Free Maxed Out by Kim Ross Page A

completely
hypocritical.”
    “I didn’t expect you to take his side,” I say. “I thought
you would be more supportive of waiting for the right guy.”
    “What, to carry you off into the sunset? Would you even
enjoy that?”
    I don’t have a good response, so I sit on that for a minute.
I generally enjoy being the one in charge in my relationships. The fact that
Max has been a departure from that pattern is the only reason I’m taking this
proposal seriously: with any of my past boyfriends the sudden reversal of
initiative and control would probably have thrown me hard enough to refuse
outright.
    “You think I should accept,” I say finally.
    “I think you should think about it and make sure you have a
real reason,” Renee says. “Will could probably draw up a pre-nup or whatever.
You might want to talk to him after you talk to Max again and make sure
whatever he has in mind isn’t unreasonable.”
    “Why can’t you just have a solid recommendation one way or
the other that I can take?”
    Renee laughs. “I’ve screwed up enough of your relationships
as it is. It’s your life. Make a decision. Or don’t and go talk to him and see
what he thinks.”
    Lot of help that is. She’s right, I suppose. This is a two
person decision – I’ve said that enough myself – and I need to make sure that
Max is involved and has a fair chance to plead his case. I still need to have a
solid stance before I go back in, so I spend a few more minutes writing things
on the legal pad before I retire for the evening.
     

14
     
    I call Max at maybe 10:30 on Saturday, after I’ve had some
time to shower and think for a bit. He’s awake, of course. He’s a firm believer
in keeping the same schedule on weekdays and weekends, which is great in a
vacuum and terrible if you have any variation in your bedtime. Just another one
of Max’s little quirks that I’m still not sure I want to live with for the
duration of a marriage. I realize that doesn’t inherently have to be very long,
but at the same time everyone I know makes fun of the latest celebrity marriage
to break up after only six months. I’m not sure that I’m ready to join them.
    “It’s a cultural thing,” I find myself saying to Max, on the
phone. “As a culture, we haven’t decided what marriage means in the absence of
religion. When someone gets married in a church it means something –
there’s this idea that you’re entering into a sacred union in front of a higher
being. When you get married in a courtroom you’re just sharing assets and
getting a tax write-off. We’re all still trying to equate the two, even though
they’re completely different.”
    “Do you just want to talk about this in person?” he asks.
“It sounds like you have a lot to say. I’m not quite sure what you’re
responding to right now—“
    “Let me finish,” I say. “I’m against the idea of marrying
you because I want to get the first kind of marriage still, one which is a
permanent arrangement concerning the state of our relationship, not the one with
the legal benefits and whatnot. I realize they’re different. I’d be perfectly
happy getting the second one if other people did too, but I’m not sure that I’m
ready to be a divorcee a few years from now, even if we split in a mutually
agreeable way. Not because I have any problems with it. Because other people
would view me differently. It’s a cultural thing.”
    “You’re letting other people’s perceptions dictate our
relationship?” Max says.
    “Yes,” I say. “It’s completely ridiculous to not care about
what other people think. We’ve had this talk before. Whether you like it or not
public perception has a noticeable and discernable impact on everything you do
and not factoring that in is ridiculous, no matter how stupid the reasons
people have for having their opinions are. In this case, I think that our
relationship isn’t worth potentially losing –“
    “None of your friends would stop