Shut Your Eyes

**Max POV**
When Maggie and Jordan came back to the condo, Marc and I were busy with a game of NHL in the living room. We were so wrapped up in the game that Jordan made it all the way onto the couch beside us before we noticed they were back.

I glanced over at him and frowned. Jordan was usually happy – almost too happy at times. It tended to get annoying. But here he was, sitting on my couch looking like an angsty teenager.

“What’s wrong with you?” I mumbled, still focused on the video game Marc and I were playing.

Jordan stayed quiet, forcing Marc and I to pause the game and look over at him. He stared solemnly out the window at the backyard. After a moment went by without being acknowledged, Marc leaned closer to me and whispered, “I don’t think he heard you.”

“Jordan, what’s wrong?” He finally looked over at us with furrowed eyebrows and shrugged.

“Nothing.”

“So you’re just pouting like a girl for no reason?” Marc asked snarkily, as confused with Jordan’s attitude as I was.

Jordan started tapping a finger against his knee – something he did when he was deep in thought, which wasn’t something that happened often. He looked down at his jeans before mumbling, “I think Maggie’s mad at me.”

Marc scoffed and tried to un-pause the game, suddenly uninterested in the conversation he’d been roped into. “That’s impossible Staalsy; Maggie doesn’t get mad at people.”

Jordan shook his head adamantly. “She’s gotta be mad at me for something, it’s the only reason she would be acting like she is.”

This caught my attention.

“Acting like what? Where is she anyways?” I asked, glancing around the condo for my sister’s wild head of hair.

“She’s in her room. She seemed fine at first, we went and got a couch and walked downtown for a while before we went in this art store she wanted to go to. Then she walked outside to take a phone call and when I went out there to find her she started acting really weird. Wouldn’t let me touch her all of a sudden, like she was scared of me. She said she didn’t feel well, but I don’t know.” Jordan avoided looking at me or Marc, who was interested in the conversation again, and began tapping his foot impatiently against the floor. “I don’t know what I did.”

My eyes narrowed involuntarily. The behavior that was so strange to Jordan seemed all too familiar to me.

“Just go talk to her, Jordan. Maggie would tell you if you did something that upset her.” Marc gave his advice quietly from his seat on the couch.

“She doesn’t bite, Staalsy.” I reminded him.

Jordan scowled at me before getting up and walking back towards Maggie’s room. A small part of me wanted to follow him back there and eavesdrop on their conversation but I knew Maggie wouldn’t approve, and more importantly that Marc would rat me out.

“What do you think he’s saying to her?” Marc asked absentmindedly, too focused on the video game to be wholly interested in anything else.

That was a good question.

I shrugged. “No idea. Probably something stupid.”

Marc nodded in agreement, all too aware of how Jordan tangled up his words sometimes.
We went back to the game and ignored the urge to look back towards Maggie’s room or crane our ears towards the crack in her door. Eventually we got distracted. The only noise that filled the room was the soft clicking of remote buttons as I destroyed Marc in NHL. Once a goalie, always a goalie.

A quick glance at the clock made me realize that Jordan had been in Maggie’s room for almost half an hour, which was strange because Jordan could rarely sit through an entire movie without getting distracted, much less have a serious conversation with someone for more than a few minutes.

“He’s been back there a long time.” Marc noticed once the game finished.

I nodded, about to open my mouth and reply when Jordan wandered back in to the living room. Instead of the anxious, pensive look he’d had earlier, he now wore a contended smile on his face.

“How’d it go, Staalsy?” He waved off my question with a sweep of his hand.

“She’s fine. Some person from university called her and she hadn’t heard from them in a while and caught her off guard. No big deal.”

I glanced back at Maggie’s room and mumbled, “Someone from university, you said?”

Jordan nodded, taking a sip of a beer he’d snagged from the kitchen. “Yeah. I didn’t ask who, though. I figured it was none of my business.” Jordan changed the subject quickly, bored with the conversation. He snagged one of the controllers from off the x-box and looked at Marc and I. “Which one of you pussies am I playing?”

I set my controller down on the coffee table with a smirk. “You can play Flower; he needs all the practice he can get.”

Marc began cursing at me in French, but instead of staying to enjoy his creative uses for the word ‘fuck’, I stood up and made my way to Maggie’s room. Her door was closed, something that struck me as odd, so instead of walking right in I tapped on it with my knuckles.

“Margaux? Are you ok in there?”

It was quiet for a minute before I heard her reply, muffled by the wooden door between us. “I’m fine Max, I’m just tired.”

Even through the door I could hear the dull edge to her voice. I reached forward and grabbed onto the door knob. “Are you sure? You sound strange…” A quick turn of the knob showed me that Maggie had locked her door, something else she never did.

“I’m fine Maxime, no need to worry.”

But I did. Leaning closer to her door, I spoke just loud enough for her to hear me without everyone else in the condo knowing what was coming out of my mouth.

“I will worry about you, because that’s what you do when you care about someone and you suspect something is wrong; you worry about them. You sit there and wonder if they are okay. So, if I ever get one of those feelings that you aren’t okay, I will ask you about it, and I will worry about you, and I don’t care if you want me to or not.”

I walked away before she could reply once again that she was fine, because she clearly wasn’t. But with a locked door and her insistence that she didn’t need to be coddled, there wasn’t much I could do about it. For a split second I mulled over the idea of kicking the door in, but she wouldn’t have taken too well to that tactic, so I quickly vetoed it in my own mind.

In the living room, Jordan and Marc had started bickering about something, so I quickly grabbed a beer from the fridge an wandered back in there to shut them up. Maggie would feel better in the morning; she always did.



When I left for practice in the morning, Maggie was still asleep.

I left a note on the coffee maker telling her where I was, not that she didn’t already know, and when I’d be back. Maggie was the only person in the world that I left notes for. Everyone else had the privilege of guessing my whereabouts, but Maggie’s constant habit of leaving notes all over the house had rubbed off on me. There was a pile of post-it’s next to the phone a mile high and most of them had Maggie’s artsy scrawl written all over them.

Practice took longer than expected, and by the time we were all showered and ready to leave – we were starving.

“Does anyone want to get lunch?” Kris asked our small group as we walked out to the cars.

Geno looked relieved that someone had mentioned food, and nodded at Kris quickly. Kris turned his attention on the rest of us. “What about you guys?”

“I could eat.” Sid offered up, and Jordan agreed.

“Yeah, I’m starving. Let’s go to that new deli downtown.”

Marc nudged me in the ribs. “You should call Maggie and have her meet us there.”

“That’s not a bad idea.” I murmured as I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. Maggie loved to eat, and she’d beaten me in more than a couple of eating contests. No one was ever sure where she put it all since she’s only 5’2” and weighs 115 pounds soaking wet. One time Marc suggested the idea of two stomachs, a theory we were still debating.

The phone rang a few times before going to voicemail – something that happened quite often. Maggie was known for getting caught up in other things and tuning out any and all communication devices. It drove my mother crazy. Her happy pre-recorded voice drifted over the line.

“Hello! This is Maggie. I’m probably available right now, but can’t find my phone – leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I find it!”

I hung up without leaving a message; I’d just bring her lunch instead of her meeting us there.

“Is she still asleep?” Kris asked, amusement clear in his voice.

I smirked at him and shook my head. “She’s probably painting. I’ll just bring her back something.”

Kris nodded, understanding Maggie’s habits, and we all piled into our cars to get lunch.



“There’s no way you’re gonna beat me, Sid. Just because you’re the best on the ice doesn’t mean you’re the best everywhere.” I rolled my eyes at Jordan as Marc and I corralled everyone into the house. A debate had broken out over lunch about whether or not Jordan was the best at NHL, and Sid had challenged him to a game.

So here we were: six grown men, all with successful careers, trying to see who was the best at a video game of our own sport. If only our parents could see us now.

“Hurry up, assholes. I want to get this over with so we can play Mario Kart.” Marc grumbled from behind the group, pushing them towards the living room.

I veered off towards the kitchen to put the leftover food in the fridge. While trying to arrange everything so it didn’t fall out of the refrigerator when the door was opened, I noticed that my note to Maggie was still lying on the coffee maker – untouched. In fact, the entire kitchen had remained untouched. Normally Maggie would at least make coffee, and the dishwasher would be humming when I got home from practice. There’s nothing she hates more than dirty dishes.

I glanced out the kitchen window. Her car was still in the driveway, so she hadn’t left the house. The boys hadn’t noticed my absence yet because they were still wrapped up with the NHL battle, so I snuck back towards Maggie’s room and knocked softly on the door.

After no response, I wandered into her room slowly. Maggie was burrowed down in her covers like a
cocoon. Flat on her back, she was staring straight up at the ceiling fan.

“Mags? What’re you doing?”

I saw her cut her bright blue eyes over in my direction. “I’m watching a movie.”

The menu screen of To Kill a Mockingbird was playing on the TV. Once the theme music started again, I realized that it had probably been on the menu screen for a while. I crawled onto the bed with her without an invitation and looked down at her.

Her eyes were bright red like she’d been crying all night. Maggie looks up at me with eyes that seem to belong to someone three times her age. It's something beyond wisdom, all the way to insanity and back. It's like her eyes are scarred from all the things she's seen.

I didn’t say anything, waiting instead for her to start the conversation. Something was bothering her – that much was obvious – but this was one instance that I didn’t feel like I should push the matter. She would tell me when she was ready to.

Maggie continued to stare up at the ceiling fan with bloodshot eyes, sniffling softly every now and then. After a couple of minutes, she took a deep breath.

“I’m so tired Max.” Her voice was stiff and hoarse from lying dormant in her throat, and it wavered slightly as if she was barely keeping herself together as she spoke. “I’m so tired of running.”

“Running from what?” I was confused.

She burrowed out of her cocoon and started searching through the blankets. After a moment or two she pulled her phone out of the mess of down comforters and quilts and started going through it, wiping away stray tears as she did. Eventually she found what she was looking for and shoved the phone in my direction so I would see what she was looking at.

A text message, crisp and cordial, was staring back at me.

Six more days.

It wasn’t from a number I recognized, and it didn’t look like a Pittsburgh area code.

“215? That’s-”

“Philadelphia.” Maggie finished for me quietly.

The gears turned quickly in my head as I made the connections and took in all the information. It didn’t take very long for me to become angry.

“Six more days? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I hissed at her a little more sharply than I probably should have. She didn’t wince though, knowing that it wasn’t her that I was livid with.

“Gavin called me yesterday while I was out with Jordan. I don’t know how he got my number, but he did, and he’s given me a week to come back to Philadelphia on my own before he comes down here to get me himself. I don’t know what I’m going to do, Max. I can’t leave, but I can’t stay, and I feel like I’m just going to make life hard for everyone. Everyone’s going to get dragged into my problems, and I don’t want that to happen.” Her voice cracked and broke as she finished her sentence, and a wave of sobs flew of her like they’d been trapped inside of her for far too long.

I opened my arms and motioned for her to come over to me, which she did – crawling into my lap like a small child. I waited until she calmed down before speaking. “So tell me why you can’t stay.”

“Kris and Geno treat me differently. It’s like I’m a porcelain doll or something, they’re too careful around me. Whenever we go out they watch me like hawks, never letting anyone get too close. They act like you.” She finished off with a dark chuckle.

“So, you can’t stay because of Kris and Geno?” I asked, confusion filling my voice.

She shook her head. “It’s not a bad thing, the way they treat me, it just reminds me that I don’t fit – not the real me, anyways. Imagine if everyone knew, Max. They’d all treat me like I was made of glass. I know you already think you have to protect me from everything, and now Kris and Geno think that too. No one else needs to pencil my protection into their lives – I won’t let them.”

Maggie stopped for a moment, taking a second to catch her breath. “Besides, Max. If I stay here Gavin will just come down and get me himself, and who knows what’ll happen then.”

I looked down at her. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. First, you’re going to stop crying, because it makes me hurt to see you like this. You can’t keep everything so bottled up, Mags. I know you want to solve all your problems by yourself, but there are so many people who want to help you. Kris and Geno love you, that’s why they treat you like their little sister. They don’t want to see you get hurt any more than I do.”

“Next, we’re done with this.” I picked up the phone from the bed and tossed it across the room, making it hit the dresser with a wince-inducing crack. “No more phone calls from him, no more text messages from him. We’ll get you another phone, and if we have to block every number in Philadelphia we will.”

Maggie stayed quiet, breathing softly against my chest before she opened her mouth and let out a whispered plea. “Don’t let him get me, Max. I can’t go back there; I don’t know how long I’ll last.”

Pulling her tighter, I rested my head on top of hers and sighed. “You’re not going anywhere Margaux. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, and there are about twenty-two other men and a very scrappy French girl that would back me up on that. If he wants to get to you, he’ll have to go through me to do it.”

Maggie squeezed me tightly. “Thank you, Max. I’m sorry I cried on your shirt.”

I barked out a laugh. There was the Maggie I knew and loved. “It’s alright, I have others. Now get some sleep, something tells me you didn’t get any last night.”

I helped her burrow back into the covers before I left; tucking her in like I used to do when we were little. “Je t’aime, Marguax.”

“Je t’aime aussi, Maxime.” She murmured from underneath the blankets, her voice already heavy with exhaustion.

I wandered out into the hallway where I came face to face with Kris Letang. He was looking at me strangely. “We were wondering where you went. Sid claims there should be a full audience for Jordan’s humiliation.”

“I was talking to Margaux. What are you doing on Friday?” I asked hastily.

He thought for a moment. “I have a date that night with some girl Vero wanted me to meet. Why?”

“Can you reschedule it?”

“What’s this all about, Max?”

I glanced back towards Maggie’s room. “I need a small favor.”

He cocked an eyebrow, but nodded for me to continue.

“I need you to come to Philadelphia with me to talk to Gavin.”

The look in Kris’ eyes turned from confusion to anger.

“I can reschedule.”