I'd Do Anything

The next day, Max pushed open the door to his parents house and called for them as he dropped his bag on the floor. Shell, the chocolate lab puppy that had replaced the golden retriever, skittered around his feet.

“I’m in the kitchen!” his mother’s voice rang out.

He shut the door, pet the dog for a moment, then started towards the kitchen. As he went through the living room, he couldn’t help but catch sight of the photograph from his senior prom. Him and Trisha standing on the porch of the house next door. Her hair was carefully pulled up, make up done immaculately. They were both laughing, but he couldn’t remember what at.

Trisha had sent him an apology shortly after he stormed away from her yesterday, frustrated at his own failings and her blindness. He replied with his own apology, but in some respects he didn’t mean it. Thomas was an ass.

Upon entering the kitchen, Max let his mother fuss over him for a moment before he sat at the kitchen table and watched her cook. She was an excellent cook, but she really excelled at baking. As it was rhubarb season, she was making tons of pies for her friends. The strawberry-rhubarb wouldn’t be seen again until Thanksgiving, when it was trotted out one last time.

“Any new girls about?” she asked now.

“No.” he said. “I’ve been too busy, really.”

“Hm. Well, can’t say I’m surprised, now that Trisha’s back.”

Max rolled his eyes. “Mom. She’s not interested.”

“Hmph. How is she, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Aunt Bridget has cancer, her boyfriend is an asshole, but she has a great career. She’s going to be famous.” He reached for a strawberry. “We actually got in a fight right before I left.”

“About what?”

“How her boyfriend’s an asshole.”

His mother rolled her eyes, and started mixing fruit and corn starch with one hand. “I wonder what you’ll fight about when you’re her asshole boyfriend.”

“Mom.”

“Sorry, sorry. I’ll stay out of it.”

But they both knew she wouldn’t.

Some other family members were coming over for dinner, so Max moved his bag up into his old room. It was pretty much the same as he left it. Dark bedsheets, TV resting on the dresser. For all he knew, the trundle bed still had sheets as well, waiting for Trisha’s return for a sleepover. Her portable CD player was probably tucked in there too, waiting to play her favorite song off of American Idiot.

Max dumped his bag on the bed and looked at the photographs pinned to the wall. Several hockey teams, old friends from high school. More photos of punk-ish Trish. She was everywhere and he couldn’t escape her, even if he wanted to.

For a long time, he had managed to get over it. He missed her, but he didn’t realize how much until he saw her again.

Honestly, as a teenager, he wanted her. But back then, they were kids. And now that they were adults, he understood what the wanting meant. And that he actually, really wanted her.

She’d figure out that Thomas was bad for her. Pretty soon, too, the way things were going. The real question was if she’d notice he was standing there this whole time.

~*~

Trisha threw herself into her work. She was unbelievably pissed at Thomas for being a brat, mad at Max for being right, and mad at herself for putting herself in that situation in the first place. Max had been gone for a week, and so she was at the store from open to close. Working the floor, stocking, helping customers. At one point, Paul irritably asked if he was going to be out of a job.

She also spent a ton of time on Behind the Curtain, obsessing over every last detail. She and Lana had been booked for a bunch of conventions over the summer, and Lana was convinced that she could draw another series at the same time. Trisha would have to go over her old idea notebooks to find something she liked. She wanted another series too.

On the social side, street hockey season was over, and the league would be playing softball until September. She also had to start thinking about her annual pool party, which she threw while her parents were in Mexico for two weeks every summer.

She was also still stuck on the romance idea. She had her plot for it, but she wasn’t sure how to integrate it.

“I mean, it would make more sense to start to integrate it in the next volume.” Trisha said, rubbing her forehead as Lana read over her notes. “But I don’t want to wait that long.”

“We could do a few stand alone chapters.” Lana suggested.

“But we need to wrap up the story arc before issue twenty. If we’re going to keep our readers, we can’t screw it up.”

Lana glanced at her assistants, Sophie and Pierre, bent over their work. “Hey, nerds, any suggestions?”

They both spun around in their swivel chairs. They had been listening the entire time.

“Why are you doing these romance chapters?” Sophie asked. “It’s a great idea. Mix things up a bit. But why?”

Lana watched Trisha carefully as she shrugged. “Just been bothering me a bit.”

“Well, with the new volume coming out soon, you should probably wait a bit.” Pierre cautioned. “You can’t ruin the story line.”

Lana snapped her fingers. “What if we wrote them, and didn’t publish?”

Trisha, Pierre and Sophie stared at her like she had three heads.

“Because we get paid when we publish?” Trisha reminded her.

“No, no. Like, we write them for volume two. Stand alone chapters, like those fucking pointless Hawkeye chapters – “

“Were they that pointless?” Trisha asked, trying to remember.

“I thought so. Shut up. We write the chapters. However many it takes, though I have a feeling it will really only be one or two. And then we put them in the back of volume two as bonus material. We won’t lose readers because they won’t be paying for it if they don’t like it.”

“Can we do that?” Trisha asked.

“I mean, we’re gonna have to ask, but I’m sure it will fly. They had originally asked me to put in some full drawings, but if I tell them I want to do this instead…”

“Who is this love story even between?” Pierre asked.

“Teru and Brian.” Trisha said.

“Who’s Brian?”

Trisha rolled her eyes and picked up issue 4, which was sitting on the coffee table. She knew this would happen. She flipped through it and held up the page. “Him.”

“The tech guy who was never seen again?”

“Exactly. We reintroduce him, imply that all this time Rosetta and Brian have been friends, and then we do this weird twisted Teru love story.”

“And it ends with this.” Lana said, holding up a full page sketch of Teru curled in a ball on the floor, listening to the conversation happening about her.

“You did that fast.” Trisha observed, reaching for the sketch. “I told you about how I wanted it to end like, last night.”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“You two have a really fucked idea of romance.” Sophie said.

Lana ignored her and started typing out an email to their editor on a tablet. Trisha sat on the couch and closed her eyes. “Vraiment.” She muttered.

Her phone started to ring and she pulled it out. She still had her eyes shut when she answered it.

“Allo?”

“Patricia.” Her mother said.

At the one word, Trisha’s eyes shot open. She could hear the stress and despair in her mother’s voice. <<Mama? Qui passe?>>

<<Patricia…ta tante…tu dois venir a l’hopital.>> (Patricia…your aunt…you need to come to the hospital.)

Trisha felt her throat starting to close up. <<Elle est…>> (Is she…)

<<…Elle ne passera pas la nuit.>> (…She won’t live through the night.)

Without saying anything, Trisha hung up. Lana was looking at her with concern. “Is everything okay?”

“I have to go.” Trisha said, feeling numb as she stood. “Aunt Bridget…I have to see her before…”

Lana immediately stood, ran around her desk, and hugged her friend tightly. “Do you need someone to take you there?” she asked.

Trisha slowly nodded into her shoulder.

“Okay, get your things.” She said.

Lana turned around and gave Sophie and Pierre some last instructions, then led Trisha by the hand out into the store, quickly pulling her past Olivia and a few customers.

“Do you want to call anyone?” she asked. “Thomas?”

Trisha shook her head.

“Max?”

Max’s name reverberated around her head. She hadn’t talked to him since the fight.

“No.” she said finally. “He’s in Connecticut.”

“Trish, he’d – “

“Can we just go?” Trisha asked, feeling the hysterics in her voice.

“Okay. We’re going. Don’t worry.”