Mad About Max. Penny McCusker
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need me around anymore, and my contract is up for renewal this year….”
“He’d be devastated if you went away.”
“Would he?”
“You’re a huge part of his life, Sara. He loves you.”
“As a friend.” Sara threw herself out of her chair, pacing the generous confines of the kitchen. “I want more, Janey. I want it all. What if he never wants the same from me?”
“Maybe he won’t, but you’ll never know unless you push him to make a choice.”
Sara snorted softly. “You know Max. If I force him to choose, I’ll lose his friendship.”
“Or gain his love. Look, Sara, in some ways your mom is right. You’ve spent six years—”
“‘Wasted’ is how Mom put it. I’ve wasted six years.”
“So it’s time to take the bull by the horns and tell Max how you feel.”
“Like you’re doing with Jessie’s father?”
“That’s different.” Janey slumped in her chair, scooping up a huge, half-melted glob of ice cream and letting it drip back into the carton. “I called him when I found out I was pregnant. He never called me back.”
“He should still know he has a daughter.”
“We’re talking about you.”
“Not anymore,” Sara said, then gave a little bittersweet laugh. “We’re quite a pair, Janey. Two young, attractive women with nothing to do but sit around and feel sorry for ourselves. There has to be a bright side to this.”
“There is—for Ben & Jerry’s.”
“Seriously, Janey. It’s time we stopped moping around and did something about what’s wrong with our lives. There have to be a couple of men out there who want a home and family—”
“Whoa!” Janey held her hands up, palms out. “I have a home, and Jessie is the only family I need. Despite my recent tendency to wallow, I see no reason to shackle myself to some burping, farting, dirty-laundry machine.”
Sara dropped back into her chair, tracing the pattern on the antique lace tablecloth with one fingernail. “Aren’t you ever lonely?”
“Sure, but that’s no excuse to get married. It’s a known fact that ninety-nine percent of men completely stop talking within five days of their own wedding anyway.”
“I’m not buying it.” Sara had learned early on that Janey’s tough exterior was only a defense mechanism to protect her soft heart. “You want to meet someone and get married as much as any woman. You just aren’t ready to admit it yet.”
“If I ever do, slap me.”
Janey put on a belligerent face, but the look in her eyes nearly brought Sara to tears.
“But, hey,” Janey continued, sitting up suddenly. “You definitely need to change a few things. It’s only a matter of time before someone’s seriously injured or you’re completely bankrupt or both.”
“Yeah, a short time,” Sara agreed. “I almost wish…” She let the thought hang, then shook her head.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Uh-uh,” Janey said. “I just ingested a couple thousand calories for you. Spit it out.”
“Well…there was this moment when I was superglued to Max—Stop smirking, Janey.”
“You have to admit it’s funny.”
Sara couldn’t help grinning a little. “Okay, so it was funny. After. But there was this moment where I almost wished I could—” She swallowed, then said the rest on a rush. “I almost wished I could stop loving Max.”
Janey burst out laughing, holding her stomach and sliding down in her chair.
Sara crossed her arms and glared until her best friend got herself under control. “It sounds stupid, but the way I feel about Max is the root of all my problems. If I could stop loving him so desperately and just accept that he’ll only ever be my friend, I could still be a part of Joey’s life, but I could be happy, too. The only problem is, how do I do it?”
Janey put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “Considering my ex-boyfriends, falling out of love was never a problem for me. But Max is such a great guy. And he is drop-dead gorgeous. Just seeing him is enough to make any woman fall in love.” She shot Sara a teasing look out of the corner of her eye. “I’d be tempted to go after him myself, but thankfully I don’t see him all that often.”
Sara leaped out of her chair. “That’s it!”
“What?”
“It just might work.” She began to pace, gnawing on a thumbnail.
“What?”
“All my accidents happen when Max is around, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if I stop seeing him, I won’t have any more accidents.”
“And how does that make you fall out of love with him?”
“I don’t know,” Sara said, her elation dimming a bit at the thought of how empty her life was going to be when Max didn’t fill it anymore. “I only know that seeing him all the time keeps me hoping. Maybe if he’s out of my life physically, my heart will forget about him.” It didn’t make any sense, even to her own ears, but she was desperate.
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” Janey got up and hugged her hard, then handed her a tissue.
“So how are you going to stop seeing him when you live about five feet from his back door? And when the man relies on you for everything but sex, and you’d be giving him that, too, if he’d ever asked.”
“Jeez, Janey, just say what you think.”
“You don’t want to know what I really think. And you haven’t answered my question.”
“I guess I’ll just have to avoid him,” Sara said with a shrug. “And when he asks for something, I’ll just say no.”
“Would you like me to write it on the back of your hand so you don’t forget how to spell it?”
“I think I can manage,” Sara said. “I have to.”
Chapter Three
After the Chinese food and ice cream, they’d moved on to Jack Daniel’s, the only man, according to Janey, who really knew how to comfort a woman. Sara was usually a rum-and-Coke woman, heavy on the Coke, or maybe a Baileys Irish Cream if she was feeling especially adventurous, but she had to admit Janey was right this time. The first shot of whiskey burned her throat and turned her stomach. The second still had her gasping for air, but it hit her bloodstream like a warm massage. By the third she was singing “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” and doing her tap routine from when she was eleven years old. It wasn’t the song she’d tap-danced to—the two didn’t even go together very well—and she had to imagine the tapping sounds because her loafers didn’t really do the job on Janey’s linoleum. But that song just demanded some life-affirming action and the one she’d chosen wasn’t going into effect until she saw Max.
Her pleasant buzz started to fade after that. By the time Janey, who’d appointed herself deignated driver and switched to coffee early on, pulled into Max’s driveway, Sara was already rethinking her get-it-over-with-now strategy.
“Shhh,” she said to Janey, putting her finger over her pursed lips when the tires crunched and popped on the gravel drive. It didn’t do anything to lessen the noise but it made her feel better.