Happily Never After

by Lynn Painter

He leaned closer to the camera and his voice was almost a whisper when he said, “I’m a fucking superhero, remember?”

“With you?” I teased, liking the playfulness in his face. “I mean, I suppose you can sit at a different table and speak to strangers, if you prefer.”

But then an email came in. From Stuart. Fucking Stuart.

Especially when I knew Stuart was sensitive about his height. It gave me great pleasure to see him have to look up at Max in fear. Although, to be fair, Max had looked dangerous when he’d stared down Stuart.

I don’t want to hurt you, Soph, but you need to let the cheating thing go. We fell out of love a long time ago and that’s what ended things. FELL OUT OF LOVE. Like it was simple, like we’d fallen out of a boat. Oops, we fell out. If love was real, you couldn’t just fall out of it.

“Larry’s seventy-five,” I added, and the smile was back. “He’s seventy-seven, for the record,” she said, smiling fondly. “But he tells everyone he’s sixty-seven. Shaves ten years off his birthday every time.”

“Wow, your arm is really solid, just like your chest. Are you swole under your clothes, kid?” He did look at me then. “You just said swole and called me kid.” “Yeah. So?” I grinned at the suspicious way he was peering at me, then pulled a Larry and said, “What are you, the language police?”

“Do you have cash?” I asked, leaning a little closer and lowering my voice. “Yes,” Max replied, his jaw doing that little flex thing that I found sexy as hell. “Why?” “Because I want to kiss you right now and I don’t want to wait for my card to be processed.” He stood, pulled a money clip out of those beautiful sweatpants, and dropped some bills on the bar. “Let’s go.”

“If you still want this when you’re sober, Soph, I am yours—night or day,” I said, meaning every word.

Because as she stared up at me, I realized that I was very into her. Not into this, this chemistry-gone-wild thing that existed between us, but into her. I was falling for her.

“Hey there, sunshine.” He gave me a look. “Fuck right off, assbag.”

and when I came out, Max was lying on the bed. One arm over his eyes, the other spread wide. “You kind of look like you’re dabbing,”

But lying there, with Max holding me like I was his teddy bear, was very nice.

His face was soft and sweet—boyish, even—as he dozed, and something about it made my heart pinch in my chest.

I grabbed my phone and took a photo to use against him later. But when I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, I looked at the photo and, for some reason, didn’t want him to know about it. I kind of just wanted to save it. For me.

Without thinking, I reached over and grabbed her hand, linking my fingers through hers. I hadn’t meant to do it, but I just loved what a decent human she was.

“What’s its name?” “That’s Cookie,” he said as his cat immediately started purring loudly when I petted his head. “He’s kind of an asshole.” “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,”

“I would like to introduce you,” he said, shoving his phone in front of my face, “to my new favorite son.” I glanced down, and no, he hadn’t adopted a baby. My father was showing me a boat.

“See, I set up notifications on my phone, so I know every time you or Sophie post something.” He looked proud of his tech savviness. “You bet your ass I run and show your mother every single one.”

Because Max was grinning from ear to ear like an obnoxious woman-hauling caveman, and I was making a face like he was absolutely annoying but I secretly loved it. Something about the shot was so us, as if we were an us, that I kind of wanted to print it off and put it in a frame.

She was so pretty that it kind of took my breath away, and I was glad I was wearing sunglasses so she couldn’t see how much time I spent looking at her. Because her pretty had layers.

“DEWEY!” I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “OUR BOAT IS BROKEN! DEW-EEEY! OUR PEDALS DON’T WORK!” “Love how hard you went on the e’s,” Sophie said around a giggle. “DEW-EEEEEEEY!” I yelled again, just to make her laugh harder. God, she had a great laugh.

She sounded entirely unaffected when she said, “That bird is never going to stop, is he?” I watched the attention-stealing asshole as he really started getting after his carcass desecration, and I let out an impressed whistle. “I mean, it is dinnertime.”

“I see your usage of the word dipshit and raise you one, King Dipshit,” she said, before raising her keys to her face and blowing into a whistle that was hanging on the key ring. And it wasn’t just a whistle. It was the loudest, most high-pitched, most brain-scramblingly loud whistle I’d ever heard in my entire life.

“Of course we are,” I replied, extending my paddle. “But don’t be sad when you lose, honey.” “Shut up,” she said, pinching my bicep, “and get ready. Honey.”

So this is working?! Max: Apparently so. We might have to go HAM on the pics later. I grinned as I texted: I don’t think people say HAM anymore. Max: What are you, the fucking language police?

“Pervert,” I teased. “Best friend,” he corrected.

“But are you okay? Is there anything I can do about whatever made you upset?” God, I loved her.

“Damn it, Steinbeck, how dare you schedule something in your life without my approval? The nerve,” he joked, sounding adorably teasing.

I’d thought about that smile so many fucking times over the years that it was ridiculous, honestly, and seeing it felt like returning to something comfortable, like visiting a house you used to live in.

it occurred to me that I didn’t feel the way I’d always felt around her. She was gorgeous and smelled good and I liked her, but I didn’t feel suffocated by how badly I wanted her in my life. It had simmered into more of an affection, of a warmth for someone who used to be important to me.

“Because I’ll always care about you, Lil, regardless of whether we’re in each other’s lives.”

Aw

“I fought it hard, because trust me, this is the last thing I want. But now you consume me, Soph, every single part of me, and I like it. I can’t drive without thinking about your impractical car, can’t run without thinking about the way you run, can’t put on a fucking hard hat without picturing the way you looked in that stupid yellow hat. Somehow you’ve become my center, and God help me, it feels right.”

“When you’re a baby, you don’t stop taking steps just because you’ve fallen once, or you’d never walk. The falls help you learn how to walk, for fuck’s sake, to make balance and gait adjustments. If you never fell, you’d do something outrageously stupid, like walk on your toes like a ballerina, which would result in you getting your ass kicked every day of your life for looking like a dipshit.”

“And the truth of the matter is that if you fell madly in love with him today and threw all caution to the wind—and then he cheated on you two years from now—would it really feel that much worse than denying yourself the love and companionship you deserve? Than how you feel right now?”

“Rose! What are you doing?” I asked, standing up and stepping between Rose and Larry. “He’s supposed to be resting.” “Resting what—his lips?” Rose looked pissed.

“What are you talking about?” “He’s not having a heart attack, for Christ’s sake.” She scowled at Larry. “He had an anxiety attack after getting caught making out with the grocery delivery guy in the stairwell.”

“Casanova here got caught red-handed—red-lipped, to be more accurate—getting nasty in the stairwell, so he acted like he was code blue to distract Mrs. Ginsburg, the poor dear, who happened upon his stairwell seduction while trying to get in her steps.”

“And what kind of an animal—I know you hear me, Larry, ya goddamn animal—is so hot and bothered that they can’t even wait and go at it in a public stairwell?” I glanced down at Larry, and he winked while waggling his eyebrows before closing his eyes and muttering, “Stairwell.”

Having my heart eventually broken by Max couldn’t feel much worse than it felt to not have him in my life at all, could it?

“We’re good, Max, but thank you so much.” “You called me Max,” I said, half to myself, because she usually called me Julian. “That’s because you don’t remind me of Julian anymore.” “Who is Julian?” I asked. “Famous porn star, very handsome,”

“Did I just see bullet points on your phone?” I swear to God it appeared she was looking at a PowerPoint. She stared at me for a minute, squinting a little as if deciding whether or not she should come clean.

“Stop,” I interrupted, taking another sip and letting the whiskey burn down my throat. I couldn’t believe she was giving me a PowerPoint breakdown of her emotions.

“Steinbeck.” I ran my thumb over the soft column of her neck and said, “It’s okay to feel broken, because I am, too. And as for the rest of those amazing run-on sentences you just yelled at me—we’ll figure them out as we go.”

“But, Soph, I know that I like you more than anyone else in the world. And that’s it, isn’t it—the thing that matters? Fuck love and relationships, I just want to be with you because you’re my goddamn favorite person. And I feel like it’s going to be impossible for you not to trust my feelings because you’re going to see them in my eyes every time I look at you.”

“I can’t imagine any two people more right for each other than us. I can’t imagine any reason why we shouldn’t be together when we both feel so much for each other. Shit.” My voice cracked and I glanced around the kitchen, desperate to make a point. “See? No one is objecting, Soph.”

Since the very beginning, he’d kissed me like he was ravenous for me, like my kisses fueled his existence and he needed as much of them as he could possibly get or he would surely perish. I knew without a doubt that I could kiss him forever and never lose a single butterfly.

I just stood there, staring at the spot where she’d been, my heart paralyzed with feelings. Fuck me, I’d fallen so hard that I wasn’t even trying to get up.

Because as it turned out, love was actually real. It wasn’t a trick at all, but more like this amazing thing that was mislabeled a shocking amount of the time, leading to endless confusion and piles of unhappiness. They really needed to fix that. But the truth was that if you looked hard enough and didn’t die from the disappointments along the way, the real thing was out there.

There was literally nothing in our life that I would ever object to ever again.