Maggie // 1.6

Outside the border of the campus, on the quaint main street running through the heart of the Village of Farmingham, there was a seventy-year-old Italian restaurant called Altieri’s. Max’s favorite. When he proposed she was surprised it wasn’t at this restaurant. Both of them had spent so much time here in the last four years.

She’d met Max at an off-campus Greek. Lamda Theta Theta had a two-story Georgian at the end of the Village. Farmingham didn’t want Greeks on campus but they still had presence. She was eighteen and so was he though he was almost nineteen. He had a dorky T-shirt on. A girls’ shirt, with a unicorn on a cloud, prancing under a rainbow. It was ironic. He had a stubbly beard back then, and he looked so cute. An adorable boy with a great sense of humor, a big smile that showed his white teeth. It was love at first sight. He was with Cole and Sam and Tyler and they were playing King’s Cup. She was with her friend Sara, and Sara pushed her — literally pushed her — into Max. He was at that happy drunk stage where everything is fun and funny and has promise. He roped her into the game and she pretended she didn’t want to play, didn’t understand Max’s rules, but she definitely wanted to. He taught her how to play, putting his kind and warm hands over hers, and she looked in his eyes, smiling at him, and she could see a life together with him. Max was a good person.

The Max next to her tonight, sitting in his place of gastric nirvana, was a different Max. She’d never seen him like this. He was not prone to moods. He was positive. Always fun. She was the one who would get depressed sometimes and he would be there for her. Only he wasn’t depressed. There was something stark in him. Something had been taken out of him, made him hollow. The light behind his eyes was gone. No sparkle in his chestnut browns tonight.

He’d rallied after that weird exchange in the basement of Samuelson — smiling now but it was as empty as his eyes. He was putting it on. Whatever it was inside him doing this it wasn’t gone, he was merely fighting it.

When she’d looked up, laying on the couch and having fun with Cole, saw his face looming above her she’d been hit with an icy dread. He knew. She thought somehow he knew. His eyes were a thousand miles distant, but there was an intensity in them, she felt. He was different. She’d scrambled, shot up, looking to do anything for him not to hurt — to tell him she was sorry for touching Jay. Wondering who told on her, who knew besides her and Jay?

Their pizzas arrived, two thin and crispy whites with pepperoni and another pitcher of beer. He’d had a few now since they got here, though she stopped after hanging out with Cole. Cole could sense trouble in his friend too and he worked with him, trying to bring out his laugh.

There was a crowd growing in the old stone building. Students and some locals as well, the sky outside getting darker now and people looking for dinner. They ate. Cole was charming and funny and Maggie watched him draw Max out of his shell, get him laughing again. She rubbed his back. He even smiled at her. Felt her hand on him and looked over his shoulder at her and showed those white teeth of his.

But what got in to him then? What had changed since mid-day when he showed up at her door and wanted to make love and hang out? Was it because she rebuffed him? Had plans? That wasn’t abnormal. He was gone from the room when she got off the phone and came back in the room. It was possible he’d seen her sketchbook. It was very possible. She’d wondered before but now it was coming into focus. He knew what her figure model looked like. Shit, he probably knew he’d come to her room. Saw the foot of her bed in her drawing. He would be mad. If the roles were reversed, she would be livid. Jay was no figure model. He was a fucking God.

She suddenly felt the weight of what she’d done. She’d hurt Max with her drawings. That simple act had hurt her poor boy’s feelings. He didn’t even know how much worse it was. God, if he knew what she’d done last week and now today he would hate her.

“Hi-ii, table,” a besotted redhead from the table next to theirs leaned way back, her pretty hair tumbling over the curved crest rail of her chair. Her friends laughed — a mix of young boys and girls, Freshmen. She was addressing the table, but she was eyeballing Cole. Cole knew, he smiled, gave her a confident look, and it made the girl smirk. She tilted her head then, rolling it around and looking into Cole’s eyes sideways, drawing muffled laughter from her friends.

She was very pretty and Cole was interested. She had blonde highlights, freckles and brilliant green eyes. She knew she was pretty, but she had a béguin for handsome Cole that made her pink lips suck into her mouth and her eyelashes flutter.

“Are you Cole Cantarella?”

“I am,” he said.

“I thought so,” she sang.

A pimply faced boy with a bowl cut helped her finally, taking her arm and pulling her back to face their table. Her friends were embarrassed, but they’d had drinks as well and they cackled and fell against each other.

She watched them. Wondered what their experience at Farmingham was going to be like. What experiences did they have in High School? What did they think it would be like for them at College? Would they get all the experiences they were after? It didn’t seem that long ago that she was one of them. Sitting here in Altieri’s drunk on wine hoisted back at the dorm and eating too much pizza and barfing in the hedges outside Keegan. She was here only a few months before she had her loving Max to hold her hair for her, to put ice packs on her forehead the morning after she might have drank too much. She loved every minute with her Max but she never got a chance to lean back in a chair and flirt with a handsome Lacrosse player.

“You okay?” Cole asked. She looked up suddenly and both of them were looking at her.

“Me? Am I okay?”

Max said something, but the restaurant was so noisy now she couldn’t hear him. She shook her head, her eyes staring.

He said, “Are you all right, Maggie?”

“Yeah,” she said.

A loud cheer broke from the table next to them as a sixth for their party barged through the front doors. She stared down at the red gingham check of the tablecloth. Saw her empty plate with crumbs and crusts. Felt the wet weight of the beer she drank swirling in her tummy. Felt the enormity of her actions in her room today. She was going to barf. Right here. All over the table in front of them. Barf and then cry. She got a sudden image of semen leaping up at her out of the deep hole set in the plump head of Jay’s huge cock. It had smelled. In that moment she could smell Jay’s semen.

“I gotta go…excuse me,” she said, and she bumped her way out from the table, stumbled through the crowd, got swallowed by it. Made her way down the glossy green-painted hall and into the ladies’.

She held herself over the sink, looked in the mirror. It had subsided now. The terror gone…the panic. But it wasn’t over. What had she done today?

She’d have to tell Max. She couldn’t keep a secret like this.

She washed her face, rubbed cold water onto her hot skin, stared at her reflection again. She couldn’t tell him. He would leave her.

When she opened the door, her sleeves pulled over her clean hands, got out of the bathroom, Max stood in the hall waiting for her. He had a strange worried but desperate look in his eyes. Something wild was in him.

Her lips trembled, she held his gaze. He looked at her with firmly set jaw. Then he stepped to her, and he hugged her. His arms felt so good around her. He kissed her neck, and she ran her hands through his hair, her nails scratching at his scalp. She tilted her chin to the pressed tin ceiling tiles, looked at the metal lampshade with its bright shining globe. It blotted her vision, turned it all to painful white.

“Max,” she sighed into his ear. His hips pressed her, and she felt his hardness. “Oh, Max,” she sighed, genuinely glad to feel his arousal. She slipped a hand down and grabbed him through his pants, his dick sticking straight up and out, pushing against his cotton.

“Get a room, Max,” somebody laughed loudly at them as they passed, but neither of them even looked to see who it was. He held her head in his hands now, kissing her lips and sucking on her tongue.

“Jessie’s home,” she said. “Your room?”

He nodded, grunted as he pulled on her lips with his.

They held hands, and he pulled his shirt out of his pants so it would hang down over his erection. They made it back to the table and Cole had his side turned as he talked to the smiling redhead, one confident muscular arm over the back of his chair.

“Cole,” she said, making him turn. “We gotta go…” She winked, Max squeezing her hand.

Cole’s smile narrowed his eyes, and he said, “Catch you later,” or something, and Max was already pulling her to the front doors of the restaurant.

It was cold outside and there was a group of townies waiting to get a table and they walked through their cigarette smoke. She went to the right and got yanked back, her leg kicking up and her flip flop almost coming off. Max pulled her to the left.

“Where are you going?” she said, stumbling along behind him.

It was colder out now with the sun gone, the purple sky of the fall night bringing a chill with it that made the skin of her arms and legs turn to gooseflesh.

“Down here,” he said.

Altieri’s was in a vintage red brick building and their neighbor was another brick building, a gift shop, painted puce with hunter trim. Between the two buildings was an alley wide enough for a car. It was dark down there but when Max pulled her into it she was excited.