Tuesday & Max

44 part 2

RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES

I'M BREAKING, NO PAST

NO REASONS WHY

JUST YOU AND ME

"Were you?"

Max's voice is strangled.

They look at each other. The seconds tick by. Tuesday knows she's got to answer, but how is she supposed to know the answer to a question so massive, so difficult?

"I—"

She looks up at the stars again. Maybe it's easier to speak to them.

"No," she says.

Silence, but she can hear him breathing.

"I don't think so. I don't think love can exist when it's secret, hidden, all pushed down into a tiny box in the back of someone's brain."

Now that the truth is out, she finds herself confident enough to meet his eye again.

"I don't even really know what love is, but I think it's something you have to go through with someone else? It can't be one-sided. It can't just be me obsessing over something you said in a study session, or your leg against mine in your room, or the way you look at me sometimes. It has to be more than that. That's just me falling in love with my own version of who you are, the snippets of you I get and then turn into something more. It's like falling in love with myself. It's not real."

Max is looking at her, forehead furrowed just slightly into a frown. Tuesday feels stupid, suddenly, like nothing she's said has made sense.

"I did... I did like you, though," she adds, feeling her face heat up violently. "In that way."

"In what way?" Max asks.

The weight of their attraction for each other suddenly feels heavy with the acknowledgement. Tuesday becomes keenly aware of the distance between their bodies in a way she hasn't felt for months. Everything floods back, like she's blasted apart the cork in the bottle that's held everything they felt for each other before he left.

Instead of drifting closer, instead of giving in, she says, "In enough of a way to ruin my relationship."

He laughs, or maybe she does, or they both do.

The humour fades slowly from his expression. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why didn't you answer any of my texts?"

"I was embarrassed," he says, and it comes out forcefully like it's been propelled.

"Of what?"

"I just felt like such a dick. You had a boyfriend the entire time. I was trying to be your friend, telling myself that that was it, but I was just lying to myself, and what? Hoping you'd notice me? Hoping you'd feel the same?"

"I did—"

"But I didn't know that. Then you disappeared. You stopped playing Lost World. We didn't need to study anymore. I felt like you just cut me out."

"I did," Tuesday says.

Max blinks. "What?"

"I felt so bad. I was treating Jack like shit, stringing him along, ruining our relationship. I didn't know if you liked me back. I didn't know if we were an option. Even if we were, I didn't know if I could give up the years I'd been with Jack. He'd been with me through my mom's illness, through the accident, through everything. We grew up together. So I tried to cut you out to fix things."