Maxed Out (6 page)

I can’t look at him. I’m going to cry and my mascara’s going
to run everywhere. “You broke up with me,” I say. “What was I supposed to do?”

It’s easier to act tough when I’m talking to a wall.

“I brought you flowers,” he says. “I still love you.”

I let a single sob slip out. Why couldn’t I have waited
another day before stuffing another guy’s cock into my mouth? I don’t deserve
this.

“I’m cooking dinner tonight,” he continues. “I’d love to
have you over so we can talk. It should be ready around 7.”

I don’t say anything. I’m still trying to wrap my head
around this.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I miss you.”

I don’t move for at least a minute after he leaves. When we
broke up it was like he flipped my world over. Just when I started to get a lid
on things again he shows up and tells me that he liked things better the way
they were, before he ruined everything. I’m not sure I can take this.

It’s not like I didn’t have a large hand to play in our
breakup. He basically just parroted back my opinions, ones that I’d drilled
into him from day one of our relationship. Communication, honesty, and
closeness. None of this distance crap, physical or otherwise. When he suggested
we separate, I didn’t so much as hint that I wanted anything else. I could have
told him we could work through it. I could have saved the relationship. But I
didn’t. Because of this, I can’t even blame Max for his actions. It was a joint
failure. I’m far more furious at myself than I am at him.

Jeremy is still inside, I remind myself. I still need to
deal with him. I haven’t the faintest idea what I want to do here – I don’t
know if I should go back to Max, if I’m even interested in Jeremy at all
anymore – but I don’t want to burn any bridges here if I don’t have to. Thing
is, I haven’t the faintest idea how to let him down gently.

I blot my eyes as best I can before heading in. Jeremy has
put his clothes back on and he’s sitting on the couch, staring at the opposite
wall. He looks up nervously when he hears the door close, barely making eye
contact before he goes back to intensely studying the space opposite Renee’s
couch.

“Is he gone?” he asks, weakly.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” he says.

That’s not exactly the response I was expecting. “I think I
did all the dragging,” I say.

“It was irresponsible of me to tell you what I did,” he
says. “I just liked you a lot and you were smart and asking all the right
questions and you weren’t an obvious nut like Phil so I decided to slip in a
little more than the cover we agreed on. I’m sorry. I didn’t think they would
be listening.”

“What?” I say. I run what he said back through my head a few
times – the words are all there, but they don’t make any sense.

Jeremy looks up, panicked. “That man was here was about what
I told you at lunch, right?” he says. He’s sweating far too much for a man in
an air-conditioned building.

“No,” I say.

“Then who was it?” he asks. I don’t think he believes me.

Might as well lay it all out, then. “My ex,” I say. “He’s
invited me to dinner.”

“So that had nothing to do with me?” Jeremy says.

“No?” I say. I’m beginning to get more than a little bit
curious, but he seems to be in a fairly fragile mental state right now so I
don’t want to push it.

He gets up and starts pacing. “Can we just forget about all
of this?” he says.

“I think I would be okay with that,” I say, slowly.

“Just forget I said anything. Please,” Jeremy says. “Please
don’t tell Phil.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

I don’t think I would have done anything to fuel Phil’s
obsession in any case, but if Jeremy isn’t angry about me toying with him – and
he seems to not care, for the moment at least – then I’m more than happy to do
whatever favor he might want me to do. Not telling Phil something that I don’t
understand myself is a really light price to pay.

Jeremy’s revelation opens up some questions – if he really
did find something to expose at the end of his article series, if he got fired
for it and there are suits coming to check up on him and make sure he stays
quiet, what else might be real? I shake my head. The world is a nasty place
with those in power doing everything they can to stay in control. The kinds of
things that the government has been doing openly since 9/11 would have been the
subject of conspiracies a decade ago. When stories about warrantless wiretaps
or the government requesting a backdoor to Facebook or whatever surface, we
don’t even bat an eyelash anymore. Hell, it’s only been a few months since the
last time a college student found a federal issue GPS tracker under his car and
nobody cares. The only reason that a coverup like the one Jeremy seems to be
involved in is interesting is because it’s relatively new. It’s not morally or
legally worse than anything we’re happy to appease.

Also if it was the kind of thing I really needed to worry
about he’d have been killed.

Our trip back to work is a comic antonym of our journey out.
Before we were all giggles and sunshine. Now we travel in silence, Jeremy
undoubtedly caught up in his conspiracy, me praying he didn’t remember what we were
doing before that came up. Luckily it’s a short trip so the constant press of
work soon drags us out of our collective dread.

Phil’s at my desk, which isn’t a surprise, but it’s a little
weird that we stepped out for twenty minutes and he picks the exact time we get
back to hover over me and micromanage.

“The K-pop article failed the marketing test,” he says. “A
couple of their big labels just signed giant ad contracts and we’re doing talks
with a third. Tony says we can run the story intact in a few months but in the
meantime you can use a lot of that cultural stuff for a generic piece on
international music. How everyone seems to copy the US scene and sing in
English and stuff. You’ve probably got half an article worth of that stuff that
you can recycle here.”

“When do you need it?” I ask glumly.

Phil grins. “Monday,” he says. He slinks back to his lair.

I crash in my chair and spin around in agony. “That was a
good article, too,” I tell Jeremy.

Still, this could have ended a lot worse.

I spend the rest of the day frantically accumulating sources
for what has to be the worst fluff piece I’ve ever written. There’s maybe a
paragraph worth of content for every page of article, made even worse by Phil’s
sudden e-mail saying he wants four pages of content (which is absurd for about
fifty reasons). Jeremy is helpful but distant. I can’t blame him, but I’ve
decided I don’t care what he thinks about anything at this point. Phil relies
on me for a lot of things. I’m not going to get replaced overnight without some
pretty clear signals beforehand.

I make a show of changing my mind back and forth regarding
dinner with Max but I have trouble convincing my audience of one. I’m going
back to Max. I’ve known all week that if he gave me a chance I’d come running;
now that he’s made this opening my play is predetermined. I’m not sure exactly
what we’ll say over dinner – certainly there will be some things to be said –
but I haven’t even gotten my stuff from his place yet. I’m clearly not ready to
move on. We’ll be able to set aside our issues with the relationship and carry
on. Hopefully.

In truth, I have no idea how he sees things. He might just
want to say goodbye in a more dignified manner. This uncomfortable tidbit
manifests as a faint gnawing sensation in my gut, the only thing that makes me
actually want to skip dinner. I don’t actually have a say in what Max has
decided. That’s the part that makes relationships great, right? The part where
the other person is unpredictable and irrational and does things you hate. It’s
all about contrast, as Renee would say. You have to have bads to bring out the
goods.

In fairness, I don’t think Renee would ever use that cliché
about life experiences in that kind of a general sense or even about
relationships, just about volume or colors or some other boring artistic thing in
some meaningless statement trying to explain her complete lack of taste
regarding everything. Still, I have to try to rationalize this somehow. I can’t
quite live with the idea that the world creates pain randomly, for no reason.

I stay at work a bit later than usual to submit a draft of
the article before the weekend. I’ve got plenty of time before Phil needs it,
but given all the other shit I’m dealing with in my life it’s nice to get this
one thing under control. This results in me leaving a bit late to go to Max’s,
but I’m sure he’ll understand.

Or, of course, I’m trying to sabotage my chance at getting
back together with him.

I manage to suppress the sudden desire to take a shortcut I
know won’t work and wind up arriving about 15 minutes late. I’m more nervous
about this than I have been about anything in a while. The walk up our driveway
– his driveway – is accompanied by a cacophony of chemical sensations flooding
every receptor in my brain; it’s not altogether unfamiliar but somewhat
unexpected considering I’ve spent the better part of half a year living here.

He hasn’t changed anything, as far as I can tell. This is
neither good, bad, nor surprising. The screen door is impossibly imposing. I
feel like Aragorn at the gates of Mordor. Just because I’m doing the right
thing doesn’t mean it’s easy.

He opens the door before I can knock, although I’m not
really sure how long I was standing there. I catch a whiff of sautéed onions
and romantic candles. He’s gone all out, it seems – he’s got the table all
fancied up and he’s cooking as seriously as I’ve ever seen him, with little
bowls for ingredients and a silly apron and everything. There’s a wine on the
table -- something expensive, I’m sure, but neither of us really cares so it’s
likely he just asked a friend.

I can’t help but dread that he’s done all of this to say
goodbye with a little more elegance.

“Come in,” he says, opening the door. “Food’s almost ready.
I figured you might be late based on your text .”

I think if I had called I wouldn’t have been able to bring
myself to come at all. Seeing him in person is almost unbearable.  I tell
myself that he’s already made up his mind either way; that there’s nothing here
for me to fuck up, but I can’t shake the feeling that if I puke on his doorstep
and leave that I can put off this climax for as long as I can ignore his calls
and texts and then we’ll be like this forever, not really broken up.

Not really together, either. I squeeze my baggage in through
the door.

We don’t touch. Max has never really been big on casual
physical intimacy in private, which is to say if we’re alone and outside of the
bedroom we don’t cuddle or hold hands or kiss or anything. Usually I’m fine
with this – it’s preferable to having a clingy guy, for sure, and he’s fine
with whatever as long as I initiate – but it means I can’t read him right now. He’s
content to go back to cooking for now. I ignore my sudden desire to pee – I’m
not going to hide in the bathroom all evening – and sit down while he finishes
up.

We make the smallest of small talk as he cooks. His body
language is entirely neutral – he seems a bit tense but that could very easily
be me imagining things, and I don’t know if that means he wants me in or out,
so I do my best to ignore it. Still, I find my eyes darting about his face,
watching his hands, hoping for the slightest glimmer of insight that might let
slip his intentions.

“How’s work?” he asks.

“Fine,” I say. “I just spent two days on an article to have
it delayed by a few months by marketing so we don’t piss off a potential
advertiser.”

“About what?” he says, his tone halfway between genuine care
and complete disinterest.

“Korean music. Phil wanted a little article on some pop
group that wants to sell albums stateside but Jeremy helped me come up with a
bunch of data on how the whole industry’s a mess.”

He stops suddenly, putting down everything before he turns
to me. “Was that the guy from yesterday?” he asks, coolly.

I force myself to meet his eyes. “Nothing happened,” I say.
“Jeremy’s a new hire –“

“I know,” Max says. “You’ve been talking about him for at
least two weeks. I just wanted to know if –“

“Nothing happened,” I repeat.

He goes back to cooking. “You realize we were broken up,
right?” he asks. “It doesn’t matter if anything happened. We’ve talked about this.”

We had, but we decided during a similar talk that if he got
more hours we would break up and here I am pining after Max a week later. “Then
why did you want to know if it was him?” I ask, not wanting to discuss the real
issue.

It works as a deflection. He’s silent for a bit. When we
pick up the conversation again we don’t skirt the topic of our relationship: we
stay miles away. Still, there are overtones in every subject, and I can’t help
but feel tense and detached from anything that comes up.

Every word grates: from annoyance that we’re not dealing
with it, from fear that he might reject me, and because with the amount of
stress I’m under, having to carry on a conversation is tortuous. I manage to
make it through – we manage to make it through, I suppose; he must be just as
on-edge as I am – and after a dozen eternities, we’re sitting down to eat.

“I thought about our earlier discussion regarding
long-distance,” Max says, finally.

I smile and nod, hardly daring to breathe.

“There’s a guy on our team – Ramirez, he’s one of our
linemen – who isn’t very trusting. Or smart. No matter what you tell him he won’t
believe you until he experiences things for himself. He came in as a freshman tackling
wrong. We told him he could break his arm if he didn’t change things. He didn’t
believe us. It took a week before he ended up in the hospital with a shattered
wrist.”