Just Revenge

Chapter Thirty-Five: Why

I found Max in a practice room, fortunately, alone as he ran his lines for the callback.

I opened the door, stepping inside.

"Hey, um... do you have a second?"

"Seriously?" The only thing covering up the anger in his voice was the shock.

"I know you don't owe me the time, but I just... I uh..." I fixed my eyes on the ugly gray carpet as my nerve slipped away, "I just wanted to return your sweatshirt. I thought you might want it back, or something."

I held the sweatshirt out in front of me as far as I could, still not pulling my eyes from the ground.

"Seriously?"

I finally gathered the courage to look him in the eyes.

"I am sorry, if that makes you feel any better." I offered.

"You're sorry? You're SORRY??" He sounded like he was about to explode. "You destroyed my friend group!!! Harper won't even TALK to me! Alex and Izzy avoid me like the fucking plague. Aurora cries ALL THE FUCKING TIME now out of some stupid, misguided guilt that you convinced her she needs to have. And Luke and Cortland?" His face was turning red as he shouted at me. "I can't talk to Luke anymore because every time I do all I'm thinking about is asking how YOU are! WHY DO I WANT TO KNOW HOW YOU ARE?!?! I hate you. I hate you so much, but every time he speaks to me all I can think about is how he still speaks to you. And that KILLS me! And Cort?? My best-fucking-friend since the fucking kindergarten won't talk to me about this. He refuses to fucking hear it because God for-fucking-bid I can't see 'your side' of things! Him and Harper got into such a fucking screaming match about it that they AREN'T SPEAKING!! You tore us apart, Carmen. So, don't fucking come in here asking if a 'sorry' makes me FEEL better! I don't give a fuck about your sorry!"

"Max..."

"No!" He took a step towards me, "Don't say my name. Don't act like you care about me. Don't act like you care what I think about you."

He grabbed the sweatshirt out of my hand, "Get the fuck out. Go crawl back into whatever dark hole you climbed out of and don't let me fucking see you again. You should be good at that, right?" His mouth twisted into an angry smile, but his last comment struck a nerve.

I deserved a lot of his shit, and I knew it. But I refused to let being a techie be something he insulted me with.

"Fuck off, Max. I didn't crawl out of a fucking hole and it's not a fucking insult to be a techie. So, do yourself a favor and stop fucking using it as one, 'kay?"

"Oh, my bad. Is the unseen bit a touchy subject? Should I have pointed out the talentless bit instead?"

"Right, so we're just going to ignore the fact that the one time I auditioned, I ended up the lead? Yeah, that really screams talentless to me."

"Oh please, the only role you played this summer was yourself. You can't act, onstage or off."

"Did it well enough to fool you, though, didn't I?"

I saw a flash of hurt mar the anger in his eyes, but it was gone just as soon as it appeared.

When he didn't respond right away, I kept going. "This, right here, this is exactly why I did what I did. You've spent the last ten minutes ranting about how I was so far off base, but the SECOND you wanted to insult me, you ran to the techie argument. THIS is what Abbi meant when she screamed at you, and this is why I started all this in the first place. You don't look at us as people, Max. You look at us as some weird, fucked up, subspecies of talentless slacks there to cater to your every whim and make you look better. We're just as fucking good as you are; we just chose to do something different, you absolute asshole."

I stepped forward until our chests were almost touching, our eyes locked so my meaning could, in no way, be misconstrued.

"You know what, Max? I take it back. I'm not sorry. I don't regret it one bit, and if I could go back and do it again the ONLY thing I'd do differently is take my time to relish the moment a little bit more."

His eyes burned with fury, "Oh, yeah? So, you're just here to yell at me one more time then? Face it, Carmen, you didn't come here over a fucking sweatshirt. You came here because some tiny fragment of a good person exists buried inside the thing that used to be your soul and that fragment regrets what you did. That fragment fell for me."

I scoffed, "Oh, you fucking wish."

"No? Don't give me that. You're not that good of an actor, Carmen. You can't fake it that well."

"And that's your problem, Max. You're underestimating me."

"Right. So, you're gonna pretend you faked ALL your friendships, your relationship, your fucking smiles, all that? I'm supposed to believe that was all fake?" He rolled his eyes.

"No. Not all of it." I breathed, staring him down as I spoke, "The friendships were real. The smiles were real too. Hell, the only thing that wasn't real was our relationship."

"Oh, interesting. And if it wasn't real, what exactly was it then?"

"Revenge."

I smirked up at him, watching his eyes blink as he stood there, something about the word seemed to draw him back a little. He took a step back, the anger in his eyes simmering down into something that looked vaguely like pain.

"I hope your revenge was worth it then."

He didn't say anything more as he retreated to his original side of the room, clearly waiting for me to leave the room.

I headed for the door, done with the conversation for the moment, but just before I left, I thought better of it.

I stopped, holding the door open as I turned back to Max, "You deserved this, you know. All of you."

"Fuck you."

There was no anger left in his response, just a brokenness that I expected to trigger a flood of guilt. To my surprise though, no guilt came. I felt strangely at peace. Maybe I was just as terrible as they were. Maybe I was worse. I didn't know anymore, but I also didn't really care. Whatever kind of person it made me for doing it, they had gotten what was coming to them.

I let the door close behind me as I walked out of the practice room, heading to go search for my friends, my real friends, leaving Max alone in his practice room.

It was possible that this was the day he realized that he was just as guilty in all this as I was. Or maybe I'm deluded, and I was the only villain in this story. Whatever it was, it didn't matter. I had gotten what I wanted. I smiled as I walked down the hall.

That was the one thing from all this that was absolutely irrefutable. For better or for worse, I had gotten my revenge.