Undone [Completed]

Undone: [Two]

Two

Nick

I showed up at his house precisely one week after Mr. and Mrs. Grey paid me a visit in school. I tried not to feel guilty for taking long to live up to the promise I’d made to them, but I couldn’t help it. Try as I would to convince myself that I’d been busy and there was no way I could have made it to the Grey residence, nothing worked. I knew the real reason I’d been pushing off this visit all too well, and it sure as hell wasn’t that I’d had a lot of work. I hadn’t been tired beyond belief, either.

I’d been nervous.

Borderline terrified of what the meeting would be like. What if Max didn’t want me there, and my being there somehow made things worse for him?

It was a ridiculous thought, but one I couldn’t completely eliminate.

Anyway, I made the visit.

I just told you I did.

*

I stood at the door waiting for someone to answer it for about four minutes before someone did.  And, to my surprise, it wasn’t Max.

“Yes, who are you?” a little girl looked up at me through the little space she’d allowed for the door to open. Smart girl, I thought, she knew not to open the door completely.

“Uh, hey, my name is Nick. I’m here to see Max?”

Her response was to shut the door on my face (quite unceremonious, I must say) . I decided to stick around for a bit, in case Max asked her who it had been and she returned, but when there seemed to be nobody coming after another two minutes, I started to turn around.

I made it till the gate when I heard the door swing open.

Max looked...better, I think, but the change in him still shocked me. He was just as thin as he’d been at the hospital, and his face was haggard. His hair had grown longer and some of it fell on his face...and he looked nothing like himself. I couldn’t help but notice how he was dressed in full-length clothing, and although it didn’t look bad or out of place, it was weird.

I walked back to the house.

Max was studying my face, and he didn’t say anything.

“Uh, hey.”

He responded by moving aside, gesturing that I could enter.

“So, I just wanted to check on you, see how you’re doing.”

He nodded slightly, then beckoned for me to go upstairs, presumably to his room. “We’ll be upstairs,” he said to the little girl in a raspy whisper.

I tried not to flinch at how, I don’t know, weak he sounded, and walked up the stairs. He followed behind me.

“So, uh, who is she? Like, I get she’s your sister, but...wow.”

“Adopted.”

Well, that’s a start.

*

We were seated in his room, staring  not at each other, but just into the air.

It had become a regular routine, so I wasn’t as uncomfortable as I had been when I’d visited for the first time. That time, we’d gone into his room and I’d looked around and stuff, then we’d settled down and I’d tried to make conversation.

Max had mainly replied with nods or shaking his head, occasionally answering with a word or two. It had seemed to exhaust him, so we’d then just settled into silence where he sat and just, I’m not sure, studied me? and I’d looked about his room and...I don’t know.