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Even after three years there, Chloe still hadn’t quite gotten used to summer in LA. For about eight months out of the year, she’d take southern California weather over anything that Oregon had ever had to offer, but from late May to mid September, the urge to get in the truck, head to the 5 and just point herself northward was strong. Except, of course, that she’d be dead before she reached Burbank, since the truck had no fucking AC. During those four months, Chloe did everything she could to stay inside, in the shade, or, by preference, in the water, where her pasty PNW ass wouldn’t just melt into the sidewalk.
And yet, here she was, parked in the cell phone lot across from LAX at two in the afternoon in the middle of June, sweating her face off.
“Caulfield,” she muttered, “you owe me bigtime.”
That was a huge fucking understatement, of course. After vanishing off the face of the fucking planet for six and a half years, bailing on Chloe right when she needed them the most, they owed her, like, her choice of severed limbs and then some. But oh yes, she was absolutely adding “made me die of heatstroke at the fucking airport” to the tally.
Okay, fine, yes. She had volunteered to be here. When Max had said they wanted to fly down and see her, spending a week with her and Rach in LA so they could reconnect, Chloe hadn’t hesitated a second before offering to pick them up. The Max she remembered would have been utterly helpless in the face of LA public transit, and even if they had six years’ “living in the big city” experience in Seattle, Chloe wasn’t going to risk them getting on the wrong train and ending up in San Clemente or some shit.
No, she needed Max right where they were supposed to be, so she could kick their bony ass.
It was funny. Until a month ago, she’d thought she was over the whole Max thing. They’d abandoned her, left her to rot in that shitty little town, but Chloe had survived. She’d met Rachel, the two of them had gotten their shit together enough to put Arcadia Bay in their rear view mirror permanently, and things were going pretty good down here. Chloe had a full time gig at a tattoo parlor on Garfield Avenue, and Rachel’s acting career was starting to have some real success. She’d even had a small but recurring role on a Netflix show. Between the two of them, they were really making a go of it. Chloe didn’t need Max anymore.
But then Max had seen Rachel on Mount Washington, used the credits to figure out Rach’s stage name, then sent a DM to her Instagram, turning Chloe's entire world completely upside down. My name is Max Caulfield. I’m trying to reach Chloe Price. She knows who I am. If she wants to talk, please let me know.
Max wasn’t the only person from Arcadia Bay who had “uncovered” Rachel’s real name. James and Rose Amber and Joyce had all sent messages as well, but ignoring those had been easy. Getting back in touch with Steph Gingrich, on the other hand, had been pretty awesome. But Max…
It had taken her more than a week to send Max a reply.
That had been three weeks ago, and contact had been sporadic, if ongoing, since then. Max had said, right from the beginning, that they knew there was a lot of baggage they needed to work through, but if Chloe was willing, they wanted to come to LA so they could hash it all out in person. “I’m coming down for a week, but if I have to get a shitty motel room for the whole time after you throw me out, that’s fine. I’m willing to risk it,” they’d said. Chloe hadn't decided yet if she was going to let Max stay or just count the number of times they bounced along the sidewalk after she tossed them out on their ass.
A few things had come out in those conversations about Max’s life, despite both of them trying to keep things strictly limited to travel arrangements and the like. Max had transitioned, coming out as nonbinary, and had a girlfriend named Kate. They’d just graduated from Blackwell’s hot shit new photography program, and Max was already being talked about in photography circles as Gabriel Walker’s new protégé. (Not that Chloe had known who Gabriel Walker was until she’d Googled him.) They were apparently going to be a big fucking deal in the art world soon.
Chloe was proud of them for it, and furious at herself for being proud.
Fuck, why the hell had she agreed to this? Also, why the fuck had she let Rachel talk her into quitting smoking?
It hadn’t helped that Rachel, while doing her best to be supportive of Chloe’s anger and sense of betrayal, had been visibly impressed by both Gabriel Walker’s name and Max’s own work when she saw it. She hadn't said a word, but Chloe could practically see the gears turning in her girlfriend’s head: This could be my ticket into modeling, real modeling, if Chloe can just get over herself.
Yeah, well, maybe Chloe didn’t want to get over herself, dammit. Maybe she wanted to marinate in all the fucking anger and hurt of seven years of silence from someone who had sworn on their life that they would never leave Chloe behind and never forget her. Maybe she wanted to scream, and yell, and throw shit around, you know? Maybe she just wanted to fucking hate Max, okay? Is that fucking all right with you, Rachel?
(Maybe she wanted her best friend back.)
Deciding what Rachel didn’t know couldn’t hurt either of them, Chloe dug into the dash compartment for her slowly-dwindling stash of emergency cigarettes. There were seven left in the pack - six, now, as she lit one up - and she’d promised herself that they were the last ones she’d ever smoke. The pack had already lasted more than a month. She really didn’t need one very often anymore. She sure as fuck did today, though.
She checked the time. As far as she knew, Max’s flight was on schedule, so they should be landing literally any minute. Blowing smoke out the window, she reached over and tapped at her phone. Firewalk’s “Dawn of the Desolate” began playing. She only had the crappy smartphone speaker, but it still helped.
It really shouldn’t have been a big deal. None of this should have. Who somebody’s best friend was when they were fourteen shouldn’t matter a fucking bit to their life when they were twenty-one. Fuck, Chloe could barely remember herself from before her father died anymore. Anger, abandonment, disillusion, abuse: by the time it had stopped piling up on her, when she and Rachel had finally made their break for freedom, the girl who had been Max’s Captain Bluebeard had basically been buried alive. Chloe should have just let her stay buried.
And yet.
She’d seen a few pictures of Max in the last few weeks; Max wasn’t the only one who could Instagram-stalk someone. A lot of Max’s pictures were selfies, in fact, and, intentionally or not, they’d been documenting their transition. (It was probably intentional. Max was far too good an artist to miss the potential in such a project.) The photos themselves were gorgeous, because Max really was phenomenally talented, but the bad part was how, the moment Chloe had laid eyes on those patented Caulfield freckles again, she’d known she was going to agree to Max’s face-to-face plan. She could have more easily stopped a tornado with a paper fan than refuse to see them.
It was an incredibly bad idea. She was risking everything she had built here with Rachel. The plan - Chloe’s plan, not Max’s - was to confront Max and finally put everything between them to bed for good. To finally get the closure she’d never had back in Arcadia Bay and then refocus herself completely on her new life.
But to do that, she had to look right into the gorgeous blue eyes of her first love and hope to hell that the spark was gone. Her reaction to those freckles was not a good sign.
The song ended and the next one started: Firewalk’s cover of “Are You Ready for Me.” All at once she was swallowed by the memory of one night in early May, more than five years previous, when she’d been on her way to hear Firewalk play that song live. It had been the night she’d first met Rachel, but the memory wasn’t of her; it was of walking along a set of train tracks near the old mill, watching a train barrelling toward her, staring into the light like she was a moth and it the brightest fucking flame on the planet. The razor’s edge of life only a breath away from dying, the lure of oblivion resisted at just the last moment, knowing that if she fucked it up, she was dead for real. That knowledge had been absolutely fucking intoxicating. It was still the best high she’d ever had.
She hadn’t had an urge like that for years, not since well before leaving Arcadia. She had shit to live for now. She had Rachel. She had her life here in LA.
And still, somehow, sitting in the truck, waiting for Max to text her that they’d landed, felt exactly like staring into the train’s headlight, vibrating with the pounding of the rails beneath her feet, so fucking alive that death might have actually been a relief from everything exploding inside her. What the fuck was she doing here? Why couldn’t she fucking look away?
The song suddenly cut out, replaced by the buzz of a new text message, before picking back up. Chloe grabbed the phone and looked, but it wasn’t Max. It was Rachel checking in.
[[Any sign of the Jolly Roger?]]
Rachel 06/14 02:11 pm
She never should have told her about the pirates thing.
[[no]]
Chloe 06/14 02:11 pm
[[just stuck waitin in the truck]]
Chloe 06/14 02:11 pm
Rachel didn’t reply directly, instead opting for a selfie showing her lying on a beach towel, sunglasses on, devastatingly sexy two-piece revealing a mouth-watering stretch of cleavage, blowing Chloe a kiss. Rach had offered to come along, but things were going to be awkward enough with Max; Chloe hadn’t wanted to try to moderate her emotions to appease Rachel and deal with Max both at the same time. Not until she’d had a chance to work out what those emotions even were, anyway. Besides, the three of them in the truck would have been way too close quarters, no matter who sat where.
All of that aside, though, the pic was damn hot, as per usual for Rach. Chloe saved it to her overflowing “pix of rach” folder.
[[love u]]
Chloe 06/14 02:13 pm
[[You got this, babe]]
Rachel 06/14 02:13 pm
At least one of them thought so.
Did Rachel have any idea what was going on in Chloe’s head? She was always so damn perceptive. Chloe wasn’t sure she’d ever met anyone else so good at reading people, and Rach had half a decade of practice on the fucked-up mess inside her skull. But there was no way. Obviously she knew that Chloe was conflicted over Max, that wasn’t news and hadn’t been for years, but there was no possible way she could know about how Chloe had once daydreamed about daring Max to kiss her. About how Max was the reason Chloe had realized she wasn’t straight. About how, just the night before, she’d dreamed of her and Max swimming in the Blackwell Academy pool in their underwear, of all strange things. Those were things Chloe had never even dared to write in those dumb letters she used to compose to Max and then never send.
Rachel couldn’t possibly know any of that. If she had, she would never have agreed to this visit in the first place, no matter how much she wanted to get in front of Max’s camera.
Chloe discovered, to her great dismay, that she’d already finished the cigarette. She barely even remembered smoking it, though the nicotine had definitely wrapped itself around her nerves and begun soothing the frayed bits. She could tell the difference, even if she’d been so spaced out she hadn’t noticed it actually happening in the moment. She grimaced, then flicked the butt out the window. She eyed her emergency pack but shook her head and shoved the dash compartment closed again. Not even Max was worth two smokes.
She was just about to go in search of a convenience store so she could buy a bottle of water or something when her phone buzzed again.
[[Just landed]]
Max 06/14 02:19 pm
[[Terminal 3]]
Max 06/14 02:19 pm
[[Give me 20 mins to get my bags?]]
Max 06/14 02:19 pm
[[nah, fuck that]]
Chloe 06/14 02:19 pm
[[im fuckin dying out here]]
Chloe 06/14 02:20 pm
[[ill find u at the carousel]]
Chloe 06/14 02:20 pm
Getting into the air conditioning was definitely worth the half hour’s worth of parking fees she was going to have to pay.
It took her about half of that twenty minutes to actually find a parking spot and get into the terminal, but opening the doors felt like stepping into a walk-in freezer, and it was fucking heaven. She spent a solid sixty seconds just luxuriating in the chill before actually going in search of the baggage claim. When she found it, she saw Max at once.
They were standing a bit off to the side, apparently unwilling to fight for a spot next to the carousel and consequently forced to bob up and down and lean around other people to actually see the luggage moving past. They were wearing a Sparklehorse concert tee and some designer jeans, with a grey hoodie tied around their waist. A camera bag was over one shoulder. Their hair was cut extremely short, their bangs swept to one side and the back trimmed down to nothing high up on their neck. It looked extremely boyish, but more than that it looked familiar; it took Chloe several moments to remember why she recognized it, and when she did, she almost choked. It had been the way William had always worn his hair.
They looked distressingly hot, although in a completely different way from Rachel’s lush sensuality, something much more ethereal. Max had never seemed to quite fit into the regular, mundane world around them, even when they were kids, but now they seemed to have found a way to make it work for them. They looked like a fairy prince, maybe, or some kind of elemental spirit.
Spirit, take my hands, most faithful friend.
Chloe shook away the confusing image and forced the echo of Rachel’s words on stage in The Tempest out of her head. Max had been anything but faithful. They’d abandoned her. They weren’t some magical creature sweeping back into Chloe’s world, they were the final sentence in one of the worst chapters in her life. She gritted her teeth and strode toward them, ready to cut loose with everything she’d been sitting on for almost seven fucking years.
“Hey, hippie.”
Fuck.
They jumped, spun, and their face broke into a brilliant smile. “Chloe!” they squealed, and took a step forward, opening their arms with the clear intent of giving her a hug… but they stopped halfway through the motion. The smile froze, cracked, and faded into something much more pained. “It’s… it’s really good to see you,” they said finally, letting their arms fall to their sides.
Rather than let her traitorous and unreliable mouth say anything even vaguely related to that, Chloe glanced toward the baggage carousel. “What do your bags look like?” She still had a good four or five inches of height on them, and wasn’t really having any trouble seeing the pieces of luggage looping around.
“Oh! Uh, I’ve got a big purple one and a black hard case with my camera stuff in it. I put Hot Dawg Man stickers on them so I could spot them easier.”
Against her will, Chloe grinned at that. It was so very Max. “I think I see them… the hard case, anyway. Hang on a sec.” She started pushing her way forward, reaching the front just as the case slid by. A moment later the purple bag dropped down from the conveyor belt, and she quickly claimed it too.
“This everything?” she asked as she returned.
Max nodded and patted the camera bag on their shoulder. “Everything else is in here,” they explained.
Chloe gestured with her head. “Come on, the truck’s this way.” Max took the purple bag, extending the handle so they could wheel it along, while Chloe hefted the case onto her shoulder as though it were a boombox from the 80s.
Going back out into the heat wasn’t a whole lot better than sitting in it had been, but the few minutes of AC had made enough of a difference that Chloe didn’t want to dive directly into a bucket of ice when she got back to the truck. Max tossed their luggage into the truck bed, but when Chloe went to do the same with the case, they grabbed it back out. “I’d… rather keep this in the cab,” they said apologetically. “There’s about twelve thousand dollars’ worth of equipment in there.”
Chloe felt her eyes widen. “What the fuck? How the hell did you score that?”
They winced, looking embarrassed. It took until they were both settled into their seats, the hard case on the bench between them, before they answered. “I’ve been selling some of my photos through some galleries. I’ve sold maybe two dozen so far? They go for about two or three thousand each, though of course the gallery gets to keep a cut from each of them.”
“Holy shit,” breathed Chloe, pulling up to the parking lot exit. Given what they’d just said, she was perfectly happy to let Max pay. “Max, that’s… that’s fucking amazing.”
“It’s… I mean, it’s really cool, but I guess a lot of them are going to speculators? Ever since I won that contest in 2013, there are people who have been thinking I’m going to be some kind of big deal, so they’re buying up stuff now. They’re not really worth that much.” They brightened. “Although the one I won the contest with sold for six thousand bucks! Can you believe that? It’s the most I’ve ever gotten, by like a huge amount. So crazy.”
“Max… are you telling me you’ve made like 50 grand in the last year and a half? While you’ve been a fucking high school student at Blackwell?”
They flushed. “S- something like that?”
Chloe shook her head. “Jesus, Max…”
“It’s not really a big deal,” they said awkwardly. Chloe felt her jaw tighten. No matter how angry she was at Max for everything, they didn’t deserve this self-esteem bullshit they were throwing at themself. She didn’t really want to get into that now, though, not until they’d had a chance to get through all their other shit first, so she just kept her eyes on the road and tried not to fume too visibly.
Unfortunately, staying quiet had its own drawbacks. “Chloe,” said Max gingerly, trying to fill the silence, “I’m really sor-”
“Wait,” Chloe cut them off. “We’re gonna do that, Max, you can bet your ass we are, but I want to get home first. And when we do, I’m going first, got it?”
Max hesitated, then nodded. Chloe could only see them out of the corner of her eye, but they were clearly getting more and more uncomfortable as the drive went on. She had to admit that was perfectly fine with her. Let them twist for a bit. She’d been twisting for seven years.
The traffic cooperated for the most part, so they reached Chloe and Rachel’s apartment a couple blocks off Alameda about half an hour later. They didn’t really speak, but Chloe did tell Max they could play music on their phone if they wanted. After a moment, they put something on, a playlist that sounded like it must be titled, “Best of Acoustic Emo 2005-2015.” Chloe didn’t hate it. There was even some Angus & Julia Stone on there. She couldn’t help but notice that Max’s phone’s speaker was markedly better than hers was.
The apartment building was five stories high and Chloe and Rachel had one of the units on the third floor. They’d just moved into it at the start of the year, riding high on that sweet Netflix money. It was almost 2500 square feet, most of which was a large open main room, but the kitchen was fully-equipped and even had an island, something Chloe had always wanted as a kid. There were two bedrooms, but the smaller one was really just a closet with delusions of grandeur. Still, it had made a good place for someone to crash after one late night party or another, and it would serve Max well enough… assuming Chloe decided to let them stay at all.
She let them in, heading at once for the kitchen. “Put your stuff wherever,” she said, and Max chose a corner near the TV. “You want something to drink?”
“Just water for now,” they said, carefully easing into the recliner at one end of the couch. “We’ll have to see if that changes later,” they muttered, just loud enough for Chloe to hear.
She came back out with a glass for Max and a beer for herself, settling down at the far end of the couch and kicking her boots off. Max hesitated, then followed suit, throwing their canvas high-tops over next to their luggage. As clumsy as Max had always been, Chloe was genuinely surprised to see that they landed more or less where Max had apparently intended them to.
“Okay,” said Chloe, taking a swig of the beer then setting it on the wooden floor next to her. “Let’s get this over with.” She took a deep breath as Max nodded, licking their lips. It was immensely satisfying to see how nervous they were. It made her feel so much better about her own nerves.
“I’ve spent almost seven years wanting to punch you, Max, you know that? Ever since I found that cheap, cowardly tape you left me. I needed you, Max! My dad died, and I know it was your parents that moved to Seattle, but you could have fucking done something to stay in touch! I fucking needed you! Instead you just fucking disappeared, ditched me like you were flushing a shit, and that was that! What the actual fuck, dude? How the fuck could you do that to me?”
Max looked like they were about to answer, but it had been seriously fucking rhetorical. “And now, you want to, what? Go back to the way it was before? Just, whoops, my fucking bad, no big? Is that your plan here? Because if it is, fuck that. Just… fuck that all the way back to Arcadia or wherever you flew down from, because that is just not fucking happening.” She gestured around the apartment. “I don’t need you anymore, Max. I don’t need you. When I needed you, you weren’t the one who showed up. Rachel was. She was the one who saved me. She was my fucking angel.
“You’re just… a nightmare I’d rather forget.”
Tears were trembling in Max’s eyes, and as Chloe said that last sentence, they spilled over, sliding slowly down their cheeks. The sight ripped straight through Chloe’s heart, shattering her anger and threatening to add tears to her eyes as well. She forced them back, tried to remember how justified she was, but…
This was Max. Her Max. Protecting them from getting hurt had been her entire purpose as a kid, it seemed like. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to hate Max. Fuck, she had never wanted to hate them, not for a single fucking second, and she’d just been lying to herself every time she’d thought otherwise. She knew in another moment she was going to be taking it all back, apologizing and throwing her arms around them, and she shouldn’t but she lo-
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!
She couldn’t still be having those feelings for them. It made no fucking sense. She didn’t even know them anymore! It had been almost seven years, and they’d both changed so much! She remembered a dorky little kid with an unkempt ponytail and a strong desire to hide from the world behind a camera’s viewfinder, not this nonbinary hipster photography protostar. And it’s not like she was still the girl Max knew either, not the optimistic daughter of a loving father who liked to imagine herself as a suave, kick-butt superspy with like three PhDs and a signature cocktail or a fearsome buccaneer leading pirate raids against the tropical colony of Arcadia Cay with her trusty First Mate at her side. Life had burned those dreams out of her, left her scarred and ugly, not the girl Max remembered, not the one they might have-
Chloe wrenched herself out of her spiraling thoughts, fought to remember that Rachel loved her, that she was worth loving, at least to someone, and it didn’t matter whether Max thought so or not. She felt dizzy, unstable, and suddenly wished more than anything that Rachel was there to help keep her grounded.
“I’m so sorry, Chloe,” Max said, their voice breaking and tear-stained, but they were still looking right at Chloe, meeting her eyes with a strength that Chloe had always known they’d had but so rarely had gotten to see. “You’re right. Right about all of it. I left you, I abandoned you, and I was the worst fucking friend ever. I’m glad you had someone to be there for you when I wasn’t, I really am. I’m sorry for everything, and I know there’s nothing I can do that will change what I did.
“I know we can’t go back to the way things used to be. As much as I would love that more than anything, I know hurting you the way I did means it’s impossible. I’m not asking for it. All I’m asking for, all I’m begging for, is a chance to find some place back in your life. I will do anything you tell me if I can earn that.
“Even if I can't… I need you to know that I never forgot you. I’m not going to make excuses for myself, I know I should have stayed in touch and I didn’t, but it wasn’t because I forgot you. I went back to Arcadia Bay just to find you. When Joyce told me you were gone… that was when I realized how badly I’d fucked up. I’ve been looking for you ever since. I genuinely thought I was never going to see you again, never get a chance to at least tell you that I was sorry and that I didn’t forget you.”
“Bullshit,” Chloe said. “You went to Arcadia for Blackwell and that famous photography teacher. It had nothing to do with me.”
Max’s jaw tightened. “Chloe…” They looked away, their voice dropping as though they were telling an embarrassing secret. “I got full-ride scholarship offers from a bunch of different schools. Yale, the Art Institute of Chicago, UCLA, CalArts. I could have stayed in Seattle until I graduated, then gone basically anywhere.
“But you weren’t anywhere. You were in Arcadia Bay. At least, I thought you were.” They shook their head. “If I’d kept in touch, I would have known you weren’t there, and that’s on me, but I went to Blackwell specifically to find you.” They looked back at Chloe. “I took the offer from UCLA. Because you’re here. If you never want to see me again, you won’t; in a city this size, that should be pretty easy to arrange. But I’m going to spend the next four years of my life in Los Angeles because I’m hoping you won’t hate me and maybe we can be friends again.”
Chloe stared at them. “That’s… completely fucking stupid,” she said finally.
Max, to her surprise, actually laughed. “That’s basically what Kate said when I told her why I was at Blackwell. Well, I guess I’m stupid then, because it’s the truth.”
Kate. Oh, yeah. Max had a girlfriend. Another artist, Chloe thought, though not a photographer. They were probably going to be some kind of incredible art world power couple. “Is Kate okay with this whole plan?” she asked, sounding harsher than she meant.
Max didn’t say anything for several moments. “Kate doesn’t know,” they said finally. “As far as she’s concerned, I’m in LA to scout out campus and maybe find an apartment. She knows you guys are here, I mean, but not that we were going to be meeting. This... I wanted this for myself, at least for now. If maybe things work out so that we can be friends in some way, then I’ll tell Kate. She’s been hoping to see you, actually.” They did something with their face that might have been intended as a smile, but wasn’t. “She even suggested I try to look you up while I’m here.”
“Is she moving to LA too?”
They nodded. “She’s got a scholarship to UCLA too, though it’s not a full ride. It should be manageable with what I’ve been making with my photography though.”
Chloe considered that. Max, in the same city as her, for the next four years. Chloe, in the same city as Max, for four years, trying to ignore that fact and never reach out. She wanted to laugh. Yeah, right. Maybe they had meant to leave the decision up to Chloe, but intentionally or otherwise, Max had completely checkmated her.
Except no, that was bullshit. This was always how it was going to end. Max was in Chloe’s blood, in the marrow of her bones, in her fucking DNA. Whatever they were now or might be in the future, Max had always had a place in her life and always would.
“Fuck this shit,” she said, standing up, and Max paled. She stalked across the floor, loomed over Max in the recliner. “Get up. I’m not fucking hugging you all the way down there, I’m old and it’ll throw my back out.”
It clearly took Max a minute to process that.
When they did, though, it was like watching the sun rise over the Cascades from one of their camping trips as kids. They practically glowed, leaping up and throwing their arms around her exactly the way they had when they were thirteen. “Oh, thank you, Chloe, thank you, God I’ve missed you so much, so so much…”
Chloe held them, closing her eyes, feeling the railroad tracks rattling beneath her feet and not fucking caring a bit right then.