Living in Max's Shadow – Chapter 53

By MyNameIsCAL

-The End-

It's been five years since Gazzy took his life. Five years and two months that I've been sober. Five years and four months since we got Max back. Things have been steadily getting better though.

Max and I have three kids now, another one on the way. Our first one, a boy, we named after Gazzy himself. Our next one was a girl, and we named her Val, after Mom. Our third was another boy, who we named Oz.

"What're we going to name this one?" Max asks, her hand on her stomach.

"Well if it's a boy?" I prompt.

"I say we name it after Jack," Max finishes. "What were you thinking?"

I shrug. "I don't know, Max the second?"

Max laughs. "Then if we have a daughter are we going to name her Fang?"

I shake my head. "No, of course not. We'd still name it Max."

"You just don't want to name it Fang."

"Well, who would want to be named Fang?" I laugh. "I mean, we mind as well should name our next child Tooth."

Max laughs, amused. "No seriously, we need names, Fang."

"Alright, so Jack," I say, thinking more deeply now. "And how about, let's see, how about…"

She suddenly takes my hand, placing it on her belly. "Do you feel that?"

Something bumps my hand. I smile and Max is smiling back.

"Oh, our baby is definitely a fighter," I say, kissing Max on the cheek.

She takes my hand as we make our way to the deck, our pool in sight now, Iggy and Ella's kids outside running around it with our own.

"Hey, guys," Iggy says as we step out. "Burgers or hotdogs?"

"Burgers," Max answers.

"Good because I don't have any hotdogs anyway," Iggy cackles. Still the joker he was, although I felt like they were progressively getting worse.

Angel is two years into college now, but it's summer, and she's still sweet, spending time with us and helping us out with the kids. She's always been strong too, not dwelling too much on Gazzy's death. Every now and then Max catches her crying, but usually it ends up that Angel is the one comforting us.

Nudge and Iggy haven't forgotten about each other. They still think about Gazzy's letter, from time to time, I guess. One time I caught them kissing behind the pool house. I probably should have told on them, but it would just be too much pain to go through and in the end, knew that Iggy would go back to Ella anyway because Nudge, well, she would always feel like family to Ig.

Oh, and Gazzy's movie ended up being a hit. It was hard not to say that his death had boosted ticket sales, but I'm sure that even he'd smile upon that, wherever he was now. He and Iggy are the kind of guys that would joke and laugh about their own deaths, even at their funerals.

Gazzy left everything he had to us. His money, his house…everything. We kept his house, only because we knew selling it felt wrong, but living in it just hurt too much. Angel went there sometimes, by herself. We took turns to keep it clean. Eventually, some day, it would get used, if not by us, by someone else.

"Hey, Uncle Jack!" The kids start to squeal, running towards the gate.

Jack Thomas, a little older looking, hair graying, stands there smiling, holding these bags, full of unneeded presents. He never starred in another movie, but Gazzy left it in his will that Jack needed to go through all his unfinished or drafted scripts and at least make another movie. Everything Jack touched seemed to be golden. Did I mention Gazzy's movie and it's actors picked up a couple of Academy Awards? That was a grand night, but tearful, as Jack was the one who we went to go accept the Best Picture award.

Angel had been staying at our house after moving all of Gazzy's things either to Jack's place or our basement, and her walls, which we lined with shelves, were filled with Gazzy's awards. Jack never wanted to keep them for himself, always offering them to Angel, but she would only shake her head and smile, saying that Gazzy would want to give him credit too.

Nudge arrives shortly after Jack, saying hello to Iggy, giving him a hug and she holds onto him longer than necessary and I'm thankful that Ella is distracted by Jack and the children. Although, through the grapevine, I saw it in a tabloid, that Nudge, now a fashion designer, was spotted with Jack a couple weekends ago at some restaurant together, looking very romantic. I made note to ask her later.

"Well, look at you," Jack smiles, hugging Max and then shaking my hand. "The two of you, with all your children. Gosh, Gazzy would be so jealous. He always wanted to have kids."

And sometimes, we all felt like Jack knew Gazzy better than us, and maybe it was because he did. Jack goes around, saying hello to Nudge, and I can tell he's whispering in her ear as she smiles. Then he moves to Mom and comes back to the kids, handing out action figures, probably something yet to be released for his new movie, probably the one he was talking about that Gazzy wrote up about superheroes.

Jack wasn't the only one who kept in touch with us. The other actors called us up every now and then, inviting us to dinner, or showing up at our house with stories to tell that made us smile and reminisce that Gazzy would have enjoyed it all so much. Especially Tate, who Iggy was glad to get together with almost every week. In another life, I swear, they could be twins. Like Jack, he always came around with things for the children. One of the closer human friends we had made over the past five years.

"Uncle Tate, Uncle Tate!" I hear Oz chant. It's like they haven't seen him in years, even though it was just two days ago we all had dinner with each other.

"Hey, Oz," Tate smiles, patting Oz's head.

Although Tate isn't has agile as Iggy is. Oz takes Tate by the hand and leads him over to Iggy and they start off a conversation quickly. Afternoons like this were chaos, but as things settled down in the night, it almost felt magical, especially when the kids grew tired and lay on the deck, trying to make sense of the stars. And sometimes, we'd pull out one of Gazzy's movies, Nudge would hook up the projector, and we'd sit, watching. Sometimes, it almost felt like Gazzy was with us, joking along, telling us how that stunt had almost burned all his hair off, or sometimes, if you sat and listened to everyone talk for a while, you could almost hear him laughing along.

Although we never watched his final movie, or the other movie he directed. For us, that was too painful. But late nights, with a good cup of coffee, Max snuggled against me, we would sit and watch and remember how far we had come since what seemed like lifetimes ago.

Well, that's the end. I'm thinking one day I have to write a story when Max and Fang's kids are really involved, not just an afterthought at the end. I hope you enjoyed this. I'll admit this wasn't exactly my favorite story to write. In fact, the last five chapters, I sat down and wrote them all consecutively. But I enjoyed writing the ending. There's some satisfaction when you complete something, and hope this ending was satisfying enough for you.

Well, I've got plenty of other stories for you to check up on, so please do. Stay tuned for a new stories. I'll put up probably two or three new ones based on poll results. So check out the poll when you get a chance because I'll be closing it soon.

Thanks for reading and for the reviews. Nothing brings me more joy than sitting at my computer and seeing that people actually read my stuff. I remember when I wrote my first story, and I must have posted a couple of chapters until people reviewed. I thought about giving up, and I'm glad I didn't. Check out the poll on my profile to vote on what kind of story I'll be posting next. Once I finish "Lie Tonight", I'll be closing the poll and posting at least two new stories, so get voting! Expect that to happen in the next week or so.

Again, thank you so much,

}MyNameIsCAL{