The Risk of Falling

Chapter Twenty One: The Choices of the Choiceless

A/N: Hi everyone! Happy New Year! 

Cheers to 2015—may it bring us many more love stories, may it be in books and our lives!

Thanks for patiently waiting for the next chapter. This may not make you think that Max and Luke are coming along but they are. What's that saying—you don't realize what you're missing until it's gone? Something to that effect. 

Hope you enjoy!

BTW, I want to dedicate this chapter to treblehearts. Check out her work! She's currently responsible for a couple million people falling in love with Wattpad characters. LOL!

***

Maybe it was too soon but sometimes, after a really bad burn, the most you could do is submerge yourself in ice until the pain went away and a frigid numbness took over.

I’ve said this before. I wasn’t going to sit in a dark room and cry my eyes out.

It was a pointless exercise—and a dangerous one if you let the darkness in instead of pushing it out. Sometime in the many hours that my mother spent secluded from the world, nursing her broken heart, she faded away and a black void took her place. Maybe she knew what she was doing but most days, I’d like to think that she wasn’t there, in the shell of the woman she’d once been, when she walked out on the street to meet death head on in a wash of headlights.

I took a proper shower and stared at the woman in front of my mirror for a long time, making sure that despite the band-aids that held pieces of me together, I could still recognize myself.

The old Max was resilient.

When she didn’t have much else, she had that for herself at the very least.

I took my time neatening up my hair and making myself presentable until my cheeks were flushed with some color again and my eyes didn’t look like empty windows of an abandoned building.

The afternoon I’d planned out with Alex was really just furniture shopping and some pizza. I didn’t want to contemplate the possibilities of more because we all know how well speculation worked for me the last time. Even then, I put on a pretty new blouse and my best dark jeans. It wasn’t because I wanted a new romantic interest to solve my current dilemma. It was simply just because at times like this, when I felt small enough to be kicked to the curb, I wanted to love myself just a little bit more than usual.

“You look really nice, Max,” Alex said when I stepped out of the apartment and found him waiting by the front steps, his car parked down the road. He leaned in to brush a kiss on my cheek before smiling and scratching his ear. “I feel a little bad now that I’m just taking you out to help me pick out chairs and tables instead of a fancy dinner.”

I smiled and followed him to the car. “Are you telling me, Alex Rizzo, that you would only take a girl out to a nice dinner if she’s all dressed up and pretty?”

His brows pulled in as he held the door open for me. “No, of course not. I guess I’m just wondering if my plans are too ordinary now to do you any justice.”

I paused from getting into the car and angled him a curious look. “It seems to me that you’re just a tad bit nervous, Alex. You’re a hockey hotshot. Aren’t you used to being surrounded by beautiful, glamorous women that furniture shopping with little old me should be a piece of cake?”

Alex’s smile was a bit pained. “I’m just a simple farm boy who likes to play hockey, Max. Part of that life is the glitz and glamour but it doesn’t meant it’s what I’m looking for.”