“Yeah, he’s such a kidder usually, but when it comes to me and Cam …” I raised my eyebrows. “He’ll openly cry at graduation.”
Max considered this. “Come to think of it, I bet my mom will, too. She’s normally good at compartmentalizing. But ceremony really gets her.”
He pulled into the parking lot near the Little League fields and Riddle Park, the spot where a couple of food trucks often congregated, including Oakhurst favorite Pagano’s Italian To-Go.
“Perfect,” I decided, though Max looked a bit reluctant.
“Some first date, eh?” he joked. “Cheap food from an idling vehicle. You’re welcome.”
“Hey, food trucks serve some of the best cooking in the world—Tessa’s always saying that. And I love cheap. I prefer cheap.”
He grinned, quick and sly—a sight I’d missed terribly all summer. “I’m, uh, not sure how to take that, as the person you’ve chosen as your boyfriend.”
We ate Italian subs messily at a picnic bench, napkins like drop cloths in front of us. Sharp red wine vinaigrette and salty salami. We split a sparkling water, and my heart fluttered each time I put my lips to the bottle where his had been.
“So,” I said, during a brief lull. It was a weird spot, being old friends in a new context. What did most people reuniting in August discuss? “How was your summer?”
Max laughed, immediately in on the joke. “Um, not bad! Saw a bit of the world, learned a lot.”
“Sounds lovely.”
“Mm-hmm.” He reached for the bottle. “It was. But I started going out with my dream girl, and I didn’t get to see her at all.”
I blanched, losing control of this comedy bit. Heat filled my cheeks, and I struggled to connect with my brain’s language center. “Dream girl”—it should have been cheesy, but he said it with a lilt. Not a joke, exactly, but not serious.
“Well, hope you two can pick back up,” I managed.
He nodded solemnly. “I’m working on it. Plying her with cheap food.”
“Do you miss Italy yet?”
“I miss Liam and everyone,” he said. Max’s summer coinquilino—roommate—was a Welsh rugby player, burly and soft-spoken and excellent at Latin. They’d gone from trepidation to good mates in mere days. “And I really miss the antiquity.”
He said it so earnestly, like he yearned for columned cathedrals and palazzi, for bricks cracked with age. I didn’t say a word, but I also couldn’t suppress my oh, Max face—a closed-mouth smile that betrayed my adoration for this total nerd. He must have noticed because he added, “I’m serious! Most of Oakhurst was built in the past fifty, seventy-five years. Rome was founded in 753 BC. Before Christ!”
“I know you’re serious.” And now I definitely couldn’t quash the smile.
He laughed, too, fidgeting with his watch. I hadn’t even realized how much I missed the full effect of him, the physicality. His laced fingers, his habit of jamming rolled shirtsleeves farther up his forearms. The way he leaned back in a chair when he knew he was right, arms crossed like an arrogant young professor.
“What about you?” Max asked. “You miss New York?”
There it was, the perfect segue to college plans, but I couldn’t fathom launching into why I’d changed my mind about film school. It would ruin our dynamic before we’d even reestablished it. “I do. The energy of it, the food, the art.”
My first week in Manhattan had been hard—so hard. The search for subway entrances, the beautiful but disorienting Village streets, the unmoving summer heat that made the city feel like a sewer grate. In my first workshop, my classmates—especially some know-it-all named Maeve Zaher—eviscerated my spec script, and I barely made it to the bathroom before crying. I missed my friends and Max like physical pain. At night, struggling to fall asleep, I chocked the week up to an expensive lesson: screen writing and big cities weren’t for me.
But I couldn’t go home—not when it cost so much money, not when my grandmother had been so proud. So I did a gut job on my script, editing it as mercilessly as it had been criticized. Because why not? It didn’t matter. To my surprise, the instructor heralded my revision as the strongest in the room and, to my greater surprise, Maeve Zaher strode up to me after class and asked if I wanted to work together over coffee—the first of many. I met people I liked, friends who wanted to debate the merits of classic sitcoms, of laugh tracks, of voice-overs. And then, New York buzzed electric—late nights spilling into the streets, shared appetizers at the cheapest diners we could find. Working on scenes, trying to get lottery Broadway tickets. Walking the same streets as so many renowned writers. It felt like being part of something, this long history mapped out behind us. Waiting for us to add to the story.
“Janie …?” Max said, calling me back to earth.
I laughed at myself. “Sorry! Yes. Hi.”
His eyes narrowed, the briefest study of me. Wondering where I’d gone. This week, I promised myself. I’d tell him.
“So, does Ryan know you’re home?” I asked.
“Yeah. He stopped over to say hey, but promised he wouldn’t tell anyone. So I’d say there’s a fifty-fifty chance that everyone already knows.”
Maybe some people inch closer, but for the next hour, Max and I millimetered closer—true last year, emotionally, and true physically now. I adjusted my position, getting comfortable, but wound up grazing his leg with mine. He leaned in at one point, but he was reaching for a napkin.
Last time I kissed Max—the first and only time I’d ever kissed him—I flew on pure moxie, unstoppable. Now I’d had three months to sit with reality: I’d only ever really kissed one other boy, and that was two years ago. Could you forget how? Had I ever really known?
We stayed until Tessa texted, wondering if I was on my way. As Max and I gathered up our trash, my nerves sang with the particular anticipation of a pending surprise. “They’re going to flip out when they see you.”
And when they saw us, together. I bit a groove into my lower lip as Max drove and wished for a week of alone time with him, figuring out togetherness in the same zip code. Our friends had rooted for us all last year, and I loved them for it. But I dreaded the attention, the expectation—their eyes like spotlights on a relationship I didn’t want to perform. Max parked on Tessa’s street, the driveway already full of cars, and I wiped my palms on my dress.
“They’re out back,” I told him.
The McMahon house was the kind of fancy that included landscape lights on a stone path, which we followed toward the pool. Our friends’ laughter floated above the tall wooden fence—Kayleigh telling a work story to guffaws and Whats?! Outside the gate, Max turned to me. “Ready?”
It was rhetorical, I knew. Was I ready to make our entrance as Max and Paige, Couple? I hadn’t even kissed him yet, and this would be our last minute alone for the next few hours. He was watching my face closely enough to see my hesitation.
Of all the places I’d imagined kissing Max Watson again, “a dimly lit side-yard with our friends nearby” was not in the Top 100. I’d envisioned that cinematic passion, frantic mouths—the way we’d kissed the first time.