Exotic - Chapter 39: Chapter 39

The Sanchez household looked as if a bomb had hit it. The front lawn - strewn with red cups and discarded shoes and cigarette butts - should have been an indication of what was to come, but when Aaron open the front door and I got my first glimpse of the hallway, I let out a tiny, audible shriek.
"When does Maya get home?" I asked him.
He checked his phone. "Six hours."
"We can hit the road and be well on our way to Darwin in that time," I bargained. "I'll get Max. You pack a bag."
He let out an amused little huff, and tugged a pair of sneakers, laces knotted together, off the hallway light. "I'll start in the bathroom. You do the living room."
Aaron looked, and sounded, completely exhausted. I was sure I was projecting the same energy, as I trudged heavily past him, dodging empty cider bottles and crumpled cans of Emu in my path. After a claustrophobic run to Bunnings with Reece, swinging a basket full of red spray paint between the Sunday crowds, he'd dumped me outside Aaron's without so much as a reminder of curfew. I appreciated that the man was picking his battles; it made my life a fair bit easier.
Aaron had asked me about the gauze over my eyebrow, and I'd told him the truth; there was no reason to lie about Reece's suspicious generosity or the source of my injury. I left out most of the details of our conversation, including Reece's therapist. I just told him that I wasn't worried about him, and he shouldn't be either.
We'd picked up Zsa Zsa from the same place we'd dropped him off, out the front of the ER. He had been sporting crutches and a fresh stitch on his bottom lip, which gave him trouble enunciating. His skin was shadowed with bruising and the swelling had gone down significantly. He was also hopped up on painkillers, the nurse attending him had warned us, which made it difficult to talk to him about anything of importance.
"Did the police visit you?" I had tried asking him in the car.
"Mmmm. I had nothing to do with the Duchess's tragic plummet from the battlements," he slurred back, and narrowed his eyes at me in the rear-view mirror. "You have a huge pimple on your forehead."
Determining that I would speak to him about what was to be done with Peter later, I combed my bangs over the spot Zsa Zsa had so kindly pointed out and let Aaron drive to the address he was given. His mother lived in a freestanding house in the suburbs, not a surprise given what Zsa Zsa had told me about the place he grew up. The garden was littered with stone cherubim's, the knocker on the door was fashioned like a cross and the welcome mat was branded with an italicised Bible quote;
Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand in vain. ~Psalm 127:1
The Zsa Zsa I knew was such a polar contrast to the place he'd been raised. I would have laughed at him if I'd been there under different circumstances.
His mother was an astoundingly tiny woman, no more than five feet tall, with a short crop of thirsty black hair and boxy figure, answering the door in a cotton orange dress with a pair of waxing strips on her upper lip. Clearly, Zsa Zsa had not told her the extent of his injuries (he'd told her he'd gotten them from fall in the street) because she had immediately taken a dishtowel draped over her shoulder and slapped it across his uninjured shoulder.
After her initial annoyance, she'd invited them in and interrogated Aaron and me over coffee in her crowded living room while Zsa Zsa showered. I had felt pressured to tell at least most of the truth, considering the amount of Jesus memorabilia staring down on me. Even the pillows had his face embroidered on them. It felt like sacrilege to sit on them.
"Where do you work? Are they paying my son enough? Has he talked to you about going back to university?" were just a few of her questions directed at me. When I told her I wasn't actually a waiter and worked with Zsa Zsa in his other profession, she pretty much tuned me out and seem pleased to be rid of me when we finally made our excuses. I left Zsa Zsa with a final, lingering hug and Aaron shook his hand (before being dragged into a hug anyway, which left him flustered beyond words).
"Look after yourself," I told him. "I'm going to call and annoy you every day until you're back on your feet, FYI."
"You are annoying," he had mused, eyes cloudy from drug-induced bliss, and blew a kiss before closing the door behind us.
I found a trash bag under the sink – which had been plugged and turned into an icebox the night before, which had since melted and felt ominously gloopy when I reached into to drain it – and started sweeping armfuls off trash off each surface of the house. I'd filled three and swept up all the broken glass into haphazard corner piles when something crashed from down the hall. I looked up to see Maya and Colin's bedroom door swing open, and a dark-haired girl I recognised from Modern History staggered out; fully clothed but with lipstick smeared down her chin. Or maybe it was red wine. She paused in the hallway when she saw me, clutching her purse and shoes close to her chest.
I waved with as much energy as I could muster.
She waved back, blinking in confusion as she staggered through the piles of trash, I'd yet to attempt clearing. "Uhm... Miles, right?"
"Yeah," I had no idea what her name was, despite our class together. I needed to focus more in school. I was pretty sure, with a gun to my head, I wouldn't recognise half of my graduating cohort. "You... alright to get home?"
She exhaled long and loud. "Yeah... I can walk... would I be able to... shower? My mum thinks I spent the night at my sister's."
I pointed her to the bathroom Aaron wasn't currently scrubbing, and she hustled towards it with a grateful smile. I got on my knees to scrub the couch clean of signs of life, and my entire body groaned in protest. I needed a long bath, a longer night's sleep, and an entire tub of deep heat to recover from the night before.
I was vacuuming the carpet when the door creaked again, and a girl I recognised from Maths crept out. She had put on her dress backward. She winched at the roar of the vacuum, shrinking back like a startled cat.
I switched it off and smiled at her. "Morning."
She flinched at the light streaming through the living room windows as she approached. "Have you seen Greta?"
The name rang a bell. "Ah, yeah. She's in the shower."
The girl smiled at me sleepily, patted my cheek a little too familiarly considering I'd never spoken to her, and cross to the same bathroom. I opened my mouth to tell her there was another if she needed to use the toilet, but she was already opening the door and slipping through the steam.
Aaron came in to offer me a glass of Coke, and we sat amongst the carnage for a quiet moment. He rested his head against the sofa edge, legs splayed out in front of him.
"You looked wrecked," I informed him. "Go to bed. Max should be doing this."
"Ehh," Aaron sighed. "I'll jot it down as an IOU."
"How many of those have you collected over the years?" I countered jovially. "You ever going to cash in?"
"One day," he assured me. "It'll be spectacular."
As if summoned by the invocation of his name, Max staggered into the hallway – surprisingly enough, not out of the same door the two girls had exited through. He dressed in only his boxers and a black singlet with a far-off look in his eyes. He zoned in on us sitting in the living room and tried to saunter over. He tripped over the vacuum hose, twice – somehow – before throwing himself down next to me, turning Aaron and I's pair into a misshapen circle.
"Holy shit," he took a quick inventory of the house. "How many people showed up last night?"
"You don't know?" Aaron asked incredulously.
"I passed out at like, ten, bro," he scrubbed his face with his hands. "I'm not used to hosting parties. I don't know what etiquette is. I only invited thirty people, but I said they could bring whoever. Could you close the curtains?"
Aaron patted his shoulder, completely unsympathetic. "How's the liver?"
"Eh. Worst case scenario, I have a backup," he slapped Aaron's side and grinned. "How'd you guys go last night?"
I met Aaron's eye. A silent agreement passed between us; Max didn't need to know the details. Nobody did.
"There will never be another night like it," Aaron responded vaguely. It seemed to satisfy Max's curiosities, and he rocked back to heave himself to his feet, wobbling slightly before catching himself against the sofa. "You want coffee? I'm getting coffee. I'm going to make everyone coffee."
"I want you to clean the damn kitchen," Aaron called after him, but Max had already vanished. He shot me a withering look. "Spectacular, I tell you."
After pouring my body weight in lukewarm beer down the sink and heaving the dining room chairs from the back yard back to where they belonged, the living room began looking reasonably tidy. Not good enough that Maya wouldn't immediately notice they had been shifted, but I figured that was Max's problem. The two girls shuffled out of the shower wrapped the matching tea-green towels Maya only bought out for guests and claimed the coffee that Max had made for Aaron and me. I was more than happy to lend them each a pair of sneakers from Max's bedroom just to get them out the door before they got too comfortable.
"Miles?" Greta asked as I lead them to the door. "You're dating Caleb's little sister, right?"
I didn't like the way she said little. It made Lauren sound twelve. "I was. We separated."
"Separated," the other girl, Rachel – I remembered her as one of Max's short-lived girlfriends, back in middle school – echoed. "Who says separated? Y'all getting a divorce?"
Greta elbowed her. "That must have been it then. Lucky you didn't hang around long last night."
My hand paused with the door halfway closed. "Must have been what?"
She turned up the collar of her jacket to the wind and made a face. "Her brother was looking for you last night. He was really adamant about it too. Probably spoiling for a fight."
I blanched. A mental image rolled through my brain like a tumbleweed. Caleb, drunk and stammering, grabbing anyone who walked through the threshold of the Sanchez house and demanding to know whether they knew where I was. Confusion mutating into suspicion rumours circulating, slurs being thrown playfully and then inimically.
Why is Caleb so obsessed with Miles Stewart?
Isn't that the kid McCaffrey keeps saying is a... y'know.
I saw Miles get into Caleb's car once.
You've got to wonder...
The possibilities made me sick to my stomach, but I tried to sound casual when I threw out. "Caleb was looking for me?"
"What?" Greta's pale brow furrowed. "No, not Caleb. Jake."
I felt my entire face scrunch in confusion. "Jake? Jake Proust?"
"Uhm, yeah. Jake," she took a step back, glancing out to the road. "Look, I'm going to get a move on. I'm freezing my tits off."
Rachel wrapped her arms around Greta's shoulders and gave me a bright smile. "See you tomorrow, Miles."
"Uh, sure," Rachel had never spoken a word to me in four years of high school together, and I doubted she was about to start halfway through our final year. "Get home safe, girls."
Upon closing the door, I slumped against it, mind racing at a million miles an hour. Jake Proust had been looking for me? Persistently?
As if his brother wasn't causing me enough confusion. Jake and I had gotten on fine for the most part; save our 'little chat' at the start of Lauren and I's fake relationship. I could only conclude that he had questions about the nature of my breakup with his sister. But Lauren had agreed to make it mutual.
Did that matter, in the eyes of the guy who had warned me that I'd have a bad time if I didn't treat his sister right? I hadn't considered the consequences of ending my fake relationship; it had only upsides, freeing Lauren of her obligations and me of my guilt, and untangling me from the spiral of lies I'd descended into over the last month. But in the eyes of everyone but Lauren, Caleb and I, our short courtship had been very real, with real emotions tied in. Maybe Jake didn't believe that Lauren was fine and moving on. Maybe he thought she was putting on a brave face. Maybe he thought I'd, as he'd said, used her for tutoring and y'know, then left her on the side of the road.
Was that the impression I gave off? I hadn't been a very good boyfriend to her, considering we were nothing more than an illusion of convenience. Maybe Jake had caught wind and was hoping to teach me a lesson for using his sister.
That ruled out visiting Caleb at home. I hadn't wanted to consider it, but with Caleb's radio silence stretching into the early afternoon, my itching need to see him was giving me outrageous ideas.
Max tackled the front lawn, finally awake enough to feel guilty about leaving clean-up duty to his brother, and Aaron and I stripped the beds, bleached the kitchen, swept up broken trinkets, and dropped them in the neighbours bin. We piled up the lost property in Max's room and matched texts to belongings, as people woke up and realised their phones, wallets, bags, and condoms had been left behind in their hurry to make curfew.
"We're going to be like Santa's elves tomorrow," Aaron grunted as we stacked his boot high. "Seriously, who forgets their jacket? In April?"
"Who forgets their pants?" I countered, tossing a pair of Levi's jeans onto the pile. "Who leaves a practically new pair of Mollini Ogosha heels in the bathtub? Can these be my finder's fee?"
"Those belong to Harriet Glossmon, and she sent nine crying emojis so she's clearly missing them," Aaron peeled the shoes from my hands and tossed them carelessly into the trunk.
"I'd wear them better than she ever will," I grumbled.
By the time Maya and Colin's car came screeching into the driveway, we were all three of us sitting in front of Max's Playstation, looking as innocent as never when the front door was thrown open. Aaron jolted from his dead sleep against my shoulder, blinking wildly and wiping drool off my shirt apologetically.
Maya dashed into the frame of Max's bedroom, out of breath and sagging at the knees. Her keen eyes scanned the three of us, narrowed in suspicion.
"The green towels have been washed," was all she said, voice sodden with distrust.
Max paused the game and turned to her with a smile that might have been sweet if it had come from Aaron. Despite their faces being identical, Maxs' smiles always came out a little crooked and sly. "Miles stayed over last night."
When she looked to me for confirmation, I shrugged weakly.
"And needed two showers?" she continued, eyes in slits.
"Auntie!" Max sounded horrified. "Don't embarrass him. His body is changing, and that's nothing to be ashamed of."
I flushed beet red and kicked his side. Maya clearly didn't buy it – her bullshit-o-meter was advanced enough to be considered a superpower – but at least she didn't drag me into her interrogation. "I suppose you want me to believe you spent Saturday deep-cleaning the kitchen, too. It smells like industrial bleach in there."
"I spilled some ketchup," Max didn't miss a beat.
"Mm-hmm," Maya quirked a manicured eyebrow. She glanced across the couch to Aaron, who had started to fall asleep against the arm. "You were home last night, Aaron?"
Aaron blinked like a dear in the headlights. He mumbled, barely audible through the thick fog of sleeplessness, "... yeah."
She immediately softened, shoulders slumping in relief. "Well. It can't have gotten too wild then."
"Wild? What do you mean?" Max was deep in his role. "We watched Human Planet and went to bed at ten pm like we always do. Aaron wanted to invite his book club over, but I told him, Maya said no girls and no parties..."
"Alright, Maximillian. I'm going to stop your digging there before you hit the centre of the earth," she sighed, the same sigh she had passed on to Aaron. "I don't want to know."
From the kitchen, we heard Colin cry, "Who ate all the turmeric?"
She stepped inside and scrubbed her fingers quickly through Max's hair, leaving it a mess and him complaining. She gave me a friendly pat on the shoulders and left us to our devices. Max gave us both a thumbs up.
"She doesn't suspect a thing."
I glanced to the right. Aaron had fallen asleep again, mouth hanging open and arm dangling off the side of Max's couch.
Max noticed him too. "Jesus, what did you do to him last night?"
I gave him an exhausted smile. "What happens in Vegas, and all that."
He nodded in a way that implied he knew exactly what I was talking about. "Thanks for showing him a good time. I was worried he'd spend our eighteenth bolted in his bedroom."
I flicked lazily at my controller. I didn't think much of video games, but at least in pixel format, I could choose to be a busty sledgehammer-wielding assassin with four miles of blonde hair, and no one asked any questions. "Hey, Max? Greta and Rachel... are they... together?"
"Oh, dude, no," Max said firmly, and I flinched, thinking for a second I was about to hear a side of Max I would never expect. But he continued on as casually as he might talk about the soccer score. "Rachel's with Celeste. Nguyen? I think. At least, she was last week."
"I think it's safe to say that's over."
"Figures," Max got the drop on me and slit my throat without batting an eye. "Rachel's pretty new wave. She once said the Catholics could take their monogamy and go fuck themselves with it."
I swallowed as I waited to respawn, tapping the sides of the controller nervously. "It doesn't... weird you out? Having dated her?"
"We were in middle school," Max shrugged. He grabbed a handful of Cornflakes from the box between his knees and crammed them messily into his mouth. "Even if we weren't, I wouldn't care if she dated a roller-coaster after we broke up. It's her life, man. Do you think Tracy Hicks holds a grudge against Aaron for kissing her under the spider-climber in second grade?"
"No," I determined.
"Behind you."
I turned in the game, to find his heavily armoured brawler standing behind me. My screen went red, and I let out a resigned sigh as he cackled.
"You ever dated siblings?" I blurted out. "Like, one after the other?"
Max made a face. "Never officially. I hooked up with Edith's older sister a year ago. But could you imagine if I went back to Edie's family, hand in hand with her sister, and expect to be welcomed with open arms? Imagine how fucking awkward it would be."
"I thought Edith broke up with you."
"Yeah, well..." he was now playing with one hand on the controller, one scrolling through his phone, apparently just to spite me. "It doesn't matter the circumstances. Family will always take the side of family. Which means slagging off their partner, no matter what caused the breakup, until they feel better about themselves. Imagine slagging someone off and then four months later, asking them to pass the salt? It'd never work out."
I tried to focus on the game, but my head was reeling. Was Caleb's family slagging me off? Was Lauren's text just a gentle lie, to ease my anxieties? "Never?"
"I mean, my family is the exception," Max mused. "Aaron never takes my side. But with girls... oh man. It's traditionalist bullshit at it's finest. Left over from Victorian English society, I swear. You defiled their precious little girl, didn't put a ring on it, so all there is to do is hope you never bump into her father at the supermarket or her brother at training. No matter what the girl wants or did. It's out of her hands."
That didn't bode well for my future; especially if Jake was already looking for me. I worked very hard on not showing my nervousness, even as Max dropped from a tree and split my skull.
"What, does Lauren have a sister or something?" he asked. "I thought it was just brothers. Which, by the way, good luck with that. If you need me to incapacitate Caleb, we're doing slide tackles on Monday."
"Noo-o," I stammered, feeling heat crawling up my cheeks. "Please don't."
Max went very quiet all of a sudden. He paused the game, dumped the controller beside him, and turned his full body towards me, along with his full attention.
"Hey," he grinned at me, that crooked smile that looked nothing like Aaron's. His nose was still slightly swollen from the break, and a fading bruise traced under his eye. Even without it, I didn't know how people could mix them up so carelessly. They might have looked identical while fast asleep and completely lifeless – then again, Aaron ground his teeth, Max didn't, Max slept on his back, Aaron on his side... - but their mannerisms and voices and expressions were so drastically different that it boggled my mind that people could have whole conversations with either of them and not realise which twin they were talking about. "What's going on? I know you're not just curious about my sex life. I distinctly remember you jumping out of a car the last time I pulled out any details."
"It was parked," I protested.
He flicked my wrist. "Are you alright?"
I set my mouth in a line. Max didn't take his eyes off me. He waited, as patient as Aaron was on a daily basis. Beside us, his brother's head lolled and he let out a tiny snore.
"Look, I know we're not as... close as you and A. That's on me," Max said softly, and I detected a hint of something very un-Max-like in his voice. Not resentment, not irritation. Regret, maybe. I remembered our non-existent relationship in middle school, the way he snubbed his brother in favour of attention from the same peers who spat slurs at Aaron. I might have hated him, just a little; only because I saw what his neglect was doing to my best friend. They'd lost their mum, never met their dad, and all of a sudden Aaron had lost his brother too, only seeing him in bursts when he graced the family table for dinner or asked for his homework answers.
And Aaron would give them to him. As much as I protested. He's my brother. He needs me. It's nice to be needed by him again.
Of course, Aaron welcomed him with open arms the second Max pulled his head in and came crawling back. The first time Max had sat at our table, I'd been determined not to speak to him, to hold him accountable for the years he had ghosted his brother.
He hadn't given me a chance to hate him. He'd stuck out his hand, introduced himself as the evil twin and the rest was history.
"Don't be stupid," I told him, wrenched back to the present with a pang.
He chuckled. "Miles. I know you're Aaron's friend first. That's always been the deal. But I want you to know that I love you like a non-identical brother and therefore, I am duty-bound to punch things that hurt you and offer you unsolicited advice about your life. So. I ask you again. What's going on?"
I swallowed again. Studied my hands. Picked my nails. My heart was in my throat at the mere thought of confessing what was going through my mind at that moment, to Max. Max, who knew virtually nothing despite being one of my closest friends. Max, who had just told me he loved me like a brother. Nobody, not even Aaron, had said that to me – not out loud.
"I think you should cut your hair."
Max's brow furrowed, and he raised his hand to comb through the longest parts of it, hanging down the nape of his neck. "What?"
"I know you want to. But you don't want to do it without Aaron, because the last time you had different haircuts, you weren't speaking."
All through middle school, Aaron's hair was long and flat-ironed. Max's had been buzzed to his scalp. People hadn't mixed them up back then. People never shoved Max into lockers by mistake and girls never flirted with Aaron, thinking he was his brother. Most people hadn't known they were related. Max got the bus home with the soccer team, and Aaron rode his second-hand mustard-yellow bike, occasionally with me sitting on the handlebars.
Max helped Aaron shave his head in the sink after MCR broke up, and they'd grown and cut it in sync ever since. I'd been keen to copy them, but my mother had intercepted my venture with Reece's shears and told me she liked my hair, kissing the top of my head, and combing her fingers through my bangs. My bangs were a constant source of frustration, but whenever I thought about styling them back, I remembered Mum running her fingers through them when she trimmed them, careful even snips of the scissors at my eye level. More recently, I thought about Caleb pushing them out of my eyes to look at me.
"I don't know if..." Max was stammering a little, tugging on the hair curling over his ears. He pointed a finger in my face accusingly. "Are you psychoanalysing me?"
"A little," I smiled. "When Aaron cut his hair, he said it made him feel closer to you. I think he told that to you as well. You think looking alike is what bought you back together."
Max was silent, but the flicking of his eyes between Aaron, the carpet, and his hands made me confident that I was right.
"Max, he felt closer to you after that because it was the first time you'd really spent time together since you started high school," I told him. "It was the first time he'd cried in front of you in years. It was the first time he felt like you cared."
Max's expression turned pained. "I always cared."
"Duh. But he didn't know that," I jabbed his side. "He realised it when you let him blubber on about Gerard Way for three hours without having a clue what he was talking about."
"He really did love that short angry man," Max sighed whimsically.
"We all did. We all did," I placed a hand on my heart.
Max dropped his head back onto the couch, twiddling his thumbs. He was clearly anxious to speak, but couldn't quite find the words. I waited, just as he had waited for me. Like Alba waited for me.
"I nearly got my ears pierced that year," he mused. "So we'd look the same again. Trout would have gutted me for it, but I didn't care. I wanted Aaron to know I didn't care if people mixed us up. I used to get giddy when people did. 'Cause then I could say, 'nah, that's my brother. He's the good one.'"
I wanted to shake him. "Hey, idiot. You're good too."
He snorted so hard that I worried cornflakes would come flying out.
"You are. I wish I had a brother like you, for real. You knew fighting would have got you kicked off the soccer team but that didn't stop you going for Greenaway when he came after Aaron. Remember when I was in the locker room and Trout started sledging me, and you came back at him without a second thought?"
He scratched his bottom lip. "No?"
"Well, I do," I said firmly. "And that shit matters to me, more than I think you know. Stop telling everyone you're the evil twin. Aside from being completely untrue, it's kind of cringey."
Max's smile was sheepish. "But that's my line, Miles."
"Ughhh," I shuddered. "Look. All I'm saying is, you should stop living your life in relation to Aaron. You'll always be his brother. But he's finding his identity outside being Maximillian Sanchez's twin. You should do the same."
"What do you mean?"
I glanced over my shoulder to check Aaron was still out cold and lowered my voice. "Remember when Aaron dyed his fringe blue?"
Max laughed lightly at the memory. "It turned his forehead green."
"Yes. We roasted him mercilessly," I told him. "But he took a risk because he wanted to see if it worked for him. It didn't. Neither did the flat-ironing, or the gauges, or really anything from that goth phase."
"He's braver than me," Max said softly.
You're braver than me, Caleb had told me. It felt like a lifetime ago. Take it or leave it.
"He was finding his style. He was finding his identity. High school doesn't take kindly to that – it's all uniforms and natural colours and shorts for boys and skirts for girls. Light makeup and non-decorative earrings, but only for the girls. Ponytails for girls but above the ears for boys. They want it to prepare us for what comes next, but they've got it wrong," I rattled off. "What comes next is a decade of tripping and stumbling, bad sex, bad apartments, changing university courses, deciding university isn't for you, cutting your hair, dying it, cutting it off again... trying to find the person you are under layers and layers of suppression and uniformity and expectations. I commend Aaron for starting early."
Max was staring at me. I didn't know how much of my rant he'd actually picked up. It had turned into something more than a motivational speech partway through.
But slowly his lips parted, and his face opened up into an easy smile. "Me dumb soccer boy. Me no think for myself. Ug ugg."
"Just cut your hair," I advised him. "Aaron will thank you. No more M sweater."
Max cuffed my shoulder gently – because he'd known me long enough to know I hated it – and un-paused the video game, leaving me with unsure if I'd convinced him of anything but pleasantly serene. I'd completely diverted the conversation, taken Max's mind off me, and turned it around to him. He seemed content to continue as we were. Max was easy like that.
But a tiny twinge in my brain wouldn't rest. A nagging that wouldn't go away, no matter how many times Max killed me on screen and laughed about it. Aaron shifted in his sleep and tossed a leg over my lap, pinning me in place. I couldn't escape the niggling feeling that I was cheating.
"Max?"
"Yeah?"
"So, bear with me. This one time in Biology class, Ms. Trudeau..."
"Wait, wait..." he hushed me. I glanced at his side of the screen and recognised the landscape. With a quick turn and a series of frantic button-mashing, I sprung a manic attack on him, throwing grenades, swinging my hammer, stabbing wildly in a frenzy. When the smoke cleared, Max's character was a smear of blood and a single pink coil of organs, and the score was 9-1.
I raised my controller above my head in triumph. "Suck it, Sanchez!"
He gave me a mocking round of applause. "Some might call it overkill, but..."
"Max?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm gay."
His face froze in place, expression neutral but his eyes fell back into something unreadable. He just looked at me for a moment. My breathing hitched, and then I felt like I couldn't catch it at all. My heart hammered like a hummingbird sewn into my ribs, and my palms went slippery with sweat. I felt lightheaded, and I held onto the couch to steady myself.
I felt a light pressure on my thigh and glanced down. Aaron's fingers had found my leg, and he was squeezing it gently, comfortingly. I caught his eyes, half-lidded, drowsy with sleep, and he smiled to me.
And then Max was smiling at me too.
"Miles Franklin Stewart," his face broke open into a grin, a reassuring grin; uncontained, wide, all his pearly teeth on display. "Stand up."
"My middle name isn't Franklin."
"I don't know your middle name. I needed to put something in there to make it more official," he dragged me to my feet, sending Aaron toppling off the couch in a heap.
"And you choose Franklin?"
He pulled me into a spine-crushing hug without warning, and I wheezed over his shoulder. My feet left the ground as he held me in a body-lock of stubborn affection, as my legs kicked uselessly below me. I could remember a time both of them had been shorter than me, and I longed for it back.
"Thank you for telling me," he said once he put me down. "I love you, mate. Are you alright?"
I was sure I looked a little red in the face. I nodded assuredly. "I'm better than alright. Mate."
Aaron was crawling back onto the couch, his body slumped in exhaustion, but his eyes crinkled up in delight. "Good on you, mate."
"Hey, come on," Max protested. "It's endearing."
"By the way," I piped up quickly, gesturing between Aaron and me, "This isn't a confession of a passionate secret love affair. I'm gay, he's gay, but not for each other."
Max looked horrified. "You damn well better believe you're not dating my brother, Stewart. He's way too good for you."
"Agreed," I nodded sombrely.
"Who is too good for Miles?" Maya poked her head around the corner. She'd scrubbed her face clean of makeup and was wearing a bandana knotted in her hair. Her presence was so familiar and comforting, and motherly that I didn't even jump at the sudden intrusion. "There are muffins on the bench."
"Haven't you been home for, like, twenty minutes tops?" Max asked incredulously. Maya quirked her eyebrows twice and disappeared into the hallway. "A, you should really go to bed."
Aaron was sprawled out on the couch like the kind of drunk I knew he wasn't. "I'll move... in a minute."
Maya's muffins were excellent.