria is a great person, but even at the beginning, there wasn’t really a fire between us. And let me tell you a few things. I never crossed the city like a maniac to track her down in a bar. I never pulled eyelashes out of her face. I never had dirty dreams about her.”

“Really? You did?” I interrupted, grinning. “Tell me about these dreams right now!”

He smiled down at me. “No.”

“Why not?” I demanded.

“Punishment,” he said loftily. “Because a few minutes ago you said that the sex we had was only ‘pretty good.’”

I batted my eyelashes up at him. “If I admit to being a big fat liar, will you tell me about them?”

“Maybe someday,” he said. He pulled me toward him, and I let him. “Just so you know, I also never stayed awake late in the night just crafting witty text messages to make Aria laugh. I never put her into a bath with a glass of bourbon.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “She never distracted me—never freakin’ invaded my thoughts—the way you do.”

Oh my. An unfamiliar warmth was spreading in my chest, and it only burned brighter when his lips touched mine. I broke away to deliver a final warning. “I’m a bit of a handful.”

Max laughed. And laughed. And laughed. “Is this supposed to be a surprise? Since I’ve met you, I’ve become involved in illegal hacking, technology stalking, and ridiculous hijinks at the office.” I winced. He certainly hadn’t seen me at my most smooth and suave. Behind my back, his arms tightened. “But, as you should have noticed by now, I keep coming back for more. Apparently, I want my hands very, very full. Now shut up.”

He kissed me softly, gently, over and over until I was on my tiptoes and my cold hands were stroking his warm neck. It wasn’t “invite me upstairs” kissing. It was “I like you so much and I just want to show you” kissing. And I flippin’ loved it.

The front door to my building slammed as Roz exited. Max and I broke apart with a breathless laugh.

She did a full-body scan of Max and raised a purple-penciled eyebrow at me. “Well, this is different for you. Mr. Hacker, I presume. Are we removing the revolving door, Tess?”

“Roz,” I warned her, but secretly I was a little impressed that she hadn’t said “of dick” aloud. “Aren’t you late for Bikram yoga?” She sniffed, put her nose in the air, and walked across the street to her favorite studio, Om on the Range.

Max watched her go, bemused. “Your BFF? Can’t wait to meet her.”

He looked at me over the rims of his glasses and shook a warning finger. “Now go inside and get warm,” he mock-ordered. “Think hard about whether you want to make me less available. I don’t want to deal with another one of your freak-outs tomorrow.” The tone of his voice was teasing, but his gaze was so direct and earnest and open that I broke eye contact, stepped backward, and grabbed my keys.

Because yes—part of me wanted to throw myself into his arms and declare “Mine!” right this second…but there was another voice in my head, a small, insistent one, that asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. You’re not a long-term girl.

He was quiet, clearly waiting for any kind of response. As always, I defaulted to sass. “Fair enough.” I lifted a shoulder. “I’ll think about it. Now you go home and get some sleep. I need you well rested and on the top of your game tomorrow night.” I winced. “If you can’t erase that sex tape, I’ll be moving to Timbuktu and this whole conversation is moot anyway.”

He snorted. “Did you actually just use the word moot? That’s ridiculous.” He leaned down again and gave me a last soft, lingering kiss. When he pulled away, I actually clutched at his shoulder for balance. Now that was ridiculous.