It took two days for Spinelli to find the nerve to call Maxie and of course when he finally did he got her voicemail. "This is Maxie. Leave a message at the tone." Before the beep though he lost his nerve and hung up. He didn't want to apologize over the phone. And he knew that he had to apologize. He was still unclear though about what he was going to say. There was no doubt in his mind that it had to be good though because Maxie wasn't a girl that trusted easily and he had shown her that her heart wasn't completely safe in his hands. It wasn't something that she was going to easily come back from. After debating for a few minutes he tried her phone again and before he knew it her voice was on the other end. "Hello."
"Maximista, hi."
"Spinelli."
"Yes. I was hoping that maybe you would come over for lunch. I believe we need to speak."
"I don't know. Do you have anything laying around you don't want me to see? Because I'd hate to walk in the door and accidentally look at something you don't want me to look at."
"Maxie. I don't know what to say. Please just come."
"Fine. I'll be there in an hour." She hung up the phone before he could speak and he realized how cold her voice had been. He had really hurt her by cutting her off from part of himself. At that moment he resolved to tell her everything about his life, about his parents, and about the events that had led to his isolation as a young man. Because if he didn't he risked losing the person that he realized now he loved completely.
An hour later his doorbell wrang and he nearly lept out of his seat to answer it. He'd barely been able to sit still since getting off the phone with her. During the hour before she arrived he had thrown together an antipasto salad and set the table for lunch hoping that after they got everything worked out she still want to stay and eat. And if he was honest with himself he needed something to do with his hands because he was as nervous as he'd been in a long time. He hadn't even been this nervous when they first started dating because it had moved so naturally from friendship to a relationship. He opened the door wide and she walked in. She was dressed casually in a pair of blue jeans and a cardigan sweater over a black undershirt. Her short blonde hair was pulled into a casual ponytail and yet he still thought she looked beyond amazing. "Maximista, you look great."
"It's been two days Spinelli. My appearance wasn't going to go to hell in two days."
"I see you're still mad then."
"What do you expect?"
"Maximista come in and sit down. Like I stated over the phone we need to talk." They walked to the couch and sat down about a cushion apart and they sat in awkward silence. "I thought you wanted to talk. That's what you called me over here for."
"I do. I'm just trying to figure out how to say what I need to say."
"I believe the words you're looking for are I'm sorry. You're a genius. You should be able to figure that out."
"I am sorry but it's more than that. I just don't know where to start. Just give me a minute." She sighed a little and then sat quietly staring down at her shoes. He loved that even though she was angry she still sat there allowing him time to preocess his thoughts. She better than anyone else understood the challenges that he had sometimes interacting with people and she made allowances for it that he wondered if she had ever made for anyone before. "Maximista do you remember that day in the cemetary when you walked me around and kind of introduced me to the people you had lost?"
"Of course I do. That was the beginning of our friendship. I don't see what that has to do with anything though."
"You've got a history of death trailing behind you. It follows you from point A to point B and you can't shake it. No matter how hard you try. I saw that night how it shaped you. How the loss that you experienced in your life molded you into this wounded creature who was constantly on the alert for the next struggle. I could see that night that you were resigned somehow to the fact that you would always be left. And when I was shot I saw it again. I could see that you were fighting your urge to fall back into that permanent fear. But you did it. And that should have been enough for me to trust you but it wasn't. I mean I didn't know that I was shutting you out or not trusting you until you pointed it out. But I guess that's what I did. I'm not used to needing people. I'm used to being needed but giving people an in to my world is hard. I've been in Port Charles for years now and really no one has asked much about where I come from. Lulu didn't really care because it was always kind of more about what I could do for her than about really being friends. And Jason isn't really the caring and sharing type. So I've kept details of my past quiet."
" But I want to know. I asked. I cared. Why punish me because no one else tried to get into your world?"
"Are you really asking me that? You're the queen of pushing people away because you've been hurt. You've always done it in different ways but you've done it. You do it to your mom because she's hurt you. You did it with Logan when you were with Cooper. I wasn't trying to punish you. I'm just not used to being vulnerable. You're used to loss. I'm used to abandonment. I'm used to ridicule. And I'm used to horror. You don't know what it's like coming from where I come from Maxie."
"So tell me. Tell me what it was like for you. Don't just use it as more of an excuse to shut me out."
"Okay. I will. My mom was fifteen when I was born. We lived in small town Tennessee and she was the local unwed mother. I was an outcast in that town from the day I was born. She had been coming home from a church event one night, she was very active in our church, and this guy grabbed her and pulled her into his car. She tried to fight him but he was a lot bigger than her and she was always kind of small for her age so she really didn't stand much of a chance. He raped her and then pushed her out of the car and drove off. When she got home she told my grandmother the whole story and she promptly called my mother a liar and a whore. Mom snuck off to get herself tested for any kind of disease he might have given her but this was back in the eighties and she didn't even know what she was being tested for. One test they didn't give her was a pregnancy test because it was too early and nine months later I was born. My grandmother did manage to not let her disgust with her mother pass onto me. The rest of the town however wasn't as gracious." He looked down at his hands and started reliving the childhood that he had fought so hard to forget. It wasn't really a place that he was comfortable revisiting but if she needed to know the details of his life he would tell her. No matter how hard it was for him. " The women in town couldn't stand that my mother had a child. They thought that she should have put me up for adoption. In reality they thought she should have had an abortion but none of them would have ever admitted that. And these sanctimonious little housewives who didn't care what she said about having been raped ran her name into the mud and taught their children to hate me. I was called bastard for the first eight years of my life. Those children would taunt me about not knowing my father and call my mother a whore to my face. I won't ever forget the kid that told me that because my mother was a faithless slut she would burn in hell for all eternit. That was just the mentality of the people there. When I was eight years old a guy showed up at my doorstep claiming to be my father. I was thrilled because it meant that I could finally tell those people in that town to go to hell because I did have a father. Him showing up though simply reinforced for the people in town that my mom had had a relationship with him, and he was much older than her, and that she had been lying about being raped for sympathy. I think for a while even I believed it." He stopped talking for a second and stretched his neck to the right and then to the left like he was gearing himself up for the next part of the story. She could see in his eyes that she was taking him someplace that he didn't want to go and for an instance she wanted to scream at him to stop. That she was sorry for asking and she wanted to eat and forget that they had ever started this conversation. But it was clear that she had opened pandoras box and it couldn't be closed until everything was out. Until there were no more secrets. But she had to give him the opportunity to stop. "Spinelli, are you sure...?"
"I've come this far. I might as well finish. It'll be nice to have someone know everything." He rubbed his hands over the base of his neck as though he was working the muscles out and took a deep breath before starting again. "For a time there I was hateful to my mother. I believed everything that the people in town said about her because I didnt' understand how he could have known about if it had been rape. And she allowed him to be a part of my life which just made me believe she was lying even more. It never occurred to me until later that she allowed it because of the things that I had gone through in that town without him. I was being hateful to her and she was being completely selfish. Seeing her rapist day after day, watching him play with me, and every minute she was reliving what he did to her when she was fifteen years old. At twenty three years old she was the town pariah and he was the cause but she stayed silent because it was what I needed. Two months after he showed up in town he cornered her in the back of the house. I was in my room at the other end of the house and my grandmother was at a church function. He got her alone and he told her that he'd been keeping an eye on her for the past eight years. That he was surprised she was still single and that he was thankful she had given him a son. She threw him out and told me that night that I couldn't see him anymore. I hated her for it. I thought that she was punishing me for some reason. I went to bed that night hating her. The rest of what I know is just what the police told me. I always slept with a radio on and my room was at the upstairs at the end of the house. The living room was downstairs and she had the TV on. Anything I thought I heard I guess I just assumed was the TV. From what the police said he came back that night after I went to bed and she let him in. They fought and he tried to rape her again. She ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife to fight him off and stabbed him in the chest. She managed to get away for a minute but he grabbed her leg and dragged her back across the kitchen. This man must have been superhuman because he took the knife out of his chest and he stabbed her four times. Twice in the chest, once in the ribs and once in the throat. Then he collapsed on top of her and they were both dead. I came downstairs sometime later because I'd had a bad dream and I was looking for her. I found them in the kitchen. Her dress was torn and he was sprawled out on top of her. It was the most horrifying thing I've ever seen. I went over and tried to get him off her but I was eight and he was so big." Tears were rolling down his cheeks and once again Maxie wished that she had never asked about that picture. She realized that there was wetness on her cheeks and that she too was crying. Her wonderful loving Spinelli had seen such horror in his life and yet he had turned into such a wonderful man. She didn't know how he'd been able to accomplish that. She'd experienced horror but she had been marked by it and up to this point she'd never seen the markings on Spinelli. But now that he had lain his past bare for her they were as clear to her as though they were physical scars. He wiped the tears off his cheek with the back of his hand and began speaking again. "I called 911 like she taught me to do but even at eight years old I knew what dead looked like. And I knew that's what she was. The cops got there and my grandmother got there at the same time. I guess her church event was over and she came in the house howling over my mom. Bawling my baby, baby. Look what that evil bastard did to my baby. He raped her then and he killed her this time. I love my grandmother but she milked my moms death for all the sympathy it could get her because she had been among those people calling her a whore and a liar for all those years. It wasn't until she was dead that she started believing what my mom had been telling her. They ruled it self defense on my mom's part and murder on my dad's. But it didn't really matter because you can't charge dead people for crimes. I stayed with my grandmother. The state gave her full custody of me because she was my only living relative. And from that moment on I was her whole world. Anything I wanted was mine."
"Things must have gotten better once people knew the truth though right?"
"You'd think. Except it just didn't work that way. Now I was the kid of the couple who killed each other. People said that she got what she deserved because bad things happen to bad people. I never understood that. I didn't understand why they were all so determined to make her out to be a bad person. She'd never done anything to anyone in that town but they wouldn't let up on her even after she died. And they didn't let up on me. They tormented me because my parents killed each other and they asked me for details about the crime scene. Finally my grandmother pulled me out of school and decided to homeschool me. That was the start of my isolated childhood. I was nine years old. She bought a state of the art computer and a video game system for me. I don't know where she found the money for it but she did. I retreated into the world of computer and video games even more. Somewhere along the line I think maybe the line between reality and fantasy got blurred. By the time I got to college people were just kind of not that important anymore. My skills on the computer were untouchable and all those people that tormented me were a thing of the past. I came to Port Charles University because I had to get out of that town. Those people didn't matter to me but I didn't want to stay there with those kids that had spent their whole lives looking down on me. I wasn't here for very long before I hooked up with Evil Al and the rest as they say is history. So when you found that picture it just reminded me of a childhood I would rather forget. The tormenting, my mothers death, my father. I just couldn't handle it. My life here has been so great that I can go for a good amount of time without thinking about it. But when I do it feels like the whole world is caving in on me. I just didn't want to get mired down in that again."
"Spinelli, I don't even know what to say. You sat there and listened to me talk about loss, acting like I was the only one in the world that had experienced it and you knew exactly what I was talking about."
"All pain is unique Maximista. And I've had years to heal from my wounds. Yours are fresh and you're still learning how to living with it. It was enough to be there for you." She moved closer to him on the couch and laced her fingers through his. He looked down at their connected hands and then back at her face. "You know I love you right Maximista? That this is so completely real for me. I wouldn't have told you this if it wasn't. It's not something I revisit often."
"I understand that now. I'm glad you told me. It's beyond amazing that you turned out as wonderful as you did. But now I understand a few things. Like why you cling to the people you love. You loved three people before you came to this town and you lost two fo them. No wonder the ones you have in your life are so important to you."
"I never loved the man that killed my mother. I wanted to love him because he was my father. I wanted it to be like it is in the movies. Where they show up in your life and that connection is just magically there but it wasn't. So many of the things that we shared I realized later were fake. He wasn't there for me. I was a possession no doubt. But mostly he was there for my mom. To torment her with his presence and ultimately to hurt her again. I was of very little consequence to him." That aspect of what he was saying she could understand. Her birth father had left when she was very young to go off and save the world and because of that she felt like she was of little value to him as well. "I love you Spinelli. I hate what happened to you as a child and I hate the things that you saw. But I am so grateful that you ended up here in this place. I'm so grateful that you're in my life." She put her arms around his neck and leaned in to place a kiss on his lips. "So does this mean that I'm forgiven for being a completely jerk the other day?"
"Yeah, you're forgiven. I shouldn't have pushed you. You're allowed to have things in your past that you don't want to talk about and I shouldn't have acted like you had to tell me everything."
"You were right though. A relationship is about learning to grow together and be honest. I was expecting it from you but not giving it." She kissed him again and then curled up next to his side. He completely forgot about the antipasto salad on the table and sat contentedly on the couch with his arms around her. He felt like they had really jumped several hurdles and they could really start to be themselves in their relationship. And he was completely ready to show her all sides of himself.