the rolls to take to the table, Annie stopped her, told her she would get them. The rolls were her escape hatch if, or when, Max arrived. She'd still been holding out hope he might not show.
Eric moves to the hall and opens the front door. "You made it. I was starting to worry you weren't coming."
"No, I just got caught at the house. You know Mom. Once she starts talking…"
"Oh, I know," Eric says. "Can I take your coat?" he asks, as Max passes him into the hall.
"Sure," Max says, and shrugs his coat off, hands it to Eric. "Something smells good."
"Yeah, we're…" Eric says, looking out the front door. "Where's Stacy?"
"Oh, I thought you knew. She had a flight to catch. She needed to get back to her folks' house tonight. She left just after you did earlier."
"No, I didn't know," Eric says, shutting the door. And all of a sudden he feels that he's made a terrible mistake inviting Max. When Eric thought he had a date things felt different, more secure somehow. But now… Now…
"You alright, Eric?" Max asks.
"Yeah, sorry," Eric says. "You got here just in time. We almost got started without you."
They enter the dining room, and Eric absently lays Max's coat on the back of the upright piano at the entrance into the dining room.
"Everyone, this is my brother, Max," Eric says as they enter. "And, Max, this is Holly. She's my assistant in the ombudsman's office, and that's her friend Tim. Then there's Wendy and Amy. Amy also works at the university. And Michael. Michael taught with me in the philosophy department until world religions, where he teaches, branched off into their own department."
Max nods at everyone, and gives them a kind of a half-hearted wave. Everyone smiles politely and nods back, and Wendy mutters, "Nice to meet you."
Michael visibly winces at this introduction, and if he didn't feel like it would make everyone more uncomfortable, he would've told Eric that the awkwardness of that whole scene was exhibit A for why he shows up so early to parties.
"Have a seat," Eric says, tapping his hand on the back of the chair at the head of the table—the end closest to where they're standing. Eric moves back to the head of the table on the opposing side. "Would you like some wine, Max?"
"Sure, that would be nice."
"Annie, could you grab the wine while you're in there?" Eric calls to Annie.
"Yeah, just a minute," Annie calls back.
She's standing by the sink looking at nothing in particular. The basket of rolls is in her hand, and her other hand is firmly planted on the counter. It seems to be the only thing holding her upright.
She realizes that she's already been away too long for someone who was just fetching a basket of rolls. But she needs time. How much time can she kill before she'll have been gone too long without an explanation? Even with the wine, she should already be out there, sitting, chatting everyone up. That is the role she's expected to play.
She shouldn't have drank so much wine before dinner. Her head is absolutely swimming. But she's not certain whether it's the wine or Max's arrival that's sent her spinning. She felt fine, if just a little tense, before he showed up. But, then, once the doorbell rang, she hit a solid wall of panic.
Still, she can't wait in here forever. She's got to put herself together and just walk out there. And she can't let her panic show. She can't worry about how she'll react when she sees him. But can she stay composed? It's been so long. Will he look the same? No, he can't look the same. What if he looks better? He'll certainly look more adult. The boy, the young man, she fell in love with will have been replaced by the man he has become.
"Annie, you need some help?" Eric calls.
"No, I'm coming," she says, and realizes there's no more time to waste. She just has to get herself straight, and pretend away all the noise in her head.
She moves out to the dining room with the basket of rolls in her hands, and there he is, Max, looking straight at her.
She stops moving, stuck in complete stillness by the table. She knows she should be moving. Her mind, even, is telling her, yelling at her, to set the rolls on the table and sit down, but her body has slipped playfully away from her.
"Annie?" Eric asks.
Everyone is looking at her now.
"The wine!" she says, a little too abruptly, a little too loudly, startling the room. "I knew I forgot something," she says, trying to recover. She turns to leave the room. Stops. Turns back and sits the rolls on the table, all the while reminding herself not to look at him. Then she turns back to the kitchen.
Once she's free of everyone's eyes, she cracks open, just wants to fall on the floor and cry. She's absolutely terrified. He looks even better than she feared he might. One look at him and ten years of barely repressed love and desire woke up inside her, and now she has to go back out there and pretend that she doesn't feel like her whole life has suddenly changed, like a bright light of hope hasn't just switched on inside her.
She grabs the opened bottle of wine on the counter, takes a long drink from the bottle, and grabs another bottle from the rack under the counter.
No more delays.
II. Dinner
Annie enters the dining room holding both bottles of wine. She readies a bottle to pour, and is standing by Max hardly before she even realizes it. She's decided it's best not to look at him. If she looks at him, she's afraid she won't be able to hide everything that's swimming inside her. And if she exposes herself in any way, she won't be able to hide from Max, from Eric, or from anybody else at the table. And she can't afford not to hide right now.
She starts to pour into his empty glass. "Anyone else want more wine?"
"I could use a topping off," Eric says.
She finishes pouring for Max, and walks the few remaining steps to her seat on wobbly legs. If she'd known she'd feel this unsteady, she wouldn't have worn such high heels.
Once she's safely in her chair, she hands Eric the open bottle and sits the unopened bottle on the table, not too far from her full glass. She'll need it soon enough. She knows she should slow her drinking down, but, then again, she has to do something with her hungry hands. The tense energy that's running through her body necessitates movement, and, since she's afraid to speak, she takes a drink—a long, slow sip. She puts the glass down and closes her eyes. She wishes she could just shut her eyes, and be somewhere else, just close them and disappear.
But she can't.
She opens her eyes. She can feel Max's stare stuck on her, but she won't look in his direction. Not yet.
Something inside her wants to jump up and tell him to back off, but another part of her is reveling in his stare, as if her skin can feel his eyes running over her flesh. Her fingers stretch up her neck near her ear. She tries to rub his eyes off her skin, or to feel it more directly. She is a stuck in a mental maze of contradictions, and she can't set her mind straight. She looks around the table, attempts a smile, and feels something like one move across her mouth. She can hardly look at the salad in front of her, and wonders if she'll be able to conjure enough hunger to eat anything at all.
Max is gripping the seat of his chair, hard. He didn't realize how tense his body was until she walked away from him. He's sitting too rigidly. His back is unnaturally straight, and his head is too firmly planted on the rod of his neck. He wants to force himself into something resembling relaxation, but he's afraid that, as he relaxes, he'll only broadcast his tension. If he decompresses as much as he feels he should, he's afraid it'll look as if he's suddenly deflating himself.
Once he sat down after Eric's initial introductions, he felt he had started to gain his equilibrium. He had made it into the house, which was a bigger obstacle than he had anticipated, and he had arrived just in time to avoid any pre-dinner weirdness. He was safely at the dinner table. If he played his cards right, he figured he could be in and out in hardly more than an hour. He started to believe that he just might make it through the evening unscathed.
Still, he was intentionally avoiding
the inevitability of Annie's entrance. He wasn't entirely successful at avoiding the fact of her presence, but he was doing his best to pretend they weren't about to be in the same room.
So, when she appeared, all his comfortable illusions were sent for a loop. When she walked out of the kitchen, and her eyes fell on him, it was as if the room shook. Before seeing her, things were almost fine—deceptively fine, but still. Then, it was if some curtain parted, she emerged, and the whole room turned to theater. Max was on stage with the lights turned on him, and his anxiety was rising higher and higher. He felt like all eyes were on him and he had no lines to speak. It didn't help his anxiety that, in that moment, some emotional certainty was clearly exchanged between them. It was like suddenly waking up, like a clear line had been drawn splitting reality from wherever they had just landed, and they both were struggling to find their way back again.
He knew then that he had made a terrible error in coming. He wasn't ready for this. There was still too much juice between them. He'd spent too many years keeping her just close enough for comfort, and when she was actually close it shook him. When she came to fill his glass with wine—her bare arm only inches from his face—he could barely keep himself from cracking open. He so badly wanted to reach out and touch that arm with his fingertips, walk them up the slow slope of her shoulder. That must've been the moment he grabbed the edges of his chair, bracing