Leaning in toward Brooks, I reached over his arm, purposefully brushing my breast against his bare skin, and grabbed his Jack and Coke and took a drink. I made a face and handed it back. “That’s disgusting,” I sputtered, licking my lips in a slow, exaggerated gesture. I was being shameless. But I was committed to throwing myself into a good time with my very available friend if it killed me.

Brooks laughed, his face looking almost pained. He placed his hand on top of mine. For just a moment, he lingered, and it felt strange. I didn’t understand what I was doing or why I was doing it. But I did know that for right now, that horrible emptiness inside of me had disappeared.

I tried not to feel embarrassed when Brooks lifted my hand and placed it carefully on my own leg. He didn’t move away, but he didn’t touch me again, and I felt myself flush in silent mortification.

“Brooks—” I began, but he cut me off.

“You think they’d play ‘Cinnamon Girl’ if I asked them to?” Brooks had gone back to bobbing his head in time to the music.

I looked at him and knew exactly what he was doing. He was giving me my out so that I wouldn’t feel weird about whatever strange pickup move I had just attempted on him. I wanted to be ashamed, but there was something about Brooks that wouldn’t let me be.

“Maybe. But do you think your ears can handle the massacre of your favorite song? Because that dude up there ain’t no Neil Young,” I said, moving past my discomfort.

“Let’s go ask. Come on.” Brooks hopped down from his stool and headed toward the stage. He took my hand and tugged me through the crowd. We were able to convince the wannabe rockers to play “Cinnamon Girl,” and then we were dancing. Very, very badly. Because dancing and Neil Young ballads didn’t really work.

I remembered seeing Brooks dance with Courtney at Compulsion and thinking how horrible his moves were, even in a place where style and technique weren’t required. But I didn’t care. Because we were having fun.

Renee and Iain joined us, and even though they danced with us in a group, I could see the way they turned toward each other. Iain was smitten, and it was obvious that Renee was losing the battle to not be smitten in return. Things were pretty freaking awesome.

And then it all went to shit.

My phone started buzzing in my pocket and I looked around at my friends, knowing they were the only people who ever called me. I pulled it out and looked down at the screen in the dim lighting and frowned at the unfamiliar number. It was local, but not one that I recognized. I hit ignore and shoved it back into my pocket, thinking it must be a wrong number.

“Who was it?” Brooks asked.

I shrugged. “No clue,” I said as he swung me around in a circle. I laughed, feeling the threads of something that felt distinctly like happiness curl around me.

Then my phone started buzzing again.

I pulled it out of my pocket and saw the same number flash across the screen.

“Maybe you should answer it. It might be important if they keep calling,” Brooks said.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll just go outside for a minute. See if they’ll play some Backstreet Boys when they’re finished,” I said, grinning, knowing Brooks’s aversion to all things pop.

“Never!” he yelled as I started to push my way through the crowd.

My phone stopped buzzing and I waited to see if whoever was trying to reach me would leave me a message. I paused by the back entrance to the bar, staring down at my phone, feeling strangely apprehensive. Then it lit up again as the number blazed across the screen. I walked out the back door and into the cool night air, feeling some of the alcohol haze clear.

“Hello?” I said, sounding a little out of breath. There was an endless moment in which no one said anything and I wondered whether I was right and it was a wrong number.

And then the person spoke and I wished like hell I had never picked up the damn phone in the first place. Followed by the inevitable self-loathing for thinking that at all.

“Hey, Aubrey,” Maxx said quietly, though I could hear him as clearly as if he were standing next to me.

I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t say anything.

I wanted to ask him where he was. To demand answers to the questions that had been plaguing me. I wanted to yell at him, to know why he was ruining the first night in forever where I was actually feeling normal. A thousand uncontrollable emotions flashed their way through my mind, flittering in and out before I could figure out what I was actually feeling. Though I recognized homicidal rage and bone-deep desire mixed up with the rest.

“Are you there?” Maxx asked, sounding small and unsure. I leaned against the wall, needing it to hold me up before I fell.

“I’m here,” I answered. The weight of those words was not lost on me. Nor how much of a lie they really were.

“Oh, well, that’s cool. I thought you might have hung up. Not that I’d blame you,” Maxx said, clearly nervous. We fell into silence like we had so many times before. But there was nothing comfortable about this quiet. The heaviness of unspoken words pulled us both down. What did he want me to say to that? Did he want me to disagree with him? Because that wasn’t going to happen.

I had every right to hang up on him. Just as he had every right to be angry with me. We both had a right to be a twisted, complicated mess of angry, bitter, and hurt feelings. But instead I felt this sad sort of numbness, as though all of my emotions had been bled out of me.

I looked around the dingy alleyway behind the bar and thought of how much it looked like the place where Jayme had been found. What a strange time to think about that. But of course I thought about her as I heard Maxx’s voice for the first time in weeks. They had become intricately twined together in my mind. The loss of each merging together until it was hard to differentiate one from the other.

“What do you want, Maxx?” was all I could manage to say. I sank to the ground, my head falling back and connecting with the concrete behind me as I slumped against the wall. The sharp bite of gravel underneath my legs cleared the last of the alcohol from my head.

“I just needed to hear your voice. I wanted to know how you were doing. I hoped you’d want to know how I was. I’m in rehab, you know. I decided to check myself in. Just like you wanted me to.” The relief that I felt at his words was violent and almost painful. Maxx was in rehab. This is what I had hoped he’d do.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to shout out in jubilation. And I wanted to run far away from the momentary elation his admission brought me. Because while I was glad to find out the reason for his prolonged absence, I was also scared that this inopportune phone call would completely throw me.

“So how are you, Aubrey? I think about you every second of every day. I miss you,” he breathed out softly.

He missed me. Why were my traitorous lips smiling at his confession? I blanked my face and then sighed, feeling the prick of anger take the place of irrational pleasure at hearing his voice again. “Do you want me to lie and say I’ve been great? That I’ve taken up yoga and have finally finished that crossword puzzle I had been struggling with?” I spat out, my voice layered in bitter sarcasm.

Maxx chuckled nervously. “No, I want you to tell me the truth,” he said, sounding less and less like the confident man I had known before. I thought back to that day months ago when I had first seen him. He had been a force of nature. Magnetic and irresistible. A man who was self-assured and in control.

And while I had been drawn to his confidence, it was his vulnerability that had made me fall in love with him. That very same vulnerability that was now coming through the phone.

I should hang up.

I shouldn’t sit here on the dirty ground listening to his sad voice and feeling the way my heart flipped over in my chest.