Romance Impossible(73)

"Everything you're feeling now," he went on, coming a few steps closer, "is completely normal. Don't be too harsh on yourself."

I managed a hollow smile. "Okay," I said. "Thanks."

While work was going on, I'd wanted nothing more than for it to end. But now, the prospect of my quiet, empty apartment, with only Heidi for company...

"Is there anything else to do around here?" I asked, quietly, not looking at him. "Anything you've been putting off? I could stay late."

He considered this for a moment. "Been meaning to rearrange the basement," he said. "Get a better system going. Many hands make light work, if your dog will be all right."

"Yeah, it's fine. I'll just text my neighbor to walk her." I had a pretty good arrangement with one of my fellow dog-owners across the courtyard. We usually had opposing schedules and helped each other out whenever we could.

"Good," said Max, looking at me - a little searchingly, I thought, but he didn't actually want to ask any questions.

The basement looked perfectly organized, to me. I glanced around the room, trying to figure out what could be wrong with it. Max didn't say anything, and for a minute I was reminded of when my mom used to have me "organize her jewelry box" to get me out of her hair.

"I was thinking," he said, finally, "over here, we should..." He gestured towards one of the corners, drifting off.#p#分页标题#e#

"You've got nothing," I said, amused. "I mean...thanks, but you've obviously got nothing for me to do."

"Sorry," he said, actually looking a little sheepish. "I was sure I'd be able to think of something before I got down here."

Sighing, I sat down on one of the heavy crates. My feet ached. I hadn't even noticed how much until now. It was tempting, terribly tempting, to just unload everything on him. But in spite of everything, I still felt wary. I had to keep my guard up. He couldn't think of me as weak. Even though I was obviously a mess of emotions just because my ex tried to manipulate me back into a relationship with his cheating ass, I wanted to retain some of my dignity.

"Don't feel like you need to explain yourself," Max said. He was standing quite close now, leaning on the end of the handrail beside the stairs. "Trust me, I know."

I looked up at him, hands folded in my lap. "I thought you said you'd never been in a relationship longer than a couple of months."

"What we lacked in time, we made up for in co-dependency," he said. "Besides - I might have exaggerated, a little."

"I can't picture you being co-dependent," I said. "Unless..." My gears were turning, but slowly. There was something about his compulsive need to teach people, to help them, to direct them, to rescue them. He needed to be needed, didn't he?

"Suppose I do," he said, and I realized that I must have been thinking out loud. "There are worse character traits in the world. Unfortunately I have most of those, too."

"Stop it." I smiled at him, and it was genuine, this time. "You're harder on yourself than you are on anybody else, you know that?"

"Always have been," he said. "Not that it matters."

"It matters," I told him. "Trust me. You're not a hypocrite. That's pretty much the only thing that really matters, in the grand scheme of things."

He looked down at the floor. Chef Maxwell Dylan, struggling to take a complement. I never thought I'd see the day. And his touching attempt to give me some work to do, even though he knew there was nothing down here. Nothing but alphabetized wine and an overflow cooler that Aiden already scrubbed with a toothbrush whenever things got slow.

"That's it," said Max. "I'm firing my therapist. What's your hourly rate?"

"I don't charge for friends," I said, before I could stop myself. The back of my neck immediately started to feel hot.

"I could never take advantage of you like that," said Max, softly. He looked a little surprised. So was I.

Are we friends?

Do I want to be his friend?

Or do I want something else...

I knew the answer to that last one, it was easy, a freebie. But I didn't want to think about it now. I couldn't. Not with Max standing inches from me, and the two of us alone here, completely alone, with all the time in the world.

"I'm sure everyone's already told you this," he said. "But you deserve better than him."

"I don't even know what that means anymore," I confessed, my gaze sliding back down to the floor. "People always say that. But it's not like I was perfect. It's not like I didn't fuck up. He should've...he shouldn't have done what he did. But what does it say about me, that that's who I picked? That I had no idea what kind of person he really was?"