Between Before and After (8 page)

Finn was needled out of a peaceful sleep with a sharp jab. He squinted into the light coming from the lamp beside his bed.

“What?” he mumbled sleepily, rolling away from it.

Then he heard it. A noise – a moan.
Something.

He rolled over again, sitting bolt upright. Kate was kneeling by the side of his bed, chewing on her bottom lip.

“It’s Max,” she said, wide-eyed. “He’s having a nightmare. He won’t wake up – I tried. I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s okay,” He pushed the covers back and swiped his hand across his eyes. “I’m coming.”

He followed the lamp light to the living room, Kate right behind him. Max was exactly where they had left him, on the sofa. A blanket was in a heap on the floor beside him and he was bathed in sweat. His face was pale and pinched, his eyes clamped shut and his mouth working silently. He looked far from the peaceful Max they had left sleeping only a few short hours before. His heart sank. Not again.

Kneeling down beside him, he shook his shoulder gently. “Max. Wake up.”

Max groaned again, but didn’t open his eyes. Finn shook him again, firmly this time, and Max threw his arm out wide, almost collecting the side of Finn’s face in the process. Kate’s silent desperation mirrored his own. Max cried out – a strangled yelp that seemed to cut through the night and grate on his last nerve.

Finn took hold of him by the shoulders and shook him roughly. Suddenly Max’s eyes flew open and he sucked in a short, sharp breath.

“It’s okay, you’re alright – it was just a nightmare,” Kate said quickly.

Max blinked rapidly, pushing himself up onto his elbows and taking a few ragged breaths.

“You okay?” Finn asked.

The fear in Max’s eyes sent his stomach into freefall.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah…’m fine.” He cleared his throat and sniffed, clearly still struggling with cobwebs the nightmare had left behind.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kate asked tentatively.

“No.”

Finn knelt on the floor beside the sofa. He shared a worried glance with Kate, before turning his attention back to Max.

“Come on mate, talk to us. It might help?”

He had asked this a hundred times or more, but Max never took him up on it. This time was no different.

Max shook his head again, more quickly this time. “No. I’m fine.”

He cleared his throat again and pushed himself up, swinging his legs over the side of the sofa. He looked exhausted – and traumatised. Finn opened his mouth to speak but Max shut him down with a look
.

Getting the message loud and clear, Finn got to his feet slowly, muttering “Okay.”

He hated seeing Max like this. It was getting worse, not better. He wondered if the nightmares were year-round now, not just around the anniversary of Danny’s death. Was that why Max had withdrawn from them all as he had over the past few months? Maybe he was suffocating under the weight of what happened? How would they know one way or the other, if he didn’t talk to them? Whatever he tried to do to ease this burden, it didn’t seem to make any difference. It was never enough.

“Coffee?” he said, to no one in particular.

“Yeah, thanks.” Kate smiled at him, a little ragged around the edges, but at least she was staying.

He was grateful. He didn’t feel so helpless when she was around. Max just nodded, hanging his head as he held a violently shaking hand out in front of him. Slowly clenching it into a fist, he withdrew it.

Kate was asleep on the couch, one hand hidden beneath the pillow, the other curled up under her chin. Her long auburn hair was buried underneath her, leaving a halo of dark gold around her face as she slept. She was coiled into the foetal position, covered with a blanket Finn had just placed over her. He was grateful that at least someone had managed to get some sleep tonight. She had valiantly fought it to the bitter end though, finally succumbing about half an hour earlier.

He was beginning to realise that he had signed up for an all-nighter. Max stood at the window, staring out silently into the darkness. He had been quiet and withdrawn since he had woken up. He had even tried to insist that he and Kate should go back to bed, but that didn’t wash. Finn was hoping they might get a chance to talk at last, but he now realised that wasn’t going to happen.
He
could talk, but clearly Max didn’t intend on joining in. Regardless, he wasn’t letting Max’s sombre mood chase him away. He was in this for the long-haul. If he wasn’t able to help with anything practical, then he would keep him company. It was the least he could do.

Copious cups of coffee later and Max had more or less sobered up. Finn, on the other hand, was exhausted. The couple of hours sleep he had under his belt was a shoddy buffer and now he could feel his body crying out for more. Instead, he dragged himself up off the sofa, picking up his empty mug as he stood. 

“Another coffee?” he asked, staring at Max’s reflection in the window. He had lost count of how many cups of coffee they had had, but he knew they had to be close to double figures by now.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Max didn’t turn around, just shuffled slightly and shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his board shorts. Finn collected Max’s empty coffee mug as he trudged wearily through to the kitchen. He filled the kettle with water and switched it on, his mind wandering, lulled by fatigue. He was exhausted, in body and mind.

He was so tired of watching Kate and trying to figure out what she was thinking; tired of trying to figure out exactly when and how he had failed Danny; tired of watching Max slowly destroy himself in front of his eyes. He was sick of watching out for everyone. Who would watch out for him? Kelly had tried, but it was more than she could handle and he couldn’t blame her for wanting out. Their relationship had ended mutually – that part was certainly true. What he was ashamed to tell anyone was that she had told him she couldn’t handle it anymore. His grief and guilt was so much a part of him, it had barricaded him behind a wall, blocking everyone else out. Ultimately, it had driven her away. She deserved more. She deserved someone decent, someone capable of loving her whole-heartedly. She said he deserved to be with someone who understood him, even though he didn’t understand himself. He had no argument for that. He didn’t have a solution for it either.

He had met Kelly after Danny’s death. She had tried to help him through his grief, but he hadn’t really let her in. It might have been different if she had known Danny. She might have understood. But with Kate, it was different. She had been there with him throughout all of it, and vice versa. While she had taken her time to deal with it, he had pushed it to the side and tried to gallop forward. For all the good that did him. As much as it hurt to admit, he was only just beginning to realise that he and Max were in the same boat. Three years later, and they were still struggling.

Not for the first time, he could feel the anger brewing from somewhere deep down inside. What was Danny thinking, leaving them to deal with the fallout like this? Didn’t he give a shit – about any of them? So much for the bonds of friendship.

His jaw was clamped together so tightly his teeth ached. He consciously took a deep breath, exhaling slowly, as the kettle switched itself off. Reluctantly, he spooned instant coffee into the mugs in front of him and filled them with freshly-boiled water, adding sugar and stirring. Within a few minutes, the smell of coffee and the fact he was moving around had roused him slightly.

He cleared his throat quietly and walked past Max, setting both their cups down on the coffee table and sinking into the sofa again. Max didn’t move. Finn stared at his reflection, trying to read him. The moonlit night was obliterated by the lamplight inside. All he could see was Max’s face in the window, but what could Max see? What was going on inside his head?

Finn could feel his energy waning and his heart felt weary once again. It was no good. No matter how hard he tried to fight it, no matter how hard he pushed things away, he was tired. He was tired and he was angry and he wished – he
wished
– he understood what had happened that day. Maybe then, they could all forget about how Danny died, just for a while – just long enough to heal. Would they all be here – screwed up, feeling guilty, feeling responsible somehow – if Danny had died in a car accident, or dropped dead from a heart attack? Probably not. But because he had shot himself in the head, here they were. Danny’s decision haunted them more than any twist of fate or act of God. It seemed grossly unfair.

Wearily, he glanced over at Kate. She looked so tranquil. It was like all the worries of the world fell away from her and she was free to just be herself again. Like she had been before.

“You should tell her.”

Finn’s head snapped up. Max had turned around and was watching him, his arms folded across his chest, his face maddeningly blank.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Over the last few hours, whatever hangover Max had been heading for had disintegrated, swallowed up by the nightmare and the buckets of caffeine that followed. He wasn’t stone cold sober, but he didn’t appear to be ridiculously worse for wear either.

Finn reached for his coffee, his heart racing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit. I’ve seen how you look at her.”

Finn was out of his depth. He was so tired, he could barely think straight - and he wasn’t ready for this conversation, not by a long shot.

He tried to shrug casually, feigning ignorance. “Mate, you’re way off – “

“It’s different now. You should tell her, before you miss your window.”

Finn stared up at him. “I don’t… what do you mean, miss my window?”

“Before we all bugger off and everything goes back to the way it was before.”

He was right. Once they all went their separate ways again, it would be harder to talk to her. If he was going to do this at all, it had to be here – and soon. He groaned softly and fell back into the sofa, staring at the ceiling.

“Was I that obvious?”

Max smiled then and Finn noticed how much younger he looked when he did that. Personally, he was feeling quite the opposite. He looked at Kate now, scared suddenly that she may have woken up and was lying there staring at him like he’d lost his mind. Luckily, she wasn’t.

“No, not really. Little things gave it away. I guess it’s what happens when you just sit back and watch the world go by.”

Max sank into the nearest armchair, reaching over to pick up his coffee mug. Most of the time, Max gave him the impression that he was walking a tightrope, stretched between reality and some corner of his mind that he went to to hide from everything. Regardless, there was no doubt that his insight was staggering. Maybe there was something in that – stepping back, watching the world go by.

“You really think she’s ready for that?” he asked, afraid to hope. “I talked to her about that earlier – just in general terms, I mean – and I just don’t know. She’s bloody hard to read sometimes.”

Max rested his coffee mug on the arm of the chair, staring down at it thoughtfully. “She seems different, but in a good way. More like her old self.”

“Yeah, I kind of thought that too. At New Years, we had this – I don’t know what the hell it was. I kept putting it down to the booze, but I just couldn’t get it out of my head. It was just the way she looked at me, and we nearly...” He cleared his throat lightly, shaking his head at the memory. “And then when Kelly and I called it quits, I was kinda relieved, to be honest. She deserves a hell of a lot more than I’ve got to offer.”

“Who, Kate?”

“Kelly.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t know, though.” He glanced over at Kate again. “It’s complicated.”

“No one said it was gonna be easy.”

“Well aren’t you just chock full of wisdom tonight?” Finn grumbled sarcastically, shaking his head. “You’ve hardly said two words in the past couple of hours, and now all of a sudden you’re Dr Phil? What’s up with that?”

Max’s face fell. He flashed a quick smile, shrugging his shoulders as the shutters came down.

“You’re right. I don’t know shit about this stuff.” he said. “Jesus, I can’t remember the last time I had a relationship that lasted longer than one night.” He glanced over at Kate, still sleeping on the couch. “We should wake her up, send her to bed. She needs to get some proper sleep.”

“You know as well as I do that she won’t go. She’s worried about you. We all are.”

Max just shrugged, the muscle in his jaw twitching. Finn decided to dive in, boots and all. “What’s with the drinking?”

The heavy darkness around the house seemed to encroach on them, pushing against the window panes. Finn felt the pressure inside the room building as the silence stretched out.

“Seriously – you can tell me. I’m not an idiot, I can see what’s going on here. You turn up here and suddenly you’re main-lining beer. It’s the nightmares again isn’t it? That’s why you’re drinking like this.”

Max seemed to withdraw into himself and Finn’s heart raced. He wasn’t sure if he was on the right track or not, but it seemed like he had to do something.

“I’m gonna take that as a yes, then. Can we just talk about that for a minute?” Finn leaned forward, setting his coffee mug on the table between them.