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December 15, 1984
Max squirms as her mom does her hair, wincing and complaining the whole time, and trying to get comfortable in the outfit she picked for the dance.
It’s not the dress her mom wanted her to wear, but it’s still nicer than she’s comfortable in. But it’s a compromise, and it made her mom happy, so she’s trying.
She doesn’t care what any of the other girls might think about her wearing pants, but she hopes the boys don’t say anything about it. She doubts Lucas will, but Mike’s still being a bit of an asshole for her, even with Eleven back, so who knows. Can’t be worse than anything he’d say about her in a dress, though.
“You seem a little nervous,” her mom comments with that knowing smile moms get sometimes, that makes it seem like they’re someone privy to their child’s every waking emotion, even when they’re obviously not.
“Not really,” Max mumbles, avoiding her mom’s eyes in the mirror.
But her mom isn’t deterred, probably because she’s been patiently waiting for the day she could talk to Max about boys for years.
“Is there a special boy you’re hoping asks you to dance tonight?”
“No,” Max answers, far too quickly, then frowns at how obvious she’s being.
She used to be so much better at playing cool; Hawkins is making her soft. Or maybe it’s just Lucas that is.
Her mom’s smile grows, confirming her transparency. “What’s his name?”
Max sighs, not seeing the point in trying to pretend anymore.
“Lucas,” she forces out, then swiftly follows it up with a stern, “But I don’t want to talk about it.”
It’s enough for her mother, who runs her fingers through her hair a few more times before sweeping it over Max’s shoulders.
“Understood,” she promises, then leans down to press her cheek to her daughter’s and catch her gaze in their matching reflections. “But he’s an idiot if he doesn’t ask you.”
Max doesn’t need the pep talk, it’s not like she’s going to come home crying if Lucas doesn’t make a move, but it’s still nice to get, just because her mom cares enough to give it to her. It’s been a while since that felt true.
“Well, he is one, so I guess we’ll see.” Max replies, a smile finally cracking through as she considers how endeared she is by the truth of that statement. “But I’ll just ask him if he doesn’t,” she decides, and her mom’s eyes shine with pride.
Max doesn’t want the night to end, but just as she promised, her mom pulls up outside the gym in Neil’s car at 9:30PM sharp, and it does.
She can feel her watching as she says goodbye to Lucas, so she doesn’t dare kiss him again, not that she necessarily would have otherwise.
But the hug they share makes her feel just as giddy, and she can’t manage to wipe the smile from her face until she’s slipping into the passenger side of the car.
“Did you have a good time?” her mother asks as soon as the door closes.
“Yeah,” Max answers as she pulls her seat belt into place. Once she’s seated and her mom has a clear look at her, Max tries her best to steel her face. “I mean, I guess. It was pretty fun.”
“Did you dance?”
Max shrugs, playing it cool. “A little.”
There’s an awkward pause before her mom asks her next question. “And who was that boy you were talking to?”
“That was Lucas,” Max says, her gaze pulled towards the window. Her mouth twitches up at the corner as she watches Lucas talk animatedly with Will as he waits for his own mom to arrive. He’s really cute, she thinks, and it’s that thought that gives her the confidence to turn back to her mom and announce, “He’s my boyfriend now.”
“Oh,” her mom says, sounding surprised but not really looking it; her face is a lot harder to read. “So you had a really good night.”
Max can’t quite place the shift in mood, but she doesn’t let it deter her. “Yeah, it was pretty great,” she reiterates, more genuinely this time.
“I’m really happy for you, baby,” her mom assures her, brushing her cheek for just a moment before she’s turning forward, her hands on the wheel and her eyes looking ahead. “But I hope you know better than to bring him around the house.”
The words, and the matter of fact way that they’re delivered, land like a punch to Max’s gut.
She doesn’t understand the full implication of them yet, not in that moment, but she knows it’s not good.
Her eyes catch Lucas’s as the car pulls away from the curb, and though she returns his wave, the smile she sends his way suddenly feels false.
July 2, 1985
Max wants to be annoyed as the boys leave them behind to play lookout, and normally she would be, but she’s too worried her stepbrother might be a murderer right now.
“Can I ask you a question?” El wonders, just sounding curious instead of tentative; any trace of her initial hesitancy with Max long gone after only a couple of days together.
“Yeah, sure,” Max mumbles, listening but not taking her eyes off of Billy from across the pool.
“Why did you break up with Lucas if you already knew that you would get back together with him?”
Max shrugs, not even aware El knew about the quick conversation she and Lucas had had before they left Mike’s earlier. “It’s just something I like to do sometimes.”
She sees El tilt her head out of the corner of her eye. “You like to dump his ass?”
The question sounds so silly in her deadpan, straight forward voice that it makes Max laugh a little at how absurd it really is when she puts it like that.
“It’s not that I like it, I just like having all of the control,” she explains, finally looking away from her stepbrother and toward her new friend. “It’s something you gotta do with boys sometimes. To show them who’s boss.”
“Show them who is boss,” El repeats, nodding sagely, and Max feels another surge of importance she’s felt since El showed up at her house the other day. Not many people listen to Max the way El does. Just Lucas, usually. When he’s not distracted by Mike.
“Yeah, or else you end up with an overbearing, controlling piece of shit like my mom did,” Max explains bluntly.
“And you do not want Lucas to be like your stepdad,” El states simply, and even though she’s not technically wrong, something about it sticks in Max’s chest and twists painfully, because it doesn’t sound right when it’s said aloud either.
“Lucas is nothing like Neil, and he never could be,” Max says firmly, and even though it’s something she’s telling El, it feels like it’s something she’s reminding herself of too.
“No?” El questions innocently, because she knows nothing about Neil.
Max can’t reiterate enough how different Lucas is from her awful, abusive, racist stepdad, and she can’t remember why she ever thought there was ever a possibility their relationship could ever end up like his and her mom’s. No matter how forgetful or clueless he could be at times.
She makes a note to be a little nicer to Lucas.
“No,” Max confirms, and when she looks away from El, her gaze searches for her boyfriend instead of her stepbrother, and she fights a smile when she spots him. “He’s way too much of a dork.”
January 9, 1986
“So, how was your Christmas break, Max?” Mrs. Kelly asks as she settles in behind her desk, her usual friendly smile sliding easily into place.
Max has a lot more trouble mustering up any kind of expression in return, and gives her a simple, half hearted, “fine,” even though she knows the school counselor won’t let her leave it at that.
“How was your mom?” the woman pushes, proving Max right. “Did you get to talk to your dad? Or spend any time with your friends, like we talked about?”
Mrs. Kelly is pretty nice, but Max hates talking to her. It’s only been a few sessions, but she’s already set up a system for herself where she only gives direct answers to direct questions. Even if half of those answers are lies or deflection.
These ones are easy enough to answer truthfully, though.
“My mom was either working or passed out on the couch the whole time, the only number I have for my dad is still saying it’s not in service anymore, and I broke up with my boyfriend.”
She actually broke up with Lucas last year, back around Thanksgiving, but she never did tell Mrs. Kelly that, and better she focus on that than the rest of her answer.
“Lucas?” she double checks, since Max has only ever mentioned him to her once.
“He’s the only boyfriend I’ve got,” she says plainly, and pauses, pinching her brows. “Or had.”
“Why did you break up with him?”
Max shrugs, looking down at her bitten nails as she picks at them. “I used to do it all the time.”
“So it’s no big deal?” Mrs. Kelly wonders, and something about that statement feels like a bigger betrayal of Lucas than breaking up with him in the first place did.
“I mean, I guess this time is different,” she relents, still not looking at the woman. She swallows thickly and admits, for the first time: “I think this time it’s for good.”
Mrs. Kelly lets the gravity of that hang in the air for a beat before she does her counsellor thing. “And why is that? You just don’t like him anymore?”
Max flinches at the bluntness. It sounds so mean and dismissive and Lucas doesn’t deserve that.
But it’s not completely untrue, though not in the way she means it.
“I don’t like much of anything these days,” she admits, her knee starting to bounce anxiously the more honest she gets. “It wasn’t fair to him.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Having a girlfriend that never wants to do anything with him or even talk to him.”
“Was he still trying to do those things with you?” Mrs. Kelly asks, sounding both curious and surprised. She clearly doesn’t know Lucas and his persistent loyalty.
“Yeah, of course he was,” Max laughs, but in that way she does when it’s more painful than funny. “That’s part of it too. I wanted him to stop doing it. To understand that I’m not the same girl he liked back in middle school, that liked to go to the arcade with him or try to teach him how to skateboard or watch movies with all of our friends in Mike’s basement. I’ve changed and we just don’t make sense anymore.”
It’s the most honest Max has been in this office, and even that’s barely even scratching the surface of why she finally ended things with Lucas.
Judging by the way Mrs. Kelly is looking at her, she knows that, but she still asks the wrong question. “Did you tell him any of that before breaking up with him?”
“He wouldn’t understand,” Max says confidently, and that’s another reason.
“Because he didn’t lose Billy?” Mrs. Kelly guesses, and then takes Max’s silence as confirmation. “I don’t know if he’s ever lost someone close to him, but you don’t think he could understand that you’re struggling with that?”
Max’s throat starts to burn in a telltale sign that she’s about to start crying, and she summons every ounce of control she has to stop her eyes from welling.
“No,” she chokes out past the growing lump. “No, I don’t think he’d understand that.”
Mrs. Kelly sees her struggling and doesn’t let up, but she does soften her voice when she asks. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t even understand it,” Max finds herself admitting before she can stop herself, and then it just all spills out. “Billy was a piece of shit, and not just to me; he was also a racist piece of shit to Lucas. He tried to tell me to stay away from him just because he’s Black. He literally attacked Lucas right in front of me. A thirteen year old boy. He probably would have killed him if Steve didn’t step in. So no, I don’t think Lucas understands why Billy’s death is fucking me up the way it is. I don’t even understand it.”
When the tears finally fall, they’re not for Billy, or even herself.
They’re for Lucas, and what a shitty, selfish, terrible girlfriend he had to put up with. A girlfriend who’s been ignoring him because she’s too fucked up over the death of a guy that hated him for simply existing.
Mrs. Kelly just sits there and lets Max cry silently for a couple of minutes, probably trying to figure out how to tell Max she’s a terrible, fucked up person in the nicest way possible.
“Grief can be a very complicated and confusing emotion. It doesn’t always make sense to us, let alone other people,” is what she says when she finally speaks, though. “Is that also part of why you broke up with Lucas, do you think? Because you feel guilty?”
Of course it is, but not just in the way Mrs. Kelly assumes.
Max can’t let herself share any of the other ways, though. Not with Mrs. Kelly, not with anyone. Not ever.
She sniffles and nervously looks at the clock, seeing she has another ten minutes of this left. “Can we just talk about my dad now or something?” she mumbles, shrinking in her seat and staring down at her dirty shoes.
Mrs. Kelly sighs in defeat, but knows better than to press any harder. “Sure.”
November 6, 1987
Max watches Vickie pace back and forth and every lap just kicks her own anxiety up another notch.
“I feel so useless just sitting here,” she complains, cutting Vickie off mid ramble. She hopes it wasn’t anything important because she’d stopped listening at least fifteen minutes ago.
Vickie looks at her like she’s crazy. “What, you’d rather be in another dimension fighting an evil, jacked wizard?”
“At least I’d be with Lucas,” is Max’s honest answer.
She was never ever one of those girls that always needed to be with her boyfriend, but after being alone for so long, wanting nothing more than to be with him again, it feels wrong to be separated from him already.
Max always told herself that if she ever made it back to Lucas, she’d never let him go again. And yet…
“They’re gonna be fine,” Vickie tries to assure her, as if she hasn’t been babbling about them all dying since they left. “You’ve all done this before, right?”
“Not like this, the stakes have never been this high before,” Max admits. She pauses before continuing, debating whether to say her biggest fear out loud. “And we’ve never won one of these battles without losing someone.”
A flash of fear crosses Vickie’s face, and Max recognizes it immediately. She wonders, only for a second, who it is that Vickie is scared to lose, before it’s obvious: Robin. Interesting.
The other girl masks it quickly though, and realizes that one of them needs to be rational right now, and for once, it’s going to have to be her.
Vickie walks closer and kneels down behind Max’s wheelchair, placing her hands on Max’s forearms.
“Lucas is going to be fine,” she says, and even manages to keep her voice steady enough that Max actually almost buys it. “He didn’t sit by your bedside for eighteen months waiting for you to wake up just to get himself killed the day you do. He’s gonna do everything he can to get back to you.”
Max has no doubt that’s true, but she also knows having the will to live isn’t all it takes to stay alive.
“It would be just our luck if he didn’t, though,” she sighs, falling back into her old pessimistic ways. “I didn’t even tell him that I love him before he left.”
Vickie smiles sadly at her and squeezes her arm, even though Max can only see her do it. “He knows.”
Max swallows, nods, and chooses to believe her.
December 3, 1987
Max is usually pretty good at listening to Steve when he gets on his tangents, but it’s hard to invest time and energy into his stories of the girls he dates when she knows Steve is just as uninvested in the relationships as she is.
Still, she plays along and nods in the right places, and only shares looks with Robin a few times throughout his very long tale.
“But what about you?” he asks around a spoonful of hospital jello when he’s finally done regaling her of his most recent terrible date. “How are things with you and Sinclair?”
“What is this now? Round six? Seven?” Robin tacks on teasingly from her spot at the foot of Max’s hospital bed.
She’s had a steady flow of visitors since everything ended, and she’s been grateful for them, but she can’t wait to get out of here and stop feeling like a charity case that the whole group feels like they have to constantly babysit or entertain.
“Things are good with us,” she nods, licking her dry lips before very slowly eating some of her own jello. Because she can do that now. “But, uh, we’re not back together.”
“What? Why not?”
“Please don’t tell me you’re not into him anymore,” Steve begs, sounding genuinely distressed at the thought. “My belief in love is hanging on by a thread here.”
Max rolls her eyes at the dramatics. “Of course I still love him, more than ever. We just haven’t talked about it.”
Those two things are, of course, not unrelated. The more intensely Max feels, the harder it is for her to talk about; it’s always been that way.
“That’s crazy,” Steve thinks.
“Yeah, after that reunion I had the absolute pleasure of witnessing, I didn’t even think there needed to be a talk,” Robin adds, and Max’s eyes widen in eager agreement.
“Me neither. I thought I made my feelings for him clear when I woke up,” she says softly, averting her gaze to the half eaten bowl of jello sitting in her lap. “Maybe he’s the one that’s not into me anymore.”
Robin scoffs and smacks Max lightly on the leg, as if she can feel it. “Now that’s crazy.”
“Are you insane?” Steve asks. “That boy came to see you every day for eighteen months. He sat by your bedside and played your favorite song on a loop for over an hour. You don’t do that unless you’re head over heels in love with someone.”
“And he refused to stop!” Robin makes sure to add. “Do you know how many times his parents tried to get him to stop coming every day? To at least do it every other day?” Max does actually know a little about that and has to fight a small, sad smile. “He literally almost got me and Vic eaten by demodogs because he refused to turn it off when we were cornered.”
That gets a little laugh out of Max, despite herself, but it comes out sounding wet and emotional. She sniffs and wipes at her nose, feeling like a stupid girl; she blames her exhaustion from her physical therapy session earlier.
When Steve grabs her foot through the blanket and gives it a tiny, reassuring shake, Max can actually feel it this time.
“I promise Lucas still loves you like crazy,” he says, and he sounds so confident that Max really wants to believe him. “He probably just wants you to focus on your recovery.”
“Maybe,” Max concedes quietly, the rational part of her brain knowing it’s most likely the truth. But the irrational, insecure part refuses to be silenced: “Or maybe he’s realizing that I might not ever fully recover and he doesn’t want to take on that burden.”
“You are literally insane,” Steve huffs, leaning back in his chair and levelling Max with a challenging stare. “Does that really sound like Lucas Sinclair to you?”
When Max won’t answer, Robin completes the tag team with the knock out blow. “Or does it sound more like you?”
Max really can’t argue with that.
July 10, 1989
Max hadn’t realized how accustomed she’d gotten to the Indiana weather until she got back to California, but as she waits for her dad to pay for their orders, the sweat already starting to pool in every crevice of her body is a harsh reminder.
The idea of coming back to California and feeling like she no longer belonged used to scare her, but she’s found she doesn’t mind that home is somewhere else now.
It also reaffirms the joint decision she and Lucas made to go to different colleges in Ohio instead of out here, like they spent most of junior year considering.
"How come your boyfriend didn’t come with you?” her dad asks as he hands her one of the ice cream cones in his hands and nods towards a free bench across the pier. “Lucas, is it?”
“Lucas, yeah,” Max nods, following just a step behind him. “He’s back at the motel.”
“He’s not afraid to meet your old man, is he?”
Max laughs, knowing he’s joking. “Because you’re so scary?”
“Hey, trust me, kid, I’ve met a few girls’ dads before, and it’s always a little terrifying,” he informs her as he drops down heavily on the bench and slides over to give her room to sit beside him.
“Well, he’s faced a lot scarier things than you, so I really don’t think that’s it,” Max assures him, taking the offered seat. Lucas had made his own jokes along the same lines on their ride out here, but Max knows him well enough to know he wasn’t being serious. He knows better than anyone that while Max loves her dad, he hasn’t exactly been an active enough part of her life in recent years for her to be seeking his approval in any meaningful way. Plus, after surviving Billy and having to avoid Neil, her dad is a cake walk. “He just wanted to give us time to reconnect on our own first.”
Her dad nods, taking a swipe of his Rocky Road ice cream before saying, “That was considerate of him.”
“Yeah, he’s the best,” Max agrees, and there’s a sense of deja vu to the simple exchange that reminds Max of the night of the Snowball, and suddenly she’s adding, “And just so you know, he’s Black,” before she can stop and think of a more subtle way to share that information.
Her dad is taken aback, and Max can’t tell if it’s by the bluntness of her words or the words themselves. “Oh. Okay…”
“I’m just telling you upfront because my stepdad and stepbrother were racist assholes about him and I’m not about to subject him to any more racist family members,” she quickly explains, making sure to sound firm even though it hadn’t come out the way she’d planned. She has no reason to think her dad will be anything like Billy or Neil, but she still remembers the look on her mom’s face the first time she saw Lucas; even though she was always supportive and is nothing but appreciative of him now, Max hasn’t forgotten. “So if you have a problem with that, I’d rather know now before-”
“Whoa, whoa, Max, honey, of course I don’t have a problem with it,” he quickly reassures her, moving his cone from one hand to the other, so he can squeeze her shoulder. “All I care about is that he treats my little girl well. That’s literally it.”
Max relaxes under his paternal touch, and she shakes off her sudden bout of protectiveness to smile bashfully.
“He does,” she confirms softly, biting her cheek as she really considers just how lucky she is, especially considering how long it took her to realize it. “He treats me so well it was hard to trust it for a long time. I’ve never had anyone treat me as well as he does.”
If her dad takes offense to that, he doesn’t make a fuss about it. He mostly just presses his lips together in a remorseful smile that’s half a grimace.
Even if he wasn’t the biggest factor, he knows he played his part in why Max wasn’t one to true easily.
But things are going well between them right now, and they have two whole weeks to get into heavier conversations, so he just says, “I’m glad. You deserved to be loved like that.”
And that’s enough for now.
September 2, 1989
Max is pleasantly surprised to find that her dorm room is actually a little bit bigger than she had been expecting. With the way everyone spoke about them, she expected a shoebox. But then again, she spent a majority of her high school years living in a trailer (when she wasn’t lying in a hospital bed), so she’s used to close quarters.
Her roommate, Amy, seems less accustomed to it, but she’s mostly handling it in stride; the little complaining she is doing is easy enough to tune out.
So easy that Max almost misses when she stops and swerves the conversation in her direction.
“And who is that?” she asks, coming right up behind Max to get a better look at the picture she’s taping to her mirror.
“My boyfriend Lucas,” Max answers, fighting a smile as she looks at the picture too.
It’s one she took herself, using Jonathan’s camera. He had let her try it, under the condition he could supervise, and Lucas had, of course, jumped at the chance to model for her.
He had actually been pretty good, which was only surprising because of how dorky and uncool he is, but Max’s favorite picture of the batch is this one, the one where his head is thrown back mid-laugh because he had a lot of trouble playing at being sexy.
Every time Max looks at it, she can hear Lucas’s laugh crystal clear in her head, and it’s her absolutely favorite sound in the world.
“As in your current boyfriend?” Amy questions skeptically.
Max fights not to roll her eyes while Amy is looking at her reflection and tries to read her tone. She’s gotten pretty good at anticipating when someone’s going to be racist, but she can’t tell what Amy’s skepticism is rooted in.
“Why would I put up pictures of an ex?” she retorts, grabbing the next picture in the pile to put up.
This one is of both her and Lucas, taken by Will at Lover’s Lake this past summer. They’re both sitting on a blanket, Max between Lucas’s legs and leaning back against his chest as he wraps both of his arms around her shoulders and grins cheesily at the camera while Max has her head turned to look at him, an equally wide grin on her own face.
“No, you wouldn’t, you’re right,” Amy admits, taking in the newest picture. Max studies her expression for any sign of disgust, but doesn’t find any before Amy is turning around and moving back towards her own side of the room to sit on the edge of her bed. “I’m just surprised you’re starting college with a boyfriend. All my friends broke up with theirs over the summer so they could be free.”
“Free from what?”
“The shackles of a relationship!” Amy explains brightly, practically bounding in her spot. “We’re college freshmen! Do you know how many hot guys we’re going to meet this year?”
Max snorts and goes back to sorting through her Polaroids of her friends as she says, “I think you’re seriously overestimating the amount of attractive guys there are in the world, let alone in Ohio.”
She is not at all concerned about missing out on any supposedly hot guys by being with Lucas, especially when she knows Lucas has them all beat in every possible category.
“The point is that, like, who wants to be tied down to their high school boyfriend when they could be out meeting college men at parties and hooking up every weekend?”
Max rolls her eyes, picking out the picture of her and Lucas from what was once the happiest night of her life, before Lucas gave her dozens more just as amazing after they survived hell.
The Snowball. God, they were so little and cute, even if they were already no longer innocent.
“Lucas isn’t my high school boyfriend,” Max informs her roommate, a smirk curling up her lips as she presses the Polaroid to the mirror underneath the others. “He’s my middle school boyfriend.”
“Oh my God, that’s even worse!” Amy gasps, shaking her head. “But it all makes sense now. He’s the only boyfriend you’ve ever had. Have you ever even kissed anyone else?”
“He’s the only boy I’ve ever wanted to kiss,” is Max’s answer, and she delivers it with the utmost confidence because it’s not even an exaggeration. “He’s the only boyfriend I want.”
Amy clicks her tongue, unimpressed. “For now. But you’ll see soon enough.”
“See what?” Max eyes her warily in the mirror.
“How many other fish there are out there,” the other girl says, sounding so sure of herself. “Better, more exciting, possibly even hotter fish.”
Max remembers a time she would have gotten defensive and angry about Amy’s nosiness and insistence, but current Max is too mature and secure in herself and her relationship to give it that much weight.
“Yeah, I really don’t think so,” Max brushes her off.
“How do you even know if you’re not looking?” Amy tries one more time, but when she sees Max has checked out of the conversation, she gets the hint. “But you’ll see. I promise not to tell you I told you so when you do.”
Despite Max’s initial annoyance with her roommate, she and Amy kind of become friends. She wouldn’t say she’s her best friend at Ohio State, but they hang out, and not just in their room.
For example, every Thursday afternoon, when both of their schedules have a pretty large hole in them, they meet up for coffee and lunch, sometimes with some of the other girls from their dorm.
Today, it even comes with an overconfident guy from her Psych class hitting on Max.
“I’ve got a boyfriend,” she immediately denies him before he can try a second line.
But the guy isn’t fazed at all. “Do you want a new one?”
Max swallows a scoff. Is this really the kind of shit that works with girls?
“No.”
The guy looks like he’s about to say something more, but Max hardens her glare a fraction more and he finally gives up.
“Whatever,” he mumbles before he stalks away, leaving the girls alone again.
“Max, are you crazy?” Emily hisses, leaning across the table dramatically. “He was so hot!”
“Lucas is hotter,” Max waves her off, taking a sip from her coffee cup.
“Who’s Lucas?” Mandy asks.
Max looks at her like she’s stupid. “My boyfriend?”
“Wait, so there’s actually a boyfriend?” Denise asks, the only one at the table that doesn’t seem to think she’s insane for now throwing herself at some random guy because he’s supposedly attractive. “I thought you were just trying to get rid of him.”
“Oh no, Lucas is very real,” Amy jumps in from Max’s side. “They’ve basically been married since they were thirteen.”
“What?” Emily gasps.
Mandy shares her surprise. “That’s insane.”
“You’ve seriously been dating him for that long?” Denise wonders, looking at her curiously.
Max shrugs, not seeing the point in getting technical about their silly break ups or the time they spent apart, not when she can’t be truly honest about most of it. She doesn’t like the way it almost diminishes what they have without the full context of what they both did to get back to each other.
“Basically,” she just says instead.
“So you’ve never had any other boyfriends?” Mandy asks the thing everyone always asks. Max has accepted she’s going to hear it until she’s old and gray, when, hopefully, people will finally see it as romantic instead of unrealistic. “But aren’t you curious?”
Amy jumps in to answer before Max has to. “Don’t bother, I already tried telling her that when we first met and she wasn’t having it. And honestly, after meeting Lucas and seeing them together, I get it now.” Max smirks into her cup as she takes a sip. “I wouldn’t give him up for any of these immature boys either.”
“You’ve met him?” Denise asks her friend, intrigued.
“He visits every other weekend,” Amy informs them, and to her credit, she doesn’t even sound put out by that. But she gets the dorm to herself on the other weekends, when Max stays with Lucas in the off campus apartment he had to get after missing out on the dorm registration, so why would she?
“And is he cute?” is what Emily is most interested to know.
“Very. Definitely hotter than any of the guys I’ve gone out with this year,” Amy confirms with a pout. “And certainly sweeter.”
Max sends her smirk her roommate's way and kicks her foot playfully. “I told you so,” she tells her smugly.
Amy just rolls her eyes and kicks her back. “Whatever, bitch. I just know I better be invited to the wedding after all the moaning I’ve had to listen to.”
February 12, 1993
Max expands her horizons and friend circle as her college years roll on, and it leads to her surrounding herself with a lot of like minded women.
This year, she’s been spending a lot of time with a group of women she met in one of the many feminism courses she’s taken.
A group that likes to get together every Wednesday night to watch both classic and underrated feminist movies. This week, it’s Max’s turn to pick what they’re watching.
“I was thinking Jackie Brown,” she suggests when prompted, meeting with the other four girls at the front of their lecture hall after their class has been dismissed. “We have a copy at our apartment and Lucas said we can borrow it.”
“And who is Lucas?” Veronica questions, raising an eyebrow.
Max shrinks a little under her gaze, knowing her friends will have a lot of opinions about her answer, but refuses to be ashamed of her relationship. “My boyfriend.”
“You have a boyfriend?” Jessica wonders.
“How come we didn’t know you have a boyfriend?” Paula piles on, as if they haven’t made their feelings on boyfriends and husbands abundantly clear.
And sure, Max has joined in on those bash sessions because most other women’s husbands and boyfriends deserve it, just not hers.
The point is that they haven’t exactly given her any reason to think they’d receive the information well.
“Since when?” Veronica challenges, narrowing her eyes
“Uh, since I was thirteen?” she answers, but she knows it sounds more like a question.
“No, how long have you been with this boyfriend? With Lucas.”
Max is much more used to that reaction, and she has to bite back a smile when she repeats, “Since I was thirteen.”
“Jesus,” one of them mumbles, but Max honestly isn’t sure which one.
But it’s definitely Louise that says, “I don’t even think I still have friends from when I was thirteen.”
“Does he go here?” Veronica presses.
“No, he goes to Central State,” Max answers, and she’s surprised to see a flash of recognition in her friend’s eyes.
“Isn’t that an HBCU?”
Usually when Max mentions where her boyfriend goes to people who ask, they show no signs of knowing much about it, but it makes sense that Veronica would be more knowledgeable on matters of race than the average student, since some of their courses cover, or at least touch on, intersectionality too. Even if they could do it a lot better.
“Yeah…”
Veronica perks up. “So he’s Black?”
Max eyes her friend curiously, trying to make sense of her sudden shift in mood. “Yes.”
“Oh, well, that makes more sense now,” is all she says, and Max is still very confused.
“What does?” she wonders, glancing at the other girls in the circle to see if they know what Veronica is talking about.
Louise speaks first, “You’re just so passionate and outspoken in class.”
“And outside of it too,” Paula adds.
“So, we didn’t expect you to be into the whole, you know, outdated and expected heterosexual courting process,” Jessica explains.
Veronica sums it up with, “You seem like you hate men as much as the rest of us do.”
Which makes sense, but Max had understood their initial reaction.
“I mean, I do, like on principle, but Lucas—”
“Is Black,” Veronica finishes for her, even though that’s definitely not what Max was going to say. “So you’re still giving the middle finger to tradition and the system.”
Louise, Paula and Jessica all nod their agreement, but it’s Paula that says, “A different kind of protest.”
“With a man that actually understands what it’s like to be oppressed,” Jessica adds.
“Respect.”
The words are encouraging and supportive, on the surface, and Max has no doubt they mean them, but they leave her feeling strange.
She and Lucas haven’t gotten as many judgmental looks and less straight forward comments in the past couple of years, at least on campus, but Max has never had anyone praise her for their relationship, and something about it doesn’t sit right for reasons she can’t find the proper words for.
“I’m not with Lucas as some act of rebellion against anyone or anything,” she tries to explain, making sure to keep her voice steady instead of letting her confusing emotions seep through. She just knows she’s not with Lucas because he’s Black any more than she’s with him despite the fact that he is. “I’m with him because I love him. And I have since I was thirteen.”
But Veronica and the others barely pay her words any mind. “Aw, that’s sweet,” one of them says, and then they’re back to discussing what movie they should show tonight, leaving Max to her weird new feelings.
December 5, 1998
Thanks to witnessing her mom battle and eventually overcome her alcoholism for years, Max doesn’t drink often, and when she does, it’s never to excess.
But tonight is her bachelorette party and she’s in a fucking limo with almost all of the most important women in her life, so she’s making an exception.
It doesn’t help that Erica set a (stupid, if you ask Max) rule at the beginning of the night that anyone that says Lucas’s name has to take a drink.
Predictably, Max is the closest to tipsy even though the party started less than two hours ago.
“Drink!” a very grown up Holly Wheeler shrieks with glee from the other end of the limo, after Max mentions Lucas’s name yet again.
This time it was because Too Close by Next came on the mix CD Robin had made for the occasion and Max had to tell everyone about the dance Lucas always does every time the song comes on the radio because it’s just too adorable.
“Damn, Mayfield, can you not last five minutes without name dropping my loser brother?” Erica tsks from beside her, and though she shakes her head in disappointment, she can’t hide her smile.
Max feels a surge of affection for her future sister-in-law and pulls her into an aggressive side hug as her favorite co-worker Lucy confirms, “No, she really can’t,” because she’d know better than all of them.
“It’s gotten even worse since the engagement,” Amy chimes in, her only friend from college to score an invite. “I swear she wasn’t this bad in college.”
“You are worse than Dustin used to be with Suzie,” El teases her, and she’s so sweet about it that Max can’t even pretend to glare at her best friend the way she did the other two.
“It’s borderline obnoxious,” Robin adds, as if she has room to call someone else obnoxious.
Nancy snorts quietly beside her. “Borderline?”
“You guys don’t get it!” Max whines before any of her other friends can add to the pile on. “If you were marrying the best, hottest, cutest, sweetest, sexiest guy in the world in ten days, you would talk about him all the time too.”
She probably wouldn’t gush so much if she were sober, but Max stopped hiding the way she feels about Lucas a long time ago, certainly around the people she’s with now.
“I think it’s sweet that you’re still so in love,” Holly says, and when Max looks over at her, she sees the little girl she used to be, that helped lead her out of Camazotz.
She might not see Holly nearly as much as she sees everyone else in the limo, but Max is pretty sure nobody else understands just how deeply she loves Lucas. Except maybe Robin, since she had a front row seat to their reunion, as she loves to remind her.
Sensing the slightly sentimental vibe shift, Erica admits, “I guess it’s not that pathetic if he talks about Max just as much.”
“And we all know he does,” Nancy laughs fondly, and the rest of the limo hums their agreement.
“It must be nice to have a man that loves you as much as you love him,” Amy, her friend most unlucky in love, says wistfully.
Max is too buzzed to hold back her smugness. “It really is,” she grins. “I’d tell you that you’ll find your Lucas one day, but you won’t because there’s only one of him.”
Amy narrows her in playful annoyance and pushes Max’s half full glass towards her face. “Drink, bitch.”
April 11, 2002
Max creeps quietly into the dark nursery, leaving the light off and the door open behind her as she tip toes towards the crib to take a peek at her sleeping daughter.
Her chest aches at the first sight of her, immediately enveloped in this new but instinctual warmth that’s unlike anything she’s ever felt before. Everyone swore she’d feel it, but Max had spent nine months worried she was too fucked up to be maternal, only for all those doubts to vanish the second Lila was placed on her chest.
She marvels at how perfect her daughter is as she gazes down at her adoringly, wanting nothing more than to pick her up but knowing it will risk waking her up when Lucas just finally got her down only an hour ago.
Fuck it, she thinks. It’s worth the risk.
So Max carefully scoops the newborn out of her crib and cradles her in the crux of her arm so she can keep looking at her.
Lila has just the smallest tuft of dark hair, too short and thin to truly tell what the shade will be; Lucas swears there’s a hint of red in there, but Max doesn’t see it. Her skin is a perfect blend of her parents, a light golden brown. She has her father’s brown eyes and her mother’s nose.
She’s absolutely perfect.
“You’re gonna have the best life,” Max vows to her baby daughter, laying her palm on her chest to feel the steady rise and fall as she breathes. “Me and your daddy are going to love you so much and make sure you never have to worry about any of the scary things we did growing up.”
She knows she can’t actually promise that, that her sweet baby is inevitably going to have to deal with a whole different set of issues growing up that Max never had to, but she can promise to protect her for as long and as best as she can, and she knows Lucas will do the same.
“I just know you’re gonna be a daddy’s girl, aren’t you?” Max coos with a smile, surprisingly not at all bothered by the prospect. “Don’t worry, I won’t blame you. Your daddy is pretty amazing. We’re both so lucky to have him.”
Max laughs softly to herself as she thinks of how excited Lucas was when they found out they were having a girl.
When she first announced her pregnancy, she heard from a lot of her friends and coworkers with daughters that their husbands had all wanted boys and were obviously at least a little disappointed when they found out it was a girl, even if they came around by the time the baby was born.
But not Lucas. His eyes just welled with tears before he kissed Max and immediately started talking nursery room designs.
“He’s going to absolutely spoil you rotten,” Max whispers to Lila, leaning down to press her lips to her soft head, knowing she’ll likely do the same. “He’s probably going to be one of those annoying, overprotective fathers when you start dating, but I promise to keep him in check for you.”
“Really, babe?” comes from the doorway, and even though Max knows who it is, she still turns to look at him, because why wouldn’t she? She loves looking at her husband. He’s only gotten hotter with age. “You think I’m that old school?”
Max rolls her eyes but can’t fight the smile from spreading her lips. “Oh please, you know you’re gonna buy a shotgun the second she mentions having a crush.”
“Have a little faith in me,” he protests. “I’d bring out my Wrist Rocket at most.”
“Right, because that’s much more mature.”
Lucas laughs and shakes his head as he pushes off the door frame and walks over to his girls. He settles in right behind Max, casually curling an arm around her still soft stomach and gazing down at the baby in her arms from over her shoulder.
“What are my girls doing in here?” he wonders quietly into Max’s ear.
Max leans back against him, nuzzling her temple against his jaw. “I just wanted to come in and look at her.”
“And gossip with her about me?” Lucas teases, his hand looking huge as it gently cups Lila’s tiny head.
“I am known to do that,” Max acknowledges easily and with a smile.
The family of three stay there together in their own little love bubble for a few minutes, until Lucas leans down to give their daughter a kiss right where Max had and breaks the silence.
“Come on, let’s put her back to bed so we can enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasts,” he suggests, and Max doesn’t protest.
Lila’s only been home for a month, but it feels like it’s been a lot longer since she’s been able to just curl up on the couch and relax with her husband like they used to.
“Yeah,” she agrees, but then waits another minute until she finally puts the baby back in her crib. Miraculously, she still doesn’t wake up. “Goodnight, sweet girl.”
Max’s hand instinctively finds her husband’s and she lets him lead her out of the dark, like he’s done so many times before.