LANCASTER AND MAXWELL ( ✔ )

chapter twenty-six.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

FOR the next week, Sullivan says less than two hundred words to everybody he surrounds. 

He greets his family with silence, answers with quiet yes's and no's to all of Abasi's questions, and nobody can pay the young man enough money in the world to say anything Chandler or Brittany or anyone that he usually talks to. Sully cradles himself in his blankets, stares blankly at the blue wall in front of him, and lays like that for days on end until it's time to get up for food or go to the bathroom. It's painful to watch him waste away in the confines of his bedroom, and by the eighth day Sadie comes in warily, knocking carefully at the door before shutting it. 

"Hey, Maxy," she says, attempting to use the childhood nickname she bestowed on him in order to bait a reaction out of him. When the blonde doesn't get one, she moves from her position against the wall to the edge of the bed, and he watches out of the corner of his peripheral when she adjusts uncomfortably at the silence. Good, maybe then she'll go away. "Brought you some weed from Kraig Cayson's stash. It was grown out of Oregon, he said. I think you'll like it." 

Shimmying his head out of the little air pocket he made for himself, an unimpressed look is shot over at his baby sister. "You brought me, the drug dealer, some weed from somebody else's collection," he deadpans. 

She shrugs. "I figured yours wasn't the job too well, since you're still holed up in your room like this." 

"It's because I don't want to talk to anyone right now, Sadie." 

"Yeah, I know. You haven't spoken to anyone in eight fuckin' days. I get it, you're sad. But he just broke up with you — he didn't slaughter your whole family. Just find a new boyfriend to dick ride, dummy." 

He mutters uselessly, "He didn't break up with me.  We weren't even together, Sadie." 

Sadie calls bullshit on him, and he isn't going to deny her of that. It's a lie within itself. It doesn't matter how pretty the packaging was or what it contained inside the strange universe it was in while they were doing it. By some fucked-up definition of the word, they were together. If you wanna take it back to a certain point, they've been together since the first time they met each other and from then on. Sully doesn't believe in fate, but if he did ... well, it'd be safe to assume that he would believe that Arthur is his true forever. 

That mere thought breaks his heart even further, like the tape that he's put over the shattered pieces is splitting open again. Because if Arthur felt the same way, if he meant anything that he had ever said to the boy, he couldn't have thrown it away like he did. He wouldn't have looked him in the eyes and broke his heart like Sully asked him to. Last week has made him rethink their whole dynamic, the mere thought of what they were. Was it all a lie? 

After a minute or ten of no conversation, Sadie finally gives up the fight to make him talk. She ends her mission with, "It's Grandmother's visiting day tomorrow, and it's your turn to go. The least you can do is go." 

He throws the blanket over his head and bellows out a groan as if he's just received the most unpleasant news he's ever heard. Because as if living with his criminal family isn't bad enough, but having to visit the woman who made their name notorious on all police scanners in the country is colossally damaging to his mood. 

"Can you at least go with me?" He tries to bargain, but Sadie's mind is already made up with a triumphant shake of her head. 

"Hell no," she says. "Last time I went, she started a fucking riot in the visitation room because she wanted to show me she could do it. Grandmother's fucking insane." 

Well, at least two of them know the truth.

.     .     .     .     .

THE road trip to Buckingham Correctional Center is less than pleasant. Even though the drive is only an hour out from Richmond, the fact that he has to go stretches out the highway in more ways than one. It's not that he doesn't like his grandmother; it's quite the opposite. She might be the only Maxwell in the family that truly understands him in the sense that he needs her — anybody — to. The problem is that she's a lot to handle, at times too much to handle, and he doesn't know if his fragile state can handle it. By the time he's done parking and going through security to finally sit in the visitation room, his hands are clammy from his nerves going bad. Sully wipes his hands on his pants and exhales deeply, his ears turning up when he hears bells and chains clinging against the ground. It takes everything he has not to melt on the spot when he hears, "Ah, my favorite grandson." 

Evelyn Nicole Fiore-Maxwell is a natural phenomenon still unknown to scientists everywhere. There are over a million words in the English dictionary used to describe places and things, and yet there are only a handful that Sullivan can pick out that will truly highlight his grandmother and her many abnormalities. She's an Italian enigma, unparalleled to any criminal that he's ever read about. In 1989, she began stealing cars that eventually turned into a car-jacking empire that took over the South and Midwest for over twenty years until her arrest in 2010. Evelyn is cunning, analytical, and overall one of the smartest women he's ever met. 

She is also bat-shit crazy. 

Ancient green eyes look into his, and it's obvious that he's become transparent underneath her gaze. Sully feels like everything he's ever done and will do has been discovered by his grandmother, and it's only a matter of time before his judgement day arrives. 

As the chains by her feet jingle, she slides into the seat opposite of him and gives him a wide smile. "Come è il mio nipote favorito?"

He rolls his eyes at her. "La madre non mi ha lasciato portare alcuna cocaina."

She exclaims, "That bitch! I didn't know I'd get a pussy for a daughter after I pushed her out of mine."  

Her sweet act is over for the time being. He glances around at the people whose attention got grabbed by her outburst, scoffing as he turns back around to her. "Can you please keep it down, Grandmother? We don't need a redo of last time I visited," he pleads quietly, a shudder soon following after. Sully remembers the last time he visited as clear as crystal — it ended with the sixty year-old woman getting tazed and strapped to a chair. He was 15.

Evelyn rolls her eyes in response and pushes a brown curl out of her eyes, pursing her lips into a thin line. "It opened your eyes to the shitty prison systems, bambino. Now you know how they're treating your grandmother in here." 

"You're insane." 

"And you're actin' strange. What's the matter?" And there it is, the golden question of the hour. What is the matter with him? 

He decides to save the trouble of lying. "I'm having...relationship problems, Grandmother."

Evelyn's eyebrows raise with curiosity. "Oh?" 

Sully adds, "With Artie." 

"The cute little blonde bottom you used to hang around?" 

"Yeah, I guess." He squirms in his seat and sighs, rubbing clammy hands against the sides of his sweatpants. "He wasn't exactly out the closet yet, and he had a girlfriend while we were seeing each other." 

She shrugs. "Infidelity runs in our family, bambino. We've always wanted what we couldn't have." 

"And now a lot of shit has happened, and now he thinks we shouldn't see each other anymore. I just...don't know what to do," he adds, defeated. 

"Sullivan-Jaymes." Evelyn's stern voice makes him look up at her, and he realizes why everyone says he looks just like his grandmother. They share the same green eyes, the kind that lovers like them have. "Do you love him?"

He doesn't even hesitate. "I do." 

Smiling, she reaches for his hand and squeezes it in her own. 

"Then you go get your fucking man back."