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They met at Berklee in the fall of 2018. They were both double majors, Max in Jazz Composition and Production and Engineering, and El was taking music therapy and performance. Max had moved around a lot in the past few years, from California to Hawkins and now she was in Boston. El had also come a long way, having grown up in Pittsburgh. Not as far, but still a trek.
It started as a simple friendship. El played bass guitar, and Max played drums. Max was consistently awestruck at how quickly El could pick up difficult and complex parts, and even more so how fast she could play them. Anything from And Another Thing by Tom Garling to Paul Jennings’ arrangement of Spain, she could nail it with ease. After a practice, Max decided to compliment her playing.
“Thanks! I used to play for a punk band back in high school, so I’ve got a bit of experience under my belt,” she said. Her voice was soft, and sounded like the colors of dreams. Her brown curly hair bounced lightly when she laughed. Max adored the way she rocked back and forth when she played, thriving in the groove.
It didn’t start out as a friendship.
They were quick to bond, though. El invited her over one September evening, and they watched Brooklyn Nine Nine.
“How have I never seen this show before??” Max asked aloud during the opening to the fourth episode they watched that night.
“You haven’t seen this?? How? Do you live under a rock??” El was shocked, borderline offended.
“I guess I do, but I’m glad you showed it to me.” Max smiled at the girl. Somehow she was cradled up under El’s arm. El didn’t seem to mind, and Max didn’t seem to notice. She fell asleep there after the sixth episode.
El couldn’t bear to wake her up.
— — —
Max woke up the next morning at 9:13am, and briefly panicked. She thought she was going to be late for class, but exactly two seconds later she remembered it was Saturday. After five seconds, she realized where she was: under a thin blanket, with the arms of Berklee’s bassist wrapped around her. Max wasn’t moving and she still managed to fall.
She was secretly thankful when El finally woke up, because it meant she had a reason to move, and she really needed to pee.
“Hopefully my roommate didn’t call the cops,” Max joked as she came out of the bathroom. El was in the kitchen beginning to make breakfast, and it took every fiber of Max’s body not to recreate everyone’s fantasy of hugging their lover from behind while they cooked. El’s scraggly appearance was beautiful, and Max felt guiltier each second she relished in it.
“Why would they?” El asked. She turned to face Max, who had seated herself at the bar.
“I didn’t tell her where I was going last night. She might have thought I was kidnapped,” She answered, pulling out her phone to find one text from Robin, which simply read, ‘If you don’t text back by noon I’m calling the police.’ She decided it might be a good idea to text back before noon. Not yet, though.
— — —
The first time Max kissed a boy she threw up. Lucas Sinclair didn’t entirely enjoy his $200 sneakers being vomited on. To this day, she still wasn’t sure if he was more upset about his shoes being ruined or about his first kiss with someone ending in ruined shoes. They’re still pals, so she could easily ask, but she liked the mystery around it.
She also didn’t want to remind him. Nobody can know about that.
— — —
The tradition of Max going to El’s on Friday nights to watch TV shows was joined by Max taking El to different cafe’s all around Boston after classes once a week by late October. The exact weekday was inconsistent, but she never missed a single week. One night she picked a place that was having an open-mic night. Max enjoyed playing piano almost as much as drumming, and wanted an opportunity to show off her skills to not just a crowd, but to El.
She went with Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” which she refuses to admit she learned by looking up the ukulele chords for the Twenty One Pilots version.
She could have sworn El was a different color when she drove her home.
— — —
Eventually, November rolled around, and so did Thanksgiving weekend, also known as her birthday. Her old friend group from Hawkins came out to surprise her, along with Steve. Robin invited El along, before she hit it off with Steve who tried to ask her out and was met with loud laughter, followed by an “I’m gay, dingus,” which Max had heard her say far too many times. They spent the entire afternoon wandering about downtown Boston, getting the tour of the Conservatory, and Will calling her on her ‘not a crush’.
“You’ve had your eyes on her all afternoon, weirdo. Why don’t you just say you like her?”
“What if she’s straight, dude?” Max replied.
“Max, this is 2019, not 1989. Relax. Go talk to her.”
“Absolutely not.”
Max came to regret this choice as she saw Mike talking to her when they got back to the apartment. Her stomach churned, green clouds of envy formulating in her mind. And while envy was not a good look on Max, in this one scenario, it might have been a good thing for her to be envious.
Somehow, Max managed to land a three bedroom apartment in downtown Boston for a good price. One of these bedrooms was turned into a music studio, where Max had various instruments from guitar and bass to drums to her baby, a Roland FP-7 keyboard.
“Hey stalkers!” She yelled across the living room. Lucas and Dustin (who had been arguing about… bees?) both looked up. “Wanna jam? We haven’t jammed in so long.”
The two boys looked the most excited she had seen them in a long time. This also got Will and Mike’s attention, as well as El’s.
“Dude, hell yeah,” Lucas cheered. Max led them into her studio.
Lucas sat down at the drums, Mike pulled a guitar off the wall, Dustin walked over to the synth in the corner and began setting it up, and Will sat against the wall. El looked lost.
“Would you like to join us?” Max asked her.
“I don’t know the charts,” She replied.
“They’re easy, promise. I’ve probably got sheets hiding somewhere in my desk, if you need them.”
El bit her lower lip, which Max took to signify her consideration. “Alright. Let’s jam!”
About ten minutes of searching for sheet music later, and Max sat down at her piano, which Robin had tried to throw away countless times. Apparently being “woken up at 4am because Max is pounding on the keys and the walls are hella thin” is a good reason to toss out a $600 piece of musical equipment.
“What should we start with?” Max asked.
“Do we all still know Strasbourg?” Dustin asked. El flipped through the sheets Max had handed her, as generic sounds of confirmation filled the room. Robin and Steve had joined the group, leaning against the doorframe.
“Woah wait, what about Will?” Steve asked.
“I play trumpet, and didn’t bring mine with me,” he answered. Max facepalmed dramatically, before standing up.
“What are you doing?” Dustin asked.
“Well, Troy went home to see his family, and doesn’t trust anyone at the school not to steal his trumpet, so he left it here. I don’t think he would mind if you used it for one little jam session.” She pulled a small brown case from under her desk and handed it to Will. He quickly set it up, (after cleaning off the mouthpiece) and played a few notes to make sure he was in tune, before giving the thumbs up that he was ready.
Lucas counted the group in, and they were off. Despite six months apart, the group sounded exactly the same. Dustin and Lucas were grooving hard, and Mike and Will were in perfect sync. Max took the first solo. Her fingers danced along the keys, allowing her soul to feed into the instrument. She didn’t see it, but El couldn’t take her eyes off of her.
The rest of the night was history. The old party had to catch a flight at 7am the next morning to get back to Hawkins, so they left for their hotel room at around 10pm, leaving just Max and El.
They fell asleep watching the first few episodes of Everything Sucks.
Max woke up the next morning to a picture of Will and Mike cuddling. “I don’t think you need to worry about him stealing your girl.”
— — —
Max was sick the week after her birthday. El hugged her the second she came back.
“Oh my god, you’re back! That other drummer is so hard to keep time with,” she said.
“We’re exactly the same!!” Nicholas yelled.
— — —
Christmas break came. Max and El’s friday nights were still happening. They had considered postponing this one, because Max was going back into Hawkins on Sunday and needed to pack. Lucas told her not to postpone when she asked him. She put up zero resistance, and he sent her a dyke brain meme.
The snow was heavy that night. Max couldn’t drive, so she ended up taking the subway, which Max almost missed because she was busy sending gay memes back and forth with Lucas. By the time she got to El’s apartment and knocked on the door, it was nearly 8, almost half an hour late. El opened the door frantically.
“Holy shit! You’re here!” El pulled Max into a tight hug, totally uncaring for Max’s snow-covered jacket melting onto El’s cute pyjamas. “I thought maybe you had crashed, I was so worried!”
Max rubbed the taller girl’s back in an effort to console her. “Hey… hey… I’m fine, see? I took the subway, I’m not stupid enough to drive in this weather.”
Max had a quick shower to warm herself up, and she found a set of white pyjamas on the counter of the bathroom when she got out. A note that read ‘your clothes are in the wash, they were drenched. - El’ was attached.
The shirt had a rainbow on it. Max snickered to herself.
She left the bathroom, and wandered down the hallway into the “living room,” aka the room with the TV and a couch, which was right next to the kitchen and about the size of her bedroom back home. El greeted her with a cup of hot chocolate.
“The roads are closed until further notice,” El said. Max’s jaw dropped. “The snow got really bad, they think they’ll be closed for a few days, and all the flights are definitely cancelled until after Christmas.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding! I’ve got a flight to Hawkins on Sunday!” Max said.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Mike told me things are just as bad over there,” El reassured.
“Wait, Mike?”
“He texts me from time to time, we mostly send each other memes, but when I heard about the flights being cancelled, I called him to let him know, that’s all. I wouldn’t steal your friends like that, I promise.”
Max let out a sigh of relief she didn’t know she was holding. Jealousy really wasn’t a pretty color on her.
“I’m not letting you go back out in that storm, so you’re gonna have to stay the night,” El said.
“I have no gripes with that.”
“Alright, well, shall we get started on out shows?” El asked.
“Absolutely,” Max answered.
El led the way to the couch, her hips swaying ever so slightly. Max turned a completely new shade of pink, and thanked any god that could hear her that it was dark so El couldn’t see her blushing.
Max couldn’t focus on what they were watching. The two girls were cuddling on the couch, similar to the first of these sessions, but this time, the energy was different. El was stroking Max’s hair, Max was in El’s pyjamas, she was staying the night on purpose.
“It’s getting late, we should get some sleep,” El muttered through a yawn.
“I’m all for that. Uh… where am I sleeping?” Max looked up at El. Her night vision wasn’t perfect, but she could have sworn El was blushing.
“We can share my bed… if you want.”
“... I’d like that.”
Max had never been in El’s room up to this point. Her room was cluttered and chaotic. Not messy by any stretch, but El’s charm had definitely expelled out into the room. There were music posters coating the walls, Twenty One Pilots and Panic! At The Disco, and pictures from different concerts El had been to. There were a couple basses hanging from the wall, but most notable was a sleek white Squier ‘60s with rainbow strings.
She felt completely at home in this room.
“I can’t sleep without music, is that okay?” El asked.
“I’m the same way, don’t worry. As long as you’re not putting on any, like, heavy metal, I’m good.”
“Nah, it’s pretty chill stuff.” She plugged her phone into the wall, and turned on a Spotify playlist.
The first song was “girls”.
They both crawled into the bed. The tension in the air was thick, as gears began to shift in Max’s mind.
“Hey, uh… sorry about earlier,” Max said, rolling over to face the other girl.
“What?”
“Well, when you mentioned Mike, I kinda freaked out… I guess I was a little jealous, y’know? I thought maybe he had been flirting with you, or something.”
“Oh, okay, well it’s not a problem. I totally get it. Mike’s not my type, you don’t have to worry about me stealing him from you or anything.”
El’s phone was behind Max when it lit up to signify that it was done charging. She got a brief look at El’s face.
She was blushing.
She was beautiful.
She wasn’t straight after all.
“I wasn’t jealous of you stealing him… I was… uh…” Max forgot how to speak english. She could feel the breath of the other girl on her face. The dark masked the distance between them. Max’s hand seemed to be pulled onto El’s, as if by divine happenstance.
Now was the time for Max to swallow every doubt she had.
She closed the distance between them, even if just for a second. Her lips met El’s, softly and briskly. It was too dark to make out anything after she pulled away. Her mind ran races, wondering if she had made the wrong move, if she had made a mistake, if El was straight after all.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, “I thought that uh… I thoug—”
She was cut short by El, returning the kiss. It was softer, and drawn out. El’s hand lightly rested on Max’s cheek, holding on to her for dear life. Her touch felt like the colors of dreams. Her brown curly hair smelled like chocolate. She adored the warmth and love she felt being around El.
It didn’t end as a friendship either.