I like having you around my neck,” he said, striving to keep things light. “Maybe I think you’re better than a winter scarf for keeping out the cold.”
She studied him before she smiled.
“Okay, let’s go. But you have to tell me the moment I start getting on your nerves,” she said.
“Scout’s honor,” he said, holding up a random number of fingers.
Another month to look forward to. Four weeks more of Maddy.
Anything could happen.
“Very convincing. Remind me not to ever get lost in the bush with you,” she said, laughing.
Her eyes were bright with amusement, and soft color warmed her cheeks. All of a sudden words were crowding his throat, demanding to be said.
Words like I love you and Don’t ever leave.
Words that filled his head, swelled his chest.
He dragged his gaze away from her, forced himself to concentrate on the cool, smooth, slippery texture of the clay beneath his hands.
It’s too soon, he repeated to himself for the tenth time that day. Too soon.
But maybe, one day, he would reach the tipping point where he risked more by staying silent than by speaking out.
THE NEXT MORNING, Maddy rolled over in bed and felt the coolness of empty sheets beside her. Already half-awake, she sat up with a frown and stared at the indentation Max’s head had left in the pillow.
She hadn’t heard him get up. She felt ridiculously cheated. Lingering between the sheets in the morning with her head on his chest, his hands moving in slow circles on her back was one of the highlights of the day. Inevitably they wound up making love—long, slow sex that seemed to last for hours.
She couldn’t think of a better way to start the day.
“Max? Come back to bed and warm my feet,” she hollered.
The profound silence that greeted her confirmed she was alone. She pulled on one of his T-shirts and made her way downstairs.
She found his note propped against the toaster. Her love of all bread-based products after years of self-imposed deprivation had become a running joke between them—the toaster was the one appliance he knew she’d make a beeline for on waking.
Maddy, am helping Richard shift furniture. Back after
lunch.
Max.
She remembered now that Charlotte had asked Max to help move the furniture from their spare bedroom into storage so Richard could set up his new home office, an idea his employer had agreed to try in order to avoid losing Richard’s expertise.
The question was, why hadn’t Max woken her? She could have helped.
She had a sudden mental image of the big bed and the even bigger chest of drawers and bookcase that furnished the guest room. Okay, probably she wouldn’t have been an enormous help. But still. She could at least have stood on the sidelines and cheered and made coffee.
“Pathetic,” she said, shaking her head.
Surely she could survive a few hours without Max.
She straightened her shoulders and reached for the fruit loaf that Max had left for her. After she’d munched her way through three slices, she cleaned up, washing last night’s dinner dishes while she was at it, then straightened the rest of the kitchen. From there she went on to sweep and mop the floors, then put in a load of washing.
It felt good to work. To have a purpose and a goal, even a short-term one. She missed the certainty and order and purpose of her old life.
All the sightseeing and fun with Max, all the indulgences and distractions—she could tap-dance around and paper over the cracks all she liked, but the truth was there was a huge void in her life where her vocation used to be and nothing was going to fill it or make it go away.
Hard on the heels of the acknowledgment came a rush of emotion, the ache of loss rising up inside her like a flash flood, all the feelings she’d banked for the past few weeks swamping her.
Suddenly she was gasping, tears flooding her eyes, her chest aching with grief and anger and a strange kind of resentment.
She was twenty-nine. Most people her age were just starting to hit milestones in their chosen professions, moving up the food chain, getting pay raises, buying bigger cars, bigger houses. She was washed-up. She’d peaked and crashed, and now she was going to be playing catch-up for the rest of her life, trying to make do with a career that paid the rent but didn’t feed her soul.
A great wave of despair hit her and she fought back a childish desire to throw back her head and wail, “Why me?”
She pressed a hand to her chest where it hurt the most, gulping back her sadness.
The worst thing was, she didn’t feel like herself anymore. She’d always been inseparable from her career. Now, she was an empty shell, a doll with her insides all scooped out. Only when she was with Max was it possible for her to feel normal and forget, because he made her laugh and aroused her and challenged her.
She was hyperventilating, in the grip of a panic attack. She snatched up her phone and pressed the first digits of Max’s number.
He would come to her. Or she would go to him. It didn’t matter. Once she was with him, she would be okay.
She was about to press the send button when she realized what she was doing: using Max as a security blanket.
She threw her phone onto the couch and sat beside it, her head in her hands.
She was such a mess. Her career was over, she had no idea what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, and she’d embarked on a hot, breathless love affair with one of her best friends as a bizarre form of coping mechanism.
You can’t keep running. It’s all going to catch up with you eventually.
Maddy sucked in big mouthfuls of air, trying to slow her frantically beating heart. Her body was filled with adrenaline, responding to ancient fight-or-flight instincts triggered by her bone-deep fear of the future and the vast sorrow inside her.
“Get a grip, Maddy. For God’s sake,” she muttered into her hands.
Tears had squeezed out of her eyes but she wiped them from her face and stood, shaking her hands to try to relieve the tension banding her body. She needed to do something, to get out of the apartment, out of her own head. She needed to—
She closed her eyes then as she understood what her body and soul wanted, needed, demanded. She crossed to her dance bag and pulled out her pointe slippers. She found an old leotard in the bottom of the bag.
