Aggie the Horrible vs. Max the Pompous Ass

by Lisa Wells

  He’d come home after his fight with Aggie and hadn’t spoken to anyone since. Not even Grant. Until today, Max had been drinking like it was New Year’s Eve and a bachelor’s party all rolled into one event.

  “Says the man who smells like a brewery and locker room sweat.” Dad made a production of opening the curtains and windows.

  Max winced. “Why are you here?” He had the curtains drawn for a reason. He wanted the gloom. It matched his mood.

  “Can’t a father stop by and see his son when he’s in the neighborhood?”

  Max leaned against the refrigerator. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “Since you’ve not answered your phone or responded to any emails in a week, I came by to tell you good luck on the O’Reilly bid in person.”

  “Really?”

  Dad walked into the living room and had a seat on the couch. “Why would I say something I don’t mean?”

  Max moved empty pizza boxes and Chinese takeout cartons off a chair, along with an empty whiskey bottle, and flopped down. “Because I know you’re also in the running on the project. The last thing you want is for me to have good luck.”

  Dad shifted and pulled an empty wine bottle out of the seat cushion. “Not true. I hope you win. I want that for my only son. Your success is my success.”

  “Since when do you want good things for me?”

  Dad scowled. “I’ve always wanted good things for you.”

  Max propped his feet on the ottoman. “You want good things for me unless it meant letting me live with Mom growing up. Or hiring me out of college. Then it wasn’t what was good for me but what was good for you.”

  Dad rubbed the back of his neck. “Son, it’s time you learned the truth.” The words came out sounding weary. “Your mom didn’t want you to live with her. She gave me custody without a fight.”

  Max recoiled. That couldn’t be true. Mom said she fought for him and lost. Grandmother would have told him. She wouldn’t have allowed him to blame his father, her son, all these years if it weren’t his fault. “I have enough going on in my life without your lying to me.”

  “If you don’t believe me, ask your mom and watch for her tell. When she lies, she rubs her left cheek.”

  Max glanced toward the kitchen. He wished he had a drink now. This wasn’t a subject he could carry on sober. His insides were too raw. “I’d prefer you tell me the truth, and I can watch for your tells.”

  “Fair enough. The reason I forced you to cancel all those weekends with your mom was because I would rather you blame me than to know it was your mom who actually did all the cancelling. I just came up with things for you to do so you wouldn’t know the truth. I let you believe I was the villain.”

  For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what Dad’s tell was, so he had no way of knowing if he lied. Except, of course, he lied. “So I’m to believe you’re the good guy?”

  Dad took out a handkerchief and cleaned his glasses. “I’m just a dad trying to do the best he can as a father.”

  “That’s a fuck-ass thing to say about Mom. Did you dummy down your bid so I could win?”

  Dad smiled sadly and shook his head. “Of course I didn’t. If you win, you win on your own. I would never help you win a bid against me.”

  “Exactly.” His stomach grumbled, reminding him he hadn’t yet eaten today. Hell, it may have been days since he last ate. “My feelings have always been secondary to your own.”

  “I just explained to you that’s not true.”

  Was it the cleaning of his glasses? Was that his tell? “You might explain Mom away, but you can’t explain away your refusal to hire me after college.”

  “Actually, I have a solid reason for that. If I’d hired you right out of college, everyone would have said you were handed your success. That I paved the way for you to move up through the ranks. By forcing you to go out on your own, I’ve given you the opportunity to prove yourself. I goaded you into that bet to put a fire in your belly.”

  Max didn’t believe anything Father was saying. He couldn’t. Not until he talked to Grandmother. “I need to shower.”

  “Do that,” Dad said. “And then we can go to lunch and kill time while we wait for the winner to be announced this afternoon.” He picked up the remote and turned on the television.

  Max peeled off his T-shirt, smelled it, and grimaced. “You want to have lunch with me?”

  Dad nodded curtly. “I do. It’s high time you and I stopped butting heads.”

  Max studied him. “I didn’t place a bid.”

  Dad pounded a fist on the arm of the couch. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Interesting. He didn’t know. “My assistant screwed up, and my bid didn’t get turned in by the deadline.”

  Dad swore. “What a complete incompetent. I hope you fired her ass.”

  Max stilled. “It’s my fault. I should have never given her so much responsibility.”

  “The hell you say. When we get right down to it, this is Mother’s fault for harassing you into hiring the tramp.”

  He jumped up and towered over his father. “Aggie’s a lot of things, but she’s not a tramp.”

  Dad leaned back into the cushions. “Don’t get fussy like a girl. You know what I mean. She’s not one of us. Ever since Mother’s parents paid off the broke chap who wanted to marry her and forced her to marry Father instead, she’s been determined someone in the family would marry across the proverbial track. When I refused, she set her sights on her only grandchild.”

  He knew part of Grandmother’s story but not all of it. Knew about Johnny John. “There’s nothing wrong with marrying someone who comes from poverty.”

  “Hell yes, there’s something wrong with doing that. Their ways are not our ways, and once those types get a taste for finer things, they keep trying to climb the social ladder. They are always in search for a man with more money.”

  Max fisted his hands. “Just because Mom left you for a man with more money doesn’t mean that’s what every woman does. Besides, Mom came from money.”

  “Her money came from her daddy winning the lottery. Not heritage. I had to learn the hard way there’s a difference. Your mom has poor people’s ways, too. Find yourself a woman with old money.”

  He couldn’t remember a time he’d ever wanted so much to punch Dad in the mouth. “Mom didn’t leave you because you didn’t have enough money. She left you because you didn’t know how to show your love for anything but your money and your business and objects of your affairs.”

  “Aren’t you full of contradictions?”

  “What in the hell does that mean?”

  “Tell me, boy, outside of your grandmother and mother, business, and the next big deal, what do you love? I bet you can’t name one thing.”

  “You’d lose that bet. I love a lot of things.”

  “Name one.”

  Max didn’t answer right away. Not because he couldn’t, but because the answer that popped in his mind was one he’d been refusing to think of ever since banning her from his life. Aggie.

  “See? You can’t. You’re a chip off the old block. And you know why? Because I raised you to be like me. Only smarter. Or at least I’d hoped smarter.”

  The thought of being like Dad sickened him. “I don’t want to be like you. I want to love something other than money.”

  “Yet that’s all you love.”

  “You know nothing about my life.”

  “You’ll have to fill out a job application before you come to work for me. And you’ll start at the bottom. Work your way up.”

  “Go to hell. I haven’t lost the bet yet.” He’d be damned if he went down without a fight. “I’m not thirty-one for another couple of weeks.” He’d sober up, get his ass to work, and find another deal. A monster deal. If he landed a contract for the amusement park befo
re his birthday, he might make that million-dollar mark.

  “Son, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Losing your mom was one of them. I should have chased her and begged her for forgiveness. Not judged her for her poor upbringing. Not let my own father’s prejudices become my prejudices. So, if this”—he motioned to the mess of booze bottles—“is about your heart and not a business deal gone astray, don’t make the same mistake I made. Even if the girl is that woman.”

  He ignored the that woman stab. “You and I are nothing alike. I didn’t lose a girl. A girl lost me. She betrayed me.”

  “Are you sure about that? Did you give her a chance to explain? Your mom never gave me a chance to explain.”

  “I don’t need to know why. Just that she did. And she admitted that much.” Hadn’t she? Of course she had. Fuck Dad and his mind games.

  Right now, all that mattered was the next big business deal.

  “Call your grandmother. She will confirm what I’ve said.”

  Max leaned his head back on the cushion and closed his eyes. If Dad could turn out to be the good guy, what other things that he knew to be absolute truths were actually lies?

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Aggie sat in the Kansas City Airport and chewed on her fingernail. She’d not been a nail biter since middle school. Since the great race between her and all the other girls in her grade to see whose boobs popped out first.

  But there was something about waiting on her flight, a flight that would literally give wings to her future, that had her fidgety, though leaving was the smart thing to do. Sure, she could have stayed and found a new job, but she needed more room to roam.

  She pulled the crumbled-up napkin containing her life plan and manifesto out of her purse and reread her words.

  …Always do the one thing that most scares you.

  “I’m doing my new one thing that most scares me.” She was searching, not for her soul’s desire, but for her nirvana. Life taught her at a young age to hope for less than her soul’s desires. Because her soul’s desires were practically unobtainable. Having a normal mom, no matter how much Aggie’s soul yearned for that to happen, never happened. And now, her soul desired Max would love her back. Which wouldn’t happen, either. He simply didn’t like her. And he couldn’t fall in love with someone he described as the bane of his existence.

  So instead of going after her soul’s desire, she would search until she found the perfect job. And then, she’d start searching for her father. That she had complete control over. People were wrong when they said you only got one shot at a happy life. As long as you didn’t place your happy in the hands of someone else to control, you got as many shots at finding happiness as you were willing to take.

  Besides, leaving would take away all chances of running into Max. The guy who had her heart stuck to the bottom of his shoe, stomping all over it with every step he took. She reached for her phone to check the time, and it wasn’t there. She’d not been able to revive it after the toilet bowl incident. As soon as she could afford it, she’d get a used one. But, for now, she’d have to adjust to life with an actual watch.

  Listening to Meemaw call her a quitter had flattened her like three-day-old roadkill. Not once growing up could she ever remember disappointing her so supremely. To have given Meemaw reason made her even more determined to win back her admiration.

  Living away from her would be hard, but she had done it while away at college. She could do it again. As long as their hearts were rooted to each other, they’d never really be apart.

  She had heard nothing from Max. Without a phone, she had no idea if he’d tried to contact her after their blowup. She had an email, but he didn’t know her email. She’d never gotten around to giving him a copy of Aggie’s Assets, which contained that important factoid. All he had was her phone number.

  And Meemaw’s phone number.

  But if he tried to call Aggie, and she didn’t answer her phone, he wasn’t the sort to call Meemaw. He’d assume Aggie wanted nothing to do with him. Which was exactly what she should want. But that wasn’t true.

  She loved him. Only he didn’t love her back.

  Never settle.

  She had to get on the plane. She had to redeem herself in Meemaw’s eyes. It was her opinion of Aggie that mattered. Not Max’s.

  Staying and fighting for her soul’s desire would be heart-suicide.

  But what if…

  “We’re now boarding for flight 1328. Passengers with boarding passes A1-A32 are now loading.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Max didn’t like to be rushed when deciding how to right a wrong. But when he received a text from Ms. Hazel saying Aggie had left for New York City, all of his foolish pride evaporated, and he realized begging for forgiveness was a small price to pay for a chance at eternal happiness.

  He’d been a fool. Had known that ever since his father came to visit him. Probably before, but he’d stayed too drunk to comprehend that realization until the day his father showed up at his door, spouting, of all things, love advice.

  Money and big deals weren’t the key to happiness. What mattered more than anything in the world to him was winning Aggie’s love.

  Agnes Johansson was the key to every fucking thing that mattered to him.

  He’d been trying to reach her, but all of his calls were sent straight to voicemail. Not that he blamed her. He deserved to be iced. Not that ice would stop him. Hell, a glacier wouldn’t stop him. He kept trying. And while he waited for her to answer, he plotted what he’d say when they talked.

  He hoped and prayed she’d find it in her heart to forgive him for all the horrible things he’d said.

  Only his plot had no idea she really was leaving town forever. This piece of information meant his plan had to be put on fast forward. Which scared him because it wasn’t perfect, and she deserved perfect.

  Thank God, Grandmother and Ms. Hazel found it in themselves to interfere one more time in the lives of their grandchildren.

  Luckily, the traffic lights were on his side as he sped toward the airport. He didn’t know what he’d say to Aggie while everyone looked on, but hopefully the right words would come. If nothing else, he’d declare his love over the intercom system.

  Thanks to Ms. Hazel’s long text, he now knew all about Aggie’s meeting with her mom and discovering she was a felon. Aggie had more than enough reason to space out and not do her job. He couldn’t imagine how she must have stressed during the hours leading up to meeting her mom. And he’d been such a jackass. Nothing he’d said to her was forgivable. It would serve him right if she told him to go jump in front of the train that ran twice a day along the back of her and Hazel’s home. Hell, he was on a suicide mission. And that’s how it should be. When she needed him most, he hadn’t believed in her enough to give her a chance to explain. He deserved whatever she flung at him.

  At the airport, he parked in the no-parking zone and ran inside right up to the Southwest ticket booth. “I need to get an emergency message to a woman scheduled to board flight”—he pulled out his phone to get the number right. Ms. Hazel had sent it to him—“flight number 1328 to Newark.”

  “That flight has left,” the woman said.

  The hope inside of him disintegrated. “When will the next flight leave?”

  “Not until tomorrow.”

  Son of a…fuck.

  Now what? Was this an omen? In a movie, she would have been standing here waiting on him, having let the flight takeoff without her.

  This obviously wasn’t a movie.

  “Will the passenger who left their car in the no-parking zone please move it, or it will be towed.” The announcement came over the intercom system.

  That was his car. He turned and dragged himself back to where he’d left it. With each step he took, an image of Aggie popped into his brain. The day of the interview when he first saw her in t
hat tiny skirt and bomber jacket. The time she pulled him into the dumpster. Her in tiny little shorts running up a hill in front of him. Her holding Olivia and asking if he was going to die. Her wicked smile when they played strip trivia. Her fingers rolling a hot pink condom down his length. Her I-love-you expression on Bridge night. The sight of her storming out of his office after he’d told her she was the bane of his life. Little did she know, she’d left with his heart. She’d had the last laugh…as it should be.

  Max drove back to work at a speed below the limit. Nothing seemed worth hurrying for if Aggie wasn’t sitting in the car beside him. He’d really thought he’d get to the airport and find her waiting on him. He believed that after a ton of public groveling, she’d tell him she loved him as much as he loved her. He’d been a fool to believe in love.

  She had left. She obviously didn’t have it in her to love someone who’d treated her so poorly. And who could blame her?

  When he got back to work, he realized he’d left in such a hurry he hadn’t locked the office door. Frowning at his carelessness, he raced in and skidded to a stop. Someone was whistling. The hairs on his arms stood.

  Somebody was in his office. The whistling grew louder. You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling.

  A smile stretched across his face. It was a somebody whose whistling could no more carry a tune than her singing voice. She hadn’t left. She’d come back to him.

  With a spring in his step, he hurried into his office.

  The sight that met his gaze brought tears to his heart and eyes.

  There stood Aggie thumbing through the résumés he’d left on his desk. Résumés for a new assistant. He stopped and breathed deep. He couldn’t screw this up. This could very well be the most important moment of his life.

  If this were a baseball game, they were in the bottom of the ninth, two outs, down by one. Bases loaded. And he was at bat with two strikes. And it was the seventh game in the World Series.

  This swing had the power to elevate him to hero or plummet him to zero. “I thought you were gone,” he said.