Jo's No Good, Very Bad Year 6/7
Neither of them could have guessed that one night would be such a mistake. This is, objectively, because Jo Halbig and David Schlichter are emotional idiots.
“I knew you two were close, but I never would’ve thought your brother didn’t think I was good enough for you,” Jo says, scraping his nails along the wood grain. He’s hiding from everyone but David right now.
“He doesn’t think that.” David looks honestly surprised. “What the hell?”
“He told me as much. He was trying to warn me off from you. Said a bunch of stuff the other day.”
David’s surprise turns to dubiousness.
“You must have heard wrong,” he tells Jo. “He’s not all protective of me, the way you are about Fabi. He trusts me.”
“I trust Fabi,” Jo snaps automatically.
“Right. Okay. Anyway, I sincerely doubt that’s what he was doing. Mäx might be a little mad, but it ain’t cause you’re with me. Well, yeah, it’s that but it’s not cause you’re with me. Got it?” David catches the confused look on Jo’s face. He groans, rubbing his face with those long fingers of his. Then he begins to speak rapidly, as though reciting a well-known fact. “Every time he picks up a girl, she’s a tall, boyish brunette, preferably with a flat chest. Barring that, it’ll be a short brunette or a tall brunette with curves or, hell, occasionally even a dark redhead if she’s got brown eyes and the right attitude. It is an astoundingly obvious pattern, Jo. How could you not notice?”
Jo says nothing.
“You are not this stupid, Jo. Tell me you are not this stupid.”
“Shut up, David.”
“You, stay here,” David says. He gets up, shaking his head and muttering to himself in Portuguese.
Asshole.
“You could have had him years ago,” David says finally, raking his hands through his hair as he paces back and forth. “How did you not see this? Seriously? I thought you knew!”
“Yes,” Jo says sarcastically. “Because it makes so much sense for me to have known all along.” He doesn’t say what he was supposed to know exactly. He’s not sure he believes David. After all, plenty of people think he’s closer to Mäx than he really is.
“So what now?” Jo asks.
David takes a swig of his Heineken. “That’s up to you. He’s upset; you’re upset. It’s whatever you want it to be.” He leans forward. “But you know what? He finds out you and I weren’t anything? That might help put a lot of this behind him.”
ØØØ
“You wanna play Frisbee with me?” Fabi asks, leaning against Jo’s bunk where the singer’s flipping through a magazine. Jo absolutely despises the tour bus now, mostly because it means being cooped up for extended periods of time with, oh, Mäx. This, unsurprisingly, does nothing to relax the unbearable tension between them.
“Not right now, Fabi.”
“Okay,” Fabi says, climbing up onto the spare bunk. There’s silence for a few long moments. Jo can hear Fabi scratching his nails against the wood frame.
“Hey, Jo?” Fabi finally asks, when the scratching is a second from becoming truly aggravating.
“What?”
“Why’s everybody mad at each other?”
“What are you talking about?” Jo’s uneasy, wondering if Fabi knows, wondering how much he’s noticed. The kid’s a bit of an airhead, but no one’s tried too hard to keep things a secret.
“You and Mäx, Benni and David, you and David, Mäx and David. Benni snapped at me earlier when I asked if he wanted to play soccer with me. David won’t even talk to me. Did David do something?”
Jo purses his lips, looks at the ceiling. Benni and David? What’s that about? “David didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t worry about it, man.”
“Okay,” Fabi says, sounding like it’s not okay at all. Jo feels like a terrible brother.
“You still want to play Frisbee?” he asks. Fabi perks up.
They leave the bus, Jo taking a furtive look around to make sure no Schlichters or Beiningers are around. Fabi stakes out the first patch of healthy, green grass and throws a perfect arc over Jo’s head. Jo catches the neon pink Frisbee, fingering the plastic rim for a few seconds.
“You know how David and I have been spending more time with each other lately?”
Fabi rolls his eyes.
“Oh, my God, Jo, I’m not five. You’ve been ‘spending time’ with David like I’ve been ‘spending time’ with Saskia.” He places his hand on the side of his mouth. “Grown up people call that ‘fucking’.”
Jo flips him off. Fabi laughs.
“Anyway, David and I have been…seeing each other.” Jo tosses the Frisbee Fabi’s way, aiming it at Fabi’s groin. Fabi, sadly, catches it. “And Mäx doesn’t approve of me.”
Fabi stands up straight. He gives Jo a funny look.
“Mäx- our Mäx- doesn’t approve of you?”
“That’s what I said.”
Fabi shakes his head. “You must’ve got it wrong. Mäx wouldn’t disapprove of you. Is that what David said?”
“No.” Jo grimaces, leaping up to catch Fabi’s throw. “He’s got this idea that Mäx is jealous of him.”
“He probably is.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Maybe.” Fabi shrugs one shoulder. “Or you’re in denial.”
“Mäx likes girls.”
“Mäx likes you. Whether he also likes girl is irrelevant.” Fuck, Fabi knows big words now. Jo keeps forgetting that. He has this idea in his head of Fabi at fifteen, and it stays with him even though that was ten years ago. “Unless you’re into threesomes,” he adds because he is Jo’s brother, after all, “I don’t see why you care about that. Mäx certainly doesn’t.”
“Okay,” Jo snorts. “Riddle me this, then: if Mäx is into me, why’s he never done anything about it?”
Fabi taps the Frisbee against his thigh thoughtfully.
“You ever think maybe he’s waiting for you to make the first move?”
ØØØ
Everyone’s crazy. That’s the only explanation. If Mäx had ever been interested, he would have said something. He didn’t.
Fabi’s gone back to the bus. He had promised Saskia earlier that he would call her, and Jo doesn’t want to keep him when he so obviously wants to go. It’s nice to know Fabi really likes this girl, even if Jo barely knows her.
He doesn’t even realize he’s walking towards the picnic table where Mäx is sitting, arms folded on top of the weathered wood, until he gets there. Jo panics, his body freezing up instantly. He turns his foot, ready to pretend to be going in a different direction when he sees Mäx’s face.
Mäx looks tired. He’s wearing dark aviators, but Jo can see the haggard set to his face, the slump of his shoulders, the dejected quality he just oozes. This isn’t hangover tired or partying too hard tired. This is “life is shit” tired. Jo knows what that feels like. A band tightens around his heart and squeezes so hard Jo can’t breathe.
He sits down a little distance from Mäx. Neither of them says anything for so long that Jo doesn’t even think Mäx knows he’s there.
Then Mäx shifts his hand too far, touching Jo. It’s just a touch, a brush of the back of his hand against Jo’s pants leg, but looking at Jo’s face you’d think it was so much more. Mäx pulls his hand back, grips the wood underneath them.
“Why don’t you want me?” Jo asks the question that’s been plaguing him for years. He looks down where their hands almost touch.
“What?” Mäx’s words are quiet. He’s surprised, but he’s not going to do anything to startle or anger Jo.
“Why don’t you want me?” Jo repeats, lifting his head to search Mäx’s face. In that moment, Mäx would do anything for him. Anything. He’s stupidly obsessed with his stupid friend who’s too stupid to realize that Mäx never, ever, ever didn’t want him. It is kind of why Mäx does fifty percent of the things he does. Jo, of course, knows none of this. He can read surprise there with overtones of annoyance and patience, but together, they tell him nothing. “We’re best friends…and that’s it.”
“I never said that.”
“You’re going to get married and start a family, and I’m still going to be here, the loser everyone secretly thinks is gay.” Jo wraps his arms around his knees, pulling them to his chest.
“No one thinks that,” Mäx says, almost laughing like it’s absurd. Shows how much he knows. Jo tries not to feel awful that the dude who’s practically his best friend knows jack squat about one of the most basic things about him. “Why do you even care so much what other people think about you?”
“I don’t- I- I just don’t want you to move on, okay? I know you’re going to, someday. Shit, Fabi’s already halfway there now, and you know it’s not going to be me next, so-”
“So what? We’re still going to have the band. That’s not going to change.”
“Yeah, but.” You will. You’re going to find someone, and I’m not because I’m too far gone to be happy with anyone else, which, yeah, is more than a little fucked up. Jo doesn’t say any of this. He can’t.
“I’ve always thought you were amazing,” Mäx says softly. He shifts just a little bit, enough to make Jo incredibly aware that they’re touching all along their sides. “Did you know that? Even when we were kids. You had this energy about you. We all wanted to take on the world, but you actually had a chance of doing it. If it’d been me and Fabi-” Mäx shrugs, “-we wouldn’t be here now. You were the one that kept pushing us.”
Jo feels warm suddenly, heat spreading over his face. Mäx’s compliments aren’t rare, but he’s one of the few people Jo listens to when they’re given because Mäx doesn’t lie, not often. Jo wants to stay right there and run, like he hasn’t known this guy for over fifteen years, like it’s completely reasonable to want to run, arms flailing over his head, away from one of the few people who completely gets him. He wants to say, you were always more talented than I was, and you still are but he doesn’t want to get into an argument, stupid as it may be.
“We’re not normal, are we?” Jo asks instead. His hand skims across Mäx’s accidentally.
“Nope.” He can feel Mäx’s shoulder against his, warmth seeping through his shirt into Jo’s.
“Did we ever have a chance, you and me?” Jo asks.
Mäx crosses his arms and leans backwards. Jo knows he’s closed his eyes before Mäx lets out a soft huff that might be a sigh.
“Did I ever have a chance?” Jo feels small, so small. It hurts to say the words, a band tightening too firmly around his chest. “Or was that just stupid of me? I know I crossed a line with David, but, Mäx-” Jo loses his words when Mäx looks up and he can see the pain in Mäx’s eyes, knows he’s hurt him somewhere deep and irreparable and knows just as surely that he, Jo, will never be forgiven for causing that pain. Jo’s voice is tiny when he says, “I’m sorry.”
He is. He’s so sorry he fucked up, that he defiled Mäx’s baby brother, that he flaunted that relationship when Jo knows how violently angry he would have been if it had been Mäx and Fabi. Friends don’t do that.
Jo just wanted someone like Mäx, that’s all. That’s all he wanted.
Mäx reaches back and covers Jo’s hand with his own.
“You still do,” he says, squeezing. A thrill passes through Jo.
“What?” Jo can’t breathe. Mäx is touching him deliberately, and he can’t breathe.
“You still have a chance. You’ll always have a chance if you want to take it.”
Then he gets up and he’s gone, and Jo’s as clueless as before.
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“I knew you two were close, but I never would’ve thought your brother didn’t think I was good enough for you,” Jo says, scraping his nails along the wood grain. He’s hiding from everyone but David right now.
“He doesn’t think that.” David looks honestly surprised. “What the hell?”
“He told me as much. He was trying to warn me off from you. Said a bunch of stuff the other day.”
David’s surprise turns to dubiousness.
“You must have heard wrong,” he tells Jo. “He’s not all protective of me, the way you are about Fabi. He trusts me.”
“I trust Fabi,” Jo snaps automatically.
“Right. Okay. Anyway, I sincerely doubt that’s what he was doing. Mäx might be a little mad, but it ain’t cause you’re with me. Well, yeah, it’s that but it’s not cause you’re with me. Got it?” David catches the confused look on Jo’s face. He groans, rubbing his face with those long fingers of his. Then he begins to speak rapidly, as though reciting a well-known fact. “Every time he picks up a girl, she’s a tall, boyish brunette, preferably with a flat chest. Barring that, it’ll be a short brunette or a tall brunette with curves or, hell, occasionally even a dark redhead if she’s got brown eyes and the right attitude. It is an astoundingly obvious pattern, Jo. How could you not notice?”
Jo says nothing.
“You are not this stupid, Jo. Tell me you are not this stupid.”
“Shut up, David.”
“You, stay here,” David says. He gets up, shaking his head and muttering to himself in Portuguese.
Asshole.
“You could have had him years ago,” David says finally, raking his hands through his hair as he paces back and forth. “How did you not see this? Seriously? I thought you knew!”
“Yes,” Jo says sarcastically. “Because it makes so much sense for me to have known all along.” He doesn’t say what he was supposed to know exactly. He’s not sure he believes David. After all, plenty of people think he’s closer to Mäx than he really is.
“So what now?” Jo asks.
David takes a swig of his Heineken. “That’s up to you. He’s upset; you’re upset. It’s whatever you want it to be.” He leans forward. “But you know what? He finds out you and I weren’t anything? That might help put a lot of this behind him.”
ØØØ
“You wanna play Frisbee with me?” Fabi asks, leaning against Jo’s bunk where the singer’s flipping through a magazine. Jo absolutely despises the tour bus now, mostly because it means being cooped up for extended periods of time with, oh, Mäx. This, unsurprisingly, does nothing to relax the unbearable tension between them.
“Not right now, Fabi.”
“Okay,” Fabi says, climbing up onto the spare bunk. There’s silence for a few long moments. Jo can hear Fabi scratching his nails against the wood frame.
“Hey, Jo?” Fabi finally asks, when the scratching is a second from becoming truly aggravating.
“What?”
“Why’s everybody mad at each other?”
“What are you talking about?” Jo’s uneasy, wondering if Fabi knows, wondering how much he’s noticed. The kid’s a bit of an airhead, but no one’s tried too hard to keep things a secret.
“You and Mäx, Benni and David, you and David, Mäx and David. Benni snapped at me earlier when I asked if he wanted to play soccer with me. David won’t even talk to me. Did David do something?”
Jo purses his lips, looks at the ceiling. Benni and David? What’s that about? “David didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t worry about it, man.”
“Okay,” Fabi says, sounding like it’s not okay at all. Jo feels like a terrible brother.
“You still want to play Frisbee?” he asks. Fabi perks up.
They leave the bus, Jo taking a furtive look around to make sure no Schlichters or Beiningers are around. Fabi stakes out the first patch of healthy, green grass and throws a perfect arc over Jo’s head. Jo catches the neon pink Frisbee, fingering the plastic rim for a few seconds.
“You know how David and I have been spending more time with each other lately?”
Fabi rolls his eyes.
“Oh, my God, Jo, I’m not five. You’ve been ‘spending time’ with David like I’ve been ‘spending time’ with Saskia.” He places his hand on the side of his mouth. “Grown up people call that ‘fucking’.”
Jo flips him off. Fabi laughs.
“Anyway, David and I have been…seeing each other.” Jo tosses the Frisbee Fabi’s way, aiming it at Fabi’s groin. Fabi, sadly, catches it. “And Mäx doesn’t approve of me.”
Fabi stands up straight. He gives Jo a funny look.
“Mäx- our Mäx- doesn’t approve of you?”
“That’s what I said.”
Fabi shakes his head. “You must’ve got it wrong. Mäx wouldn’t disapprove of you. Is that what David said?”
“No.” Jo grimaces, leaping up to catch Fabi’s throw. “He’s got this idea that Mäx is jealous of him.”
“He probably is.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Maybe.” Fabi shrugs one shoulder. “Or you’re in denial.”
“Mäx likes girls.”
“Mäx likes you. Whether he also likes girl is irrelevant.” Fuck, Fabi knows big words now. Jo keeps forgetting that. He has this idea in his head of Fabi at fifteen, and it stays with him even though that was ten years ago. “Unless you’re into threesomes,” he adds because he is Jo’s brother, after all, “I don’t see why you care about that. Mäx certainly doesn’t.”
“Okay,” Jo snorts. “Riddle me this, then: if Mäx is into me, why’s he never done anything about it?”
Fabi taps the Frisbee against his thigh thoughtfully.
“You ever think maybe he’s waiting for you to make the first move?”
ØØØ
Everyone’s crazy. That’s the only explanation. If Mäx had ever been interested, he would have said something. He didn’t.
Fabi’s gone back to the bus. He had promised Saskia earlier that he would call her, and Jo doesn’t want to keep him when he so obviously wants to go. It’s nice to know Fabi really likes this girl, even if Jo barely knows her.
He doesn’t even realize he’s walking towards the picnic table where Mäx is sitting, arms folded on top of the weathered wood, until he gets there. Jo panics, his body freezing up instantly. He turns his foot, ready to pretend to be going in a different direction when he sees Mäx’s face.
Mäx looks tired. He’s wearing dark aviators, but Jo can see the haggard set to his face, the slump of his shoulders, the dejected quality he just oozes. This isn’t hangover tired or partying too hard tired. This is “life is shit” tired. Jo knows what that feels like. A band tightens around his heart and squeezes so hard Jo can’t breathe.
He sits down a little distance from Mäx. Neither of them says anything for so long that Jo doesn’t even think Mäx knows he’s there.
Then Mäx shifts his hand too far, touching Jo. It’s just a touch, a brush of the back of his hand against Jo’s pants leg, but looking at Jo’s face you’d think it was so much more. Mäx pulls his hand back, grips the wood underneath them.
“Why don’t you want me?” Jo asks the question that’s been plaguing him for years. He looks down where their hands almost touch.
“What?” Mäx’s words are quiet. He’s surprised, but he’s not going to do anything to startle or anger Jo.
“Why don’t you want me?” Jo repeats, lifting his head to search Mäx’s face. In that moment, Mäx would do anything for him. Anything. He’s stupidly obsessed with his stupid friend who’s too stupid to realize that Mäx never, ever, ever didn’t want him. It is kind of why Mäx does fifty percent of the things he does. Jo, of course, knows none of this. He can read surprise there with overtones of annoyance and patience, but together, they tell him nothing. “We’re best friends…and that’s it.”
“I never said that.”
“You’re going to get married and start a family, and I’m still going to be here, the loser everyone secretly thinks is gay.” Jo wraps his arms around his knees, pulling them to his chest.
“No one thinks that,” Mäx says, almost laughing like it’s absurd. Shows how much he knows. Jo tries not to feel awful that the dude who’s practically his best friend knows jack squat about one of the most basic things about him. “Why do you even care so much what other people think about you?”
“I don’t- I- I just don’t want you to move on, okay? I know you’re going to, someday. Shit, Fabi’s already halfway there now, and you know it’s not going to be me next, so-”
“So what? We’re still going to have the band. That’s not going to change.”
“Yeah, but.” You will. You’re going to find someone, and I’m not because I’m too far gone to be happy with anyone else, which, yeah, is more than a little fucked up. Jo doesn’t say any of this. He can’t.
“I’ve always thought you were amazing,” Mäx says softly. He shifts just a little bit, enough to make Jo incredibly aware that they’re touching all along their sides. “Did you know that? Even when we were kids. You had this energy about you. We all wanted to take on the world, but you actually had a chance of doing it. If it’d been me and Fabi-” Mäx shrugs, “-we wouldn’t be here now. You were the one that kept pushing us.”
Jo feels warm suddenly, heat spreading over his face. Mäx’s compliments aren’t rare, but he’s one of the few people Jo listens to when they’re given because Mäx doesn’t lie, not often. Jo wants to stay right there and run, like he hasn’t known this guy for over fifteen years, like it’s completely reasonable to want to run, arms flailing over his head, away from one of the few people who completely gets him. He wants to say, you were always more talented than I was, and you still are but he doesn’t want to get into an argument, stupid as it may be.
“We’re not normal, are we?” Jo asks instead. His hand skims across Mäx’s accidentally.
“Nope.” He can feel Mäx’s shoulder against his, warmth seeping through his shirt into Jo’s.
“Did we ever have a chance, you and me?” Jo asks.
Mäx crosses his arms and leans backwards. Jo knows he’s closed his eyes before Mäx lets out a soft huff that might be a sigh.
“Did I ever have a chance?” Jo feels small, so small. It hurts to say the words, a band tightening too firmly around his chest. “Or was that just stupid of me? I know I crossed a line with David, but, Mäx-” Jo loses his words when Mäx looks up and he can see the pain in Mäx’s eyes, knows he’s hurt him somewhere deep and irreparable and knows just as surely that he, Jo, will never be forgiven for causing that pain. Jo’s voice is tiny when he says, “I’m sorry.”
He is. He’s so sorry he fucked up, that he defiled Mäx’s baby brother, that he flaunted that relationship when Jo knows how violently angry he would have been if it had been Mäx and Fabi. Friends don’t do that.
Jo just wanted someone like Mäx, that’s all. That’s all he wanted.
Mäx reaches back and covers Jo’s hand with his own.
“You still do,” he says, squeezing. A thrill passes through Jo.
“What?” Jo can’t breathe. Mäx is touching him deliberately, and he can’t breathe.
“You still have a chance. You’ll always have a chance if you want to take it.”
Then he gets up and he’s gone, and Jo’s as clueless as before.
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