M is for Mind

[parallax23]

MIND

 

“Heard from her?” Asha asked casually as she leaned against a desk in Logan’s home office.

“Still won’t talk to me,” Logan replied in a decisive tone. His eyes didn’t leave his computer screen, but she knew it wasn’t because of devotion to his work.

“Give her time,” she replied easily, then smiled. “She’s just scared.”

Asha could only imagine how difficult it had been for Max to admit the truth to Logan. He loved her so much, even when he thought she was dead he didn’t give up hope on reuniting with her. It had been the stuff of drugstore romance novels and Hollywood films. A love that was absolutely pure and passionate and perplexing. How could someone look into the face of that and say, No thanks, I’d rather skip the drama and do the hot X5 with the motorcycle and commitment issues?

She didn’t envy Max that burden. It also meant that maybe, just maybe, that epic love could be Asha’s someday now that Max was out of the picture.

Thinking about Max and Alec, Asha couldn’t help smiling at how obvious it had all been. They were constantly having their own conversations away from everyone in Crash. She imagined there were several secrets between them. She had yet to see Max react as passionately to anyone as she did with Alec. She was a little too angry at him once too often, when Asha thought about it. She wasn’t supposed to love him, she was supposed to love Logan. So she lashed out, trying to fight what she wasn’t supposed to be feeling. Then there was Alec. Max was the only other person he gave a damn about besides himself, and the only person who could put his ass in line.

How many times had Alec put himself in the line of fire for Max? He had helped her save that mermaid. He had her back when she was trying to save the S1W. When Logan wanted Max, all he had to do was call Alec. If that wasn’t love – bullets, bad guys and matching bad-ass attitudes – what was?

The night when Max and Logan had their temporary cure, Alec had been downing drinks alone at Crash before Asha arrived. Though much of the evening would become a drunken haze in her memory, she could remember his intense cynicism towards their friends’ relationship. He called Logan “a repressed WASP” and Max was “a broken toy.” They’d never work. Why did he care?

Asha had been so busy drowning her sorrows about losing Logan that she had missed his bitterness and resentment at losing the woman he loved. Alec had been far from happy for them as he downed shot after shot with Asha at Crash. He had probably only come to the realization of how he felt for Max when she was with Logan, and just decided to go back to his carpe diem pick up lines and empty relationships. That was safer than acknowledging that he just had his heart broken. They had been raised not to think of themselves as humans but weapons. What would he know about love and expressing it? Asha could imagine the toll it took on their emotional coping skills as well.

Then, like some divine act of fate, it turned out that the virus wasn’t really cured. Max and Logan weren’t back together; they hadn’t even consummated their relationship. It had sent Alec back-pedaling away from Asha after several decisive efforts to get into her pants. He had been hitting on her since he came back to Seattle, only to all of a sudden decide that he didn’t want anything to do with her once Max was a free agent again.

“Hm, I’m the one that almost died last week,” Logan pointed out.

Logan hadn’t gone into the details of what Max and Alec had been up to when he discovered them at her apartment building. He had choked out a broken tale of seeing Alec leaving early one morning. The X5s’ parting was a warm and intimate, both smiling as they held each other close. Later that evening when Logan confronted her, she admitted it. Asha could only imagine how that conversation must have gone.

“You don’t think that was scary for her?” asked Asha. “She’s a loner. She’s not used to worrying about anyone else. This relationship stuff, it’s all new to her… It’s new to the both of them.”

Maybe Alec had taken his borrowed time speech from that night seriously and told Max how he felt. Asha could see him doing that.

Alec would have pulled Max aside one night at Crash with a playful attempt at a pick up line to break the ice. She would rebuff him, probably with a smack across the head, asking if he’d gotten baked with Sketchy. He would stop smiling and in his hazel green eyes she would catch a glimpse of his soul. She would remain still as he made some confession that he would hope to play off as a joke if she decided that she didn’t love him too.

Knowing Max, she would have run off into the night in an effort to come to terms with it. Then a day later she would show up at his apartment door after realizing that she couldn’t stay away from him. The reason she was angry at him all the time was because he made her feel things for him that she shouldn’t have felt. He’d tell her to forget it and she was only looking for a Logan substitute. But she would prove him wrong by kissing him in the doorway just like at the end of all those Saturday afternoon movies.

“Both?” asked Logan.

“Her and Alec,” Asha answered.

It seemed natural for Max and Alec to clash before coming to terms with their feelings for one another. For their entire lives they had kept people at a distance, and at the first signs of genuine affection they would balk and run in the opposite direction. In their world, they had to be cruel to be kind. Getting attached meant making themselves vulnerable, and neither was willing to show that kind of weakness. No wonder it had taken them so long to see what was in front of them.

“Right,” said Logan.

He spotted something on the film. A car driving away. He zoomed in the picture to see White’s face staring back at him. He was probably relieved to change the topic of conversation.

“Better let Max know,” Logan decided and Asha looked at the clock.

It was late. She didn’t want to say that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to call. It wasn’t an emergency and he would just come off looking desperate by calling Max in the middle of the night when she was probably with Alec.

When Max didn’t respond to the first two pages, Asha decided not to stick around to shield both Logan and herself from the indignity of what he was doing. Apparently he still hadn’t gotten over her.

As Asha shut the door behind her, she realized that he was still healing. She didn’t expect him to get over Max overnight. He loved too passionately to let things go that easily. Still, in her mind, someday she imagined he would let go of Max, then they would have their chance at that messed up, post-Pulse kind of love you could only get in a broken world.