"Max." Chloe glances at the girl beside her, slumped against the car door, head resting on the edge of the window. "Max, please go to sleep." She'd think she were asleep already if it weren't for the death grip she has on her hand.
Max shakes her head, tightening her fingers around Chloe's hand. "I want to stay up with you. What if you fall asleep?"
She wouldn't be able to if she tried. The storm's winds are still screaming in her ears. She's been checking the rear view mirror more often than she needs to. It's not following them. "I won't. I promise. I'll take care of us." She hopes to god her voice isn't shaking. "Just get some rest."
"I don't think I'll be able to sleep," Max says in the same hollow voice she's been using since she stopped staring out the window in dead silence. Her eyes are fixed on something in the distance, but whenever Chloe follows her gaze it leads her to a dead end. Nothing. There's nothing there but a spattering of headlights glowing in the dark. "I can drive. You've been driving all day."
Chloe stops at the red light, stretching her left arm over the steering wheel. "I've got it."
"Are you sure?" Max asks. There's more energy in her voice now, but Chloe wouldn't let her drive if her arms were falling off.
The light changes, and she presses her foot down on the gas. She runs her thumb over the back of Max's hand.
"Where are we going?" Max twists a piece of hair around her finger. Her hand is visibly trembling as she shivers from the breeze through the window. Or something in her head.
Chloe lets out a long breath. "I don't know." All those years spent trying to get the hell out of Arcadia Bay, every cent saved up, every night spent in her room with Rachel, planning routes down to the cheap motels where they'd spend the nights, and she doesn't even know where they're going. Figures. "I was just putting some distance between us and…" She stops talking before the words turn into a picture in her head. She doesn't see Max flinch so much as feel the movement travel up her fingertips like static electricity.
It's not that she doesn't want to leave anymore, and she sure as hell doesn't miss that hellhole. Maybe she even wants to leave now more than she ever has.
It just wasn't supposed to be like this.
She was supposed to slip out in the middle of the night. She and Rachel. Rachel was supposed to be there. Hardly anyone would notice that she was gone, but only because she's not worth giving a fuck about, not because there was no one left to notice.
It wasn't supposed to feel like this either. Not like her heart beating painfully against her ribs, not like the bitter taste in the back of her mouth, not like the cold that she'll never be able force out of her skin. It was supposed to feel like power in her hands, finally, because she was the one doing the leaving.
"Do you want me to take you home?" she says when it becomes apparent that Max won't be offering any suggestions. "I'm getting back on the freeway up here."
The traffic lights illuminate Max's face, highlighting the dark circles under her eyes, the lack of color in her cheeks. She tilts her head away from the window, eyes searching Chloe's face.
Chloe wonders what Max thinks of when she says, "home." Rubble and ruins, or the pretty little house in Seattle where her parents are? She doesn't know what exactly she's supposed to think of either.
"Ok. But my parents will be mad that you drove all this way instead of letting them pick us up."
"I like driving."
Getting on the freeway again- after her unsuccessful attempt to get Max to eat something, anything, please- is a relief. It's mind-numbing. That's exactly what she needs. For her brain to shut the hell up.
Max's phone rings loudly in her pocket, it's ringtone startlingly loud in the quiet of the car. Max scrambles to pull it out of her pocket, glancing at Chloe before she answers it. "It's my mom."
"Answer it." Her own phone is painfully silent. The only person left to call her is sitting beside her.
After a moment, Chloe can hear the anxious crackle of Max's mother's voice on the other end of the phone call.
"I'm fine, Mom," Max says, but something in her voice changes, tightens, and she looks down at her lap.
She's a bad liar.
Chloe squeezes her hand.
She's so far from fine it hurts.
"Chloe's here, too. Yeah… yeah, that Chloe. She's fine, too."
Is that part a lie? She's not sure.
"We're fine. We're coming h-" Max looks at Chloe and then back out the window. "We're
coming to you."
There's a pause. Chloe makes a poorly executed lane change. Max takes a long shaky breath. "No, they… We don't think so. They haven't…" She looks at Chloe with cloudy eyes, biting her bottom lip. Her voice is hushed like if she says it quietly enough, Chloe won't hear her.
"They haven't called her or anything, and everything… it's all completely destroyed."
The car swerves, and Chloe fixes her eyes back on the road, muttering a curse under her breath.
Max gives her an alarmed glance. "But I'm okay. Chloe's okay."
The mystery of the day. Why the fuck is she okay? (She's already asked Max. Quietly, on an endless stretch of highway, when her thoughts were too restless to keep in her head. "Why did you choose me?" "I love you.")
"Bye. I love you. See you soon." Max drops her phone into the cup holder. "Take the next exit."
They're close enough now that she knows the way.
The only time Max lets go of her hand is to hug her parents.
"I can make up the guest room," Max's mother offers, and Max grabs her arm and shakes her head.
"She can stay in my room."
Holding her hand is an anchor, pulling her back when she drifts away. When she thinks about Rachel or her mom or-
Max tugs on her hand, opening the door to her room. "We should change. We smell like rainwater."
Chloe suspects that the only thing that will get rid of the damp, hurricane rain smell is a long shower- and even then the scent might stick to their skin- but neither girl has the energy to unlink their hands and shut herself in the bathroom.
Max hands her a pair of only slightly too short pajama pants and a t-shirt. They change quickly, and Chloe gathers up the pile of clothes to toss in the laundry hamper. They're heavy in her arms, like they're still soaked with millions of raindrops.
"Wait." Max tugs on the sleeve of something in the pile until it comes free, clutching it to her chest.
Chloe squints at the blue flannel, taking it from Max and pressing it to her face. She inhales. "This smells like rainwater, too."
Max gently takes it out of her hands, wrapping it around her shoulders. "I think it smells like you."
Chloe raises her eyebrows. Any other time she'd tease her about how cheesy romantic comedy that line sounds. "What do I smell like? Weed?"
"I don't know." Max crawls onto the bed. "Pancakes. The diner. Something warm."
Max's room is mostly bare. That's how it's supposed to be, probably, since she's been living in a different state. It still feels strange. There should be pictures on the walls, her camera sitting on a table somewhere. The only evidence that Max has even been here is the rest of the house, the kitchen with family photos on the fridge, her left behind pairs of shoes at the door, everything Chloe tried not to look at.
She didn't look at her own house when they left, except for one millisecond long glance out of the corner of her eye. Unrecognizable. What she didn't see she could tell was awful from the look of horror on Max's face. It's stupid, but she should've said goodbye. Or good riddance. Something.
"Can you come here?" Max asks softly. She stretches her hand in Chloe's direction. She looks so small, sitting on the bed with the sleeves of Chloe's flannel pulled over her hands. Her eyes are still wide, like they're permanently fixed on something Chloe can't see. She wants to tell her not to look.
"Of course I can." Chloe climbs onto the bed beside her, leaning back against the pillows.
Max presses herself against Chloe's side. Her whole body is trembling, like just existing requires an immense amount of effort.
"Get some rest, okay?"
"Okay. I will."
She's still the worst liar Chloe knows.
When Chloe wakes up with Rachel's name cutting her lips, Max barely lets her get out the words, "I'm fine," before she has her arms wrapped tightly around her.
Chloe presses her face to Max's shoulder. She's still wearing her flannel. It doesn't smell like anything except rainwater. Tears streak down her face. Finally. One less thing to feel guilty about. Finally, she's crying, like a normal human being.
"It's okay," Max says gently, and Chloe doesn't believe her.
"If anyone besides you deserved to make it out of this alive, it was Rachel. God, it's so fucking unfair!"
She can't stop seeing her. In the junkyard, buried, dead.
Rachel in the dark room. Rachel in the dark room.
And Chloe wasn't there to save her, like she wasn't there to save Max. Who has she ever helped?
"Chloe, you deserved to make it out alive. You deserve to be here right now."
It's a lie. Chloe swallows it anyway. It tastes better than the truth.
The truth: she is a bad person. What she deserves is to be dead in a school bathroom. She deserves to have the life bleed out of her onto the tiled floor, a mess for someone else to clean up and for Max to never have to see.
"Can we go? I don't want to stay here."
Chloe rolls over, reaching for her phone. 3 AM. She's only slept in 15 minutes intervals, and as far as she can tell, Max hasn't slept at all. Her eyes have been trained on the door like she's standing guard, waiting for someone to jump out of the shadows.
Fuck you, Mark Jefferson.
Chloe joins their hands together and holds them over her chest, playing with Max's fingers. "Anywhere. I'm your faithful travel companion."
They stand outside Chloe's truck for a long time before Max opens the door. Chloe gets in and looks at the house over her shoulder. It's the kind of house her mom would've liked. Cute, bright, the perfect little size.
"What is it?" Max touches her arm lightly.
"Nothing. I was just thinking about... my mom." Guilt scratches at her throat. "I was such a shitty daughter, and I never... I just should've… god." She slams her foot on the gas, and the car screeches out of the driveway. What she should have done or could have done or would have done- if she'd just had more time- is a mystery to her, something that she knows exists but that slips through her fingers when she tries to pin it down.
Max's fingernails dig into her arm. "You shouldn't drive like this. Not when you're so upset."
Chloe blinks a few times, and her vision clears. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm fine. I like driving."
The roads are long, endless. The traffic lights flicker. Sometimes it feels like they're stuck in an infinite time loop, driving the same streets again and again.
"I think…" Max pauses, biting her lip. She's still holding on to Chloe's arm. "You're an amazing daughter, Chloe."
Chloe presses her lips together. "Thanks, Max." At this point Chloe knows she's just saying whatever the fuck she thinks she wants to here. She's always spot on.
The silence is deafening. Chloe turns the radio up too loud.
"I'm the shitty daughter. My parents are going to freak." Max tucks her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. "But they'll never understand, and it's too weird to be there, like everything's normal." She pauses. "You're the only person who understands."
Another way they're connected. For better or worse.
They spend what's left of the night in a cheap motel, pressed together in the small bed. Chloe falls asleep with both arms wrapped around Max's waist.
When she wakes up in the morning Max is counting dollar bills at the end of the bed, lying them out in little stacks like a kid organizing the money from her piggy bank.
Chloe sits up, rubbing her eyes.
Max crumples the money together into her hand. "Hey."
Chloe looks at the bills poking out between her fingers. "Maybe… maybe this isn't a good idea. We'll run out of money."
"Please, Chloe…" Max drops the wad of money on the bed, taking both of Chloe's hands in her own. Her hands are freezing. "Just one more day. I just want to stay away for one more day."
Chloe looks down at Max's thin fingers entwined with her own. She'd do anything for her. "Ok. One more day."
A day turns into a week that turns into two, and the money doesn't run out. Max's parents deposit money into her bank account again and again. Enough to let them move from hotel to hotel, enough for food, enough for clothes. They call, too.
"I'm not running away," Max says into the phone. "I just need some space."
She's running. But there's nothing left to run from.
"Why did you choose me?" Chloe asks again. Because the first answer wasn't good enough. Because it was too hard to believe.
"I love you," Max says, again, like it's the simplest thing in the world, the words sliding off her lips like honey. Her gaze drifts away from the rain pounding angrily against the window of the parked car, settling softly on Chloe.
Chloe's lips part, a thousand arguments trembling on her tongue as to why she doesn't deserve anything Max has given her, not the countless second chances, not the defiance of fate, not her soft words or gentle smiles or the effortlessly intimate way she grazes her fingers across her skin.
"Do you not believe me?" Max presses her lips together until they turn as chalky white as the knuckles of her hands gripping the blanket around her shoulders. There's something in her voice that's heavy and tired, and all at once she's simultaneously younger and older, slipping through the thin fabric of time.
Chloe draws in a long breath. Who knows? Maybe it's just the fucked up part of her brain trying to convince her that Max doesn't really love her, that there's no one left who ever will, or maybe it's the truth, but somehow it doesn't matter because she'll never let it go. She'll never just fucking drop it, like she should because starting arguments is useless and what's done is done, sealed by a torn photograph on a cliff over a pile of rubble that used to be a town. "I just don't understand-"
"Chloe, what the fuck do I have to do to make you believe me?" Her voice is sharp, a hint of anger curling on her tongue like the edge of a burnt paper, and Chloe inhales it like smoke. She wants to watch this surreal haze of calm around them burst, wants to catch the words she knows Max has thought but never said as they fall out of their perpetual suspension in the back of her throat.
"I fucked up your whole life!" Chloe presses her hands to her face, elbows digging into the steering wheel. There's something looming over both of their shoulders that's too big for her cramped pick up, but she can't open the window to let it out without letting in a rush of cold air and a bucket load of water. They've only just gotten the last of the rain water out of their clothes. "God, Max, I fucked everything up!"
Max's eyes are wide, her body shifted to the edge of her seat. Like there's anywhere to go. "What are you talking about? I did. My storm, remember?" The words catch in her throat, the line of jaw becoming sharper with a hard swallow.
"No, it started because of me. Because of you saving me." All of a sudden she's back in that bathroom, the bitter taste of anger in her mouth, pinned between Nathan and the wall. Nowhere to go but down. He has a gun. If Max hadn't been there… "I didn't deserve it, and you should've-" She chokes on the words.
She can say she was ready to sacrifice herself for everyone else, and she can say she deserved what would've happened to her, but nothing can stop the ice cold fear creeping up her throat. She can't deny that the thought of dying is fucking terrifying.
"Everything I did to save you would have meant nothing. Everything we went through together would have meant nothing. You wouldn't even have remembered." Max's voice is soft and scratchy. The only remnant of her anger is the I'm so fucking done with you look in her eyes, the scent of smoke in the air. "You would've died thinking... I left you forever."
Rain continues to beat relentlessly against the parked car, and Chloe shivers involuntarily. "You should've let me die." The words are easier to say than she thought. Maybe that means they're not true, since the truth is supposedly always the hardest to say. Or maybe it's the other way around. Either way it's still a pretty shitty thought, and it's cold, and they should've just driven the last few hours to the hotel, and she's tired of Max looking at her like there's something going right over her head. "You know what, just forget it." She rolls onto her left shoulder, tucking her legs up onto the seat and looking out the window into the darkness.
"Don't say that. Please, Chloe." Max says, and Chloe realizes how absolutely desperate she sounds. "I do love you. And that's what you do for the people you love. You sacrifice things. And you… you fuck some things up."
She doesn't turn around. If she looks at her, she'll lose any fire she had left. She'll look at her, and she'll fall apart. Like she isn't already broken. "What if one day you wake up and you don't feel that way anymore and you realize you wasted your powers on someone you fell out of love with?" Her voice is cracking, and she wishes she would just. Shut. Up.
"Oh my god, Chloe."
Chloe looks over her shoulder, and Max is wiping tears off her face.
"That will never happen. Nothing is going to tear us apart," she says fiercely, like she's daring the universe to just try.
Chloe takes a deep, rattling breath. "Okay." She says it because it's easier than fighting a battle she can't win any longer, because she wants to believe there's someone who will never leave her. Because they're both crying, and even though that's what always happens, she still has it stuck in some part of her mind that it's supposed to be a taking turns sort of game.
"I found an apartment up the coast." Max claws at the sleeve of her sweater.
Chloe scoops up a handful of sand and lets it fall between her fingers.
"It's cheap, and we can both get jobs, and-"
"Max, are you sure about this? We can still go back, you know."
"No." Max looks down. "I don't… we can't…" She takes Chloe's hand, and there's so much hope in her eyes that all Chloe can do is nod. "We're starting over." She stares out at the ocean.
The sunset paints her face a thousand different colors, the light reflecting in her eyes, illuminating the watery smile on her face.
"I'm never using them again. The powers." Her voice is hard, determined. The smile fades from her face. "Never. Again. I swear."
Chloe nods. She doesn't blame her. But, then, who's she kidding, Max could do practically anything, and Chloe wouldn't blame her. "You're still my Super Max, with or without the time travel."
"You're a dork," Max says, and she laughs for the first time in whatever feels like forever, and Chloe thinks that maybe everything will end up okay.
Max unintentionally breaks her promise within a week.
Chloe finds her sitting on the floor of their god-awful apartment, their starting over, it'll be okay, let's just pretend it's okay. Her back is pressed bruisingly hard to the wall. Blood drips from her nose, running over her chapped lips and soaking the light fabric of her t-shirt.
Chloe is on her knees in two seconds, the ugly, scratchy carpet burning her skin. She tangles both her hands into Max's hair. "Max. Max. Where did you go?"
Max opens her mouth and gasps, drinking in the stuffy apartment air like she's had her head held under water. She rests her forehead on her knees. "Just…" She gasps again, and it's another moment before words find their way out of her mouth. "A few seconds back... over and over again. I couldn't make it stop." She lifts her head, and there are tears streaking down her face. "I wish someone would just take it away. I don't want it anymore."
Chloe holds her until she stops shaking, like she always does, like Max does for her. She presses her lips to her fingertips and her collarbone and the corners of her lips.
Max sobs like the world is ending, which is impossible, because it already did, approximately three weeks and twenty-two hours ago. And somehow they lived through it, through the end of the world. How unfair.
"I'm glad I had them," Max says between hiccuping sobs. "I don't regret it. I don't regret saving you."
"God, Max, how can you… I'm fucking killing you. Look at yourself. Look at what everything you did for me is doing to you." Look at what I did to you.
"You didn't do this. The universe did. The universe just hates me." A shaky little laugh escapes her throat.
"The universe is a dick. Fuck the universe."
Max laughs again, a small, uncertain sound. She sniffs.
"Max, you should be, like, finishing school, not holed up in some shitty apartment. Let me take you home. I'm going to take you home." If that's the only thing she can do for her, then so be it.
Max nods reluctantly, wiping her face with the back of her hand. Blood smears on her fingers.
"It's going to be ok." Chloe lets a small grin slip onto her face, squeezing Max's shoulders. "The only thing we have to worry about now is where we're going to go for our first actual date."
Max looks up at her through her too long bangs. "You're taking me on a date?" she sniffs a small, watery smile crossing her face. "We are so past the first date stage by now."
"I think you have to actually go on a first date to be past the first date stage."
"Okay."
"That easy? You'll really let me take you home?"
Max sighs. "I'm tired, Chloe."
Chloe looks out the window of the truck, searching for Max's familiar grey sweatshirt in the crowd of students. She drums her fingers against the steering wheel.
Finally, Max appears in the parking lot, and Chloe waves her over.
"What are you doing here?" Max slams the door behind her, dropping her bag at her feet.
"I got off work early, so I thought I'd come rescue you."
Max opens the glove compartment, digging through the pile of junk inside as Chloe starts the car. "Thanks."
"Sure."
Max pulls the tiny calendar out of the glove compartment, snatching a pen out of the cup holder. "Just a few more weeks 'til freedom." She draws an X over one of the little boxes in green ink.
"Long day?"
Max nods. Then a glint appears in her eyes that's an equal mix apprehension and excitement.
"What are you thinking about?" Chloe looks over her shoulder.
Max shrugs. "I don't know. What we're going to do next."
Chloe drives them to a little cafe a few blocks away. There's a diner next to it, and if you squint it looks a bit like the Two Whales. Everything looks like Arcadia if you squint. The trees, the streets, the houses. There's her mom's ponytail and Rachel's eyes and Frank's dog. When her vision goes from just narrow and squinty to blurry and wet, she stops squinting.
They're rebuilding in Arcadia now, according to the news sites she and Max both pretend not to read. Part of her thinks she should be there to help. It was her home once, right? Maybe not. It was someone's home, anyway. But the more reasonable part of her knows she'd lose her fucking mind just looking at it.
"So, where to now, Captain?" Chloe reaches her right hand out, searching for Max's on the other side of the mattress. Their fingers are laced together in a millisecond. Max's bed is barely big enough for the both of them, and she's practically falling off the side, but she doesn't mind. "Now that you're a fully fledged adult and almost college student. Oh, and future world renowned photographer."
Max rolls her eyes. "I don't know." She shifts so that she can rest her head on Chloe's shoulder.
"Well, we've got the whole summer to waste." Chloe tilts her head to the side to look at her. God, she's so beautiful.
"Furniture shopping?"
"What?"
"'You know… for our apartment. Since you are coming with me, right?" Max squeezes her hand, her gaze flitting nervously across the room.
"Of course," Chloe says automatically. "If you want me." She almost laughs. Where else would she go?
"Sometimes I feel bad for dragging you everywhere."
"Sometimes I feel bad following you everywhere," Chloe says. She doesn't mean it. She doesn't mean half the things she says- I'm fine, everything's okay, yeah, I believe you. She stares at the ceiling. The paint is peeling at the corners of the room. It's time to go.
Max bites her lip. "Maybe we should both stop that. Feeling bad about everything." She has that nervous, determined look in her eyes that she gets when she's going to give something everything she has. "It would be good for us both."
God, she sounds so grown up.
"You know, you are full of good ideas. Good thing, too, because I don't actually feel that bad. What would you do without me and my mad decorating skills?"
A smile tugs at the corner of Max's lips. "Gosh, I don't know."
They leave within the week, packing their scarce belongings into cardboard boxes that they shove in the bed of the pickup. Their new apartment is small, which is fine because they spend most of their time as close together as possible anyways.
It's okay now, everything's okay, just sometimes it doesn't feel like it. Sometimes it still feels like they've both got the weight of the world on their shoulders, dragging the same chest-crushingly heavy worries around in dilapidated cardboard boxes.
But she's trying. God, she's trying. Her cigarettes are turning to ash in a landfill somewhere because Max has given her whole fucking world for her to have this life, and she'll be damned if she wastes it by smoking herself to death. She sits up at night like staying awake will let her ward off Max's nightmares. She makes lots of lame jokes in the hopes that some of them will make Max laugh the same way she used to.
And still: Chloe knows that there are things that Max has seen that she'll never have to, because they exist in warped realities that- for better or worse- only Max has the key to. And it scares her. Because how can she protect her from things she doesn't know? How can she end nightmares when she doesn't know what they're made of?
She tries. She holds Max's hand tighter.
Nothing will ever be normal. But then again, her normal was nights alone in her room wondering why she was alone, wondering why everyone had to leave. It was smoke-filled lungs and guns and being afraid, or not being afraid and wondering how the hell she was so fucked up she wasn't scared of the things she should've been scared of. In the simplest terms, it was lonely.
And this, this bittersweet reality, this is the farthest from lonely. This is
Max kissing her good morning, this is whispered reassurances and knowing that she has someone now who will never leave her.
She still asks her why. She still gets the same answer.
I love you.
Only, now, instead of shaking her head, she just says it back.