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You think, maybe, you’ve been in love with Max Caulfield since the day you met her.
It’s summertime and the streetlights won’t be on for another two hours. You’re 7 and tall and lanky and way too talkative. She’s 6 and tiny and quiet and doesn’t know how to propel herself on the swings without her father – the big burly guy who stares at the tiny girl with a love rivaled only by the way you’re dad looks at you.
“I can show her how!” You volunteer yourself to help the struggling dad and he lets you take over, “My name’s Chloe. What’s yours?”
“Maxine. B-but I like to be called Max.” She’s younger than you are but you find out she’s in your grade because she gets bored easily.
She has so many freckles on her face, it’s like she has constellations on her cheeks. You always did love looking at the stars. And you want to count the ones she has.
You show her how to pump her legs back and forth, forward as she goes higher and backward on the downswing. Before long she’s getting higher than you and though there is fear in her eyes, there’s exhilaration too, especially when she laughs, and your smile is so wide you’re pretty sure your face will get stuck that way.
When it’s late August and school starts up again, she sits next to you in class. You write your names with a plus sign under your desk.
You’re 10 and she’s 9 when Captain Bluebeard and Long Max Silver are created. You’re swing set is your ship and you can’t think of a better first mate than the one you have. Hours are spent creating a back story for your alter egos.
“But wait.” Max’s voice is soft and tiny and you think it’s you’re favorite voice. “How do Captain Bluebeard and Long Max Silver meet?”
You grin. You may have been thinking about this all night. Maybe not. She can’t prove it, so there.
“Um…I, being the valiant pirate, rescued you from the grips of my worst enemy Wild Bill…”
“I’m not a princess waiting to be saved! I’m a pirate too.”
“Sure, but it’s like when Cody started picking on you yesterday. I saved you then and that was okay, right?”
So, you’d picked a fight with a boy who was giving Max a hard time about her height. Isn’t that what best friends are supposed to do? Who could blame you?
“Okay, fine. I do need saving sometimes.”
“You’re lucky you have me then.”
Max’s smile is bright and you promise to protect her for as long as you lived.
You’re 12 and she’s 11 and there’s a boy – Kenneth Masterson – who likes Max. Likes likes Max. She holds his hand on the ride to the field trip to the science museum 45 minutes away. That means Max doesn’t sit next to you, like the two of you always do. She sits next to some stupid smelly boy she barely talks to because she’s too shy. A boy who looks incredibly proud to be holding her hand.
It makes your stomach hurt. You want to tell Ryan Caulfield that his daughter is holding hands with boys now because you know he’ll like it even less than you. But that will get her in trouble and you never want that.
So you tell your father instead.
“Well, do you like Kenneth? Is that the problem?” He has a grin on his face. Like he knows something you don’t.
“Ew, no. He….” You can’t come up with a good reason not to like Kenneth, other than the fact that he took your best friend from you. But you come up with a reason anyway, “He’s not even cute or anything.”
“Okay, well maybe you want a boyfriend too? You can’t by the way.”
“No, dad, I don’t want a boyfriend. It just seems like it’s too much work.”
“So, it’s Max then?”
“What? No, I just want my friend back, I want it to be the way it used to be.”
When she didn’t need other people in her life but you.
It takes you two years to admit that your father did know something you didn’t.
You’re 14 and she’s 13 and you wonder if she’s always been this pretty. You answer that yourself. Yes and you’ve always thought so and you think she’s more than just pretty. You want to tell her so, but you don’t want to lose her. So, you say it with a joke on your lips. You say it when there’s another fucking boy who wants her attention and you want to make her blush. You say it without looking at her to gauge her reaction. You say it with a shove to her shoulder when she starts to doubt herself.
“You’re pretty too, Chloe.”
You hide your blushing cheeks.
You’re 14 and your dad is gone. 3 days later, so is Max. She leaves you a recording and you listen to it daily for the next five years. Sometimes cursing at her voice. Mostly crying at the memory.
You’re 15 and Max doesn’t respond to text messages. You think she must be doing it on purpose, too chickenshit to tell you that she’s better off without you in Seattle. You know this because you text her twice a week and then once a week and then once a month, so she knows you still exist.
You don’t know that Max’s parents have put her back a grade so “she can be with kids her own age” because they think she’s not fitting in well. You don’t know that her parents are right about that. You don’t know that she is too chickenshit to talk to you because she’s afraid anything she says will only hurt you.
You’re 16 and your life has gone completely to shit. Mom is bringing some guy around to replace your dad, that bitch. But you’ve met a girl named Rachel who’s pretty and likes you as much as you like her, you think. She acts like she does anyway, and that’s enough for you. You two plan to leave this shit pit as soon as you can. It seems like a real possibility when you’re finally expelled from Blackwell.
You have nothing else going for you, not really. Your mother thinks you squandered your opportunities. Your father would be disappointed. Max would be too.
Rachel becomes your everything. You don’t know that you are not hers.
You’re 17 and you hate yourself, for various reasons, but none more than the fact that you still miss Max. That you still pull out that cop out tape she recorded and listen to her sad voice - the one you love, the one you hate to love.
Even with Rachel next to you, naked and sleepily clinging to you, there are few nights that you don’t dream of Max.
You don’t know that she dreams about you too.
You’re 19 and Rachel is gone. She wouldn’t leave without you, but it doesn’t stop the thought from creeping in. You weren’t worth shit to begin with – maybe she wised up, like Max.
Six months later and you almost hit Max with your truck– yes, doe eyed, freckled face, too goddamn pretty for her own good Max. It’s not the first time you’ve almost hit someone with this piece of shit, but it’s the only time you’re grateful for it. Nathan Prescott has a chokehold on her and that cannot stand.
A boy – another goddamn boy looking at her all googly eyed – jumps Nathan and it’s your chance to escape with the prettiest girl you know, stealing her away from him (Warren, his name is Warren). You want to be mad at Max but you can’t find it in yourself to be mad for more than 5 minutes at a time.
Because she’s back. Because she’s looking at you with those eyes. Because she’s making your heart do a backflip. Because you’re flirting with her and because she, maybe, likes it?
No more than two days later, and you’ve already convinced her to shoot guns with you and break into the school. You’re turning her into a criminal and you know it and you hate it, but you love it too. You’re in the Blackwell pool and you should probably stop staring at a barely dressed Max. You try to tell yourself that it’s not like she has much to look at; Rachel had been fuller figured. But you still look, mesmerized by the freckles on her shoulders and her stomach and wondering, if those had always been there? Surely, you would’ve noticed.
You don’t want to just count the stars and constellations on her body. You want to touch them and kiss them too.
You feel like you’re betraying Rachel. You can’t find it in yourself to stop. The next morning, with her in your clothes, you dare her to kiss you. You feel smug because you know she won’t do it. You feel justified because she’s flustered and, really, how dare she show up and be cute at a time like this?
You don’t expect the kiss. You don’t know that she’s been thinking about kissing you a lot lately. All you do know is that you jumped too quickly and that you look like a moron and that you shouldn’t be kissing her in the first place.
Three days later, you’re not sure you ever really knew Rachel at all. You want to ask her what Frank had that you didn’t. Or what Frank had that you couldn’t buy or steal. You don’t really want the answer. You just want to be enough for someone. For anyone.
Max tries to reason with you. You hate her for that. For being reasonable. You know that if the shoe were on the other foot – if it was Rachel sitting next to you and Max who turned out to be a cheating bitch, Rachel would be cursing her with you. Because Rachel knew you never saw reason. Because Rachel understood anger.
You know Max thinks you’re a better person than you are.
A day later, you find Rachel in your hideout, buried. It’s your fault. Max will say it’s not, that you can’t be responsible for others decisions, but you don’t need to hear that right now. Because you know you ruin everything you touch.
You’re just waiting for Max to figure it out.
The next day, there’s something in Max’s eyes that says she seen terrible things. You don’t know what but you know it probably involves you and it’s definitely you’re fault she’s even in this situation. It’s your fault that it’s come down to Arcadia Bay or you.
And she chooses you. Tells you that she’d always choose you. Because she’s gone through space and time to save you an untold number of times and she’s not going to back down now. Because you mean the world to her – to a girl you know you don’t deserve. She chooses you, when no one else has ever done so.
She just might be your everything. For the first time, you’re hers too.
You could kiss her.
The storm blows through your town. Your family survives, but many – most – of Max’s friends do not. You were worth all of those lives to her.
You could kiss her. But you don’t think you should.
You kiss her two days later, while the two of you sit outside a truck stop. You couldn’t help yourself. The sun Is setting and she looked too perfect, too perfect not to kiss.
“I —“ you want to say that you’re sorry, but you’re not, and you never lie to Max.
“Why?” She looks shocked. Happy, maybe. But still shocked. That surprises you. Most people would notice by now the look in your eyes whenever she’s near you.
“Because…I love you? Fuck.”
Max’s cheeks are red but she’s smiling and she’s moving towards you. And her hands are warm on your face. And her lips are warm and soft on yours.
“I love you too.”
She’s said it before, when you were kids, but it’s different now. It’s different from anything you’ve ever known.
You’re her first everything. It’s something you take seriously a week later in the empty Caulfield house in Seattle, in Max’s bed. You’re more nervous than she is, you think, until she says your name, all breathless and careless. Then you’re not nervous at all.
Her voice was always your favorite voice. Your favorite sound is the way she says “Chloe.”
When you’re 23, you’re a real adult with a good job and a nice spot in Portland with the girl you’ve loved your whole life. Your hair is blond, still short. Your mother is thrilled. You’ve convinced Max to do things she’s still too shy to do on her own - pierce her nose, grow out her hair, put her amazing photos out there for the world to see. Only one thing would make your life better.
So, you ask Ryan and Vanessa Caulfield if you can marry their daughter. You’ve never been one for formalities, but this seems like the right time to be so.
You’ll ask Max to marry you at the lighthouse you two used to play in as children at The Golden Hour because, hey you’re a romantic. She’ll say yes, because she still thinks you’re the most amazing person she’s ever met. Because she still looks at you like you hung the moon in the sky. Because she still thinks you’re worth it.
You’ll never quite get over yourself long enough to believe that, but you’ll be willing to prove Max right for the rest of your life.