The Death Card - Part 3

Here's the third part of "The Death Card." Now we see the infamous Max from his point of view, and it's not pretty...

Apparently, calling Jake a dumb blonde was a bad idea since Shelley immediately slapped me. In the cold air, it didn't sting that much, but the shock was enough to make up for the lack of pain. She looked pretty damn furious, flicking some piece of paper at me before walking to her front door and going in without another word.
I picked up the piece of paper she had thrown at me; it was the two of hearts. At first, it made no sense, but then I remembered an incident when Freddie pulled a similar card out of his wallet when George was being annoying. More annoying than usual, that is. For some reason, he shut up after seeing it; they called it the Death Card or something. I didn't really need to know the story behind it to know what it meant. One thing I've always been proud of is the fact that I know when to cut my losses and book it, but for some reason that little talent had failed me where Shelley was concerned. The card reminded me of that.
Instead of trying to appeal to Shelley again, I thought, fuck it, and left. I didn't get very far before I heard someone shout my name from behind. Thinking Shelley had changed her mind, I turned around right away. But it was just her roommate, Alice. Great.
"Hey, Max, what are you doing around here?" she asked. Her voice was always just a little too peppy for me. The only good thing about the fact that Shelley wanted to us to hide all the time was being able to avoid Alice. She was cute enough, but I wasn't into brunettes.
"Just walking home. I happened to be passing by."
"Really? Well I'm going in the same direction. Mind if I walk with you?"
Perfect. Now I had to make small talk with her until she went on her own way. But I always thought of myself as a gentleman, so I said, "Sure."
"Awesome!" she said, then started chattering on about something or other.
I wasn't really paying attention to anything Alice said, just interjecting an, "uh-huh" and "hmm," whenever I remembered to. I liked Shelley because she mostly kept her thoughts to herself. We did what we came to each other for, and that was it; nice and simple. Alice, though, just didn't seem to know when to give up.
Finally, I couldn't stand her anymore and just said, "Alice, I've kind of had a rough day. Do you mind just going on without me?"
She looked pretty crestfallen, but didn't really take the hint. "What's wrong? Not girl problems, I hope. I can't imagine that you'd have any issues there."
The way she smiled at me was the way girls smiled when they wanted something from me. It was the smile that Shelley gave me right before she told me she wouldn't mind another guy on the side whenever Jake wasn't around.
"Look, I really don't want to talk about it. Thanks anyway."
"Well, if you ever want to talk," she started to say, but I wasn't about to let her continue deluding herself. Just as I was about to cut her off, I realized the card was still in my hand.
"Here, I'm sure you know what this is all about. Maybe that can get my point across a little better." I handed her the card and walked away. It was pretty shitty of me, but after getting stomped on by Shelley, I didn't really care about pretending to be a nice guy anymore.

Next time, we'll see how Alice copes with Max's insensitivity.