"Thank God you came!" Max exclaimed gratefully as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail and got into Logan's new ridiculously toned down SUV. She threw the plastic rings from the Red Bull cans she'd drained into the backseat. "My ride took off somewhere. Probably off talking to some vapid blonde."
" 'Vapid'?" Logan asked. "And here I remember you saying that you'd never have to use any of those words you learned for the SAT." Max slammed the door after she got into the car.
"I did say that," Max told him. "I learned 'vapid' from Renfro and not from that stupid book."
"Of course," Logan nodded in that way he had of nodding. That way that, no matter how much he nodded, you still thought he didn't really believe what you were saying. Max figured she had plenty of not-believing-nods coming ahead. "So, who was your ride, anyways?" he asked. "One of the guys on the squad?" Max's eyes widened when she realized that she hadn't quite told Logan about… everything.
"Uh, yeah," she said. "It's Krit."
"He broke up with Syl?" Logan asked.
"For the moment anyways. You know them – total yo-yos," Max lied with what must've been her fifth cheesy smile of the day. She'd really gotten good at the faking-happiness thing over the past few weeks.
"So," Logan started. "Brin called a few days ago." And that's when the madness began.
By the time Logan reached Max's street, Max wasn't talking to him anymore (and hadn't been talking to him for a solid ten minutes).
"Look, Max – "
"No, you look Logan!" Max yelled, breaking her ten-minute silence. "Just because you want to become, like, the best social worker ever doesn't mean that you have to try and… do whatever you did." She wiggled her hand vaguely to punctuate her remark. "Whatever the hell it was." Truth be told, she couldn't quite remember what Logan had said to her that had made her so mad. But she was sure it was really bad.
Of course, it never really occurred to Max that Logan would drive up to 337 Waverly and find a big black charred spot instead of Max's own elegantly decorated home.
"Oh my God!" he gasped. "What happened to your house? Should I call the police? Where are your parents? Where's Sketchy? Oh God, where's my cell phone?" It took Max about four seconds of staring straight at where her house had been to realize what he was freaking out about.
"Oh, don't worry about it," she said nonchalantly. "That happened weeks ago. The only casualty was Sketchy's face, and even that wasn't missed too much." Logan out a breath that he seemed to have been holding in. He looked at Max with wide eyes.
"Why didn't you tell me this over the phone?" he asked.
"Because we talked all of two times and I never had a chance!" she nearly shrieked. "It was always, 'sorry for not calling, but I've got to go do homework' or 'sorry for not calling, but my advanced calculus teacher keeps on hitting on me and it's impossible to get out of class on time and then I've go homework and everything'…" she mimicked Logan's deeper voice. "What about me? Your loving and caring girlfriend?"
"You love me?" Logan asked point blank. Well that was taken out of context.
"Maybe," Max said quickly. What could she say now? Sure, Logan had told her he'd loved her millions of times but she'd never really said it back to him – treasuring the words far more than to hand them out like alkopops and a tweenie party. And, she couldn't really take words back now, could she?
"I mean," her voice faltered slightly. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. I'm very confused right now. I mean, a few days ago I told Pierce Brosnan I loved him."
"Pierce Brosnan?" Logan wrinkled his forehead in confusion.
"Yeah, I was watching some old James Bond movies on TV and… well, the guy's just so damn sexy," she fibbed. Well, it wasn't too big of a lie. She really had screamed out her affections for the actor right around the same time that Alec was waxing poetic about Bond's female acquaintance and Original Cindy was telling her Lickety-Boo that she loved her over the phone.
"But… you love me," Logan said again. "You. Love. Me."
"Sure," Max nodded. She truly wasn't sure about this whole love thing. She was about as versed with her feelings as a raccoon was in Ancient Hebrew.
Meanwhile, Logan had a triumphant smile on his face.
"You can just drop me off at the house next door," Max said. "They know me there."
"No problem, darling," Logan said, sneaking a sly smile at her. Oh great, Max was afraid of this. Immediately following the "I love you for the first time" stage came the pet name stage. She'd suffered through Krit and Syl going through this stage as they struggled to find new and inventive pet names for each other. At one point Krit was "Krittle-bear".
Max was never more happy to see the Castle Next Door in her life.
"So, I guess this is good-bye for now," Max said, shifting her roses and duffle bag to one hand so that she could open the door with the other. She leaned over and gave Logan a quick kiss on the cheek; but before she could pull away, Logan had one of his hands around the back of her neck and she found herself in a more complicated, deeper kiss.
Was it just her imagination or did Logan kiss better in junior year?
Max eventually got her lips removed of the boyfriend attached to them and climbed out of the car.
"Thanks for the ride!" she yelled as the vehicle speeded out of the driveway and onto the residential street. The sound of leaves rustling met her ears and it sounded like it was coming from the general direction of the garage. Max looked around for the cause of the sound. "Hello?" she asked outloud.
Idiot! She chastised herself. That's the first thing people say right before they get chopped up by the psycho in movies!
"Hello?" she yelled a little louder. Then there was definitely the sound of a garage door slamming. "Crap," she dropped Logan's flowers and her duffle bag and ran over to the garage. It had been locked from the inside, which meant that she had to lose valuable criminal-catching minutes by looking for the keys that Original Cindy had copied off for her.
Finally, she had to run back to the abandoned duffle bag. She found the keys, unlocked the door and opened it slowly to look inside just in case there was a crazy ax-man or something inside. The door bumped into something as it opened. Not a crazy ax-man.
A bouquet of flowers.
Max wrinkled her nose and reached down to grab the flowers. A dozen red roses with a white one in the middle – just like she liked; only this one had a teddy bear and a card attached. She squinted a little in the dim light and read the card.
Hope all of your dreams come true,
Love, Alec
Short, sweet, too the point and not too sappy, Max noticed. Logan's card droned on about how much he loved her.
"Alec?" she asked, looking around. There was silence for a few minutes before she continued. "Thanks for the flowers. I love them." Certainly Alec wouldn't misconstrue that as a declaration of eternal yearning, right? "Logan's my boyfriend – going on seven months now. He came to pick me up after you left to go talk to Brin or whatever… he's sweet like that." She shrugged. "Kind of bland in the kissing area, but he's sweet. Anyways, tell OC that I went to Joshua's to see what he's up to. And tell my parents that I'm at Jondy's."
There was another silence before a very quiet, "All right," came from the red Corvette.
"Thanks," Max smiled weakly. She had a feeling that one of Joshua's After Competition pity parties would really hit the spot right about now.
Twelve hours later Max woke up in a strange bed with feathers glued to her forehead and dressed in a giant Metallica t-shirt.
She turned around to see the head of a giant cat lying next to her and she screamed.
It was one of the more interesting ways she'd woken up, anyways.
Ending Note: YES! I have a new computer! A laptop in fact. With all sorts of stuff on it! Nonetheless, it is eleven thirty at night and I do have school in the morning so I'll have to end it here. But have no fear, everything will be explained in the next chapter. Or not. Depending on how my mood is tomorrow.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed and everything because god knows I haven't really been too consistent with my chapters (my goal being a chapter every two or three days – but it ends up being every week or so). And keep the reviews coming, because the more reviews I have, the more motivation I have to actually finish this fic!