" He didn’t know how to help. If Max were anyone else, Jules would sit with him for a while, looking out at the night, and then start to talk. About nothing too heavy at first. Warming up to get into the hard stuff.
Although, maybe, if he tried that now, the man would either open up—Ha, ha, ha! Riotous laughter. Like that would ever happen—or he’d stand up and move outside of talking range, which would put him away from the window with nothing to look at, at which point he might close his eyes for a while.
It was certainly worth a try.
Of course there were other possibilities. Max could put Jules into a chokehold until he passed out.
So okay. Start talking. Although why bother with inconsequential chitchat, designed to make Max relax? And weren’t those words--Max and relax--two that had never before been used together in a sentence?
It wasn’t going to happen, so it made sense to just jump right in.
Although, what was the best way to tell a friend that the choices he’d made were among the stupidest of all time, and that he was, in short, a complete dumbfuck?
Max was not oblivious to Jules’s internal hemming and hawing. “If you have something you need to say, for the love of God, just say it. Don’t sit there making all those weird noises.”
What? “What noises? I’m not making weird noises.”
“Yeah,” Max said. “You are.”
“Like what? Like . . .?” He held out his hands, inviting Max to demonstrate.
“Like . . .” Max sighed heavily. “Like . . .” He made a tsking sound with his tongue.
Jules laughed. “Those aren’t weird noises. Weird noises are like, whup-whup-whup-whup”-- he imitated sounds from a Three Stooges movie—“or Vrrrrrr.”
“Sometimes I really have to work to remind myself that you’re one of the Bureau’s best agents,” Max said. "

― Suzanne Brockmann , Breaking Point (Troubleshooters, #9)