“Oh god, Lee,” she vividly recalled thinking as she rushed to wrap an afghan around his drenched shoulders for warmth.
He was physically and emotionally exhausted, and now with his marriage officially over, and his deteriorating mental state in no shape to deal with the rigorous demands of his degree, Mac’s own personal problems vanished instantly—replaced by a worry for her friend unlike any she’d ever known.
At the same time, as much as her heart ached for him, she also felt completely and utterly powerless to do anything about it. No matter how catastrophic her situation might’ve seemed just months ago, Mac knew she could never fully comprehend the emotional gravity and immense psychological trauma of a divorce, much less one stemming from this most egregious of betrayals. Furthermore, she was also stricken with an extreme sense of guilt for her lack of foresight prior to now. He’d been so incredibly kind to her during those dark nights in California when it felt like everything was going so horribly wrong, and her life, as she’d planned it, was such an abhorrent failure. Still, no matter how hard things got—or how late the hour of her call—he was always there for her, listening to her angry rants, comforting her when she had nowhere else to turn, and encouraging her at a time when even she’d lost all faith in herself. Mac honestly wasn’t sure if she’d have survived that experience without Lee’s friendship, nor was she sure he would ever truly realize just how much he’d come to mean to her because of it. Now to think that all of that was happening at a time when his entire life was literally falling apart around him? He’d never said a word, and even though she knew that was his intention, she still hated herself for being so obtuse.
“My turn, Lee,” she whispered, placing his head on her shoulder and wrapping her small arms around him. “Just relax… it’s my turn now.”
The first few months were turbulent to say the least, as Mac and Danny fought to break Lee out of his isolated existence, and back into a social environment. Knowing him to be the solitary, stoic type—admittedly to a fault sometimes—they knew his preference would be to sort things out on his own, and to them that simply wasn’t an option. The hope was that by getting him out, and keeping his mind active, he would be forced to realize that, in spite of his nature, he wasn’t in this alone. It took a while, but as the months following that stormy night passed, the jovial, outgoing person they’d always known as Lee Summerston slowly began to re-emerge and Mac, for one, had sorely missed him.
Late that year, having pulled himself together as best he could, Lee officially earned the doctorate that he’d survived so much to attain. Naturally that meant there had to be a party, and not just any party, but one truly worthy of the occasion.
The next two weeks were a whirlwind of plans as Mac scrambled to make sure every last detail was covered. There were meetings with caterers to attend, decorations to pick up, booze vendors to meet with, staffing arrangements to make, and of course alerting the Pourhouse regulars that the bar would be closed for a private event that night, though many of them would be in attendance anyway. Not the least of her duties was the ever-ballooning guest list, which included several of Lee’s departmental colleagues plus dozens of friends and family, including Link (who by then lived in Atlanta), and Hamish (then in Daytona). Even Lee’s older sister Katelyn managed an appearance, catching a red-eye in from Seattle, where she served as the head of cardiothoracics at King County Hospital.
What an incredible night that was—everyone together again, as if nothing had ever changed.
Finally catching a break from her responsibilities as hostess, Mac grabbed a stool at the bar and poured herself a draft just in time to see Hamish and Link shove yet another shot in front of a visibly tipsy Lee.
“Oh, Lee… you’re so gonna hate yourself in the morning,” she winced as the trio fired back their glasses. Still, she couldn’t help but smile as he wobbled away. It’d been a long time since she’d seen him this happy, and regardless of the work she’d invested to pull this little extravaganza off, it had all been worth it just to see that lovably goofy look on his face.
“Thank you so much, Mac,” said Katelyn as she pulled up a stool. “Not just for the party, but for everything. You don’t know how hard it was for me to be so far away when things went south with Karen. I hated the fact that I couldn’t be there for my little brother when he needed me, but you were, and that meant the world to me. I’m so happy that you guys have each other.”
Mac puzzled for a moment at the ambiguity of her last statement, not quite sure what Katie’s impression of their relationship really was.
“No problem. That’s what friends are for,” she shrugged, hoping Lee’s sister would catch her double meaning.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of four in the morning, as the final group of guests piled into their cab, Mac recruited Hamish and Link to assist her in carrying a virtually incapacitated Lee out to her car for what she hoped would be an uneventful ride home—not that this stopped her from cramming an empty coffee can in his lap, just in case. Arriving at his house, she marveled at the fact that he could even find the key to the front door, much less make it in without help. Once they were inside, she navigated him down the hall and into his room as Lee—still giddy and giggling—babbled his way through the lyrics of the evening’s final Dropkick Murphys song.
“So kiss meeeee… I’m shishfayzed! I’m soaked, and soiled, and… grrrooouuuunnnnddddd!”
Shutting him up long enough to force-feed him a couple of aspirin and some water for his impending hangover, Mac rolled Lee into bed and pulled the covers over his listless body, giggling a bit herself over his adorably helpless state.
Taking a final pass around the room to make sure he wouldn’t trip over anything in the middle of the night, she reached for the light switch and started for the door, only to be halted by a weak grasp at her wrist. Amused, she turned back to face him, and kneeling down beside the bed, she watched as his glossy brown eyes fought to stay open for one final murmur.
“… Oh my god,” he slurred, drifting off, then catching himself again. “You are so… beautiful.”
Completely stunned, Mac snapped upright and glared at him—eyes wide—as her mind raced to make sense of what she’d just heard. Granted she was flattered, of course… what girl wouldn’t be? But in all the years she’d known him, he’d never said anything like that before. Sure, there had been the occasional compliment on an outfit or something new she’d done with her hair—that’s what friends do. But this? This didn’t feel like one of those times at all. This was something else.
As her thoughts ran wild with all the possible implications and connotations of what he could’ve meant, casual or otherwise, Mac quickly reminded herself that it didn’t take a bartender to understand how alcohol—particularly the amount he’d had tonight—could sometimes make people do or say things that might ordinarily seem out of character. Feeling this was probably the most likely of explanations, she decided it best to chalk the whole thing up to a classic case of harmless “drunk speak” and try to forget about it.
Still, one thing was certain. His comment—regardless of its meaning or motive—had had a profound effect on her, and she had no idea why. She knew it was probably nothing… probably. But, what if it wasn’t? What if it was something? And if it was something, what would that something mean?
Ultimately coming to grips with the certainty that all she’d have tonight were pointless questions with no answers, Mac elected not to overanalyze things, as she had a tendency to do at times, and took her cue to go. Though in the interests of what had transpired, she paused for one additional second to say her own goodnight. Quietly hovering over him so as not to disturb his slumber, she leaned in and placed a soft kiss on his forehead.
“I’m glad you had fun tonight, Lee,” she whispered, running her fingers through his thick brown hair. “You deserved it.”
In the months following his graduation, Lee, Mac and Danny took full advantage of their newfound inseparability while Lee loo
ked for work in the world of academia. Outwardly of course, Mac was completely supportive of his choice to apply for jobs around the country, though inwardly she hated the thought of him landing as far away as Portland, Oregon or Salt Lake City, Utah. So when Lee finally got the call from Layne State College in Jacksonville—even though it was far from his first choice—Mac couldn’t have been happier that he’d only be a quick jaunt down I-10 from Tallahassee. Then came her parents’ decision to open a second Pourhouse location in Athens… so much for that.
****
“I’ve been worse,” Lee responded to Mac’s question, sitting upright in the sand and folding his legs together. “Don’t get me wrong, two years ago I hoped I’d be a little better than I am now. But I’ve most definitely been worse.”
“Yeah,” she nodded, “I see that.”
Watching the ends of her long brown hair dance in the breeze through the corner of his eye, Lee found himself feeling a bit more candid than usual.
“Listen, Mac, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this in so many words, but I don’t think I would be sitting here right now if it weren’t for you and Danny.”
She smiled and shrugged off the compliment.
“Seriously, I know what you’re thinkin,’” he went on. “That whole speech about ‘that’s what friends do’ and all that, but it’s true. Three years ago, everything in my life was spiralin’ outta control. My marriage was shot, my career was circlin’ the drain, and I’m pretty sure everybody around me—my folks included—thought I was losin’ it. But no matter how bad things got, or how much I just wanted to crawl into a hole and be left alone, you guys refused to let that happen. Anyway, I’m grateful… real grateful, is all.”
Mac looked away and back out toward the rolling surf. “That’s not exactly what I was thinking.”
Lee raised a brow. “Oh,” he said, slightly befuddled. “Well, enlighten me. What were you thinkin’ then?”
“I wasn’t thinking that ‘that’s what friends do.’ I was thinking ‘that’s what family does,” she corrected. “Think about it Lee, we’ve all been friends for years now; and in that time, we’ve all seen each other through a lot of good times and some pretty bad ones, too. When I went out to L.A., I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life, just as you did with Karen. I had the business degree, the industry knowledge, the drive… the savings account!” She laughed out loud. “I’d done everything that I physically knew how to do in order to make my career what I thought I wanted it to be, and yet six long years later I was still working in craphole dive bars and picking up shifts waiting tables just to make rent. Bottom line, no matter how hard we work or how much we want it, sometimes things just aren’t meant to play out the way we want them to… and when that happens, family rally around each other, and that’s exactly what we did. Lord knows you did it for me once upon a time, ya know?”
“Yeah, well,” he said, recalling those nights on the phone.
“Man, talk about feeling like a failure,” Mac admitted. “After everything I’d worked for and sacrificed, to be faced with the sobering reality that I was heading home and right back to the bar?” She cringed. “Talk about a tough pill to swallow. But on the upside, at least I got to come home to my boys, and once I heard what was happening with you and Karen, I was glad to be home. At that point, I’d taken my spin on the ‘Wheel of Hard Times,’ and I knew damn well what it meant to me to have someone in my corner to see me through it. Because like I said...” She paused and fired him a look. “That’s just what family does.”
Lee gave her a warm smile. “What can I say, Mac? You’re one in a million.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” she chirped with a coy grin and a single, accusatory finger. “There’s nobody else like me, baby!”
“I’ll drink to that,” Lee snickered, clinking the neck of his bottle to hers.
The duo reminisced for a while, sipping their beers and doodling in the sand with their fingers as they talked the night away. Eventually, however, the conversation returned to the present.
“So tell me about Jax,” Mac asked, drawing back to lob a seashell into the incoming tide.
“Eh, it’s okay,” he mused. “Livin’ near the beach is nice, plus the concert scene is definitely a fair shake better than what we had in Tally. For sports, we’ve got the Jags—”
“Who suck,” she reiterated.
“True, but our Bucs usually come to town for a preseason game, at least. I did do two or three Suns games last season, and that was a good time. Then again, minor league baseball usually is.”
“Yeah it is,” Mac agreed. “I really miss those trips with my family down to Tampa to see the Yanks in spring training. Now that all of my brothers are married with kids, those are a lot harder to plan these days, ya know?”
Lee nodded. “Beyond all of that,” he smirked. “Well, there ain’t much else. The job is the job. Like the Jags, it pretty much sucks, but it serves its purpose.”
“Awww,” she teased. “Somebody getting tired of being chased around town by college girls in bikinis, is he? Such a tough life.”
“Knock it off!” Lee griped. “I take enough of that crap from Danny. I don’t need it from you too.”
Disregarding his protest with a wave, Mac turned her attention to the dorsal fin slicing through the current some 40 yards out. Thinking it to be a dolphin, she followed it down the shoreline with her eyes while considering her next question.
“So how’s the dating scene over there on the coast?” she asked, mindful to cloak her inquiry in the appropriate amount of apathy. “Jokes aside, between the jeep, the Ph.D., and the whole surfing thing, I’d venture a guess you’ve had a few bites in the last year or so.”
Lee shrugged. “Ya gotta have money to date,” he grumbled.
“Excuses, excuses!”
“Okay, you and Danny seriously need to start spendin’ a little less time together,” Lee muttered. “Anyway, dating is dating. I mean, it’s meet stranger. Go out with stranger. Find out what you don’t like about stranger, or what stranger doesn’t like about you. Become awkward with stranger. Break up with stranger. The end. It’s… whatever.”
“Woooowwwww!” Mac cooed. “And I thought Danny was cynical.”
“Okay, okay. So maybe I’m a little jaded, but gimme a break! Can you blame me?”
She laughed.
“I dunno,” Lee added. “I’ve been out on a few dates, but nothin’ that ever really took, and truthfully, that ain’t on them… it’s on me. I guess in a lot of ways, I’m still gettin’ re-acclimated to this whole bachelor thing, and until all of that’s outta my system, I’m not really lookin’ to get back on the relationship market.”
“Oh god,” she blurted. “Please don’t tell me you’ve applied to the Daniel Tucker School of Womanizing, have you?”
“No! Of course not,” Lee defended. “What I meant is, I kinda like being able to just come home, throw my keys on the table, and do whatever I want with my time, whenever I want. Actually been kickin’ around the notion of gettin’ a dog.”
“Boston Terrier?” she asked, drawing a nod from Lee. Not surprisingly, she even remembered his favorite breed.
“So how about you?” he shifted. “Found yourself a good ol’ Georgia boy up there in Athens?”
“No!” she said vehemently.
“Wow, subtle. Story there, I take it?”
She rolled her eyes and glugged her beer. “Yeah, but it’s stupid.”
“Okay, well you can’t drop that little bombshell and not tell me the story. So dish.”
Mac hesitated, silently weighing whether or not to oblige his persistence. “There was a guy… for a little while, but he didn’t last.”
“Let me guess… he was a Gator fan?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “It was a little worse than that… he was kinda married.”
Lee’s head snapped around to face her.
“Relax, I didn’t know!” Mac rushed to clarify. “I me
t him at work, and we’d only been dating a couple of months when I found out.”
“Oh, that’s nice” Lee sneered. “What made the douchebag finally fess up?”
“Oh, I didn’t find out through him,” she explained. “He came in for Happy Hour on his way home from work one day and left his cell phone on the bar. Anyway, it rang shortly after he left, and I answered it… yeah, it was his wife.”
“Wow, bet that was awkward.”
“Ya think?”
“Ouch. I’m really sorry to hear that, Mac. Really, I am.”
“Ah, don’t sweat it,” she said with a dismissive hand. “Believe me, there have been some boyfriends over the years that I hated to pull the ripcord on, but this guy? He wasn’t one of them. Honestly, I should’ve known he was a tool when he gave me flack for my autographed Nathan Fillion Firefly poster.”
“Ooooohhhhh!!!” Lee howled. “Strikes one, two, and three… you’re outta here!”
“Yeah, like I said… don’t sweat it. I only dated the guy for a few months before it happened, so it’s not like I wasted a bunch of time on him or anything. Still,” she hesitated, drawing an inquisitive look from Lee.
“Still… what?” he wondered aloud.
A sinister smile cracked the edges of Mac’s mouth. “Still… I can neither confirm nor deny that there might’ve been an anonymous call to his wife’s voicemail before it was all over.”
“That’s my girl!” Lee beamed.
The two chatted well into the early morning before finally electing to turn in for a few hours of sleep. It went without saying that tomorrow would be a busy day, though crossing the lobby floor en route back to the condo, Lee’s thoughts drifted back to the present, and how much he really had missed everyone—not just Mac, but all of them.
Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1) Page 21
