JEDDROVEto Portland with Max fidgeting in the passenger seat and Flo wedged between them. He felt like he was stuck in a weirdScooby-Dooremake, but the palpable, vibrant energy coming from Max made it worthwhile.
They ditched the truck in an all-day parking lot on the outskirts of the city and walked the rest of the way. Jed noticed Max surreptitiously glancing at his leg—fueled, no doubt, by the mess he’d gotten himself into a few weeks before—but he ignored it. He felt good, better than good. Portland was a nice place to be. Its laid-back bohemian vibe suited him, and it fit Max like a glove.
“Farmer’s market is that way.” Max stopped walking and pointed to the left. “You want to come find me when you’re done in the nerdy bookstore?”
Jed rolled his eyes as he debated whether he wanted to let Max out of his sight in the bustling city. It wasn’t that he was worried about Max. He was a grown man, after all, and he had Flo with him. No. It was his own uncertain sanity that bothered him more. Crowded, jostling streets made him antsy. He wasn’t sure he could deal with not knowing Max was safe, but he wasn’t about to let his inner freak show hold Max back. “Sure. I’ll find you.”
They parted ways. Jed watched Max and Flo in her brightly colored coat disappear into the crowd. He felt a little strange when he lost sight of them, but he shook it off and made his way to the specialist bookshop hidden down a side street.
He was tempted to hide out in the musty-smelling shop. He liked bookstores, and libraries too. They had a sacred, peaceful hush, like graveyards without the shadow of death. But after searching out the book of ancient Sudanese dialects, he didn’t linger. Instead, he found himself drawn back to Max.
It didn’t take long to find him. Jed stood at the entrance to the farmer’s market and spotted him by a bread stall, talking animatedly with the vendor who had a broad smile on her face. The sight made Jed smile too. It was the first time he’d seen Max out in the real world, and it was clear he wasn’t the only one who found him enchanting.
He took a step forward. A light breeze swept through the air, rustling the trees and flapping the protective tarps around the stalls. The smell of smoke from a nearby Middle Eastern barbeque filled his senses. Suddenly, his world tilted and his vision narrowed. He scanned the busy marketplace again, seeing it for what it was, he could even still see Max, but everything felt off, like he was somewhere else entirely.
His heart thudded and white noise filled his ears. He stumbled backward and sank onto a bench.
Max dropped down beside him and nudged him. “Jed?”
Jed jumped a mile. How had that happened? Max had been fifty feet away just seconds ago. Unnerved, he took a deep breath and tucked the paper bag from the bookstore into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Yep. What did you get?”
Max eyed him. “Rye bread andweird ass rabbit food,” he said, quoting Jed with annoying accuracy. “Are you hungry yet? It’s two o’clock.”
Jed wasn’t hungry, but then he never was. To make up for his sudden descent into madness, he got to his feet. “Sure. Let’s get you some lunch.”
AFEWhours later, Jed led Max to the foot of one of the Portland mountain trails he used to know well.
Max was suitably unimpressed. “You want to walk up a mountain?”
Jed shrugged. Put like that, he could see the idiocy in the suggestion, but the flyer sticking out of Max’s back pocket swayed him into standing his ground. He’d picked it up at a table by the pod of international food carts. It was for an open-air concert at dusk that evening. Some kind of indie crap Jed had never heard of… the kind of indie crap Max loved.
“I can’t take Flo to something like that, and the lights….”
He’d never finished the sentence, distracted as ever by food, but Jed understood. He’d said no more, and amused himself picking at a chapatti, and trying to guess how much of the superhot Bangladeshi dhal Max could eat before he admitted defeat.
It took a few hours to reach the top of the mountain trail, and by then daylight was beginning to fade. Jed knew the terrain around Portland like the back of his hand. The city had changed, but the surrounding mountains, not so much. He couldn’t fix Max’s epilepsy, or make the indie gig dog friendly, but he figured he had a compromise that might make him smile.
He wasn’t disappointed. Max stared over the ledge of the secluded forest clearing with wide eyes. “Wow. That’s the Pit down there, isn’t it?”
Jed smiled at the colloquial nickname for the hollowed-out, grass-covered concert venue. It had been a hub for local events for as long as Jed could remember. “Yeah. You can’t see the stage, but you can hear it okay. I used to come up here with Dan and watch all the shit we couldn’t afford tickets to.”
Max grinned, knowing that both Jed and Dan had grown up on the wrong side of town. “That was a lot of shit, then?”
“That it was.” Jed left Max to his staring and sat down at the foot of a large tree. The rain he’d feared hadn’t come, and the air was fresh and mild, but the arduous hike had left him sore and tired.
Max leaned further out over the rocky ledge. He was in no danger, even if he slipped and fell, but Flo growled and pulled him back with her leash. “All right, all right.”
He ambled back to Jed, and following his direction, settled between his legs with his back to his chest. “I’m not hurting you like this?”
Jed shook his head. Somehow, though he didn’t know all the tender points in his body, Max seemed to have a knack for placing his weight in the right places. Sometimes he figured Max couldn’t hurt him if he tried. “It’s fine. What about the lights? Are they too bright?”
Max leaned forward again and squinted. “Nah. I like it.”
Satisfied, Jed slid his arms around Max’s waist and rested his head between his shoulder blades. Lulled by the rustling trees and gentle tap of Max’s fingertips on his leg, it wasn’t long before he fell fast asleep.
He woke with a start sometime later to Max twisting in his arms and kissing him, gently at first, then harder as Jed responded.
Jed grinned. “Hey, there.”