The silence between them was echoing.
What else could she really have expected? She deserved his anger, but considering who he was she knew it wouldn't come. Instead, she'd just sit there and feel the heaviness of the moment. Reminders of what she'd done to him. If she was being completely honest, it was even worse. She would have preferred him to scream and get his anger out.
Blue eyes lingered outside on the snow covered ground. "Carmen's back." She really didn't need to know that. The girl who'd always had the biggest crush on him through school. The one that she'd accidentally fucked over more times than she could count. Stomping on any chance that the girl had when it came to her massive crush on Henderson. "oh" her response wasn't coated in curiosity. It was simply just a statement. "Her father passed a couple of months ago. She's grown up." Again, Max didn't care.
She knew Dustin well enough to know that he wasn't even trying to make her jealous. He was simply informing her of what had been up in the years that she'd been gone.
Yet there was a part of Max that felt her jaw clench.
Silence once again settled between them in the cab of the truck. A truck. Who would have ever thought that Dustin would have bought an actual pick up truck? The whole thing just seemed… weird. But she supposed that was what happened when during the first year of college your mom got sick and the responsibility was left on your own shoulders to take care of.
She still felt guilty for that.
"Are you staying with Susan and Neil?" home or whatever. Where else was she supposed to stay?
"Yeah" the response was quiet.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see the lot where the old mall had once stood and she felt a flair of sadness that she had to work a little harder than most to push down. The fence looked dilapidated and worn. It was as if no one had touched the site since they were 14 years old. Not that she was surprised.
Maybe she should have stayed.
"And he's been... alright?" Neil.
"He hasn't laid a hand on me. Mouths still as crass as always." He'd commented on her lack of college the moment she'd walked in, doing his best to make her feel small. It hadn't worked in his favor this time.
"Susan told me she's missed you. Not that that matters. She should have missed you six years ago." A bitter smile pulled at her features for a moment. D was usually right.
He stared the car to the quiet intersection and stopped as the yellow light turned red, "you didn't come home when Mike proposed." The first year after they'd graduated. El had voiced her suspicion. Max had known what the response was going to be.
"She was never going to say yes. We're just kids."It may have been the first time she'd ever heard a bitter laugh come from him.
It was a sound that she deserved.
She could see it clear as day in her head. The day that she'd decided she was done, that she couldn't have handled another moment in Hawkins. They'd been two weeks from graduating. Prom had been the day before and everything had been a whirlwind. She'd let him in, let him kiss her in front of all of their friends, she'd given him …hope.
Then in true Max fashion, she'd let everything crash down around them.
"It crushed him." The far away tone to his voice gave away to Max that he wasn't talking only about Mike for the moment. Because she knew, she knew that she'd crushed him just as El had done to Mike by turning down that proposal.
Besides, with what had happened senior year she knew that things between himself and Mike weren't great. No matter how badly she'd begged for it not to hinder their friendship. She also knew that she and El were another story all together. Something he too knew.
Once again there was silence, thick and overwhelming as the light changed and he pulled the car down one of the side roads that was covered with a worn blanket of snow that made the Christmas lights pop against the perfect houses. "You know… mom would love to see you." Claudia Henderson. Last Lucas had given an update Claudia had weeks left at best. Hospice care was there around the clock so that Dustin wasn't shouldering it all on his own.
There it was again, that silence. The silence as the Christmas lights glistened.
"Come home Max. I don't… I don't mean home home. Just home. For the weekend. Stay with me. I would never ask you to come home, not to stay… just… for the weekend." There it was, the mumbling, the talking too fast for his own good. One of the things that she'd fallen in love with the most when it came to Dustin. "I know you don't want to be with Neil and Susan." He always knew, always knew what she wasn't saying. Perhaps it was because they'd spent so much time together for those four years. Always every waking moment from 14 to 18.
She knew he could tell what she wasn't saying.
He could see that there was a part of her that regretted leaving. That wondered what it would have been like if she'd stayed in Hawkins. If she'd been less selfish and helped him look after Claudia. Waking up beside him every day. Would she have had a ring on her finger by now? Probably. Would they have been talking about expectancies? Most likely. Because what else did you do stuck in one small shit town for the rest of your life?
It had been her fears then.
Now? Now she wondered what that would have been like. To, at twenty, be settled down and moving into a comfortable life. Would they have been happy? Could she have been?
Part of her had no doubt that they would have been. He would have made sure of it.
"Just the weekend Max" he'd pulled the car over, by the little farm that always went all out with their Christmas décor for the holidays. They hadn't let the town down this year, the array of lights made for an echoing and cheery backdrop on their dismal scene. "I miss you" his words were worn out and tired sounding, genuine.
She'd missed genuine things.
His hand was out, laying palm up in the center of the barrier between them. Her tired eyes looked from his face to his hand a couple of times before she made her decision, before her small hand slid into his. Fingers fitting right between the creases like a puzzle that she'd forgotten how to finish and complete in the two years since they'd graduated from high school.
It was in that moment that Max, for the first time in years, felt like she could breathe.
"Just the weekend."