“Is this movie actually controversial?” It was reading as benign enough to him. Charming in parts, sad in others, populated with a lot of well-liked English actors.
“In certain circles.” She nodded at the TV. “Like this part coming up. Everyone I know says it’s creepy and stalkerish. And I guess if you explain what’s literally happening—this guy has been in love with his best friend’s girlfriend all this time and now he’s about to tell her when there’s no way it will end well—yeah, it’s creepy.” Max watched as the character in question knocked on Keira Knightley’s door and, when she answered, silently flipped through a series of placards proclaiming his love for her.
“But if you look at what’s actually happening,” Dani went on, shaking her finger at the TV, “if you look at the way they look at each other, it’s not that creepy. He knows it’s never happening. He knows he’s been a dick about it. He knows she knows he knows. It’s his way of closing the door on it, saying he’s going to be less of a dick going forward. I think it’s actually rather lovely. I like that line, ‘At Christmas you tell the truth.’”
“Being less of a dick,” Max said. “Something to aspire to.”
She threw a pillow at him. He caught it and watched her watch the rest of the scene.
“I don’t know,” she said, sighing as the man walked away from Keira Knightley’s house. “It’s a memorable scene. I guess there’s just something about an unrequited crush.”
Yes. “There is, isn’t there?”
When Dani woke the next morning in Max’s giant, posh bed at the Four Seasons—Max himself was on a shrimpy rollaway—it was to the sound of an incoming text.
She read it through bleary eyes. She and Max had stayed up until four talking. Not even about anything of consequence, unless you considered bickering about Love Actually of consequence. She suspected he’d been leaning into the meaningless banter because he had exhausted his well of revelations. And what revelations they had been. Surprising, but only in the way that stories of cruelty always were. In another, deeper sense, they were the missing piece to the mystery that was Max. The explanation for why he was always deflecting attention from himself and embracing his bad reputation.
But actually, there was still a bit of a mystery, and that was how he had retained his guileless ability to express emotion. To say, I like you and I want to hang out with you, when he had grown up with such unkindness.
She was suffused with tenderness toward him. Not pity, because she knew he wouldn’t want that, but her heart broke to think of the little boy trying to protect his brother. And of the man that boy had become. Her wonderful, strong friend.
She’d have thought they’d run out of things to say last night, given that they’d now spent almost forty-eight continuous hours together, but they hadn’t. In fact, they’d fallen asleep talking in the dark, like teenagers at a slumber party.
“Oh my god!” she exclaimed as she read the text.
Max sat bolt upright in bed, his hair sticking up like he’d stuck a finger into an electrical socket. “What? What’s wrong?” Max Minimus started barking. He was in Max’s bed, the traitor.
“A text from Vince.” She read it aloud as she tried and failed to get her dog to come back to her bed. “‘I’ve signed the papers. I’m on my way to your place to drop them off. I’d like to see you in person.’”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Max said, scratching Max Minimus’s head. “Perhaps that party was more effective than we knew.”
“I have to get there.” She threw back her covers and hopped out of bed.
“I don’t know why he can’t courier them.” Max sounded peeved.
“Or give them to his lawyer, which is what he was supposed to do, but probably he has to have the last word or make me jump through one last hoop.” Dani dug in her overnight bag as Max Minimus finally left Max Maximus’s side and yipped around her heels. “Which is fine. I don’t care anymore. I’m getting my divorce and my dog, so he can make whatever little speech he wants if it makes him feel better.”
Max got out of bed. “I’m coming with you.”
“Do you have enough time before your flight?”
“Yes. I don’t fly private, but I’m not above playing the baron card in order to cut the security and customs lines.”
“Okay,” she agreed, pausing to smile at his bewildered expression. He had probably expected her to object. Historically, that was what she had done whenever he’d offered her something. Not today. If he could bare his soul to her, she could accept his help without arguing. In fact . . . “Any chance you can order up your magical Mercedes?”
“I can indeed.”
She clapped her hands. “Okay, come on, Maxes. I’m getting divorced!”
“The awkward part is that the mime is still in my apartment,” Dani said laughingly as they got out of the car at her building. “I’m going to have to receive my divorce papers out here.” A waist-high ledge separated the sidewalk from the building’s property, and she boosted herself up and sat on it.
Max peered up at where he thought Dani’s windows were. It bothered him, the idea of her having to clear out of her place to make room for strangers. While he understood intellectually that rents were high in New York, it still rankled.
But not as much as the sight of Vince strolling up did. He wanted to fucking punch the man, an impulse he checked both because he was not the kind of person who went around punching people, even people who deserved it, but also because the rational part of his brain knew that punching Vince was not the way to get Dani the divorce he wanted.
She wanted. The divorce she wanted.
So he swallowed his rage and said, “Why don’t I go around the corner with my namesake?” He assumed that if Vince had signed the papers, he had given up on the canine custody battle, but there was no reason to remind him what he was missing out on.
Dani’s eyes flickered to Vince and then back to him. She seemed uneasy. He wasn’t accustomed to that. The Dani he knew tore the outer layer of skin off idiot students and charmed her way through parties as the situation called for. He thought back to her telling him that Vince was a “good talker.” And she’d said on more than one occasion that Vince didn’t listen to her.
“Unless you’d prefer I stay?” He forced himself to issue the question mildly, as if it didn’t make any difference to him one way or the other. But suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to be her backup. For her to want him as her backup.
“Would you?” she asked quietly.
“Of course.” He reached for Max’s leash. “May I?”
“Yes. Thanks.” He could sense her bracing herself. He knew the feeling. Wondering what was about to happen, even though experience should have taught you exactly what to expect. Perhaps it wasn’t bracing so much as hoping. Which he should know better than to do by now.
But this wasn’t him. This was Dani.
“Dani,” Vince said. He glanced at Max but did not acknowledge him.
“Hi, Vince,” she said with no intonation at all. Despite her nerves, she was pitching her voice and her posture perfectly. “I—we—were about to take the dog for a walk.” She gestured back toward Max. Maxes.