This is probably not the work crisis I should have tagged along to witness.
“So how does this work?” I say. Please don’t make me test it. Please don’t make me test it. I’m the only person in the room and he needs someone to take it for a test drive.
“Well, maybe you can help me test out this thing…”
What did I tell you.
He sets me down in a chair in the center of the room and puts the wearable brain scanner on me. I’d rather be putting on some lingerie to get his attention instead of a twenty-pound metal helmet.
“You should be able to move freely while you’re in the helmet,” he says.
“Maybe if you’re a linebacker. You should make this thing smaller.”
“Next version.”
When I put the helmet on, inspiration hits. “Max, are you testing this thing? Is it on?”
“Let me just ask you a few questions to make sure it’s working right, and then we’ll try to trigger the bugs Chan identified.”
He looks down at a sheet of paper and then up at me. “None of my test questions are going to work on you.”
Duh. I don’t know my address and I still have to look up my birthday on Facebook.
“I’ll just freestyle,” I say. “My name is Mia Wallace and I don’t remember my life before last Tuesday. I own a business and have a boyfriend who I’ve met once on the way home from the airport.” It sounds even more pathetic when I say it out loud in a laboratory while wearing a brain scanner.
“Looks good,” he says.
I frown. “What’s good about that?”
“I just mean that’s all coming up as truthful. Keep going.”
“Well, you accused me of being a liar.”
He looks up, his expression worried. He knows I’m going to take this somewhere he doesn’t want it to go.
“That’s true,” I confirm. “I lied to you.”
“Mia, stop. It’s okay.”
“Number one: I found out at the bank that I’m broke. I spent money I don’t have and am in serious debt. Number two: I’m wanted for check fraud. I was too embarrassed to tell you. I probably told a thousand little lies to back up those bigger ones, but those are the main lies.”
“Mia, you don’t need to do this.”
Oh, but I do. “I’m not a habitual liar, though. I really like you and I didn’t want you to think less of me.”
I stop and look up. “How did that come out? Does it look true?”
He nods, which is amazing. I was 70 percent sure it would fail.
“I know, Mia. You’re not a bad person, but I don’t think I can trust you.”
“Max, maybe I feel this way for messed-up psychological reasons, but whatever—I can’t worry about where my feelings come from. I just experience them.”
From the look on his face, he’s preparing for a crash.
I step on the accelerator. If we’re going to crash, so be it. “I love you,” I say, loud and clear.
He looks at the brain scanner results and says, “Um, no you don’t.”
“What?” I’m genuinely shocked.
“No, the imaging says that you definitely do not love me.”
“This machine is bullshit then. You can’t tell me how I feel.”
Chan, who is totally not paying attention to the drama, wanders into the room and hands me a list. “Just read these lines,” he says to me. Looking toward Max, he says, “Watch the scanner while she reads. Fay programmed these statements to come up as automatically false.”
I stand and say, “Chan, you read them. I’m out of here.”
“No!” Chan looks pained when I suggest this, but I’m out. I put myself on the line and Max not only didn’t respond—he told me I was wrong. I still don’t think I’m intrinsically dramatic, but that has to be the worst “I love you” ever.
“Mia, wait,” Max says.
“It’s okay. I just need to be alone right now. I’ll text you later.”
In the parking lot, I sit behind the wheel of the Ferrari and say a silent prayer of thanks for the heavily tinted windows so I can have a good, private cry. I turn on the breakup music and sob.
I don’t know what I want—Max just proved it with science. Crystal texts a Thanks to me, and I start crying even harder. I want to tell Max about it, but not after that fiasco in the lab. I could tell JP, but I don’t even know who he is. Why would I text somebody I just met with news about Crystal and Jules? It doesn’t feel right.
Of course, that’s my own damn fault. JP has been there for me the whole time. It’s not his fault that he was on vacation when I decided to have a head injury. I look at his last few texts—it’s nothing but messages that he misses me and wants me to come home.
The irony hits me. I’m avoiding him out of fear that he might want to declare his love for me. This entire emotional affair with Max is probably just a subconscious act of self-sabotage. I’m scared of letting someone love me and so I am avoiding it.
Time to stop being such a chicken shit, Mia. I text JP: On my way! Autocorrect provides the exclamation point. As I start the engine and drive to the only home I know, I try to match that enthusiasm, for the man who wants me and for the life that I actually have.
* * *
When I pull up to JP’s, I sit and listen to the Ferrari click for a good long while. It was a hot day. Hot car. The lights inside the pink house are on and JP is waiting inside for me. The life I had planned for myself is waiting inside for me. Throw pillows and vacations to Switzerland.
I could be Mrs. Howard. Mrs. Jacques-Pierre Howard, the queen of Jacques-o-late. I start laughing, the kind of hysterical laughter that’s basically crying.
I pick up my sparkly clutch and will myself all the way to the door. It’s still #homesweethome. Pink house with pink door and a flowerpot.52 Such a beautiful facade.
Do I knock or just storm in and throw my stuff on the floor? This morning I would have thrown my purse on the couch, flopped over the edge and put my feet on the coffee table. But JP doesn’t seem like a feet on the coffee table, eating cereal in bed kind of guy.
Max ate cereal in bed with me.53 My eyes start to water at the thought, which is dumb. Eating cereal in bed is gross, and we shouldn’t have done it either. Max and I are both gross. We are…perfect for each other. I decide to knock while opening the door like a nurse entering a hospital room. I belong here, but I’m not in charge.