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“Tammy?”
Tammy put the curling iron down and turned to face the figure lurking awkwardly in her doorway. Max looked much as she always did; red hair cut short and curling at the ears, wrapped up in several layers of oversized flannel, looking both too small and too big for the space she occupied. She was a good roommate, clean and conscientious, if quiet.
“Yeah, Max?”
“Here.”
Max stepped into the room and held out a piece of paper.
“Thank you…?”
Max shrugged, a self-conscious gesture that revealed a glimpse of pale, scarred shoulder. “It’s – dumb, probably, but I trust him, so. If you get in trouble, just – just call that, and ask for Steve. He’ll come get you.”
Steve. It was a name Tammy has heard a few times. Usually late at night when Max couldn’t sleep again, curled up on their lumpy couch with the phone pressed between cheek and shoulder, exhaustion evident in the slump of her body even across a darkened room. Once or twice in the daytime, Max’s voice exasperated and fond. In person only ever the once, before Max was Max and had just been her college roommate, carrying boxes up from the car and ruffling her hair and getting in the way in exactly the sort of way Tammy would expect from an older brother.
“Thank you,” Tammy said, folding the paper carefully and slipping it into her purse, because even if she never used it doing so made some of the tension ease from Max’s shoulders.
“Sure,” she said, and backed out of Tammy’s room. “Have fun.”
Tammy kept the piece of paper.
It lived, half forgotten in a pocket of her purse, for six months. It was a comforting, in a vague sort of way, in the same way her St. Christopher’s cross was comforting. Somebody cared about her, cared about her safety, and cared enough to reach out and let her know. Especially from someone like Max, who kept her cards close to her chest and rarely offered anything at all about her life. It felt like a talisman, an expression of trust and affection and concern. It didn’t need to be useful to be worth keeping.
Except…
The party had been going fine. Her date had been fine. Everything was fine, until it very abruptly wasn’t. She couldn’t find anyone – not her date, not her friends, just the awkward press of too many strange bodies and her head was swimming, spinning out from under her. Her stomach lurched, and she tripped, and somewhere she’d lost a shoe. She was being jostled along on the ebb and flow of the crowd, like a very small boat in a very big storm.
She wished, suddenly, that Max was here. She never came to parties, and that was fine, but Max could move through a crowd as if it wasn’t there, pulling Tammy along in her wake. Max would know where her shoes were, and why she felt so sick, and Max had people who –
Oh.
Max did have people who would come get her. And Max had passed them on to her.
She’d never rang the number. Hadn’t even looked at it, not really, because why would she? She didn’t know him, and she was just some dumb college student he didn’t know from Adam, even if she was Max’s friend. They’d never spoken. Steve probably didn’t even know her name. He could be at work, or would have work in the morning, and I got too drunk at a party was the kind of thing he might have tolerated from Max, but from a stranger?
But she was too drunk, stomach rolling uneasily. And she felt sort of lightheaded and distant, palms sweaty and breathing too short. She didn’t have anyone else to ring, not now her date had disappeared and –
He might call her a cab, at least?
Thank god for out-of-the-catalogue interior design, because the phone was easy to find, buried under a mound of empty cups and napkins. The phone rang, and rang, and rang, the little slip of paper in her hands crumpled and crackling between her fingers –
“ ‘lo?”
The voice was low and sleepy, female, and Tammy swallows against the twin burn of bile and tears.
A memory of Max’s voice, blurry through the alcohol. “Sorry, I – she, she said to ask for Steve.”
“Who did?”
“Max,” Tammy said, miserably.
“Fuck,” said the voice on the other end, and then “ – just hang on, okay? I’ll go get him.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” Tammy said into the phone, miserable and shivering and with only one shoe. It was a man’s voice, this time, vaguely familiar. “Sorry.”
He made a quiet shushing noise, the kind of thing Tammy’s mother used to do after a nightmare, until she got too big and grown up for that kind of thing. But it soothed some of the tightness in her chest, anyway.
“No need to be sorry. I’m Steve. What’s going on?” There was the muffled sound of voices in the background, footsteps. Tammy was too fired to make them out. “Is – you said Max told you to call?”
“To call if I got in trouble.”
“Alright,” Steve said, still in the same soothing voice. “Who am I talking to?”
Oh. Tammy felt a flush of shame on top of everything else.
“Tammy. Tabitha Newell, Max’s roomma – “
“Max’s college roommate, yeah,” Steve said over her, and Tammy felt relief right down to her toes. Did Max talk about her to him? She couldn’t imagine it, not even drunk, because there was no way Max – Max, who hesitated to share her favourite kind of cereal and when her birthday was – had talked to Steve about her. But maybe she did, or Steve was just the kind of person who remembered the name of everyone he’d ever met. Or maybe Max complained about her – yeah, that seemed more likely.
“You still with us?” Steve asked in her ear, and Tammy said yes. He asked if she needed a ride home, and she said yes. He asked if she knew where she was, and she said yes, and then gave him the address.
“Gimme… half an hour, okay? We’re on our way.”
Tammy hung up, went and sat on the front step, and tried not to cry.
“Tammy?”
Lifting her head up was difficult. It had seemed like a good idea to tuck her knees up and hide her face in them, but she was cold, and she’d been crying; her mascara must have run, and she must look a frightful state.
Crouched in front of her was a man and a woman, a few years older than she was. The man had the beginnings of crow’s feet in the corner of his eyes and was starting to go grey at the temples, a leather jacket on top of pyjamas. She thought she recognised him, even in the dim light.
“Steve?”
“Yup, that’s me. This is Robin. We’re gonna take you home, okay?”
The woman – Robin – stood and offered her a hand. Tammy took it and let Robin pull her to her feet, using her shoulder to steady herself as she swayed. Together they shuffled their way off the drive and over to the car parked on the curb, Robin half holding her up and Steve a protective presence on her other side, close but not touching. Nobody from the party seemed to notice them. Even if someone did notice, they didn’t approach. Steve opened the back door and Tammy climbed inside, surprised when Robin went round and climbed in next to her rather than sitting up front with Steve. There was a blanket and a washing up bucket in the back – the blanket smelled of cigarettes and damp dog, but Tammy pulled it clumsily over her legs and slumped back against the upholstery.
She fell asleep to the low murmur of Steve and Robin’s voices and the rumble of the car engine.
“Tammy!”
She woke with a start, muzzy and disorientated, too warm and vaguely nauseous. The world was spinning slightly, her limbs distant and uncoordinated, but she focused long enough that Max’s worried face swam into focus.
“’m alright,” Tammy said, and reached out to pat Max on the arm, because she looked so worried and that was wrong, Max shouldn’t be worried.
“Just drank too much, I think,” said a voice, and Tammy pulled her attention away from Max long enough that Steve swam into focus, twisted around in the driver’s seat to look at them. “Got disorientated. It happens.”
“Let’s get you inside,” Max said, in the gruff almost angry voice that used to scare Tammy but which really meant that Max was worried about something and trying not to show it. Abruptly she remembered crying and that her make up must have run horribly, and that Steve had had to pull over and let her be sick into the bushes, and that she was missing a shoe. She must look awful – that was why Max was so worried. She tried to tell Max again that she was okay, but then Max was wrapping a hand around her shoulders and one under her thigh and thinking suddenly became very difficult.
Max left her lying on the couch, scratchy car blanket tucked up around her ears. Robin had made her drink a pint of water and take some painkillers and was now using their landline, reassuring someone called Eddie that it was just regular college bullshit and nothing spooky, and that everyone was fine and they’d be home in the morning. Max was perched on the armrest near Tammy’s head and would periodically brush her bangs back off her forehead. It was weird, but Max’s fingers were cool and comforting, so Tammy didn’t want to say anything in case she stopped.
She fell asleep like that, listening to the quiet murmur of Max’s voice
“Morning, sleepy head.”
Tammy groaned and pressed the heel of her hands against her eyes until she saw stars. God, she was so drunk last night – god only knows what was in that punch. Why did she let that guy get her so many of them. Why did she drink so many of them. Her head was pounding dully, sending sharp spikes of nausea through her body. Christ, she didn’t even remember getting home –
“Oh, fuck – “
“Easy,” Max said, leaning backwards and nudging the washing up bucket in her direction. “You’re looking a bit green.”
Tammy clutched the hard plastic in her hands and stared down into the depths of the bowl. Had she really …
A quick glance around the room suggested she had actually rung Max’s big brother and asked him to give her a ride home at stupid o’clock in the morning. The scratchy car blanket was still half draped over her lap, still smelling of cigarette and wet dog. There was a beaten-up old leather jacket that definitely didn’t belong to either of them hanging from the peg by the door and a set of car keys discarded on the coffee table.
“I’m sorry,” she said, miserable. “I didn’t… I shouldn’t have…”
“Nah,” Max said, quiet. When Tammy looked over Max was looking away, one knee drawn up to her chest and the other dangling down where she was perched on the arm of the couch again. “It’s why I gave it to you. And he – he’d rather you rang than didn’t.”
“If you’re sure…”
Max did look over at her, then, a grin beginning to form. “To be honest, I think he liked having something to do. I think he’s feeling a bit lonely. Got an empty nest, you know.”
The sound of the door opening made Tammy tense in apprehension, darting a glance from Max to the two people just coming through the door. It was one thing to pick up a drunk girl who might be in trouble in the middle of the night and another thing entirely to know she was just… panicking. And you’ve wasted the drive over and spent the night like a glorified babysitter. But Max didn’t do anything except maybe relax, as if some unseen unease had suddenly been alleviated.
“Morning, Tammy,” Steve said with a wave, and the wave of buttery baked goods and coffee that rolled over abruptly turned nausea into gnawing hunger. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I got, uh …”
“Everything,” Robin said, with a fond eyeroll as she unpacked the contents of their paper bags onto the coffee table. “And flirted his way into a discount.”
“Lie and slander,” Steve said, throwing a wink at Tammy as if to include her in the joke. “I was flirting for the sake of flirting. The discount was a bonus.”
“Shut up and give me baked goods,” Max said, and they all gave up on talking in favour of eating.
But Tammy couldn’t help the niggling worry. Steve hadn’t said anything, but then sometimes people didn’t even when they were angry. And he was an adult, a real adult, who had a job and a car and a house. Loosing it at her was… well. It would have been preferable to this waiting, but maybe this was what made someone a real grown up. Even if it was difficult to feel properly worried while watching him lose soundly to Robin in a wrestling match for the last croissant, which Max stole and split with her anyway.
So when Steve and Robin finally got up to leave, Tammy followed Max to the door with a twinge of apprehension.
“Thanks,” Max said quietly, and punched Steve on the arm. “For, you know.” She wasn’t looking at any of them, and so Tammy got to watch Steve’s expression go soft and warm.
“Dude, of course,” Steve said, and wrapped his arms around Max’s shoulders. She leaned into him, just for a moment, before shrugging him off with an expression of exaggerated disgust. Steve let her go and ruffled her hair, dodging the swipe she sent his way with a laugh.
Which gave Tammy the courage to take a deep breath and step forward.
“Thank you. For coming to get me.” Steve and Robin both turned to look at her, and she forced herself to keep going through the sudden nerves at the attention. “I’m sorry for disturbing you for no reason.”
Steve and Robin exchanged a glance, and then Robin stepped forward. “You had a reason,” she said, and bumped their shoulders together. “We’d always rather you rang than didn’t, in a situation like that.”
“What she said,” Steve agreed, shrugging on the leather jacket. “Ring any time. Okay? We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Sure,” Tammy agreed, and was surprised to find she believed them, and that she might even consider it.
“Okay, you sap, go,” Max interrupted, pushing at Steve’s shoulders but not, Tammy thought, with any real force. “God, you’re annoying”
“We’re going, we’re going! You still on for Sunday dinner?”
“Yes! Now go,” Max said as she shoved him off the doorstep. But she stayed leaning in the doorway as the two of them climbed into the car and drove away, Robin leaning half out the window to wave as they went. Tammy waved, too, thinking about the press of Max’s arm against hers when they washed dishes and how Max waited up until Tammy got home from shopping and always saved her the last brownie.