Page 31

Marcos

As I suspected, my dad thinks therapy is a waste of time.

He tells me I need to go outside more, as though the hours I spend playing baseball each week isn’t enough.

I promise to do so, and don’t bother putting up a fight about the therapy sessions.

I don’t have a leg to stand on. Not unless I tell them the exact reason why I need it, or foot the bill myself. Neither option is appealing.

When Max gets home, I’m still sitting on the living room couch even though the call with my parents is long over. His face falls the second he sees me sitting here without the TV on. I realize how it looks a second too late. Now he’s going to think something is wrong.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asks, stepping into the room and squinting at me.

“Yeah.” I hold up my phone. “Just finished talking with my parents.”

“Oh.” His face relaxes into a smile. “How are they? ”

“Good. How was practice?”

“Did they say anything about the behavioral therapy appointments you’ve been going to? Or the meds?”

Damnit . “Yeah. They aren’t able to cover the extra cost, so I won’t be able to do any more.”

“Shit.” Max sits down and faces me on the couch, back against the armrest and one knee cocked at an angle. “Well, you can’t just stop. We can figure something else out. We can get jobs at Luke’s diner.”

He nudges my knee with his foot when he says this, making certain I know it’s a joke. I try to laugh, but can’t quite get it up.

“It’ll be okay. I probably don’t need to go anymore.”

“Really? You’re feeling better?”

I frown, thinking. I’m mainly attending sessions to help with the touch aversion, which has definitely been getting better. I was lying naked on top of Nate only a few days ago, and if that’s not a testament to success, I don’t know what is.

“Yeah, a bit,” I reply slowly. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely better, but it would make Max sad to say it out loud.

I shrug. Max bites his lip and looks away across the room. It feels like he’s working himself up to saying something. I wait for him to meet my eyes again before raising an eyebrow in question.

“Marcos, I’m sorry. I was a really crappy friend after everything happened,” he begins.

“I felt like shit and I didn’t know how to talk to you about it, so I just pushed you away instead.

I wasn’t mad at you or anything, but it felt like things were different between us and I just wanted everything to go back to how it was before. ”

“Max,” I say, shaking my head as my stomach bottoms out. “No, just…no. You weren’t?—”

“Yes,” he cuts me off firmly. “I was. All I did was shut you out when you tried to help. I was selfish and I’m sorry for that, because I think you needed help too and I blew it.”

“Max,” I repeat, trying to stem the flow of words. He talks over me.

“Which is why I don’t think you should give up on therapy. I told you before, I have money in my savings from my parents and I hardly ever use it. We need to…” He stops, thinks for a second and continues. “We need to stop giving Theo and Cruz our time. They don’t deserve it.”

Max’s voice cracks a little bit on Theo’s name.

It’s one of only a handful of times I’ve even heard him say it.

As always, fury and guilt are my immediate response, as my brain supplies images of what probably happened to my friend in that bedroom.

Across from me, Max deflates a little bit, having said what he needed to say.

He’s right. Once more, we’ve invited Theo in and let him shit all over us. Enough.

“You’re right,” I tell Max, looking at him and seeing the glimmer of the ghost he was last year. “You’re right. I’ll talk to my mom again. I do think the therapy has been helping, so I’d like to keep going if I can.”

“I just want you to be happy,” he says sadly. “You weren’t happy before and I missed it. This time, I’m going to be better.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong, Max.” He nods, still looking a great deal less joyful than he was when he first got home.

I hate it when I’m the reason he’s unhappy.

I love him so fucking much; I’d do anything in this world to take away his pain.

I gesture between us. “When you hurt, I hurt. It’s as simple as that. ”

He takes a deep breath. “I know. I’m still sorry, though. I felt like I was…wandering around lost in a fog, but I never meant to leave you behind.”

“I’m still here.”

“Yeah. Thank God for that. Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you—remember Coach’s barbecue? I told Vas about what happened when we were on our way there.”

“You did?” I raise my eyebrows at him, surprised. His doctor told him months ago that he needed to try and be more open and honest with his close friends, but every time I asked him about it, he would only say that he was working up to it.

“Yeah. It was easier than I thought it would be, and Vas didn’t make me feel like it was my fault or anything.

I actually felt better right afterward, like a weight had been lifted or something.

But then I stayed over at Luke’s that night, and had a nightmare.

I scared the shit out of him. He had a hard time waking me up, I guess, and then when I did wake up, I just started sobbing.

” He makes a flippant hand gesture. “Because I’m essentially a fucking water fixture at this point. ”

“Max.” He looks over at me.

“One of these days I’ll have full control over my emotions,” he jokes. “But, seriously, other than that it was fine. Poor Vas. He looked devastated.”

I nod, because even though I’ve never formally met Max’s friend, I’ve heard a lot about him. From what Max has said, the big German hockey player is sweet, and doesn’t have a single mean bone in his body. I doubt it was an easy conversation to have for either of them.

“That’s a big step. I’m proud of you.” And then, because Max looks like he needs it, I throw in a joke. “My therapist gives me easier homework. All I have to do is imagine myself naked and touching someone else who’s naked.”

A startled laugh bubbles up Max’s throat and I smile. Bingo.

“If only imagining Luke naked would cure me.” He sighs, and then laughs again when I make a disgruntled noise. The tilt of his mouth turns sly as he regards me. “Speaking of Nate.”

“Were we?”

“Did you tell him you were going to school to be an accountant? Because he keeps making offhand comments in the locker room about his accountant. ‘Oh my accountant messaged me,’ and ‘my accountant and I are grabbing dinner tonight.’ Everyone thinks he’s making investments or something.”

“Oh my god.” I snort, shaking my head and smiling at the visual.

“He’s so goofy,” Max says fondly. “I like him.”

“So you’ve said.”

“You like him, too. Even though you’re being weird about it,” he tells me. I sigh and fiddle with my phone. Nate had texted me while I was on the call with my parents, and I’ve yet to text him back.

I’m not sure I can do a good job of explaining how I feel about Nate to Max.

I can’t even explain it to myself. Do I like him?

Obviously. That’s not the problem. It wasn’t the problem the first night we met, and it will never be a problem as long as he’s around. There’s nothing to dislike about Nate.

No, the problem is me. The touch aversion is a big hurdle, sure, but that doesn’t feel like the half of it.

I’m in my last year of school—same as Max and Luke—while Nate has another year to complete.

The clock is ticking down, and is now really the best time to start a relationship?

Not just a relationship, but one with someone who is very firmly tied to a specific place.

When Nate graduates, he’ll be going back to his family’s property to work.

That’s his plan, and that has always been his plan.

It’s not as though he could pick up the damn ranch and move it to Detroit.

And is Detroit even where I want to be any longer?

Max has always been the sun my planet orbits around, and I like it that way.

He’s my person—the one thing I can count on to remain steady in a world that constantly tries to throw me off-balance.

We’ve spent our entire lives together, from grade school all the way up until this year when we graduate.

I hadn’t planned on ever putting state lines between us.

Without even meaning to, Nate has knocked the plan off course. I look at him and I want. I want a future that I’m too scared to form into more than vague dreams, because the moment I voice it out loud, I can’t take it back.

“Yeah, I do like him,” I answer Max eventually. Words are so inadequate sometime. Like . The truth, yet so, so far away from it at the same time.

“You can tell me,” Max says softly.

“I know. I guess I’m just worried about the future. Luke got me thinking about Detroit, and then Nate wants to be my fucking boyfriend for whatever reason. My parents, everything with Theo and Cruz. It’s just a lot, and no matter what choice is made, I’m going to be letting someone down.”

“Wait, did Nate ask you to?—”

“No.” I wave a hand. “Nothing like that. But we’re starting a relationship months before the end of the year, so… It’s just something I’ve been thinking about as a possibility. Another thing to worry about, I guess, because apparently that’s my forte. ”

“We still have the rest of the year, and most of the summer to decide. I’ll be back and forth to Detroit a little bit, sure, but I’ll still be here.

We don’t have to make any decisions right now.

” Max chuckles softly, but it’s a despondent sort of noise.

I look over at him. “I have to admit, the thought of you not being next door to me freaks me out.”

“Me too.”

“I guess my mom was right, and we’re too codependent on each other.” Max sighs gustily, clicking his tongue and shaking his head. I grin at him.

“Oh well, there’s no hope for us now.”