TANGLED PLANS

26

It seemed that the situation with Max was more urgent than I thought because he came over to my house only a few hours later. When I open the door for him, I think that he came for my brother. Holding the door more open, I gesture toward the basement stairs.

"Brayden's playing in the basement today," I say with a small smile.

"Okay," he says with the same smile, and as he walks into my house, he doesn't make any indication of moving toward the basement stairs. My eyes zeroed in on the notebook and folders that were in his hand. The folders appeared to be bursting at the seams with papers.

"Is that for Brayden?" I ask as I point to his hand. Max turns around to me and shakes his head. "For us," he answers.

I ran a hand through the hair I should've put up because the weather, even inside our air-conditioned house, was making me sweat. A con of summer weather was the sweaty hair that made my hair greasy so quick.

"For us?" I repeat, and Max looks at me sideways as he gives me an amused look.

He takes the items from his hand and places them on the coffee table. "We only discussed this a few hours ago, sweetheart. I'm here because I need your help with this."

"Right," I answer, and then head over to the couch to take a seat next to him. I keep a fair amount of space between us, but I can still feel him. It's like there is something that automatically comes into the air when he sits next to me. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that if I wanted to be anything more with Justin, these feelings needed to go away.

Ignoring those betraying feelings, I train my attention on the folder he just opened up. "So, what are we doing?"

Max's eyes are still on the papers he is shifting through as he answers. "So, like I said, my dad had me create another idea for a branch in his company. Here I have all the information as well as the documentation. From rough drafts to finalized ideas." He seems rather focused on the paper he picks up, and I find his eyes moving back and forth as he reads it. "Everything's in here," he adds at last.

Turning to me, he hands me the paper he was staring at. I take the paper from him and start to read along with his ideas. His dad's business was fairly large in this town, so I knew what it was about. I just didn't know that Max, who was only a teenager, was able to come up with such ideas.

"So, I need a design or symbol created by tonight," Max asks, and my eyes narrow as I look up at him. Tucking a hand under the paper, I say, "Tonight?"

Max's eyes soften at the panicked tone in my voice, and he asks, "Why? Is that too short notice for you?"

I shrugged in answer. I didn't know how long it would be for me to do it, but it was simple enough. The prompt for it was in my hand, so it shouldn't be too hard for me to sketch something up.

"I need it," Max says with a sudden determination in his voice as he meets my eyes.

I tilt my head to the side and ask, "You keep saying need; what do you mean?"

Max takes a breath out of his mouth and says, "I need something from my dad—a big thing—so I need to do this in order for him to say yes."

"Oh," I say after realizing he isn't going to share what that certain thing is. I didn't need him to share much, either, as long as I knew the gist of everything I needed. "I'll see what I can do," I say to him at last.

A grin plasters Max's face when he says, "Thank you, Daisy."

🌼

"I didn't think you would be able to actually do it!" Max says in amusement as he takes the sketch from my hand. After working for two hours straight, I was able to have a good thing on the paper. Because Max said that he needed this in return for a favor with his dad, I went and did more.