around the dog, and went back inside with the dogs following her. She picked up her slobbered shoe and took a selfie with it. She texted it to Max. She thought the photo spoke for itself.
Max did not answer. He was probably too busy taking a postcoital bubble bath with his girlfriend, that lucky bastard.
Seven
Max didn’t answer Carly’s texts or take on the responsibility for the fish oil debacle—which may or may not have been Hazel, let’s be honest, as there were two dogs in that house—because he was living his own personal shit show.
The weekend in Chicago? The one that was supposed to be a joyous occasion for his brother that would eclipse all other memories? It turned out to be one of the hardest things Max had ever done. Oh, but his dad had warned him when Max had first floated the idea. He’d scratched his chin as he’d considered it, then had slowly begun to shake his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Son. I don’t think Jamie can handle all that excitement.”
“Sure he can,” Max had said with all the confidence of a neuroscientist who thought he knew everything there was to know about anything. He studied brains for a living. He taught budding young scientists the intricate wonders of the central nervous system. He was an expert on neurodevelopmental disorders. He knew what medications Jamie took to manage the aggression and self-harm he sometimes exhibited; and he knew all the behavioral, sensory integrations, and occupational therapies that Jamie had been exposed to so that he could better navigate this world. He knew everything like a thirteen-year-old knew everything.
“Look how well he’s been doing,” he’d pointed out to his father, as if his father might not have noticed.
“Because he’s got a routine,” his dad had countered. “We do the same thing every day, and every day, he knows what to expect. But when we step out of that routine, he gets flustered. An airplane? A new city? I don’t know about that, Max.”
“Dad.” Max had spoken with the patience and compassion a brilliant neuroscientist would have for an addled father, and had even put his hand on his father’s shoulder and squeezed it in a reassuring way. “I know what I’m doing.”
Well, the verdict was in, and he did not know what he was doing.
In the space of three days, he’d proved once again that all the study in the world could not substitute for actual experience in the field, in the lab, or in life. He wanted to kick his own ass for assuming that it could. Jamie wasn’t a lab subject, he was his brother, and Max had prepped for this weekend like it was a lab experiment. He had all the necessary ingredients in place, and all he had to do was set the wheels in motion, watch Jamie enjoy the event of a lifetime, and record the results. An event Max had designed with all his brain science.
Stupid asshole.
The trip had gotten off to a fairly good start, maybe better than Max had hoped, and he’d been smugly pleased with himself. He’d prepared for the flight, had a new copy of Dogster magazine just in case Jamie didn’t take to the flight well. But Jamie had been enthralled and had spent most of the flight with his face glued to the window, his unintelligible grunts a sign of his pleasure at what he was seeing.
There was a small hiccup in Atlanta when they had to catch a connecting flight. Jamie had not understood the need for that. He’d tried to pull Max toward the exit. “Dog show,” he’d said impatiently, pointing at the exit sign. Max had finally convinced him by showing him the boarding passes, and they’d carried on to Chicago.
But Chicago, with the cacophony of sounds and lights and the crush of people in the streets, was too much for Jamie. It began at the airport. When Max hailed a cab, Jamie refused to get in until Max lied and told him it was the only way to get to the dog show. At their hotel, Jamie kept putting his hands over his ears at the sounds of traffic and the grind of a garbage truck making its rounds.
His first outburst had occurred on the street. Max had thought it would be a good idea to get something to eat. The concierge had suggested a diner down the street. So off they’d gone, crowding in with everyone else