Re: log: dylan & max
It wasn't any secret that Max had found herself too deep in a bottle after Amanda was born. That had been a shit time for her, and going back to any empty apartment without a kid had been hard. It had been six-pack after six-pack and nights lost in a buzz that never let her get off the couch. She'd felt sorry for herself then, and it had been the kind of drinking that happened away from people, because she hadn't wanted anyone to see her crying. This shit was different. This was bars and laughter, darts and pool. It was fake as it could be, but she'd lived her life with aliases, and why not have one when it suited her for a change? Alias: Confident, contented woman who liked to throw a few back. Nice. Nearing forty, and she could live with that.
But McKendrick had never struck her as the type. Alright, so they'd gotten drunk a lot, but she always traced that back to her nervousness and his willingness to accompany her on the journey. She didn't imagine him sitting at home and tipping back with a video controller in his hand.
He didn't pull back. His hand stayed, and somehow her attention had fallen back to the resting clasp of gun-learned fingers. He talked, and she looked up again. There were a million reasons to say no; there was only one reason to say yes.
"Alright." She slipped off the barstool, and she finished the dregs of her drink and tucked her smoke in the pocket of her well-worn jeans. She didn't know what to expect. The man she'd known had been all about beds and normalcy. She was even more about bar bathrooms and alleys these days than she had been before, and she had no clue how far off the path he'd traveled. "Where?" she slurred.