Just Max

A Short Story

Photo by Laura Wielo on Unsplash

Her best friend tells this story when he has an audience willing to listen.

He was on a flight from somewhere. Abby knows he was on a flight from Des Moines to Dallas, but sometimes he changes it. When it’s work buddies, it’s a flight from D.C. to Dallas. When it’s a new girl, one of Abby’s friends come into town for a girls’ weekend but finding herself at a bar with Max too—don’t worry, he’s cool. No, we’re not dating. He’s just Max. No, seriously, he’s like a brother. When it’s a girl, especially one who’s just graduated from her H&M wardrobe to something a little more sophisticated, then he was flying from New York City to Dallas.

But Abby knows that, to Max, the point isn’t the city, which is why it doesn’t really bother her that he always changes it. The point is that he makes this flight all the time, for work, on his way back from visiting his cousins: you get the point. He wasn’t expecting anything. You never expect something like this.

As he boards the plane, pass in hand, he waits his turn to shove a worn carryon into a crowded bin, hopes for a worn pleather seat with fewer crumbs in its crevices than the next, prays he doesn’t have a seat right next to the bathroom. All this to get them laughing, commenting on how stupid it is, the leg room, the fact that your sock is on all wrong because you had to stuff your shoe back on after security and book it to your gate. That airline lost my luggage for three days one time. They give you a bag with two pretzels in it and call it an in-flight snack. Have airplane bathrooms gotten smaller? He gets them into it. Makes them feel like this is their story too, because he knows that’s all anyone really wants to hear.