Mad About Max

He gulped in a huge, painfully cold lungful of air and yelled “Sara!” just as she lifted the ax.

With a shriek she froze on the upstroke and kept going, the heavy ax dragging her over to sprawl flat on her back. The powdery snow puffed up around her, then drifted back down like her own miniblizzard, dusting her in white, face and all. Max pinned his lips between his teeth and slogged over to help her to her feet.

Sara ignored his hand. Her cutting glare might even have made him feel a little bit chastened if she hadn’t spent the next couple of minutes floundering around in her puffy green coat like a turned-over turtle. She finally managed to roll onto her side, then crawl to her feet, leaving behind a snow angel that looked more like a Lizzie Borden silhouette, complete with murder weapon.

Max’s amusement completely evaporated when she bent, picked up the ax and tried to walk around him. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, stepping between her and the woodpile.

“Chopping wood,” she said in her best third-grade teacher’s voice, reasonable and patient. “I use it to heat my house, remember?”

“How could I forget when I always chop it for you?”

“Well, now you won’t have to.” She lifted the ax and took a step forward.

He crossed his arms and held his ground. “You’re not chopping wood, Sara. That’s my job.”

“Not anymore.” But she dropped the ax head to rest on the ground. Safely. “Weren’t you listening three weeks ago?”

“Well, yeah, but…you were drunk.”

Sara’s breath puffed out in a cloud of white. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t know what I was saying. Or that I don’t remember what you said.”

“I really didn’t mean to imply you couldn’t take care of yourself, but…” You’re Sara, he finished to himself, Clumsy, artless, scattered-as-a-handful-of-packing-popcorn-in-a-windstorm Sara. His best friend in the whole world. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“You didn’t offend me, Max. I’m used to people thinking of me as hopeless. What bothers me more is that you didn’t really hear what I said.”

That was exactly what his ex-wife had always accused him of, but Max shook off the thought almost as soon as it reared its ugly head. Sara and Julia were nothing alike.

“Of course I remember what you said.” He shut one eye and tried to remember. “You said, ‘I can’t live like this anymore.’ But like I said, Sara, I thought you were—” He got a good look at her face and swallowed the word “drunk,” and, just to be safe, decided against mentioning her unfortunate tendency to leave chaos in her path every once in a while—which was the other reason he’d decided that statement had nothing to do with him. Now he had the sneaking suspicion she’d aimed that dart much closer to home—and he was wearing the bull’s-eye. “What did I do wrong?”

The way she nibbled on her lower lip and looked away confirmed it.

“Just tell me and I’ll take it back or apologize for it or fix it or…” He spread his hands. “I’ll do whatever I can to get things back to normal, Sara. I miss you.” More than he’d ever believed possible, enough to drag that confession from him, which was really saying something for a man who considered “hi” an emotional outburst.

Baring his heart, however, only seemed to have saddened her more. “It’s not you, Max.”

“Then it’s the accidents?”

Sara lifted her shoulders and let them droop in a dejected shrug. “I’m not too pleased with making a fool of myself every few weeks, but the accidents are just the symptom of a bigger problem.”

“So what’s the bigger problem?”

“It’s me.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Don’t yell at me.”

“Don’t—” Max shoved his cold-reddened hands back through his hair, pacing away then back. “You want me to listen to you, but you’re not saying anything. You’ve been sulking for weeks and when I ask you why—”

“I haven’t been sulking!”

“Really? I used to talk to you every day, but I’ve barely seen you since Halloween. You’re hardly ever home before dark, and even when you are here you only come out of your house to get in your car and leave again. If that’s not sulking, then what is it?”

“I’ve been busy,” she muttered.

“Everyone’s busy. If I did something to make you angry, that’s fine, but at least tell me why I’m being punished.”

“I’m not punishing you.”

But she couldn’t look at him, either, Max noticed. “It feels like it.”

“I’m sorry for that, but you just have to understand that I can’t—I don’t—I’m unhappy.”

“You’re unhappy?” She seemed relieved to have that off her chest, but all that revelation did was heat his temper up a few more degrees. Julia had said that a lot. And then she’d left. He paced away, hands in pockets, kicking at the drifts of snow. “If you expect me to say anything remotely helpful, you’re going to have to give me more to work with.” He thought he’d said that in an incredibly even tone of voice, but when he turned back, Sara didn’t seem all that impressed. She appeared…irritated. She sounded it, too.

“I made the decision to come here six years ago, Max. It was my choice and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

“And we’re grateful, Sara. More than grateful. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. If I haven’t said that enough—”

“It’s not that,” she said, shoving his gratitude aside with a wave of her mittened hands. “Much as I lo—” Her eyes lifted to his, then skipped away before he got any clue as to what was going on inside her. “Much as I’d love to spend the rest of my life taking care of you and Joey,” she said so fast the words tumbled over one another, “I want a home and family of my own.”

“Damn it,” Max said on an outrush of breath that emptied his lungs and left him gasping. And damn her for catching him off guard with something he hadn’t thought about in years—six to be exact. A home and family were what he’d wanted when he married Julia, and he’d gotten them—not the way he’d hoped, and he wouldn’t trade Joey for anything in the world—but damn Sara for reminding him that Joey would be an only child. “Nobody’s preventing you from having those things, Sara.”

She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing in a very un-Sara-like way. “So it’s okay if I just move out, get on with my life? You should’ve told me a long time ago that you didn’t care if I was around or not.”

“Who said that?”

“You did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

She snorted. “You’re hardly broken up at the prospect of me leaving, Max. How am I supposed to take that?”

“I was trying to be supportive.”

“You mean you were humoring me.”

“No, I wasn’t….” He rubbed at his temples. It felt as if his head was going to explode. “You’ve been so confused lately. I just…didn’t think you were serious.” He dug at a half-buried log with the toe of his boot and jammed his hands in his coat pockets, looking up at her without lifting his head. “Are you?”

“Would you be upset if I left?”

“Joey—”

“I’m not talking about Joey.” Sara closed the distance between them, waiting until he met her eyes. “How would you feel, Max?”

Max found himself standing behind the woodpile without knowing how he’d gotten there, except that panic had something to do with it. One minute everything was fine, then suddenly Sara was unhappy. Talking about leaving. The next thing he knew, she’d be out the door, exactly like Julia. Except in Sara’s case she’d go back to her family in Boston, probably marry some junior VP handpicked by her father. And when she left, he’d have to pick up the pieces as he’d done before. Unless he made sure he wasn’t breakable this time. “What do my feelings have to do with it?” he demanded.

“They just do, Max.”

“It doesn’t sound to me like you even know how you feel about it.”

She tried to answer, but he walked away while he still could.

“Let me know if you ever figure it out,” he said over his shoulder.

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