Max sat at his desk Monday, completely unable to work, willing his cell phone to ring. It had been two whole days since he’d laid his conscience bare in front of the Williams family, and the lack of response was eating him alive. Simon’s future had become deeply, personally important to him, and his passion for the boy’s opportunities lay foreign and unsettling in his stomach.
“I’d always expected I’d catch your passion for the whole world—the ‘getting guys with disabilities out into experiences’ thing—but not in terms of one scrawny, brilliant kid.” Max was glad Alex was in the office today, because he needed to talk this out with someone or he’d explode. “The need to make this right is driving me nuts.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Max realized how close to home that urge must feel to Alex. His boss and brother-in-law had talked many times about his old company’s role in making the climbing line Max had been using when he fell. Max was here and had the amazing job he did because of Alex’s persistent need to “put things right.” Okay, falling for JJ may have amplified that a bit, but Max’s tumult was tangled up with Heather, too.
“Who’d have guessed we’d end up with so much in common?” Alex said with a quiet smile, then pointed up and added, “Well, except for you know who.” He walked over and perched on the corner of Max’s desk, picking up the drawings of new “Maxed Out” lightning-bolt wheel panels that would be in the company’s next catalog. “I boast I know how to think outside the box, but the Good Lord blew me out of the water on this one.”
“Yeah.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
Usually Max dismissed any of Alex’s continual comments about how God had paved the way for this whole venture, but he knew too much now to ignore how God had intervened in his life. If anyone understood what he was going through, it was Alex. Alex, who at one point was his enemy, the man he’d set out to crush. If that wasn’t evidence of God and grace in his life, what was?
“Heather said something to me one night. It’s stuck with me, working on me until I could actually, well, believe it.” He ran his hands through his hair, trying to put that moment into words.
Alex set the drawings down. “What?”
“The night that whole thing blew up with Simon and his parents—the first time, I mean—I got frustrated enough to spit out to Heather that I was furious at God for letting me fall.” These words were hard to say to Alex, but they’d long had to learn to be honest with each other. “For dropping me.”
He could see the impact of the words in Alex’s eyes. There were people who insisted it was Alex’s company’s climbing line that had failed Max. Max no longer felt that to be true. Lots of things were to blame for what had happened that night, but none more than Max’s own arrogance. Alex’s silence spoke of the whole hard journey the past year and a half had been for everyone.
“Heather said the most amazing thing when I blurted that out.” Max made a point to look straight at Alex, wanting him to see that it had gone beyond hurt and blame, wanting him to believe the healing Max knew was taking place. “She said...” Max remembered the unbelievable tenderness in Heather’s tone and the words suddenly caught in his throat. “She said she believed God caught me just in time.”
Alex’s eyes closed for a moment, and Max knew the words were just as powerful for him. “You hang on to that woman, Max Jones. She’s a keeper.”
Max was planning to tell Heather just what she’d done that night when he got the chance to give her the prayer shawl Violet Sharpton had made. “I’m trying, Alex. There’s a mile of hurt between us right now—and I put most of it there—but I’m fighting it with everything I’ve got. She came with me to talk to Simon and his parents, so that’s something.” He sunk his head onto his hands. “This is so hard.”
Alex rested a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve done a million near-impossible things since I’ve met you, Max. I’m pretty sure you can pull this off.” He spun his wedding ring with his thumb. “Some things are worth fighting for with all you’ve got. I’m pretty sure Heather’s one of them.” He gave Max’s shoulder a squeeze before letting go. “Although I wouldn’t mind if you at least tried to do battle with next year’s sponsorship schedule.”
Max despised paperwork. Alex could whip up plans and spreadsheets and timetables with his eyes closed, but that kind of forethought was like a foreign language to Max. “It’s late—I know.” He groaned. “If just one of them—Simon or Heather or even Brian Williams—would call me I’d be able to think straight, you know?”
“Yeah,” Alex commiserated. “I do know. But try anyway.”
Max wrestled with the spreadsheet for over an hour, and even the addition of an extra-strong coffee from down the street hadn’t bolstered his success. He was just about to slam something hard into his computer monitor when his cell phone rang. With a wide smile he saw Heather’s name on the screen.
“Are you sitting down?”
Some part of him was overjoyed that she could make such a joke. The caution and careful nature of their conversations lately jangled his nerves. “As a matter of fact, I am. Good guess.”
“I had two visitors this morning.”
Please, Lord, let one of them be Simon. Please. The prayer slipped out of Max with unexpected ease. “You did?”
“Linda Williams came in this morning. She wanted to know if we could hold a place for Simon for the second semester.”
Max felt the illogical sensation of his heart both leaping and falling at the same time. “You mean in January? Not now?” It didn’t feel like enough of a victory.
His words must have echoed his frustration. “I think it’s a good compromise, Max. It gives everyone a chance to catch their breath and keeps the door open for Simon to come back. And it wouldn’t be happening at all if it weren’t for you.” The tone of her voice changed completely, now soft and low. “Thank you. You did an amazing thing back there at Simon’s. I wish you could have seen Simon’s face as he heard you talking about him. He looks up to you so much, even after all that’s happened. Maybe especially because of all that’s happened.”
“Then why on earth hasn’t the guy called me? Texted? Anything.”
Heather’s laugh was sweet to hear. “They grounded him from his cell phone and computer outside of classwork until the end of the month.”
“Ouch. He said they wouldn’t be that cruel.”
“I had another visitor this morning, too. What exactly did you say to Candace Norden?”
Max had hoped his role in that one wouldn’t ever get back to Heather. She might consider it meddling if not outright manipulation. “Um...about what?”
“She came in asking for the form needed to take a non-student to the homecoming dance. Something about a bargain of a date for an A in algebra? And the chance to put something right?”
Max laughed and slapped his hands over his eyes. “I didn’t really think she’d do it.” That wasn’t exactly true—he’d carefully couched it as an offhand comment, then prayed like crazy that that the notion would stick.
“So you did give her the idea to take Simon to homecoming?”
Max winced. He still couldn’t read from her tone whether Heather approved or disapproved of his plan, and things were precarious enough between them as it was. “Maybe.”
“You convinced a junior on the cheerleading squad to take a freshman in a wheelchair to the homecoming dance?” Was that awe or annoyance?
“Well, okay, there may have been a little incentive thrown in about my paying for dinner at The Black Swan. They need another chance to get the ramp right, you know.”
There was an exasperating silence on the other end of the phone before she replied, “You’re amazing.”
“Is that amazing great or amazing bad?”
He wouldn’t have thought he could hear a smile over the phone, but she sighed in a way that made his heart gallop in his chest. “That’s amazing amazing.” Her tone required no other qualifier. Max felt his eyes shut and his shoulders unwind. He hadn’t lost her. At least not completely. And she didn’t know what was coming.
I’ve gotta win her back, Lord. You know that. I can’t lose her. Not yet. Max thought about the package in the back of his van, newly fetched from Violet Sharpton, who was “amazing amazing” in her own right. He checked his watch. Ten after three meant school was done for the day. “Can you meet me at the wheel bridge in half an hour?”
“The wheel bridge?”
“Well, for you it’s the footbridge, but you know what I mean.” It felt delightful to be able to tease her again. Her laugh untied the knots that had been twisting in his gut for days.
“Do you ever stop, Max?”
Max looked up to see Alex holding up a note in the palm of his hand that read, “Leave now and go get her!”
“Only when there’s a staircase, and maybe not even then,” he told Heather.
Heather couldn’t wipe the smile off her face as she drove past The Black Swan. She’d avoided the place since that night, unable to bear the reminder of how things had unraveled since then. Inside that restaurant, even despite the challenges of making that evening work, Heather had begun to believe she could build a life with Max Jones. It had been an unsteady, fragile belief, but Max’s eyes, his passion for life right down to the spontaneous pirouette under the balcony, and his heart-stopping kiss had all bloomed a strength within her.
His actions afterward had put that strength to the test. She knew Max could be bitter and resentful; she’d seen his impulsive side run off with his good sense. Heather didn’t want to be caught in the crosshairs of that kind of life, battling someone always on the defensive, always with something to prove. That kind of man had soured her parents’ marriage, had tainted her engagement with a man who insisted that God had wronged him.
What she’d heard from Simon’s kitchen was a different man. A man who could endure what life—what God—had asked of him. She had always suspected the Max on wheels had become a better man than the Max who walked. The words she’d heard at Simon’s house had proven that to be true. As Heather pulled up to the parking lot that sat next to the Gordon River, she knew she was almost ready to give her heart to Max Jones. Almost. She prayed that when she looked into his eyes today, God would grant her whatever last piece she needed to get past “almost.”
He sat at the near end of the charming footbridge that was the unofficial symbol of Gordon Falls, a spectacular smile lighting up his face. That grin was accompanied by a twinkle in his eye that couldn’t be classified as anything short of mischievous. Max was up to something.
Max was always up to something. It was one of the best and scariest things about that man.
“Hi there.” The way he looked at her made her feel, well, beautiful. Not glamorous beautiful, but the inner, lasting kind of beautiful. A woman no longer afraid to be noticed. A woman capable of making a difference in someone’s life—and not just Simon’s and Max’s.
“Hello.”
She noticed a package in his lap. He caught her gaze and winked. “I’m hoping we have a lot to celebrate today.”
Me, too, Heather thought as they moved toward the set of benches that sat at the very center of the bridge, one of the prettiest spots in town. “I’m so glad about Simon.”
“That kid’s gotten to me. I want him to succeed so bad I can taste it.” He gestured for her to sit down. He was uncharacteristically fidgety, a departure from the ever-cool guy who had rolled up to school back in August. He seemed to know, as she did, that today would be a turning point for them.
“I know you do. I think it’s wonderful. And he’ll make it. I just know he will.”
Max reached out his hand, palm up, asking for Heather’s to slip inside his grasp. “I want us to make it, too. I hope you know that. I’m scared to death we don’t know how, but if God caught me when I was falling then, I figure he’ll catch me when I’m falling now.” He wrapped his hand around hers. “I’ve fallen for you.” He suddenly slumped forward, a wincing sort of laugh echoing from up under his shaggy hair. “Oh, man,” he moaned, still gripping her hand. “That sounded so much less stupid in my head.” He looked up at her, cringing and smiling at the same time.
Heather could feel a smile bursting across her face. Max’s awkward, imperfect declaration charmed her more than any sonnet or grand gesture. Laugher bubbled up from a joyful place inside her, a place she hadn’t felt for a long, long time. “It was...was...” She groped for the right words, settling on, “Wonderfully cheesy.”
She pulled his hand to her lips and kissed it. “I fell, too. And I want us to make it, too.” She held his callused fingers to her cheek, reveling in the strength of them. “I’m ready, I think. I’m not going to walk away, Max. You need to know that. I don’t think I can anymore. I need you too much. I think we need each other.” She took a deep breath, daring herself to say what she’d already realized she came there to say. “I’m in love with you. Warts and all, wheels and all, wild and all.” Some part of her was so proud to say it first. It was such an enormous leap toward the woman she wanted to be. The woman Max could help her become.
Max reached out to cradle her face in both of his hands. “I am head over wheels in love with you, Heather Browning.” With that he kissed her so grandly she nearly fell off the bench, sending them into peals of splendid, happy laughter. “Oh!” he cried, smiling wider than she’d ever seen him. “I can’t believe I forgot this. I was going to give this to you before my little speech....” He put his hand to his forehead and moaned, “That horrible little speech. I should have had Alex write me something.”
“No,” she refuted. “It was perfect. I wouldn’t change a word.”
Max gave her an I-doubt-that look, but he handed her the package.
Heather saw fringe first. A band of long green fringe, interspersed with a few shots of black. As she began to unfold the soft fluffy fabric, she recognized it as knitting. Only it didn’t look like any of the prayer shawls she’d seen before. Opening it more, Heather uncovered an amazing design of the palest pink background with a flock of flamboyant pink flamingos standing on each end. The pattern was such that the fringe looked like sea grass and the black flamingo legs extended down to become the black bits of fringe so that the whole piece looked like two flocks of flamingos standing in the tropics. “Oh, Max! It’s incredible!” And it was. It was playful and soft and just a little bit outrageous. The absolute perfect prayer shawl for her. “How?”
“Violet Sharpton. Evidently she enjoys a challenge.”
Heather held it up, laughing at the soft and silly flock of her very own. She pulled it around her shoulders, feeling every bit of the affection she knew was behind the gift. “I love it.” She leaned over so that the ends found their way around Max’s shoulders. “I love you.”
Max pulled her down onto his chair. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He kissed her again, and they sat there, wrapped up in flamingos and pure joy, looking out at the fall spectacle that was the Gordon River in October.
It was as close to a perfect moment as Heather could ever hope to come. “So I guess we do have a lot to celebrate today,” she whispered into Max’s hair.
“We could have a whole pie each and not come close to hitting the mark.” Max laughed and planted a kiss on her shoulder.
“I think a slice will do. Karl’s?”
He spun the chair in the direction of the riverbank. “Hang on, darlin’—it’s all downhill from here.”
Heather held up the shawl, letting the fringe flutter in the breeze as they rolled toward town.