Us, Again

by Elle Maxwell

  us, again

  Elle Maxwell

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  01. MARIPOSAS

  02. DAY 3

  03. I THINK I’M A STALKER

  04. WEAPON OF MASS SEDUCTION

  05. HELL YES, I DID

  06. THE PRINCESS & THE DRAGON

  07. BROWNIE SITUATION

  08. DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

  09. LOW FAT YOGURT

  10. 1:02 PM

  11. JUST FOUR WORDS … BABE

  12. SUCKER PUNCH

  13. GRIFF

  14. NOT A DATE

  15. MYTH BUSTING

  16. CONGRATULATORY HIGH FIVES

  17. SHOW ME ON A RULER

  18. THAT GLOW

  19. NOT IN MY HOUSE, KIDS

  20. KEEP THE HELMET ON

  21. GHOSTS

  22. RUINER OF SUBURBIA

  23. MARTYR MOVE

  24. ALL THE WOMB THROBBING

  25. NO ADDITIONAL FOREPLAY REQUIRED

  26. SHRINK SHADY

  27. TACOS AND FUCKBOYS

  28. SEVENTY-YEAR PLAN

  29. FOUR MINUTES, TOPS

  30. “START TALKING. NOW.”

  31. THE PRECIPICE

  32. THAT NIGHT

  33. ARE WE OKAY?

  34. MR. FUCKING CONGENIALITY

  35. TIME TO GET UP

  36. ALL DRESSED UP, NOWHERE TO GO

  37. EVERYONE DIES SOMETIME, RIGHT?

  38. MISTAKES THAT GOOD MEN MAKE

  39. DEAD SERIOUS

  40. MR. CRIME FIGHTER GUY

  41. WAKE UP FOR ME

  42. INCORRIGIBLE

  43. IN GOOD HANDS

  44. THE BDP

  45. FERTILITY FUCKFEST

  46. #DADDYSGIRL

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Us, Again

  Copyright © 2019 Elle Maxwell

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 9781688799691

  Cover illustrations by Elle Maxwell and Sandor Szuhoterin/Shutterstock.com

  Cover design by Elle Maxwell

  Edited by Max from The Polished Pen

  ElleMaxwellBooks.com

  This one is for myself, circa 1999.

  You can calm down now, you ambitious little maniac.

  I didn’t let our dream die.

  PROLOGUE

  Mackenzie

  Once upon a time, we were in love.

  It was a big, crazy, terrifying love, but we were too naïve to know we should be scared. It was the kind of love that is only possible once, when your heart is still something whole that can be given away completely. It requires the guileless abandon of youth, the fearless confidence of an undamaged soul.

  Our love was a miracle, a secret we were certain no one had ever discovered before. He and I were bound together in the knowledge of it, in this new world where only the two of us existed.

  I was fundamentally changed, as though love rearranged my atoms. He created, or perhaps merely unveiled, parts of me I’d never known about before. And with every day that passed, we became more connected, until he was a vital cog in the machinery that allowed me to draw breath into my lungs.

  I felt alive for the first time. Loving him made me realize that anything I thought I’d felt before this—this uncontainable emotion bigger than me, or him, or even both of us together—was merely a droplet and this was a torrential downpour. It was chaos, a madness we couldn’t control, and we gave ourselves over to it.

  What we had was a forever kind of love. Until forever suddenly ended.

  It was a big, crazy, terrifying love, and it destroyed me. It introduced me to pain and betrayal. In the trusting naïveté of youth, I’d allowed another person to become essential to my being, to my very act of breathing, and when he was gone, I suffocated.

  Once upon a time, love broke me. And I will never, ever, let myself fall in love again.

  01. MARIPOSAS

  Mackenzie

  “So … you were home at 9:00 PM and I didn’t hear any action. Great date, huh?”

  I roll my eyes at my roommate, joining her on a bench outside the Psychology building, then eagerly accept the coffee she hands over. Bless her for knowing I needed this!

  “How do you know I was home at nine?” I’m stalling. I guarantee she was sitting up listening for the door, like a parent waiting for their teen to come home—which is ridiculous, of course, since we’re both twenty-three.

  Marisa continues to sip her coffee, not bothering to respond. After a moment I give in and break the silence.

  “For your information, I had a perfectly fine time with Jim. We already have plans to go out again.”

  The Queen of Sarcasm sets down her cup so she can use both hands to clutch her chest dramatically.

  “Ooh, perfectly fine. I can’t handle the passion! Wait a sec while I go change my panties.”

  I swat at her with the back of my gloved hand, hissing at her to lower the volume. Psych 101 just ended; some of the students in my section might hear her! She ducks away from me, giggling.

  She finally calms down, face turning serious as she pins me with one of her no-nonsense looks that I swear can see right through me. Maybe it’s a special Cubana superpower.

  “But really, how long has it been? I think we need to go out this weekend and find a guy in a bar who gives you mariposas en el estomago. And then you can let him take off all your clothes.”

  I roll my eyes again and drink my coffee. She can keep her mariposas, thank you very much. The stomach fluttering excitement of pure attraction is not only absent from my list of requirements for a boyfriend, I actively avoid it. You can’t trust those butterflies. They’re little traitors.

  “I’m not having this conversation again, Ris. I’m looking for companionship and compatibility, not passion. Passion is nothing but a temporary high that eats your brain cells.”

  So what if I’ve only had mediocre sex these past five years? Things have been lackluster with the handful of guys I’ve dated since him, but I’ve long since decided that type of passion isn’t a realistic goal. Anyway, I’m sure what I experienced back then was the result of surging teenage hormones—or I’ve built it up in my head all these years, romanticizing the past so much that those memories have become exaggerated fantasies. I mean, nothing is ever really that good.

  What I know for certain is that big love leads to big pain. Even now, I can’t think about him without feeling whispers of that old ache inside my chest.

  No, Jim is exactly what I’m looking for in a guy. Intelligent, driven, with a solid career and a refined palate for a nice Pinot Noir. He’s right on schedule to hit boyfriend status in approximately two weeks, at which time I will let things progress to sex. By then we’ll have gone out at least five times, giving us time to learn each other’s lifestyle habits, family backgrounds, and five-year plans. Enough established compatibility to give a relationship a shot—and best of all, a high likelihood of a civil, amicable parting if and when we decide to end it.

  “But are you happy?” Marisa asks.

  “Of course I am.” My smile is at least seventy-five percent genuine. “I’ve got a great life, a beautiful apartment that comes with the best friend a girl can have, a spot in an amazing grad program, and a job I love. I don’t need a man to make me happy. That’s just window dressing. I’m structurally sound and whole all by myself.”

  Marisa’s face looks more pitying than persuaded, but I know she’ll drop the subject … for now. We met in undergrad when the wounds were still very fresh, so she knows plenty of gory details about my history with love.

  I shiver despite the coffee in my hand, the chill January wind cutting right through a
ll my layers of clothing. I’m about to suggest we relocate to a warmer location when my eyes catch on something—someone—that makes my breath stutter and then halt. Standing across the courtyard, as though summoned by my thoughts, is a ghost. He must be a ghost, because it is impossible—there is no possible way—that Graham Wyatt is in the middle of the Boston College campus right now.

  Marisa catches sight of him too, obliterating any possibility that I’m hallucinating. “Speaking of taking all your clothes off … who is the piece of man candy giving you the smolder eyes?”

  He looks older. It’s more than the normal signs of passing time; he exudes a new edge of darkness and solemnity. Back when we were together, there was still a boyishness to him, but it only takes one glance to see that whatever these past five years did to him removed any trace—he is now all man. The scruff covering his jaw makes him look rugged, his dirty blond hair is longer than I’ve ever seen it, and his eyes … even from this distance I can feel their intensity as they bore into me.

  It’s really him. The former love of my life. The man I gave everything to, who broke me so badly the pieces never healed back together properly.

  Mariposas indeed. When I’m able to pull in another breath, they swarm my abdomen, filling every inch of my midsection with the pulsing and fluttering of their frenetic wings. It’s a sensation I haven’t felt in so long I’d forgotten the sheer power of it.

  Right as all of my molecules start trying to pull me into his magnetic grip, reality suddenly slams back into place. The butterflies vacate my stomach to wreak havoc somewhere else. Because I remember.

  I haven’t seen him for five years because he’s been in prison.

  On murder charges.

  02. DAY 3

  Graham

  I make it two days.

  Two days of pacing my parents’ too-large house, which now feels like a giant crypt, trying to convince myself to leave her alone. At least until I have my shit together. I’ve had this argument with myself a hundred times over the past five years, but it was different when I was locked up. It’s easy to be noble and sacrificing when it’s theoretical. Now that I’m out, knowing she’s only thirty minutes away makes every part of me ache with a craving two hundred times worse than anything I felt while getting clean.

  I’m luckier than most guys out on parole. A lot of them have to live in shitty halfway houses and take shittier jobs the state sets them up with because they have nothing to go home to. I, on the other hand, have a massive house at the edge of the idyllic suburbia of Westwood, Massachusetts, half an hour southwest of Boston. Not to mention the nearly twenty million dollars I inherited between my parents’ life insurance policies, assets, and the settlement from their accident. All that money has been sitting in high interest accounts and investments all this time, multiplying, its growth tended to by the firm I’ve paid to handle the estate and maintain the property in my absence. So much fucking money, and I don’t deserve a cent of it. I would give it all up in a second to have my parents back.

  On day three, I break and set off to find Mackenzie.

  To reach my old Range Rover, I have to pass the Benz my dad was driving the day they died. One of the universe’s great jokes: it only cost a couple of grand to repair the car, while Mom and Dad are gone forever. Back then, I considered driving the thing off a bridge, and it’s honestly a miracle I didn’t do it. I was a mess after the accident, so lost that I fucked up my entire life.

  If they’d died just a few months earlier when I was still seventeen, someone would have needed to take responsibility for me. Maybe the authorities could have tracked down distant relatives overseas or something. But I was eighteen, so they sent me home with empty condolences and the expectation that I handle things like an adult.

  I wasn’t an adult, though. I was a senior in high school; barely more than a kid. The product of a loving affluent household that hadn’t hardened me to the ways of the world. I needed my parents. And they were gone.

  I drive the Range Rover to Boston College like a man possessed (at the speed limit, though—I have no intentions of breaking the conditions of my parole). BC is on the line between Boston’s westernmost limits and the city of Newton. The college atmosphere straddles city and suburb too; the campus is within walking distance to Boston’s Brighton neighborhood and an easy trip downtown via public transportation but also stands apart on a hilltop, its many historic stone buildings creating a separate little world. I can see why Mackenzie chose this place. The sprawling lawns and clustered buildings give BC the traditional college campus vibe she prefers, unlike BU and other urban colleges whose campuses are tucked within the city itself.

  After scoring a parking spot, I make my way through open courtyards lined with evergreen bushes and bare trees—I bet this place is a veritable oasis of green in the warmer months—until I finally locate the Psychology building. I find myself a seat a short distance away, where I can be discreet but still have a clear view of the entrance. Then I wait.

  This is as far as my plan goes. My information is limited. Toward the beginning of my sentence, I received visits from old friends on the outside—not a lot, but a few—and Mackenzie was all I ever asked about. All they could tell me was that she’s studying psychology at BC, which surprised me because when I knew her she wanted to be a veterinarian. It makes me itch to find out what else has changed.

  I could have hired a PI who’d give me a nice fat folder filled with info, including her address, in exchange for an even fatter paycheck, but I hate the idea of some guy—or a woman, even—following my girl around, digging into her life, taking pictures of her. So I’m just going to watch her myself … like a fucking creep.

  I keep waiting. I have no idea if she even has classes today, or if this is the right building, but it’s the only lead I have, so I’m not going anywhere. It’s not like there’s anything better for me to be doing. And I don’t mean that in the way people throw it around, implying what they’re doing is insignificant; this is literally the best and only thing I could be doing right now—she is the best and only thing I want to do with my life.

  And then there she is. Maybe a hundred feet away, exiting the door I’ve been staring at for hours. I jump up from my seated position to get a better view.

  In prison, I thought about Mackenzie a lot. No, that’s an understatement. I thought about her constantly. Through every second of drug withdrawals, every minute of boredom, every hour of state-funded counseling, every seemingly interminable beatdown, it was the thought of her that kept me going. When I hated myself and started to wonder if it was all even worth it (which sometimes happened hourly) I thought about seeing her again and I pushed through.

  All these years, I had an image in my mind of the girl I fell in love with. Despite the distance, it’s clear I am not looking at that same person. While Mackenzie the girl was beautiful, Mackenzie the woman is gorgeous, a transcendental goddess who could inspire men to kneel in worship and gods to wage wars.

  The sight of her hits me, and I am suddenly afflicted with every single romantic cliché.

  Heart racing? Check.

  Breath taken away? Check.

  Vision narrowing until I only see her? Check.

  Weak knees? Check. (And what the actual fuck? I literally have to sit down.)

  With that one glimpse, I know without a doubt that I never stopped loving her—and I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back.

  03. I THINK I’M A STALKER

  Graham

  I don’t approach her. I can’t.

  For five years I’ve been imagining the moment when I could finally explain and start to win her back. Now that it’s here and she’s within reach, I’m scared shitless.

  I duck down so I’m hidden but still have a clear view of her, trying to take in every detail as she stands mere yards from my makeshift hiding place. She’s chatting with a dark-haired girl in front of the Psychology building. A bulky gray coat hides most of her body from my view, but I can see her
slender legs clad in black pants and her feet in shiny black boots. Her hair, twisted up with a clip, is the same mesmerizing orange-red color she informed me is called “strawberry blonde” when we were sixteen. She laughs at something the other girl says, and her smile flashes brightly enough to blind me even from afar.

  When her conversation ends and she begins walking away from the Psychology building, it feels like she’s taking my heart with her. I know what I do next is crazy, but there’s an overpowering sense of urgency screaming to keep her in my sight that drowns out all reason. I’m not ready to lose her again. Not yet.

  So I follow her.

  I keep following her for days.

  I even switch out cars and start driving my mom’s—even though her scent still clings to the interior and brings back memories so potent it’s sometimes hard to breathe—so I can continue to trail Mackenzie without the risk that she’ll recognize my Range Rover.

  I think I might be a stalker. Does it count as stalking if you’re in love with the girl? The lie down in the street and die for her kind of love? I doubt that would convince a judge and jury, but … fuck it. I suppose I can live with being her stalker.