A hazy mind led to an uneasy presence, something felt as if it was bending inside Max's body, a nerve stretching all throughout her chest. "What did you talk with Alfred about?" Max asked in a calm voice, trying her best not to make it sound hostile.
"Nothing that's important now," Chloe stretched her neck as she turned her body to the right and backed a little away from her friend.
"Can you tell me what is going on? How far back did you travel?" She asked while looking out the window.
"Since it's past midnight, it would have been around 3 days," Max had thought about it herself, resulting in the answer coming out with ease.
"3 fucking days…" Chloe whispered while gently shaking her head.
"What happened?" She asked shortly after, despite the fact she had more specific questions in mind.
Max began to feel the heat around her arms but kept the bright-white hoodie on. She knew this was going to be a long explanation and the uncomfortableness had already begun.
"Let's sit down," Max suggested as she began walking backwards towards the bed behind her before sitting down on the edge.
"I need to stand up for a while if you don't mind," Chloe said despondently without moving.
Max paid no mind to it, as she was already thinking of how to start off the story.
"After we took that walk that we just… took." Max was already having a hard time, trying to explain it in a simple way. She needed to point a few things out– things that Chloe already knew, but was needed to be said to establish the circumstances."When I travel back in time I create a new timeline, so everything I am about to tell you happened in another dimension or whatever we should call it," she spoke quickly, just wanting to get it out of the way.
"Yeah, I am aware," Chloe responded, sounding impatient.
"The morning after that night, we went to the mall, since you said you needed nail polish remover. Sephora I think the brand was."
"Shit. I do need nail polish remover," Chloe broke in, placing her right hand onto the table.
"A man in his late twenties came up to us and he began asking me if I was Max. The girl that went to Blackwell Academy and survived the storm… he sounded like a pretty normal guy, but I was surprised that some guy in Idaho knew about me though. Not much happened, until the day after when he came to your house to find me. I don't know how he knew– how he knows- where you live. At first, I thought he was going to ask me out or something weird…" Max took a short break, trying to look at Chloe's reaction.
"Turns out he knows about my abilities to rewind time," She continued with a doleful tone of voice, but Chloe seized the opportunity as Max took a breath.
"And he tried to blackmail you," She let out, almost as a statement rather than a guess.
Max took her hands away from her knees and placed them on the bed, feeling the soft mattress she was sitting on.
"No, because as it turns out… he can turn back time as well." Max barely had time to finish the sentence before Chloe smacked her down onto the table, sending a scare through Max.
"It has seriously only been a like 5 months since all that shit we went through with Rachel and the bullshit apocalypse! Why the fuck do we need to go through all sorts of possibly life-threatening, bitch-ass drama again?!" Chloe lifted her hand again, only to force it down onto the table once more.
"Tell me that it's done… tell me that you fixed everything when you went back in time. I don't even want to hear what it was or why you had to travel back 3 fucking days, just tell me that you're fine, that I am fine, that everything is just fucking fine!" Chloe sounded substantially aggressive, as the only thing moving was her mouth and her twitching arm.
Max was anything but prepared for Chloe's reaction. All her famous courage seemed to have disappeared in a heartbeat. The story was far from finished, but Max was frightened to let out another word.
"I- I don't know," Max stuttered, feeling her jaw shake.
"Fuck!" Chloe let out loudly while flipping her body around.
"I'm… I'm sorry." Max could barely handle the situation, as Chloe's reaction was exceedingly out-of-place. Her face was almost red as she began pacing from right to left.
"Don't apologize. I'm just having a fucking whatever attack. Panic shit. Happens when I get too freaked out, as you know." Chloe's breath was let out snakingly, while the light from the lamp revealed her twitching eyes, scanning everything in front of her. She was in a condition of hypervigilance; her state of sensory sensitivity was enhanced and her intensity of behaviors exaggerated. It had happened once before, only a week after the events in Arcadia Bay. Max pinpointed her focus, remembering Chloe describing how truly terrifying the feeling was back then.
"Do you still have your pills?" Max threw away any thought that was not related to Chloe and began to focus on things that could help her friend calm down.
"I threw that shit away. Didn't think I would need it," Chloe let out a nervous chuckle as she took off her wool cap and threw it behind her before sliding her right hand through her blue hair. In rhythm with her steps, her breath became quicker as she was close to hyperventilating.
"Hang on," Max quickly got up from the bed and walked over to the table, opening the window behind it, letting in some fresh air.
"Want me to call your doctor?" Max expected a refusal, but it looked like Chloe legitimately thought she was about to die.
"No," Chloe answered as expected, but her face still revealed her consideration.
"Should I get your granddad?" It felt everything was moving in double tempo as the atmosphere had shut up in intensity, yet Max forced her anxiety down and kept focusing.
"No… No. Just… talk to me. Just not about time-travel. Distract me or something," Chloe finally stopped moving around as she placed a hand up to her mouth, shortly echoing her heavy breaths.
"Okay, no problem," She answered automatically, even though she had no idea of what to say."I know you don't feel like it, but I think you should sit down," Max suggested with a sturdy tone as she looked at her friend.
Chloe looked back, getting ready to deny the offer, but instead, she kept quiet for a few seconds as she looked at Max.
"Alright," she eventually said as she intentionally shook her right arm a few times before walking over to the bed and sitting in the spot Max was sitting on previously. A few seconds passed as Max could feel her mind urging her to say something.
"Remember that thing you said, just after you took my picture outside?"
Chloe leaned a little back, but her body was still tense and her eyes were wide open.
"The dikfor joke I was about to make?" she sighed, placing her left hand on her chest to feel her heartbeat.
"Yep, I… I fell for it," Max admitted as she looked at Chloe's legs.
"In the other timeline," she added.
"No fucking way," Chloe closed her eyes and let out a smile, but quickly returning to take quick breaths.
"That joke is freaking old dude," she briefly looked up at Max standing in front of her with a slight sideways smile.
"Guess I'm just that stupid," Max shrugged as her cheeks widened, looking like she had just spilled a glass of milk, but not giving a damn.
"No," Chloe wanted to smile, but she didn't want it to come off as dishonest.
"Only lame people use that joke. I heard it from some creep I used to hang out with… he was stupid as a grinded-up brick." Chloe leaned further back, supporting her weight with her shoulders on the bed.
"You're smart Max," she looked to her left as the words escaped her mouth.
"Kinda cute too," she said in a whispering voice as she could no longer resist the urge to fall back onto the bed on her back.
"God, I hate that word," she said just as she landed, making the sheets bounce a few inches up.
Max barely had time to process the compliment and decided to focus on her last statement.
"What? You hate the word 'cute'?" Max questioned as she began walking towards the bed Chloe was lying on, before sitting down on the other side of the edge.
"Pretty much. Where does the word come from?" Chloe asked, placing her right arm across her face, covering up her eyes.
"You mean it's origin?" Max raised an eyebrow as she looked straight-forward, paying attention to a poster on Chloe's wall, showing a naked baby in a pool, seemingly chasing after a dollar bill on a hook in the water.
"Yeah," Chloe confirmed.
"I really want to show off, since you called me smart, but I honestly have no idea. Maybe from the word acute…" and suddenly it was Max that felt completely distracted, wondering about the simple word.
"Acute?" The blue-haired girl asked, still covering half of her face with her arm, as she was lying motionless on her back.
"Yeah. We sometimes use it in geometry. Basically meaning sharp. I believe cute was once a sort of synonym for the word clever… and someone who is clever can also be said to be sharp, or in other words, acute," Max titled her head slightly to the right.
"Holy shit. I'm not just smart. I am a genius," Max openly praised herself with an expression of revelation.
"Tss. Told you." Though Chloe's words were mellow, her body language still showed signs of nervousness. Her fingers were shaking, her breathing hadn't slowed down and she must have been hiding her eyes for a reason. Max had picked up on these giveaways but still felt slightly incapable of helping.
"I once kicked a baby," Max let out emotionless.
"What?!" Chloe was quick to exclaim.
"Just kidding," she replied equally as fast as she shook her head with a grin.
"I did kick a kitten once though," Max continued with some quite shocking confessions.
"For real?"
"It was an accident of course. I was visiting my aunt, who has like, shit, 5 cats or something. 2 of them being kittens." Max began making hand gestures for no apparent reason as Chloe was still covering her own vision.
"Crazy cat lady?" The light suddenly made a quick flicker, but Max continued.
"She's pretty down to earth… but as I was walking down this narrow hallway, a black kitten that blended in perfectly with the floor was lying up against the wall, close to a door. I was holding a plate– luckily a plastic plate- so I didn't notice it until I took a particular swift step and toe-kicked it right in the stomach."
Chloe let out a subtle laugh, as Max began taking off her white hoodie.
"It let out this tiny cry and in my surprise, I dropped the plate with my buttered toast, which didn't help calm the kitten down, as it began running away. I felt so guilty and wanted to show the little kitten that I didn't do it on purpose, so I began running after it so I could apologize and give it a friendly petting…"
"So you chased it down?" Chloe took the opportunity to ask when Max took a break when she pulled out her arm from the sleeve.
"Well, I just wanted to comfort it, but it kinda freaked…" Max let out with low spirits, bringing back mental images of the scared kitten.
"Never saw much of Cuddly after that," she ended, as she finally got free from the piece of clothing.
"Cuddly?" The blue-haired girl finally removed her arm from her face, but Max kept her attention forward to not make Chloe uncomfortable.
