Mad About Max. Penny McCusker
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chuckled.
“I know that laugh,” Sara mumbled. “You don’t think I’ll do it, but I will. I’ll just do it tomorrow.”
“I don’t think you’ll remember any of this tomorrow.” Janey turned off the lights and eased past Max’s house.
She pulled up in front of the old bunkhouse Sara had converted into a little cottage, complete with a white picket fence and a generous garden, the frost-browned vines and bare trees decorated like a graveyard for Halloween. Every year when Sara put up the wooden gravestones with funny sayings, she’d secretly dedicated one to her perpetually broken heart. Well, that was going to change. “When New Year’s Day rolls around, I won’t need a resolution,” she said to Janey. “I’ll already be over Max.”
“From the look of things, you won’t have to wait till tomorrow to get started on that resolution.”
Sara twisted around in her seat, this way and that, groaning when she realized what Janey was talking about. Either Bigfoot was coming toward her car or Max was. She would’ve preferred Bigfoot. A three-hundred-pound ape-man with an unpredictable temperament would’ve been much easier to face.
Janey glanced over at Sara, muttering, “I’ll buy you a couple of minutes to get it together, then you’re on your own,” and she popped out of the car, crossing her arms on the top of the door.
Max pulled up short when he saw it was her rather than Sara. He turned toward the passenger side of the windshield, but the way Janey was staring at him was a challenge he couldn’t ignore. “Don’t you have someplace else to be?” he asked her.
“Jessie is spending the night at Mrs. Halliwell’s.”
Max frowned. “That doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
Janey lifted up a shoulder, and gave him a crooked smile. “Moral support,” she said. “And entertainment—at your expense, hopefully.”
Max just shook his head. They had a…unique relationship. No matter what he said or did, Janey would roll her eyes or huff out a breath, as if he had absolutely no clue about anything. Max wrote if off as a kind of younger sister/older brother thing that came from knowing each other their entire lives. If it had been anything else, Janey would’ve told him, he figured. She was nothing if not outspoken.
He went around to the other side of the car. At least with Sara, he knew where he stood. “I figured you were at Janey’s,” he said once she’d rolled the window down. “I wish you’d called, though.”
Sara tried to defend herself, but she had to put her head down first. Jack Daniel’s, loyal and thoughtful guy that he was, suddenly wanted to come to her rescue, and not in a good way. Then again, throwing up at Max’s feet would definitely send him running in the other direction. Or maybe not.
Considering the kind of man he was, Max would almost certainly see her tucked up safely in bed, maybe sit with her for a while to make sure she wasn’t going to get sick and choke on her own vomit. The picture that went along with that thought—minus the vomit—had her sitting up in her seat. Smiling. Max in her bedroom, inches away from her bed. Within easy touching distance. All she’d have to do was take his hand, invite him into her bed and indulge every fantasy she’d ever had. It might mean losing him forever—or it might mean that he’d finally acknowledge her real feelings and consider the possibility that he could grow to love her, too. It was a risk she’d never been willing to take before, but with Jack Daniel’s to help her…
Jack was supposed to help her do something else, Sara thought fuzzily, something entirely different. Wasn’t he? Her head spun like a roulette wheel, risk opposite caution, fear across from courage, all of them separated by big sections of necessity. By the time Max knocked on her window, necessity had shoved all those other pesky options out of the picture.
Sara took a deep breath and looked up at him. Her heart lurched like it always did, but only a little. It was too heavy to give a really good lurch.
He opened the door and offered to help her out. Sara ignored his hand. She waited until he dropped it and stepped back before she levered herself out of the car, awkwardly but on her own.
“You okay?” he asked, all concern, from the deep timbre of his voice to the slight frown between his eyes.
She nodded.
“I was getting worried, Sara. After this afternoon…” He reached for her again.
She held up both hands to ward him off, bending into the car to gather her purse and her courage. And then her balance. She had something to say to Max. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it had to be done or he’d never give her the space she needed to get over him. Just once, she told herself. If she did it right, she’d only have to do it once. She straightened slowly, grabbing on to the open door so she wouldn’t have to wait for her head to stop spinning. “Max—”
“Why don’t you come in the house? We’re eating popcorn and watching The Mummy for the umpteenth time.”
The Mummy was one of her favorite movies, but not for the action or the really amazing special effects, or even the bumbling hero and endangered heroine. She always found herself hoping those two dead Egyptians in love for thousands of years would find a way to be together.
“Come inside,” Max said softly, homing in on her indecision. “Joey is worried about you, too.”
Sara closed her eyes, stifling the intentionally rude thing she’d been about to say. She’d forgotten about Joey. Max would eventually understand why she’d had to stop being his friend until she could be only his friend. But she was going to have to be very careful about how she alienated the father if she was going to avoid hurting the son. She turned to face him, taking a step forward so he couldn’t possibly misunderstand her. “I don’t wanna watch a movie. I’m going t’bed.”
Max took a step back, waving a hand in front of his face. “Are you drunk?”
And she’d enunciated so carefully, too. “Maybe just a li’l.”
He glared over at Janey. “This is your idea of making her feel better?”
“Now I have somewhere else to be,” Janey said. She slid into the car and fired it up.
Max took Sara’s purse and slid his hand under her elbow, steering her out of the way as Janey peeled off in a small shower of gravel. “Leave it to Janey to get you drunk.”
Sara wrenched her arm out of his hand, then had to catch herself before she spun completely around. “It’s not Janey’s fault. I got myself drunk.”
“She should’ve called me. I’d have come to get you.” He tried to take her arm again.
Sara stepped back and, just for good measure, snatched her purse from his hand. It took her two tries, but it still felt good. “Janey’s not responsible for me, Max. Neither are you.”
He stopped in midstride. “I know that, Sara,” he said, his voice very deep and solemn. Hurt. “But I think of you as a—”
“Don’t say it!” She winced as her own screeching voice cut through her head like a railroad spike. Apparently she was getting started on the hangover already. Great. That meant she was sobering up. But drunk or sober or somewhere in between, she had to finish what she’d started before Jack deserted her entirely. “I’m not your sister, Max. I’m thirty, no twenty-nine, years old and more’n capa-capa—I’ve been making my own decisions and my own mistakes for a long time.
“Of course, noooobody forgets the mistakes, but why can’t you remember that at least eighty—seventy—” She stopped and thought really hard, but she seemed to be having an awful lot of trouble with numbers tonight. “Most of the time I manage to live my life without tripping over anything or gluing myself to anyone. But does anybody notice that? No, you all congregate at the Ersk Inn—and by the way that’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard for anything—and you sit around and drink