James shrugs. “Working.”
“I hope you’re letting her know how much we all miss her,” Max says.
“Fuck off, Max,” James replies, but he doesn’t sound irritated.
“A little bird told me you’re planning to propose,” I say.
“Excuse me while I go vomit,” says Max, walking inside.
“Propose?” James snorts. “A little bird named Ginny thinks a whole lot of things that aren’t even vaguely true, and she mouths off about most of them, but that one’s even new to me.”
“So you’re not? Proposing, I mean?” My heart rate doubles, at least.
He shakes his head. “Jesus, no,” he laughs in exasperation. “Like my life isn’t enough of a fucking mess. Where does Ginny get these ideas?”
I’m beginning to think she gets them from Allison, but I keep my mouth shut. “Your life isn’t such a mess. Just look at mine.”
He grins. “Yeah, yours is kind of a train wreck, isn’t it?”
I smack his arm again, and he laughs. It’s a low rumble in his throat and it completely unseats me. I could be in the middle of a funeral and start thinking about bad things if I heard that sound.
“Yeah, but I don’t have Ginny offering me a daily lecture on the perils of failure,” I say. Ginny’s lectures to James are even tedious to me, so I can’t imagine how tiresome he finds them. “Are your parents making a big deal out of it?”
“They make Ginny look restrained by contrast,” he sighs. “They think I’m going to turn into Max if I don’t finish.”
“This is only a big deal in Campbell world,” I tell him. “In the real world, deciding you aren’t cut out for a certain type of law or even being a lawyer at all isn’t that big a deal. If you decide you want to be a lawyer, you’ll find the right niche for yourself. But if you already know the one you left wasn’t it, is it really that great a loss?”
He smiles at me, looking a little less stressed than he did only moments before. “I’ve been feeling like I just destroyed every chance I had, the way I quit. Like I’d never amount to anything. But you’re totally right.”
“See how wise I am?” I grin. “By the end of the summer you’ll be coming to me for all of your advice.”
He looks at me for a moment, and there is fleeting panic, and regret, on his face, before he closes his eyes, leaning his head back against his chair. “You’re dangerous, Elle.”
“How so?” I ask with consternation.
He doesn’t open his eyes. “You just are.”
Chapter 15
I spend two days feeling hopeful. He tried to break up with her. He isn’t marrying her. He doesn’t even seem to miss her.
And then it’s all taken away: Allison is coming down for the weekend.
I don’t hear it from James, but from Ginny, who couldn’t be more giddy. She is video-chatting with Alex when I go upstairs to get ready for work, and Allison’s arrival is all she wants to talk about. You’d think Hillary Clinton was staying with us.
On my part, of course, Allison’s arrival here is roughly as welcome as a herpes outbreak. Max seems to feel similarly.
“That’s the last thing James needs right now,” he grumbles.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because he doesn’t want to be with her, he’s already confused about school, and all she’s gonna do is show up and make him feel guilty and more confused.”
“If he doesn’t want to be with her, why is he?” I ask. James has never struck me as the type to waver.
“He broke up with her and she asked him to give it the summer,” he says.
I shake my head. “I don’t understand why he’d agree to that.”
“He has all these people telling him he’s losing it — Allison and Ginny and his parents. And telling him not to blow the whole thing up instead of fixing the bad parts. And he’s worried they’re right. He says, ‘When four people you respect are telling you the same thing, it’s probably true.’”
“And what do you think?” I ask.
“Yeah, I think he’s having a bit of a crisis,” he replies. “But it’s been a long time coming. He’s not the type to sit at a desk all day. He needs to move, he needs to have a goal. He used to talk about joining the FBI until his parents flipped out. But it seems kind of perfect for him. He’s got that whole save-the-world impulse. He’s kind of just born to protect people.”
I laugh. “Yes. I think Ginny and I have experienced more than our fair share of that this summer. No guy can get within 10 feet of us.”
Max gives me a long, pointed look. “I’m not sure he’s actually trying to protect you.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He shrugs and gives me an enigmatic smile. “Not really my story to tell.”
“You mean because he dislikes me,” I say flatly.
Max laughs. “Dislikes you? No, I wouldn’t say that’s the issue.”
“Then what is the issue?”
His smile is evasive. “I can’t give all of James’s secrets away, now can I?”
**
Both James and Ginny request the weekend off for Allison’s visit. The funny thing is that her own brother does not.
He smiles at me shyly on the morning of her arrival. “I have to get ready for work,” he says, running away as he always does when I come in the room.
“You’re not taking time off?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “Uh, no. My sister is kind of a pain in the ass.”
His answer surprises me. I suppose I’ve gotten so used to Ginny’s views on St. Allison that I didn’t realize anyone could feel differently. It must show on my face.
“You’ve been listening to Ginny too much,” he says.
“She does kind of idolize your sister,” I reply.
He nods. “She does, but she shouldn’t.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because Ginny is under the impression that Allison is acting in James’s best interest, but the truth is that Allison only acts in Allison’s best interest.” I’m not sure what surprises me more — that he’s not a part of the fan club, or that he just said more than five consecutive words to me.
**
Ginny is in full scrub-down mode when I get back from the beach on Friday. “Don’t even think about dropping anything there,” she says, as I swing my backpack to the ground.
“Why exactly must I continue to hold my fairly heavy bag?”
“Because my sister is in an idiot,” comes a voice from the couch. “She seems to have confused Allison with the Pope.”
“And you’re a lazy sack of shit for not helping,” snipes Ginny. He sits up and rolls his eyes. He’s unshowered, unshaven, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. I can honestly say that I’ve never seen him look so disgusting, and yet he’s still gorgeous. It sort of pisses me off. “Who needs a clean house,” he asks, gesturing to himself, “when you have all this to look forward to?”
“Are you, like, planning to shower or anything?” I ask with disdain. As if I give a shit whether he cleans up for his girlfriend.