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Chapter 2: Maxime

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🙃

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You deserve everything, Rivette had told Max once. It had happened at the cottage, the summer before the summer he kissed Matt, the summer before the summer he left for Australia, in a rare moment where he and Rivette had found themselves standing apart from the group, sunning themselves on shore in the last rays of the afternoon while Frank and Shariff and Matt balanced on the dock like goalies and repeatedly dunked Brass into the water, grabbed him and threw him back in every time he tried to climb out, shouting, laughing, screaming—Maxime, you deserve everything.

What? he’d said, distracted; Matt was shouting at him.

Everything, Rivette had said, wine-drunk. Everyone deserves everything, but you most of all.

Max, get over here, Matt had shouted: Max, he’s escaping, don’t let him escape. He’s dragging me in, oh coliss! There was a tremendous splash as Brass hooked his hand around Matt’s ankle and tugged him in.

Max had finished Rivette’s wine for him, grinning, chugging. I deserve this, he had said, waving away Rivette’s protests, parrying Rivette’s arm, isn’t that what you just said? But in his heart of hearts Max knew he deserved nothing. Not this day, not this sunset, not Matt’s arm around his neck, later, as they staggered back to the house.

I don’t deserve this, he had thought, when he’d opened his door in Melbourne to find Matt waiting outside. Then he’d thought Matt should get something for coming all this way, and he had let hope and momentum carry them: into his house and into his bedroom, where they had kissed and fondled each other until Matt had fallen asleep. In the morning, hope and fear were the same emotion, soaring wax wings melting under the sun, an awful lurch. Matt had rambled about sexuality—his own, Max’s, Frank’s, for fuck’s sake—and visas and lawyers and Karine Mercier. Matt had said, you know I love you, and Max had told himself that Matt was there so it must be true.

 

 

Max knows what girls like and he knows what he likes and somewhere in the middle, he figures, he'll find what Matt likes. The night he takes Matt to Port Melbourne Beach, the night he fucks Matt for the first time, he feels Matt opening up for him and holds his breath, as anxious as he's ever been about performing well. Matt’s fingertips skate up and down his back, light as air. How was it, Max wants to ask, but they both fall asleep. In the morning, he wants to touch Matt’s cheek but strokes the pillowcase instead.

After Matt moves into his bedroom, they sleep together the way they always have, touching only accidentally, waking up in a warm sweaty pile, except now in the mornings Matt rolls toward him and thrusts blindly into his hand.

While Max is learning how to touch Matt again he's forgetting how to touch everything else. At work he drops glasses, spills ice; on the street he loses his bus pass in a gutter. Barflies buy him drinks, brush his knuckles; he comes home with the world fuzzy around its edges and stands gazing at Matt as he sleeps. He wishes that Matt had never come and that Matt had come sooner.

Max? Matt says, still half-asleep.

Shh, Max says.

 

 

Time passes. Matt’s hair gets shaggy and his beard, untrimmed, starts looking wild. In another life, Max would have teased him about it, would have elbowed him and said, you’d better do something about that, you coureur de bois, you Sasquatch, what’s Sarah have to say about this fur you’re growing on your face? I’m just looking out for your love life, dude. In this life, this Melbourne afterlife, Max thinks about the rasp of Matt's face against his face and flushes and says nothing.

Matt, keeping his promise to go outside every once in a while, signs up for surfing lessons. Now he wanders around the house with sand baked into his calves, smelling like the sea. His skin darkens, but the sun bleaches the hairs on his arms until they shine like gold. Max thinks about tickling them and doesn’t. He thinks about licking Matt’s forearms, one night after Ellie has gone to bed, and doesn’t.

Do you like it? he asks instead.

Be more specific, Matt tells him, I don’t know what ‘it’ is.

Asshole, Max says. I mean surfing. He touches their knees together, feels the acceleration of his heart. Matt’s leg is hot, firm and still against the nervous jigging of Max’s thigh. He gulps his beer and waits.

I’m going to bed, Matt says abruptly. It isn’t an invitation. He disappears into the bathroom. Max leans back on the couch; sighs; palms himself through his shorts.

 

 

He hadn’t told Ellie much about himself when he messaged her about her spare room, just that he was Canadian, that he was a bartender and fairly tidy and that he smoked but would be happy to keep it in the yard. Ellie had been friendly but formal and he had thought he wouldn’t see much of her, but the night after he’d moved in, he had come home from work to find her crying in the kitchen over a balled-up pair of socks. Her boyfriend had left her last week, she had explained, in such a hurry he’d taken just a suitcase. He wants me to box everything up to send to him, she had said, and I can’t, these socks, these stupid fucking socks, I can’t.

Max, tipsy, had said, fuck him. If he wants his things he can come get them himself. He can come on his hands and knees. Impulsively he had plucked the socks from Ellie’s hand and stuffed them into the garbage, and said, okay, what else, let’s gather it up, let’s burn it in the yard, and Ellie had laughed; the next morning, Max was hungover and Ellie was his friend.

He hadn’t told Ellie about Matt, either, about the mess he’d left behind in Montreal; not even about his mother. He had hinted, had said, if you knew what I did…

Did you kill someone? Ellie had said. No? Then no worries.

So Ellie had supported each and every of his short-lived flings, and when Matt appeared she had supported that too, with winks and nudges and insinuating comments. And date-night suggestions. When he’d said, Ellie, what about you, who are you swiping right on today, she’d said, oh, I’m taking a break, I’ve had enough of men. But what are you doing tonight, eh, you and Matthias?

A week into the dry spell, Ellie says, “Took my girlies to the beach yesterday. We saw Matt surfing.”

“Cool,” he says.

“I think you should check him out,” she says. “He’s getting good.”

“Oh yeah?”

She angles a look at him, a decidedly un-Ellie look, surprisingly stern. “Don’t just take my word for it,” she says. And she says, “I really think you should see for yourself.”

 

 

It’s important to be interested in your partner’s interests, Ellie says. So he goes. The sun is shining, the ocean glitters; he arrives squinting, trying to keep his eyes open against the glare, ready to admire Matt in his new element. But whatever he’d expected to see, to feel, it wasn’t this: Matt's instructor hugging him, whooping; this jealousy so thick and heavy that it slams into him like a black tide. It’s just like with Frank, he tells himself as he chokes. It’s just like with Frank, with Shariff, with Brass, that easy arm around Matt’s shoulder, that big toothy grin. When Brass yanked Matt into the water at the Rivette house you didn’t want to cut off his head, you just laughed. Laugh now: it’s funny. But he sees the way Matt leans into the hand that is placed on him. How Matt obeys its push and pull.

He touches the surf hut behind him, leans against it, scrubs his fingers against its splintering wood wall. He thinks of the way Matt shied from him a week before. He thinks, how dare you. He thinks, my heart’s going to burst.

Matt lopes toward him. Doesn’t see him: all of Matt’s attention is fixed on his instructor, on this blond amiable giant, Jared or Jason, Max forgets. Matt is grinning, chatting. Chatting in French, Max realizes, as his ears begin to ring.

Don’t be a fucking idiot, he tells himself. Millions of people speak French, speak joual, you’re not special. Millions of people have boyfriends. Millions of people fall in love with the boy next door. None of this is sacred. It’s statistics.

He watches Jared or Jason sliding his fingers into Matt’s hair. Shitting Christ, he thinks, and he thinks, vomit, do it, you have to puke or you’re going to explode, and he thinks, this is too much, too terrible; leave it, drop it, run away.

Then he thinks: where would I go? For fuck’s sake, I’m already at the end of the world.

Coliss,” Matt says, “what are you doing here?”

 

 

In the locker room behind the surf hut, he bites Matt’s lip until Matt gasps. He thinks, if I can’t have you, I’d rather die. I want, I want, I want. I’ll eat you up raw. I’ll swallow you whole. I’ll drag you into myself, into this void that is both heart and stomach, and then and only then will this wailing hunger stop.

What stops it is the noise of a key in the lock. Max springs back and looks at his hands like they’re covered in blood.

He can feel Matt staring at him. The swollen silence.

I’m sorry, he says. Fuck, Christ, sorry. So sorry. Sorry—

The door opens. He turns to the sink. The water erupts into the basin like a geyser, stinking, icy, and chills him to the bone.

 

 

On the tram back to Eirene Street, he has to sit, sick and shaky. Matt stands in front of him, quiet, holding a strap, blocking his sight.

Max…, Matt says.

He doesn’t answer. He looks at the hair on Matt’s toes, the sand. A few weeks ago, he’d told Matt, if you could read my mind, you wouldn’t like it; you wouldn’t like what you saw. Because in my mind is a monster. It deserves nothing and it wants everything. And its teeth are sharp.

Ellie greets them as they shuffle inside. He says something he won't remember later, takes Matt into his room, and locks the door. At the surf hut he had demanded, are you fucking him? Are you? Answer me, are you? Now he says, “I thought you came here to be with me.”

“I did,” Matt says, bewildered. And: “Ellie’s home.”

“I don’t care about Ellie,” Max says. “I don’t give a flying fuck. If you came here to give yourself to me, then do it. Then beg me.”

You’re going to leave me, he thinks. Now that you know. Now that you see. I’m all twisted up inside, I’m so fucked up. You’re going to leave me and then I’m going to die.

He looks at Matt with his vision blurring, and through the blur he sees that Matt is taking off his clothes and lying down, not just obediently but eagerly.

"Please," he says.

“Please,” Matt echoes.

 

 

He wakes at dawn to red shame and ten missed texts: his manager, Helen, asking him where the hell he is. Concerned at first, then angry, then concerned again. Matt is asleep beside him, sprawled on his stomach, his cock pinned to the mattress and his bare ass bluish in the light streaming in from the street. Spreading Matt while he fucked him, he had spat at his own cock and watched himself pounding the thick foamy trickle deep into Matt’s body, and Matt had reached back and clawed at him, at his thighs, crying out so faintly and rhythmically it was like he was hiccupping. He had known he was hurting Matt and hadn’t stopped, hadn’t slowed down.

Matt hadn’t asked him to. Matt had drifted somewhere beyond words; it was only at the end, when Max pulled out of him with a gush, that Matt had groaned, oh fuuuuck.

I’m sorry, he tells Helen. I’m okay. I’ll explain.

The eighth, ninth, and tenth texts are from Ellie. First an emoji blowing a kiss. Then a shocked face. Then, twenty minutes later: Jesus CHRIST Max. I’m opening tomorrow, can you give it a rest?

Matt sighs in his sleep: whuff. His forehead wrinkles, then smooths out. The light is on his cheek, in his parted mouth.

“I love you,” Max says. “I love you.” His voice cascades: falling gravel. I love you. I love you. Love you. Fuck. Love you. He wipes his face and climbs out of bed.

 

 

There are packages on the kitchen counter. He sees the Rosemont zip code. Recognizes Francine’s handwriting: Matt’s handwriting but smaller, neater. Chèr Maxime… He bends over her gifts, forehead to the paper, and breathes.

 

 

This dessert book, Francine explains in her note, has all of Matt’s childhood favorites. It is a joint Lamy-Ruiz treasure, stolen from the house of that heartless ogre, Ronaldo Ruiz. Just call me Indiana Lamy, she says. She hopes the book will arrive in time for Matt’s birthday, and that Maxime will take his courage in hand and attempt a recipe. You have the skill, she says. Remember how you and Matt made all those mud pies!

Her postscript is brief and mystifying: Prescription caramel.

There’s only one caramel recipe in the whole fraying binder, a sauce the book claims will go well with the devil’s chocolate cake on page 79. He goes to the 24-hour corner store with red eyes and buys the missing ingredient, heavy cream.

It’s six o'clock and balmy. Returning home, he crashes into Ellie on the doorstep. Sorry, he begins, but she sprints off, too harried to glare at him or give him a second glance. His manager is still asleep, and he wonders what he’ll tell her tonight. There’s nothing he can say except that he’s lost his mind. Back in the kitchen he discovers that mice have gnawed into Ellie’s bag of white sugar.

 

 

Matt rises with the sun. And he’s cheerful. He smiles at Max and stoops to lick burned caramel off Max’s fingers. Then he makes himself coffee and opens his present.

Francine’s birthday gift to Matt is a silk bathrobe, gunmetal blue. Matt drops it in a puddle on the counter, scalded, swearing.

“At least it isn’t lingerie,” Max says. His voice comes out raw, like he’s getting over a cold. Or, he supposes, like he’s been awake for an hour and a half, cleaning and cooking and crying into an inedible caramel sauce like the world’s most pathetic Cinderella.

Matt looks at him sharply.

He covers his eyes. This is your fault, he says. I don’t know how to live without you. I was learning how and then you showed up and ruined it and now look at me. Now look. If I miss work again I’m going to get fired. Christ and fuck.

Matt says, slow, soft, “Do you want me to go?”

He shudders.

“I just submitted my visa extension request,” Matt says, “but I can withdraw it.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“I’m not threatening, I’m just asking.” Matt sounds raw too and he looks up; Matt is staring at him with his lower lip trembling. “I thought—last night—”

I hurt you, he says.

“I liked it.”

Fuck, he says, an explosion.

Matt says, I don’t know how to live without you either. So don’t ask me to.

 

 

He apologizes to his manager. He apologizes to his coworkers. He apologizes to Ellie, who shows him the Bose noise-cancelling headphones Matt gave her and says cheerfully, you could murder someone in your room tonight and I wouldn’t know.

Fuckin’ Moneybags, Brass used to call Matt behind his back. To Matt’s face, Max says, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“What’s the alternative?” Matt says. “Keeping it down?”

“Well, yeah.”

Matt shrugs at him. “You know that’s impossible.”

“Slut,” he says jokingly. “Oh,” he says, as Matt looks at him, gulping, wide-eyed, “see? You can be quiet.”

 

 

March.

Opeulaille,” Francine exclaims. “That hair!” Max looks at Matt, who looks back, rolling his eyes. “Don’t they have barbers in Oceania?”

“Mom,” Matt says, “it’s lockdown.”

“And? So? Don’t you have scissors?”

“I’m on leave,” Matt says, petulant.

“Oh, and you can’t cut your hair on leave? It’s against the rules?”

“Rules, what rules, come on…” Matt glances at him: sudden, shifty. “Anyway, Max likes it.”

Francine changes her tune immediately. “Oh, well, in that case…”

Matt nudges him. “You do, don’t you? Max?”

He does like it. He likes pulling it. Dragging Matt’s mouth to the root of his cock and holding him there until he gags. He did it last night and smeared Matt’s saliva all over his face. Rubbed Matt with the ball of his foot until Matt jerked and came on his sock.

The sock had gone into Matt's mouth, afterward, to muffle him. It hadn't worked, and neither had the Bose headphones, judging from the way Ellie had kicked the wall. That morning Matt had disappeared for an hour; reappearing with an apology millefeuille from some fancy patisserie in the CBD, far beyond their permitted 5-km radius, he had held a finger to his lips and slipped it inside her door.

He turns red; mutters, “I’m sorry.”

“Now, Max, why on earth are you apologizing? It’s a matter of preference, of course. I just think…”

Matt’s grinning at him.

“By the way,” Francine says, one of her dizzying topic switches, “did you ever make anything from that book of mine? The Lamy Bible? Now’s the time, isn’t it? I hear everyone’s doing sourdough. There’s no sourdough in the Bible, I mean the dessert bible, in the real Bible, probably, but I think—”

Maman,” Matt interrupts. “Prescription caramel, what does it mean?”

“Oh!” Francine flutters to a halt. “Oh, that. I was just…it was just…oh, well, look at you,” she says. “You don’t need prescription anything. You’re happy, I can tell.”

And you should be, she says. Don’t look away, Maxime. You should be. You deserve it.

 

Notes:

Thank you for reading! If you liked it, please reblog!

  • small playlist
  • (but I mostly listened to Lately on repeat)
  • See you Tuesday, Jason yells. His next client has arrived, a white-haired woman. This is absolutely alt-universe Priscilla.
  • Maxime, Maxime, get thee to a therapist, Maxime!

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