Page 25 of For All It's Worth
His only downfall was that he needed everything in order and was obsessed with cleaning. It served him well when the Health Department came to give his certification, though.
It was useful that I already knew the place. I’d helped set it up, so it wasn’t a strange environment that I was worried about. It was more that I was anxious that our time apart had changed us. Could we settle back into friendship after the enforced break? My thoughts kept circling those questions, to the point that it was giving me a headache.
There was also the issue of not knowing exactly what I’d done to Max to make him press pause on being friends. He’d stuck by me even after I’d left him a couple of times so I was sure it wasn’t that. I regretted those times so much and still felt sick at the idea of Max’s drink being spiked because I wasn’t there to protect him.
The idea that I’d hurt him had rattled around in my mind for weeks in rehab until I’d finally addressed it in one of our calls. His quiet, “No, you didn’t hurt me,” had tears of relief running down my cheeks. That would have been something that we couldn’t ever truly come back from. It would have sat between us, festering.
The first thing that I needed to do was to appear early and apologize to Max for avoiding him these last few days. I should have gone to see him as soon as I was out and instead I hid away at my mom’s. We hadn’t even gone looking at properties, so that meant I was stuck living with her for longer than I wanted to. Fan-fricken-tastic. I loved my mom, but she was worse now that I’d been in rehab. I think there was some guilt there for not seeing my problems sooner, so she was overcompensating.
In truth, if I looked really hard at the situation, I hadn’t given my mom or any of my family a chance to see how bad things had gotten. After I’d met Max, we’d formed our own family and I’d stopped pushing as hard to be a part of their lives. There were occasions that I’d stuck my neck out and risked the hurt of rejection. Over the years though, they became fewer and fewer.
For all too long, it had just been me and Max. He was the only family that I wanted and he needed to be told how important he was to me.
