The door to the office slammed open, startling Max out of her daydream. She was supposed to be going over the weekly radio play numbers for the label's artists but a glance at the clock informed her she had zoned out over twenty minutes ago.
"You got next week's studio schedule for Rayon Flux?" Rick asked as he hung his worn leather jacket on the hook next to the signed poster of INXS and took a seat at his desk.
"Um, yeah," Max muttered, shuffling through the stack of papers on her own smaller desk. She could feel his impatient gaze on her while she searched through the disorganized mess, finally finding the schedule and taking it over to him.
"Christ sweetheart, you look like crap," he said, looking her up and down as he took the paper.
She glanced down at herself. Admittedly, she hadn't been putting in much effort lately, her unwashed hair tied back in a messy bun, and she just now realized the oversized flannel shirt she'd been wearing all week had a grease stain on it.
She glared at him as she sat back down in her chair. "Yeah well you're not the prettiest peach yourself either, Ricky."
"That's not what my ma tells me," he shot back with a wink. Max laughed despite herself.
Over the almost three years of working for Rick, their relationship had gradually evolved from mutual disdain to begrudging respect to wholehearted trust; particularly after his father's sudden illness and subsequent death the year before, when Max had kept track of countless doctor's appointments and made sure Rick was eating and then held down the fort at work and kept everything running smoothly during his bereavement leave. Now they were more friends than colleagues, the jabs and insults lobbed back and forth always playful and lighthearted.
It also helped that with Lake Michigan Records doing so well the past couple of years, Rick had been able to hire a second assistant who took over the more menial tasks while Max got to help with the music-related work. The pay raise certainly didn't hurt either.
"Speaking of, don't forget about–"
"Her birthday on Monday, yeah, I know," Rick cut her off with a roll of his green eyes. "You and Neil only left me like thirty sticky notes about it."
Max raised her hands in surrender. "Well, after last year's fiasco…"
"Yeah, yeah, you think I don't get enough shit from her about that?"
"You deserve it," she chuckled as she spun around in her chair and looked back down at the graphs in front of her, intending to focus.
But after a few minutes, the numbers started swimming on the page again, and she leaned back and rubbed at her tired eyes.
"You missing Doctor Dweeb?" Rick asked, his tone softer than before despite the less-than-kind nickname. He'd met Mike at various work events and still thought it was hilarious she was dating such a nerd.
"Yeah," Max sighed, not wanting to meet the pitying look in her boss's eyes.
A requirement of Mike's degree was completing an internship in the summer between his third and fourth year, and he'd of course gotten the one his whole class had been vying for. In Seattle. Which meant four whole months of long distance. They'd been naively optimistic before he'd left, making promises of frequent phone calls and postcards and assurances that the time would fly by and they'd be reunited before they knew it.
At first, they'd called each other every day."The ocean reminds me of your eyes," he'd say. "90210 isn't as good without your running commentary," she'd sigh. And they'd go to their respective windows and look up at the same moon and know they were feeling the same yearning in their chests as they recounted every minute detail of their days.
Then he got busier, needing to stay late at the office with the other interns, and the calls decreased to every other day. Now they were once a week, if they were lucky; unanswered calls and voicemails left back and forth like a disappointing game of tag.
Even during the weekends, he seemed to always have plans, his fellow interns planning trips to the beach or the market or even going for hikes, which Max had initially laughed at thinking it was a joke because Mike had never wanted to hike in his life. But apparently, he was having a fucking blast meeting new people and trying new things. Without her.
She didn't say anything about how it was making her feel, she refused to burden him with her neediness when he was already stressed from the demands of his internship and also having a grand old time outside of it with his new friends. "Who is this? Mm… doesn't sound familiar," she'd joke when she finally managed to catch one of his calls, a fake smile plastered on her face to mask the sadness in her voice, pretending she wasn't missing him at all.
There were, at present, 2064 miles between them and she was feeling every single one acutely, like a knife in the heart. Work kept her busy enough, but once she left and she was alone with her thoughts for the remainder of the day the loneliness set in, so heavy and oppressive it was almost debilitating.
Max wasn't living well, she knew it, but she didn't care enough to do anything about it. She'd go straight home, blowing off any invitations from friends and colleagues, and proceed to get stoned out of her mind before ordering takeout or throwing something in the microwave. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten a vegetable that wasn't a potato.
The television was constantly on just to fill the silence—Donna Martin and Roseanne Conner and Captain Don Cragen becoming her roommates for the evening, drowning out the thoughts in her head with drama and murder and canned laughter. Most nights she ended up falling asleep on the couch because the bed felt weird and empty without Mike in it.
Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night, stiff and disoriented, an infomercial for a love song compilation CD blaring from the TV. She'd feel her way to the bedroom in the dark and try to fall back asleep before she could think too hard about how cold the sheets were.
Lately, she'd started using his body wash just so she could remember what he smelled like. The other day she'd actually sniffed one of his t-shirts that had fallen behind the laundry basket before realizing that was kind of gross, not to mention truly pathetic.
"Ah, chin up kid," Rick said. "You got, what? Two more months? I dunno if I can take that much more of you moping around." She could tell he expected her to have a sassy comeback, but all she could offer him was a sad smile.
"Why don't you come for dinner on Sunday? Tara keeps saying she wants to have you over again before she goes back on tour," he continued. Tara was Rick's girlfriend of six months. She was the bassist in a band that had signed with the label after Max had seen them playing at a bar on the South Side, so they liked to say that Max was their fairy godmother. "And we can watch the game after! It'll be great!"
Max made a noncommittal sound and mentally rolled her eyes. The Bulls were two games away from winning their first-ever championship title and the city was in an absolute frenzy—it was all anyone could talk about, and their overwhelming glee over the playoffs just further soured her mood. She'd never been much of a basketball fan herself anyway. Sometimes she and Mike would score cheap tickets to see the Cubs play at Wrigley, yet another thing she was missing out on this summer.
Thankfully, Rick seemed to realize he wasn't going to be able to cheer her up and left her to her own devices for the rest of the evening.
It was just after eight p.m. when she decided to call it quits, leaving her desk in its perpetual disorganized state as she shouldered her overstuffed messenger bag and made her way out of the office and down to the lobby. She hadn't even really gotten anything done in the final few hours, she was just delaying going home and facing another weekend of doing absolutely nothing.
"Max!" she heard someone call out behind her. She turned to see Jess, the lead singer of The Hellcats, jogging towards her, her short, freshly bleached hair spiked up with pink gel.
"Hey, how was the meeting with the execs?" Max asked once Jess caught up with her.
"Rad, we extended our contract for two more albums," Jess grinned.
Max smiled as they reached the door, her hand already grasping the handle. "That's great, you guys totally earned it."
"Thanks!" Jess smiled brightly and put a hand on Max's arm to stop her. "Hey, we're all going to Neo tonight for Kim's birthday, you should come with."
Max tried not to make a face. Getting jostled around in a sweaty, packed nightclub while everyone else scoped out guys to make out with was not her idea of a good time right now.
"Um yeah, maybe," she replied, yanking the door open and hoping Jess got the message. "I'll catch you later."
"We'll be there around midnight!" she called out as Max started to walk away. "You deserve a night out, girl!"
Max left her headphones on as she trudged up the stairs to her apartment, praying that Mrs. Richards, the octogenarian who lived next door, wasn't in the hallway to rope her into a minimum twenty-minute conversation about her grandchildren or her shitzu or her suspicions that the handyman was a pervert. She let out a sigh of relief as she rounded the corner and found it blessedly empty.
The Smashing Pumpkins album had taken up almost permanent residency in her Walkman since its release, and she turned it up as she entered the apartment and locked the door behind her. She immediately beelined for the bong and took a hit of the ashy remnants left in the bowl from the night before.
Exhaustion settled over her like a heavy blanket. She knew she should probably talk to her doctor about increasing her dose of antidepressants but she hated messing with her meds, never knowing if the side effects would make her gain weight or cause insomnia or take away her ability to orgasm.
The fridge was nearly empty save for some condiments, a jar of pickles, and a takeout container of Chinese food that was at least two weeks old. Max let the door swing shut. Popcorn it is. She tossed the brown paper bag in the microwave and leaned back against the counter as she waited for the popping to begin.
Her eyes were drawn to the door of the fridge across from her, covered in pictures that she'd contemplated taking down because they made the chasm in her chest throb painfully—an orca-shaped San Diego Seaworld magnet held up a candid shot from Nancy and Jonathan's wedding reception, Max in the horrible bridesmaids dress that still lived in the back of her closet, chin resting in her hand and her pupils practically heart-shaped as she grinned at something Mike was saying.
A picture of the whole gang on the day of their high school graduation, arms slung around each other in front of the school was held up by a free Northwestern magnet that Mike had gotten for free his first week of college. A magnet shaped like the Empire State Building held up two pictures, the first, a Polaroid taken minutes into 1991 at Ben and Trevor's New Year's Eve party, depicted a drunk Max flipping off the camera, her lipstick smudged from frenching her boyfriend at midnight, and said boyfriend wrapping his arms around her from behind with a random pair of sunglasses on his face and an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.
The second was a photo booth strip from the record label's Halloween party that Mike had dragged her into against her will. They'd dressed up as Bobby and Shelly from Twin Peaks.
In the first picture they were caught off guard, still getting into position when the flash unexpectedly blinded them; the next one was nice, Mike smiling brightly while Max wore a look of fond exasperation; in the third one he'd surprised her by grabbing her face and planting a kiss on her cheek; and the last one was just a blur of limbs as she shoved him in retaliation. If there had been more than four pictures the rest would have shown their playful tackling turn into a heated makeout that lasted several minutes and ended when one of the executive assistants ripped the curtain open and told them to take it elsewhere.
She smiled sadly and let her gaze roam over the rest of the pictures, memories of her favourite person in the world. Then the microwave beeped loudly and she gingerly picked up the steaming bag, giving it a shake and carefully tearing it open by the corners before planting herself on the sofa. She took her headphones off and turned on the TV, substituting one form of distraction for another.
An hour later, America's Most Wanted was finishing as she scraped the few remaining popcorn kernels against the butter-coated side of the bag and sighed. Another half hour until her scheduled phone call with Mike, when it would be half past eight in Seattle and he would hopefully have some time between getting home to his company-provided apartment and whatever fun activity his friends surely had planned.
She switched the channel to MTV to catch the Top 10 at 10 and took another bong hit before sprawling out on the sofa and letting her thoughts blur into a contemplative haze.
When a rather racy music video came on featuring a nearly naked couple practically dry-humping each other on the beach, a familiar tingling originated in her lower abdomen and her mind drifted, as it so often did these days, to thoughts of sex. And the fact that she wasn't having any.
Lately, she felt like a horny freak with the way her mind kept shoving explicit thoughts of Mike and his mouth and his hands to the forefront of her brain and the way her body craved his touch at all hours of the day, regardless if she was on the train or in a meeting or lying in bed unable to fall asleep because of the persistent ache between her thighs.
Her hand simply wasn't doing the job anymore. Neither was the vibrator she'd bought in a moment of desperation, donning sunglasses and an old baseball hat and slinking around one of the sleazy downtown sex shops like she was some kind of celebrity in danger of being photographed.
It didn't help that everything in this apartment prompted vivid memories of past passionate encounters—Mike lifting her up onto the kitchen counter, her legs wrapped around him; her bent over the dining table, the salt and pepper shaker tipping over as he pounded into her from behind; her riding him on the very couch she was now laying on. Hell, one time after a night out they'd barely made it through the front door and she'd ended up on her back on the hallway rug, clothing barely shoved aside as he slid into her without hesitation…
Max groaned and crossed her legs tightly, deciding she would attempt to lure Mike into some sort of phone sex situation once he called. They'd never tried it before, but maybe the sound of his voice coupled with the frantic movements of her fingers would be enough to satisfy her temporarily.
The longest they'd gone before this had been the month in senior year when her new antidepressants had completely killed her sex drive. And then there was the nearly three weeks last fall when she'd gotten a particularly nasty bout of the flu directly after he did, and then he had his midterm exams right when she'd recovered. But this had been almost two months now, and they still had another two to go. It was enough to have her seriously consider the logistics of just jumping in the car and somehow making the thirty-hour drive twice in one weekend.
She glanced at the time, her stomach flipping with anxious excitement when she realized he'd be calling any minute now. Then out of nowhere, the thought came to her that she hadn't checked the mail in over a week. That had always been Mike's job. Last month she'd forgotten to pay the electric bill and came home to a very aggressive voicemail from the collections department. Not wanting to get distracted and forget again, she jumped up and grabbed her keys, dashing towards the door and making her way to the mail room downstairs.
Their small cubby had been stuffed with mail, mostly junk, and she was still shuffling through it as she came back into the apartment where the phone was ringing.
She tossed everything on the coffee table and sprinted for the phone. "Hello?"
"Hey babe."
"Mike," she panted, a grin spreading over her face at that voice she'd missed so much. "Hi."
"What's up? You sound out of breath."
"I was just getting the mail and didn't want to miss your call," she explained as she relaxed into the couch. "How was your week?"
He told her about the project they were working on at the internship, and how the team they were assisting had a major presentation on it at the shareholder meeting next week so it had been all hands on deck. While he talked, she swept up the stack of mail on the table and began sorting out the junk.
She paused when she came upon a small white envelope addressed to her and Mike by hand. "Ooh, guess what just came in the mail?"
"Your new issue of Playgirl?" Mike joked.
"Har har." She tore the envelope open and slid out the light blue cardstock. "It's Dustybun's wedding invite."
Dustin had proposed to Suzie over Christmas by serenading her with a song from Phantom of the Opera before popping the question in a restaurant in front of her entire massive family. Max thought that she would have shrivelled up and died of embarrassment if that had happened to her, but from what she'd heard Suzie absolutely loved it. Dorks.
She scanned the sloping silver script. "August 31st… Salt Lake City, Utah… Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. Huh, I always forget she's Mormon."
"Are they the ones who don't use electricity?"
Max rolled her eyes. "That's Amish, you absolute airhead."
"Oh." He paused. "Then what's Mormon?"
"I'm not really sure, but I think they don't drink coffee or alcohol?"
"Shit, no drinking at a wedding?"
"I know," she chuckled, "how will we survive?" There was a silence and she could hear him shuffling things around. She cleared her throat as she pivoted to lie horizontally on the sofa. "So… I was thinking about you last night…" she started, twirling the phone cord around her finger, "when I was in bed."
"That's nice," he replied, clearly distracted by something. Max rolled her eyes. Apparently, she would have to make her intentions more obvious.
She lowered her voice to what she hoped was a breathy, seductive tone. "I was thinking about that day last summer when we went to the beach…"
"Oh yeah, when we played crazy eights with those Dutch tourists? That was fun."
Max frowned. That was definitely not the time she was referring to. She meant to remind him of the evening there was a fireworks show to celebrate the end of the Blues Festival and they drank a whole bottle of wine and he fingered her under a blanket.
Just as she was about to make her desires unmistakably clear, there was a muffled pounding on the other end of the line.
"Yo Wheeler, we're leaving in five!" a feminine voice called out in the background.
"Just a sec, Max," Mike said into the phone, followed by the dull thunk of the receiver being set down. "I'll be right there, don't leave without me!" he called out to whoever was at the door.
Max felt an acute wave of nausea wash over her. Why was there a girl at his door? A girl who called him Wheeler? Granted, it was his last name, but it was her name for him.
"Who was that?" she asked, trying to sound casual and not all bothered.
There was a pause. "Um, that was Chris."
She frowned again. The only Chris she knew of was one of the other boys in the internship. "But it sounded like a girl."
"Yeah, Chris is a girl," Mike replied nonchalantly. "You knew that."
Max felt another wave of nausea, stronger than before. Had she known that? She wracked her brain trying to remember their previous conversations. "I went to the market yesterday with Chris…", "Kyle, Chris and I went to this amazing concert, we stayed out until sunrise…"
"Did I...?" she asked doubtfully.
"Yeah, Christina," he insisted, "she just goes by Chris."
Max was certain now that she had not known that. Her chest constricted painfully. Was Mike deliberately lying to her?
"Max, I gotta go," he continued before she could question him further. "We're going to karaoke and the guys are waiting for me. Talk soon?" The guys plus Chris, you fucking liar, she thought as she swallowed past the dryness in her throat.
"Okay, bye–" she barely got the words out before she heard the tell-tale click of the call ending.
Max sat frozen with the phone still clutched in her hand, her heart pounding and her mind racing as she took stock of the facts:
One of Mike's fellow interns was a girl. Named Chris. A girl named Chris, who lived on the same floor as Mike and the others. A girl who he spent his entire day working with and then every evening and weekend from what it sounded like. A girl who convinced him to go hiking and apparently do karaoke, two things that would have never interested him before.
At worst, he'd straight up lied to her about it, at best he'd lied by omission by never mentioning her gender in any of their phone calls; either way, he'd been deceiving her.
The handset creaked from the force of her grip and pulled her from her thoughts. She set it down gently and ran her hands through her hair. Visions filled her mind of some nebulous, genius hottie draping herself all over Mike, laughing and touching his arm; pressing her thigh against his while showing him something on the computer… They probably had a great time talking about code and software and floppy disks, all that stuff that completely goes over Max's head when Mike talks about them, excitement gleaming in his eyes.
She'd never thought she was a jealous person until now. She had felt completely secure in her relationship for years, and Mike had never given her a reason not to be. But it was easy to feel that way when he was with her all the time. Now he was living it up on the other side of the country. Without her.
Of course, she should have known that she wasn't the only one who found him attractive. It was only a matter of time before some other girl found herself charmed by his dreamy eyes and his awkward sense of humour.
And Mike was so oblivious he probably wouldn't even notice a girl was flirting until she was flinging herself into his lap. And what boy could resist a girl who was fun and smart and most importantly there, while his girlfriend sat uselessly on the other side of the country? She knew that no matter how many times he said he missed her, there was no way it was as much as she missed him.
Max stood up abruptly, suddenly feeling like the walls of the apartment were closing in on her. She had to get out of there. She had to stop thinking about this before she worked herself into a panic attack.
The clock on the microwave told her it was half past eleven. She could still go out and meet up with Jess and the rest of the band. It was a perfect excuse to get blackout drunk and she wouldn't even have to be alone.
Ten minutes later, she was clad in a short, black halter dress and her combat boots, studying herself in the mirror after quickly lining her eyes with a black pencil and swiping on a dark red lipstick. Her hair was unbrushed and a little frizzy but it kind of worked with the whole look. She thought she looked pretty hot, which was something she hadn't thought about herself since before Mike had left.
She took a swig from the cheap bottle of vodka in the freezer before grabbing her things and heading out the door. If Mike's not sitting around moping, why the hell should I?
It was a hot night, and Max found she'd already worked up a sweat on the twenty-minute walk from her apartment building to the back alley where the club's entrance was located.
Tattooed and pierced patrons clad mostly in black were loitering around the dumpsters and smoking, the smell of weed and cigarettes lingering in the sticky air. Some sort of industrial grunge rock blared from inside every time the heavy steel door opened while she stood in line.
She flashed her driver's license to the bouncer—her real one, as her faithful fake ID had been officially retired once she'd turned twenty-one a few months ago—and made her way down the narrow staircase inside. The pulsating force of the music engulfed her as she descended the stairs, the heavy bass reverberating in her chest.
Neo had a reputation as somewhat of a goth cave, but the DJs catered to all kinds of alternative subcultures. Max stepped into the packed main area of the club, which had been decorated to look like Lower Wacker Drive—the underground highway in downtown Chicago. The walls and ceiling were modelled to resemble concrete pillars and arches, all of them fully covered in bright, spray-painted graffiti.
She stood off to the side, standing on her toes and trying to catch a glimpse of Jess and the rest of The Hellcats. Somehow, through the thick smoke from the fog machine and the rapidly flashing lights, Max was able to spot a head of pink and blonde hair, and then she saw the rest of the girls with her, standing around a table.
Weaving through the erratically dancing sea of bodies, she tried not to get snagged on any studded bracelets or body chains as she made her way to the back corner.
"No fucking way!" Jess shrieked when Max came to stand in front of the group. She dashed around the small tabletop and hugged her, enveloping her in the scent of her cloyingly sweet perfume. "I can't believe you actually came."
Max returned the hug before turning to face Kim, who had her waist-length black hair done up in two buns on either side of her head and appeared to be wearing some sort of long-sleeved fishnet dress over a bra and underwear.
"Happy birthday!" she called out to the guitarist, her voice barely audible over the music. Kim flashed her a grin and a peace sign in return. Max leaned back in towards Jess's ear. "I'm gonna need to start drinking now."
"Hell. Yes. Let's get shots!" Jess grabbed Max's hand and tugged her through the crowd towards the bar, shoving people aside roughly and paying no mind to their disgruntled reactions.
Max glanced around while they waited for the bartender to notice them, taking in the heavily made-up faces and outrageous outfits of the people around her. She accidentally made eye contact with a guy wearing a spiked dog collar who winked and flicked his pierced tongue at her, prompting her to quickly look away, her face flooding with heat at the lewd gesture.
Then she realized she hadn't thought about Mike in almost an hour, and the sadness and insecurity from earlier popped right back up, causing her stomach to clench with anxiety. Max shook her head as if she could physically shake the thoughts out of her brain. Where the hell are those drinks?
She peered over Jess's shoulder and watched the bartender pour four shots of Jack into questionably clean shot glasses. Jess threw some cash down on the counter and turned around, shoving a shot into each of Max's hands.
They threw them back one after the other, and Max savoured the harsh burn that lingered on her tongue. After that, they each got a Jack and Coke to go and headed back to the table where the rest of the girls were. She already felt less steady on her feet, holding onto Jess's shoulder as she led them through the crowd.
A song came on that Max recognized as being by one of Lake Michigan's bands. The bizarre growling vocals and synth-heavy electronic sounds of industrial cybergoth weren't generally her thing, but the crowd was into so she let herself get dragged onto the dance floor by the girls.
She felt pleasantly light and uninhibited, dancing in a tight circle with her friends under the spinning disco ball, self-consciousness banished by the fact that every single person in the room was a total weirdo. Occasionally a man would try to approach one of them and coax them away but they were always quickly shooed away by the other women, who'd made a pact that it was a "no boys" kind of night.
She'd lost track of how much time had passed when she realized she desperately needed to pee and staggered upstairs to the restroom.
They'd all done two more shots and Max was definitely feeling the effects, bracing herself on the graffiti and sticker-covered walls as she launched herself into the bathroom stall.
After she washed her hands she leaned in close to the mirror as she reapplied her lipstick, her reflection swimming in front of her the way it does when you know you're well and truly drunk. Her eyes dropped to the necklace Mike had bought her last year. She never took it off. Fuck. Mike. She'd been having so much fun she'd forgotten the reason she was there in the first place.
"Your boots are so cool!" the girl at the sink next to Max said with a black lipsticked smile, cutting her pitiable thoughts off at the pass.
"Oh thanks," Max grinned. "They're Docs." She nodded at the elaborately bejewelled rosary hanging around the girl's neck. "I like your necklace."
They started talking about the music the DJ was playing and then Max's job and before she knew it she was spilling the whole "Christina" saga to the group of random women who had assembled in the restroom, having grown interested in her story.
"–so yeah, he basically brushed me off and told me we'd 'talk later'." The group collectively scoffed as Max finished her tale with a dramatic flourish of her hands.
"That is shady as fuck, girl. You should dump him," a girl with about a dozen facial piercings called out from the back. The other women murmured in agreement.
"No first, you should get with someone," another woman interjected. "Revenge screw,"
Max laughed and shook her head rapidly. "What? No! He wouldn't actually cheat on me. Mike's not like that."
The girl she'd first been talking to, whose name was Marla, snorted at Max's denial. "Mhmm and I thought Peter wasn't like that until I walked in on him balls deep in the coworker he told me I didn't need to worry about. Men just can't stop themselves."
Max frowned and chewed on her lip. Sure, she'd been irritated and hurt by Mike's lying, but she hadn't seriously thought he would have done anything with that girl. But then why lie about it if it's nothing? Her mother's words from her childhood suddenly surfaced from her memories. "Never trust a man, Maxine. He'll leave you for the next pretty little thing like that," she'd say with a snap of her fingers after getting dumped by yet another loser.
The small, cramped room started spinning and she closed her eyes for a second and leaned back against the counter. The idea of Mike with someone else was unfathomably painful, and it made her chest seize up as breathing suddenly became difficult.
The group began to dissipate and Max turned back to the sink and splashed some cold water on her neck as her thoughts ran rampant. No, she decided. She wasn't going to assume Mike was cheating and she wasn't going to do anything retaliatory either. But she was suddenly filled with the burning desire to make him just a little jealous too.
Max stumbled outside, inhaling lungfuls of fresh air, her hand scraping along the brick wall as made her way down the alley.
There was a phone booth on the sidewalk under the hot pink neon glow of the "NEO" sign. She picked up the receiver, wedging it between her ear and her shoulder while she dug around in her purse for change, shoving a random combination of coins into the slot until the sound of the dial tone came through the phone.
There was a persistent, shrill ringing in Max's ears as she was pulled from the depths of sleep, and it took her a few seconds to realize it wasn't in her head, it was the actual telephone. With an agonized groan, she fumbled blindly on her nightstand for the source of the disturbance, her fingers finally grasping the offending device.
"Hello?" she croaked out, her throat raw and sore from the drunk cigarettes she couldn't resist when Mike wasn't around to stop her.
The remnants of last night's revelry clung to her like a heavy shroud, and her parched mouth begged for mercy.
"Ah, she lives." Mike's voice came out sounding much louder than it usually did. She winced and held the phone further from her ear.
"Mm," she grunted in response. "What time is it?"
"Noon here, so it's two p.m. there."
Max gave a hum of acknowledgement as she rolled over and pulled the blanket over her head in an attempt to ward off the relentless ache that pounded through her temples.
She thought she got home just after three last night, but evidently, not even almost twelve hours of sleep was enough to banish the hangover from hell. She vaguely remembered hugging Jess and Layla, the drummer, goodbye after they walked her home and practically carried her up the stairs.
Her eyelids, heavy with exhaustion and regret, reluctantly peeled open, and she glanced down and saw that was still wearing her dress which had ridden up around her waist in the night.
"So," Mike continued after a moment, "exactly how many guys did you end up dancing with last night?" Max's eyes flew open. Oh no. It all came flooding back to her. The shots, the bathroom conference, the brilliant idea to leave Mike a voicemail and let him know what he'd been missing.
She groaned and squeezed her eyes shut again as the scene replayed in her head.
"Hey, baaabe. I know you're not home because you're out with Christina," she'd said, drawing out the end of her name mockingly. "You're probably having a great time drinking overpriced coffee and fucking gazing out at Mount Ranier from the fucking Space Needle or whatever the hell else you do in Seattle. But I'm out too. And I'm wearing that black dress you like. And a lot of guys wanna buy me drinks, and they wanna dance with me. So you and your stupid bony knees are missing out, so suck on that you– you butthead!"
"Fuck," she mumbled, her face flushing bright red from embarrassment. Could she have come off as any more desperate and insecure? Talk about a turn-off.
"That was quite the unexpected voicemail to come home to," Mike chuckled. "I haven't been called a butthead in quite some time."
"Mike, nothing happened, I swear. I didn't even dance with any guys, I just wanted to– to make you jealous," she confessed, needing him to believe her.
"Relax, I'm not mad," he assured her. "I just– well I never thought the shoe would be on the other foot."
Max furrowed her brow. "What do you mean?"
"Just that usually it's me with the jealousy issues."
"What jealousy issues?"
He huffed out a laugh. "Max, you hang out with literal rock stars on a regular basis. I'm just a computer nerd with bony knees. I guess I've gotten good at hiding how paranoid I feel sometimes."
She snorted. "Oh please, those guys are all way too into themselves. And their hair… And for the record, I love your bony knees," she added quietly.
Mike laughed. "Good to know."
Max squeezed her eyes shut. The question sat on the tip of her tongue. She needed to know. She shouldn't say it, she should just let it go. But when has she ever done the thing that she should do?
"Did you purposely hide that Chris was a girl?" she blurted out before she could stop herself. There was a silence on the other end of the line that made her nausea worsen exponentially.
Then there was a heavy sigh. "I… I just didn't want you to worry," Mike admitted, his voice heavy with regret. "It honestly didn't start off intentionally but then you just assumed it was all guys and it– it felt too late to correct it and… well I know it's been hard on you, the long-distance thing."
Max chuckled bitterly. "It doesn't really make me feel better to know that you've been hanging out with a girl and lying to me about it."
"I'm so sorry, you weren't supposed to–"
"Find out?" she hissed, her face flushing again but this time with anger.
"Fuck, I– I'm just stupid and I thought I was making it easier for you. There's nothing going on. At all."
Max raised an eyebrow. "Does she know that?"
"Yes. She does," he said emphatically. "I talk about you all the time, it's honestly annoying."
Mike continued to feed her desperate reassurances and her own thoughts tuned out his rambling. She didn't really feel that much better because she knew plenty of girls who wouldn't see a long-distance girlfriend as an obstacle. And she knew firsthand how simply being nice to someone of the opposite sex could be misconstrued.
"–what I'm saying is, you don't have anyone to be jealous of," he finally finished, short of breath from his prolonged appeal for forgiveness. There was a long pause as Max gathered her thoughts. She rubbed at her eyes, grimacing at the traces of black eyeliner and mascara that came away on her hands.
"Do you not… believe me?" he asked in a small voice that made Max's heart hurt and her outrage fade away.
"I do," she sighed, deciding she forgave him. He meant well, he just had the worst instincts of anyone she'd ever met. But she was still unable to shake the feeling of inadequacy that had been plaguing her since last night. "I just… I dunno. It's been so long and you're in this exciting new city and there's girls who are smart like you are–"
"Don't do that," he cut her off. "Don't talk about yourself like you're not smart. And you know I don't care that you're not in school too. You have like, the coolest job ever."
"It's definitely not," she said with a self-deprecating laugh. "But also like, we've been together since we were sixteen and neither of us has really been with anyone else so–"
"Max, stop. Don't even finish that thought." She heard him sigh as if he was exasperated with her. "How could I possibly want anyone else, Max?" he asked after a second. "You ruined me the first time you kissed me. No one else even comes close."
Her stomach gave a flip and she couldn't stop the grin that spread across her face at his words. She rolled onto her back and threw the duvet off of her head. "Wow. Must have been some kiss."
"It was," Mike chuckled, clearly relieved that her mood had lightened.
"I just really miss you," Max said, cursing the tremble in her voice. Then she took a deep breath and summoned the courage to tell him exactly how she'd been feeling lately, knowing he'd understand.