Since We Last Spoke

by Brenda Rufener

  Henry’s voice whirls in my head. Fucking bulldoze through the snow. Go after what was stolen from us. My heart wants her. My brain wants her. Every cell in my goddamn body wants Aggi, and it’s time for me to bulldoze through my fears and tell her exactly how I feel.

  I reach for her hand, and she lets me take it. “Aggi?”

  38

  Aggi

  “MAX? I HAVE TO ASK you something.” A thousand questions bombard my brain, but I only need the answer to one. “Do you blame me for what happened to your brother?”

  Max grabs my other hand and hesitates. Standing under the trees, in complete darkness, the only sound our breathing, he whispers, “Nothing is your fault,” and his words seem to echo.

  “But your family blames me.” A heavy weight lifts from my chest.

  Max squeezes my hands. “They don’t blame you for anything. They know we were together that night, and they know Cal and Kate tried to call us, but they don’t blame us. They tried to call our dads, too.”

  His words, a soft blanket, wrap around my shoulders, smothering painful memories and a year of regret. But ten seconds later, I’m cold again. “Mine do. Well, my dad blames me, us, for everything.”

  “I’m sorry, Aggi. I don’t know what to do.”

  The first time Dad threatened Max, I thought he was joking, that it was the beer talking, but the next morning his words still stung. “If you care about your family, if you care about Kate, you’ll never speak to him again. And if he tries to talk to you . . .”

  Dad was never a violent man. A stern voice when I deserved it, but after Kate died, the tone changed. The hurt from losing his daughter shot from his mouth in the form of anger and blame.

  “Your dad said he’d hurt me. His words hurt more.” Max squeezes my hand again. I shiver, pull Max toward me, and he wraps me in his arms. “I’m scared, Aggi.”

  “It’s just a threat,” I whisper, although my dad’s words scare me, too, sometimes. They’re what’s kept me from Max all these months.

  “What do we do?” Max asks, and I’m unsure how to answer.

  I kick at the pine straw, run my hands up and down his arms before grabbing handfuls of his coat and pulling him toward me. “I guess we’ll have to figure it out together.”

  Max reads my cues—like clockwork—and his palm flattens against my cheek, his arm pushes at the small of my back. He pulls me into the warmth of his body, and my lips search for his. It takes only seconds for our mouths to reunite, and we kiss for the first time in a year.

  Fast, frantic, breathless at first, until we find our rhythm.

  His bottom lip brushes the top of mine, my tongue dancing with his.

  Max tastes how I remember. Peanut butter and spearmint, soda and something bitter. He smells different, though. The smoke from the party lingering in his clothes and hair.

  “Aggi,” he whispers between breaths.

  “Yeah,” I whisper back.

  “Let’s.” Breath. “Go.” Breath. “To.” Moan. “The.” Breath. “Car.” Breath.

  “Yes. Let’sgonow!”

  Holding hands, we sprint for the barn, but after a few steps, Max says, “Wait. Shit! I’ve lost my shoe.” I pull my phone from my pocket to shine the light and notice several more messages from my dad.

  “Hang on.” I scan one of his messages, type back: Be home in a while. With friends. Although I’m angry with my dad, I don’t want him to worry something’s happened to me. Immediately, another message pops up from him that reads: Home now. Not in a while. I swipe away the bubble and shine the flashlight at the ground.

  We spot Max’s shoe a few feet behind us. He slips it on and grabs my hand. “Everything okay?” he asks, eyeing my phone.

  I shake my head. “It won’t be,” I say, “but right now it’s perfection.”

  We slip into the barn, racing for the car. Max abruptly stops and motions at the steamy windows and bare foot pressing against the glass. “Guess the car’s taken,” he says, and I laugh.

  I stoke the fire while Max relocates the wool blanket at the side of the pit. Max’s eyes connect with mine, and we smile, then quickly look away. In the dark, our desire for each other took over, but in the light of the fire, my insecurities ignite. As if reading my mind, Max sits on the blanket, arms draped over his knees, and says, “Will you sit beside me?”

  I chuckle nervously and nod. As soon as I move next to him, he tilts his head, and I grab fistfuls of his coat and pull him on top of me.

  Max squeals like my little sister. Damn, the sound is almost shocking.

  39

  Max

  I HAVE A BONER THE size of Florida, and if I don’t stop kissing Aggi . . .

  “What? What’s wrong?” Aggi asks as I break our five-minute kiss. We’re both gasping for air, and I don’t want to stop, but I’m overwhelmed with emotion. A year of separation, each day spent wondering and worrying about Aggi, if she hates me, blames me, wishes we never were. Brokenness was all I felt for so long. Lost without my brother, lost without Aggi. And now here we are.

  I shake my head. “Nothing’s wrong.” Everything’s right. I trace her lips with my finger. “It’s just . . .”

  Aggi’s eyes are speckled with brown and green moss in the light of the fire. Her nose is splattered with freckles that spill onto her cheeks and will me to connect the dots with my lips.

  “Just what?” she asks, kissing me again.

  “Just that you’re so amazing and I can’t stop looking at you. I can’t stop touching your face. Everything feels like it used to, like we’re back where we started yet beginning from someplace new.” I shake my head. “I know. I’m not making sense.”

  Aggi laughs, grabbing my neck and pulling my face against hers. “I missed this face,” she whispers, both hands against my cheeks. “Your eyes, your lips, your . . . everything. And I never want to be without you again.”

  We roll around the blanket, Aggi laughing as Henry’s shoe flies from my foot and bounces off a rock lining the fire pit. Our laughter feels comfortable, as if we’ve never been separated. This is what they say happens when old friends reunite after months or years of distance. We start where we left off, and it’s like we’ve never been apart.

  It hits me how free I feel. Unburdened, not focused on blame. Since the accident, guilt was the only thing I’d given myself permission to feel.

  Aggi climbs onto my lap, straddles Florida, and kisses my chin, cheeks, nose. “I want to stay like this forever,” she whispers, and I’m so happy I nearly let out another embarrassing squeal.

  Aggi slips her hand beneath my shirt and shoots it up my chest. “Those pull-ups at the library are really paying off,” she says, and my smile circumnavigates my head, twice. She shifts and undoes the top button on my jeans, and I stop breathing. Seriously, no air, only a grunt.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, the button paused between her fingers.

  “Yeah, very okay.”

  “O-kay?”

  “Sorry. It’s just . . . I had a problem . . . or not really a problem . . . a symptom . . . no . . . never mind.”

  Aggi smiles. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  My initial reaction is an emphatic HELL NO! Yet I do. I need to talk to someone about my year of brokenness, but Aggi’s not that person. Next week, I’m going to tell my mom and dad that I want to see the grief counselor again, but this time by myself, so I can sit on the couch and speak freely about how I’ve felt, what I’m feeling, and how I’d like to feel. I want to talk openly about the brokenness I’ve experienced since Aggi and I had sex the first time. I want to find out if I’m okay. Tonight I feel amazing, but what about next week or the month after that? I need someone qualified to listen when I ask embarrassing-to-me questions.

  “I need to say something.” Aggi scoots backward on my lap and reaches for my hands. “After we—you know—had sex that night, and then . . .” I stop for a deep breath.

  The best day of my life turned out to be the worst day, too. I
lost my virginity and my brother the same night. While I was enjoying the best moments of my life, Cal’s was ending. The incredible time Cal had told me not to push but to let happen naturally. And I would never get an opportunity to tell him about it. Every day since, all I wanted was to tell my brother how being with Aggi was everything he’d said it would be and more. “When we found out our worlds fell apart, everything broke,” I say. “Including me.”

  Aggi nods and stares at our interlocked fingers. That’s as much as I can bring myself to explain. What I thought was broken had nothing to do with Aggi, but everything to do with blame. I blamed myself, and I expected Aggi to blame me, too.

  “I broke, too,” she whispers, scooting closer to me again.

  “I . . . Aggi . . . I . . .”

  “Max . . . I . . .”

  An engine purrs alongside the barn.

  “Oh my God,” she says, and leaps off me.

  We scramble to our feet and she throws the blanket at me, and I’m not sure if she wants me to hide it or wear it like a ghost.

  “What do we do?” I ask.

  “Out the back?”

  “And leave Henry and Jen?”

  “What if it’s my dad?”

  Aggi’s already racing toward the back door when the front ones open and in walk Umé and another girl. Jen and Henry fall out of Jen’s car, and Umé shoots them a look of horror. “Great Scott Disick! What the hell is going on in here?”

  “Umé!” Aggi runs toward her.

  I retrieve my shoe from the fire pit and join Aggi, as I’m introduced to Umé’s new college friend, Abigail. I wisecrack about the names Aggi and Abby, and nobody laughs. New girl flatly says, “Just Abigail. Never Abby.”

  Henry and Jen join us from the car. Jen tucks in her shirt, and Henry buttons up his. “Missed one, champ,” I say, and Henry grins, fumbling to rebutton his shirt.

  After a series of awkward hellos, Aggi whispers, “We need to get out of here. Too many cars, too many voices.” She’s right. We’re uncomfortably close to both of our homes.

  “Anyone hungry?” I ask.

  Someone suggests Plum Lake Café, but it’s been closed for over an hour. Jen says, “I could really eat some pizza right about now,” and Aggi says, “We know just the place.”

  The fire’s dwindled to short orange flames, and I grab a shovel and toss dirt into the pit. Smoke plumes and disappears with the wind.

  While we’re figuring out who is riding with whom, headlights tunnel through the darkness, aiming at the barn, and Henry shouts, “Let’s go!”

  We scramble for the cars. Aggi and I end up with Umé and Abigail, and Henry and Jen spring back into Jen’s black Honda. A tangerine Chevy pickup plows into the field, spraying slush as it heads toward us. I recognize the silhouettes—long straggly hair and bearded faces—as Henry’s twin brothers. Henry shouts, “Lucio and Sons! Meet you there!”

  He jams the car into drive and races for the road in front of Aggi’s house.

  Umé whips left to cut the twins off, and the giant tangerine circles us twice, Henry’s brothers craning their necks to see who’s in the car. I wave, trying to distract them, even though the last thing I’d ever want to do is have a conversation with those two assholes.

  40

  Aggi

  WE WEAVE ON AND OFF side streets, creep down black alleys, pull into a trailer court, and park—cutting the lights—while we watch the twins whip by in their sunburst of a pickup.

  “What the hell did Henry do this time?” Umé shouts from the front seat.

  “They were drinking, so he took their keys.” Max stares at the taillights as they disappear down the narrow country road.

  “Hasn’t Henry learned good intentions will get him nowhere with those two shitheads?” Umé inches from the row of mailboxes and pauses at the main road. “Wish I’d talked to Henry before texting them back. Should have known they were up to no good. He needs to stand up to them. It’s the one tactic he’s never tried.”

  “We should go back the same way we came,” I interrupt. “It’ll lead us to Lucio’s.”

  “The pizza place?” Umé’s friend Abigail asks.

  “Best pizza in town,” Umé says. “So incredible, in fact, that Aggi and I had it earlier tonight.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s impossible to refuse even when you’re not hungry.”

  Max and I watch the back window for light as Umé races toward town. The window fogs and Max and I take turns wiping it with our coat sleeves.

  “They must think Henry’s with us,” Max says.

  I shift sideways in my seat so I can eyeball what’s in front and in back of us. “They don’t know Jen’s car, so it’s perfect that Henry’s not with us.”

  Main Street at night is dead. Store windows—those that aren’t boarded up or plastered with for rent signs—are black, and the only open business is a lonely bar in the middle of town. As we pass that dive bar—its red, white, and blue neon sign flashing Open—Umé steps on the gas and yells, “Hold on!”

  We shoot through a red light. Out the window, the orange truck revs its engine.

  “Faster!” Max yells, and Umé cranks the wheel. I slam against the door, choked by my seat belt.

  “There’s a car wash at the next street!” Max shouts over the hum of the heater blasting on high.

  “You want me to pull in there?” Umé yells. And I, too, question Max’s idea.

  “I don’t think we should stop,” I say.

  Max and I know how awful Henry’s brothers can be. We’ve watched as they’ve teamed up and made fun of Henry for reading books, snapping photos of the beavers on early-morning walks around the lake, and talking about strong girls with horses and swords from faraway lands. Henry’s the outcast in his family—since his mother died—and frankly, the twins should see how lucky they are to have him as a brother. So he steals their keys. At least he doesn’t steal for fun. Henry had his reasons for taking them. Henry always has reasons. Maybe he really didn’t want the twins driving drunk. He’d seen them do it before and they’d ended up in a ditch. Henry and Max had to pull them out with Max’s Jeep. Maybe Henry doesn’t want their luck to run out like Cal’s and Kate’s did. If that isn’t brotherly love, I’m unsure what it is.

  Before my dad started checking my phone, Henry used to send me messages every day around the same time. I got to where I expected them, counted on them. They became a lifeline. Henry and his big heart. How he wars for love but won’t ever fight.

  Henry never gave up on Max and me. Those messages he sent me were the only threads that held us together.

  Max says he’s sorry.

  He hates you’re going through this alone.

  He wants you to know he loves you.

  He’ll be there, always.

  My dad found Henry’s text messages and warned me they were a ploy. He said Max’s dad was behind those texts—trying to gather information and use it against our family—and he was convincing. He planted doubt. He told me not to communicate or he’d take away my phone for good. Dad felt threatened, but I didn’t know it at the time. He put me in the middle; he wanted me to choose. Already weighted down with guilt for not answering my phone the night Cal died, I broke and succumbed to Dad’s demands. Max talks about his year of brokenness, and I understand. I, too, have a year of regret.

  When we finally reach Lucio’s parking lot, Umé’s the first brave soul to unlock and open her door. Max and I sit, waiting. He’s clutching his phone and wondering why Henry hasn’t called.

  “Thought they stayed open late,” Umé says. “After all that driving, I was totally ready for my third dinner.”

  41

  Max

  WE’VE BEEN STANDING IN LUCIO & Sons’ parking lot for thirty-five minutes with no sign of Henry and Jen or the twins, and I’m worried as shit.

  “Relax,” Aggi says, and I try taking a couple of deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, but knowing Henry’s two brothers are looking for h
im makes it impossible to relax.

  I grab Aggi’s hand and rub her knuckles along my lips. Umé’s eyebrows shoot up, and Aggi says, “Yep. We’re sort of back together.”

  Umé snatches Aggi’s arm and leads her to the other side of the car, leaving me with Umé’s new friend, Abigail.

  “So,” I say. “You’re in college?”

  Abigail nods. “First year.”

  “Nice,” I say, kicking the ground. “Fourth year. High school.”

  She nods, rather slowly.

  My phone beeps and I tap the button, hoping it’s Henry, but a message from my dad lights up the screen asking if everything’s okay. I send a quick reply: All good. At Lucio’s waiting for Henry.

  Dad messages back: Getting late. Can you head home soon?

  Then: Is Aggi with you?

  I glance up as Aggi walks toward me. “Is that Henry?” Her voice sounds urgent.

  I shake my head and hold up my phone. “My dad wants to know if you’re with me.”

  “What? No. He asked you that?”

  I nod, messaging my dad back. Nope.

  He replies immediately: You sure?

  My dad knows something. I feel it. I also feel myself getting angry at him for suddenly involving himself in my life, so I shoot another text: Why would you ask me such a ludicrous question? Since when do you check up on me?

  Dad replies: Saw Dr. Nelson dropping off Grace. There’s a lot of noise. Shouts coming from next door

  I read the message, twice. Then: Guess I hoped Aggi was at home for her little sister’s sake.

  I look at Aggi, my mouth open with no words.

  “What?” Aggi snaps. “What did he say?”

  “He says Grace is home. He hears fighting.”