Happily Never After

Max: Can we talk?

I wanted to cry when I saw the message, because already, everything had changed.

I still had the same Pavlovian response to seeing his name pop up, where my body betrayed me and felt happy that my best friend was texting, but then my stomach clenched and reality rushed back at me.

He hadn’t texted or called since he left last night, which made me both relieved and so sad I could barely breathe. It felt empty already, not talking to him all day, but I’d get used to it.

I hadn’t even known him all that long.

I glanced over at Edie’s office, glad she wasn’t in today, because I didn’t have the energy to fake happy. It was much better just burying myself in work. I hadn’t even stopped for lunch, desperate to just keep working, but Max’s message had been like a record scratch, and now I was frozen.

I texted: I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Max: So what—that’s it? We’re just not friends anymore?

I sighed and sat back in my chair. Replied: I just want to pretend yesterday never happened.

Max: Please let me take you to dinner or coffee and talk to you. I promise it will be painless.

Painless no longer applied to Max Parks.

Because somehow the universe had gotten inside of our harmless friendship and screwed up all the gears, lacing in feelings that made my whole heart violently ache when I found out he’d warned Lilibeth.

It felt like a betrayal, even though in the end I knew it wasn’t—but I almost felt more hurt by Max than I did by Stuart.

My phone started ringing, but instead of Max, it was Rose.

Just what I need.

I sighed. “Hello?”

“Hi, um, Sophie?”

That wasn’t Rose, even though it was her number calling. I said, “Yes?”

“This is Benny. From next door . . . ?”

Benny Ginsburg, my very nosy next-door neighbor? Why the hell would that guy be calling me? “Hi, Benny. Is Rose okay?”

“Rose is,” he said dramatically, and I could tell he was waiting for me to ask.

“Why are you calling from her phone?”

I did not have time for nonsense today.

“Yeah, well, she asked me to.”

“Okay . . . ?” God, was this man going to make me pull the reason for his call out of him?

“She said she wanted you to know that the squad just took Larry to the hospital.”

“What?” I asked, gasping as my heart started racing. I sat straight up in my chair. “Oh, my God. What happened?”

I opened the top drawer of my desk, grabbing my keys and standing.

“I’m not really sure. Someone found him in the stairwell, short of breath and having chest pains.”

“Oh, my God,” I said again, closing my laptop and rushing down the hall toward the elevators. “Is he okay?”

“Again, I’m not really sure,” he repeated, sounding annoyed. “I just said I’d call you.”

“Well, do you know what hospital they’re taking him to, Benny?” I asked, sounding like a dick but too freaked out to care. “Does Rose?”

“UNMC,” he said. “But I’m not sure—”

“Thank you.”

I disconnected the call just as Max texted: I don’t want to beg but I’m already on my knees and will provide video proof if you don’t believe me.

I blinked fast and texted as I walked, I just got a call that they’re taking Larry to the ER for shortness of breath and chest pains.

Max: He’s going to be fine, Steinbeck. You okay to drive or do you want me to pick you up?

I was light-headed as I texted, I’m okay, and I literally sprinted to the elevators.

Max: What hospital?

I pounded on the lobby button as the elevator took an eternity.

Me: UNMC.

Max: Drive safe. I’m on my way.

—

“Larry?” I said quietly, sitting down on the physician stool in the ER exam room and wheeling it next to the bed. Larry’s eyes were closed, and he looked pale and weak—old—which terrified me. I realized, as I raced across town to get here, that he actually was my best friend.

I glanced at the blue machine he was attached to, and it appeared that his blood pressure and oxygen levels were relatively normal.

So at least there was that.

“Soph?” he whispered, his eyes fluttering open.

“It’s me, loser,” I said, grabbing his hand and holding it between mine, biting my lip so I wouldn’t cry. “How are you feeling?”

“Where’s Julian?” he asked, his eyes moving behind me.

“No idea,” I replied. “Are you comfortable?”

“Listen, I heard your fight last night,” he said, his voice breathy and hard to understand. I scooched a little closer to better hear him. “And you’re acting like a child.”

“What?” I whispered, not wanting to upset him, but he had been the one to go off about Max warning the bride. He’d been the one to tell me it was the “dickest of all dick moves.” I loved that he wanted to spar, even when he was weak, but he needed to save his strength. I said, “Maybe we should talk about this later.”

“I don’t know how much time we’ll have,” he said, and a knot formed in the pit of my stomach. Did that mean something? Had he already been given a prognosis? His face blurred in front of me as I tried blinking the tears away, and he said, “So listen to me now, okay?”

I nodded and squeezed his hand. “Okay.”

“From what I could hear,” he rasped, his breathing shallow, “Max is nuts about you but you don’t want that.”

“Right,” I said, not wanting to think or talk about Max when Larry was lying in a hospital bed looking like this.

Especially when I was still so pissed at myself for falling. How the hell had I fallen into a pit of feelings for Max when I’d worked so hard to keep my feet firmly planted on solid ground?

“So are you not attracted to him, is that it?” he asked, raising a very overgrown white eyebrow.

“Oh, no,” I said, remembering Detroit. “Max and I have chemistry through the roof.”

“He’s an asshole, then? I kind of thought he would be, honestly; he’s too hot to be nice.”

“He’s actually not,” I said, thinking that it had to be a good sign that, though weak, Larry didn’t seem to be in any kind of pain.

“Is he a player?”

“No.”

“A pervert?”

“I get what you’re doing,” I said, smiling in spite of myself. “And I get it. But we can talk about Max after you’re home, okay?”

“We’re talking about him now, damn it, because there’s no time to waste.”

The tears returned, and I quickly wiped them away, not wanting to worry him.

“I can’t understand why you’d back away from a really good shot at true love.”

“Haven’t we talked about this?” I asked on a mirthless, sad laugh. “I thought you agreed with me that there’s no such thing.”

“I just wanted you to shut your face hole, so I faked it,” he said, closing his eyes. “The truth is that who gives a flying fuck if you’ve been hurt in the past? Who cares if you’ve been cheated on? You have to get hurt to get to the good stuff, don’t you see?”

“No.”

“When you’re a baby, you don’t stop taking steps just because you’ve fallen once, or you’d never walk. The falls help you learn how to walk, for fuck’s sake, to make balance and gait adjustments. If you never fell, you’d do something outrageously stupid, like walk on your toes like a ballerina, which would result in you getting your ass kicked every day of your life for looking like a dipshit.”

“That . . . doesn’t make any sense.”

“But the first part did,” he said, and I nodded in agreement.

“Think about this. What if you could see into the future and know that Max was only going to live for two more weeks. Would you want to spend two weeks being his friend and holding your feelings at bay—wasting what you’ve been given, or would you want to spend every minute of every day loving him with every single part of you?”

I blinked back tears. Holy shit, was he right?

Was I wasting what we’d been given?

“And the truth of the matter is that if you fell madly in love with him today and threw all caution to the wind—and then he cheated on you two years from now—would it really feel that much worse than denying yourself the love and companionship you deserve? Than how you feel right now?”

“Larry,” I sighed, but couldn’t come up with more than that because for some reason, his words were making sense.

There was a knock at the door, and Rose entered, looking irritated.

“Rose,” Larry said, closing his eyes.

“Sit up, you damn liar,” she hissed, reaching out and delivering a firm smack to his shoulder.

“Rose! What are you doing?” I asked, standing up and stepping between Rose and Larry. “He’s supposed to be resting.”

“Resting what—his lips?” Rose looked pissed.

“Can it, Rosebud,” Larry said.

I narrowed my eyes and asked Rose, “What are you talking about?”

“He’s not having a heart attack, for Christ’s sake.” She scowled at Larry. “He had an anxiety attack after getting caught making out with the grocery delivery guy in the stairwell.”

“What?”

“Casanova here got caught red-handed—red-lipped, to be more accurate—getting nasty in the stairwell, so he acted like he was code blue to distract Mrs. Ginsburg, the poor dear, who happened upon his stairwell seduction while trying to get in her steps.”

“The stairwell?” I said in disbelief.

“The stairwell,” she repeated. “And then he asked Benny to call you, just to add more drama to his bullshit heart attack.”

“Well—”

“And what kind of an animal—I know you hear me, Larry, ya goddamn animal—is so hot and bothered that they can’t even wait and go at it in a public stairwell?”

I glanced down at Larry, and he winked while waggling his eyebrows before closing his eyes and muttering, “Stairwell.”

“You little shit,” I said, then basically lectured him for an hour about what a dick he was for scaring me.

But after I left the two of them at the hospital, pissed and exhausted from the burst of fear and worry, Larry’s words kept replaying in my head.

And as eccentric as the guy was, he was right about one thing.

Having my heart eventually broken by Max couldn’t feel much worse than it felt to not have him in my life at all, could it?

So what was I supposed to do?