Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1) (26 page)

“Mac?” Lee asked, turning his attention to the brunette on the couch.

Her expression held firm for another moment before finally giving way to a simper. “You don’t honestly think I’m gonna let that crack about me being the second-best pilot in this squad stand unanswered, do you?” she relented. “Bet your beach-bum ass I’m in.”

“That just leaves you, man,” Lee said to Danny, who remained slumped back on the sofa, his face still saturated with conflict.

“I hate surprises, Lee,” Danny prefaced with visible unease, “and this trip has been nothing but surprises. I also hate being boxed into making a decision, and make no bones about it, that’s exactly how I feel right now.” He hunched forward on his elbows and heaved a reluctant sigh. “But the way things are going, there’s no guarantee that I’ll have a job when Reiser’s six months of charity run out, which puts me right back at square one. So for that reason alone, I’ll go. But have no illusions… I’m here to get paid, and with all due deference to those folks and their situation, that’s where it ends for me.”

“Oh relax, Crockett,” Link groaned. “Think about it this way. Now you’ve got an excuse to spend some quality alone-time with your favorite redheaded physician in a setting that precludes her from running away from you. A word of advice though—try to contain that overwhelming sense of empathy you’ve got for her cause… just a thought.”

Danny rolled his eyes.

“So I guess that’s it, then,” Mac concluded. “We go… all of us.”

“Rock on!” Link shouted, raising his glass for a toast. “To infinity and—”

“Shut up,” Mac cut him off, clinking her glass to Link’s. “Just stop talking, right now.”

This drew a labored smile from Danny, who rose to his feet as Lee and Hamish also stepped forward to join in the moment.

“Yeah, yeah,” Danny huffed. “Let’s go save a planet and all that.”

“
Ruah!
” the group shouted in unison.

“Alright, alright, alright,” Link piped up once the cheers and high-fives had died down. “Seeing as how this will probably be our… and I still can’t believe I’m saying this… last night on Earth for a while, I’m thinking this calls for a little extra celebration down at the tiki bar. Who’s with me?”

****

A few hours later, as the others chatted the night away with the bartenders and a handful of regulars, Lee stuffed a fresh lime into his bottle of beer and excused himself from the group. Craving a quiet moment alone in which to think, he strolled down the deck—past the pool and the Jimmy Buffett cover band that was almost too drunk to play—and descended down the wooden steps at the far end to the powdery beach sand below. Walking for a while until the commotion had faded to a distant muffle, Lee collapsed onto a dune and peered blissfully up at a gorgeous, star-filled sky—all the while savoring the soul-soothing sound of the tumbling Pacific before him.

“Hard to believe we’re actually gonna see those up close and personal, huh?” a voice said behind him.

Unaware of her presence there, Lee turned to see Mac settle in on the sand beside him.

“Tell me about it,” he replied. “I’d love to call my sister and tell her all about this, but I’m scared she’d think I’ve finally gone off the deep end.”

“I know, right?” Mac laughed and sipped her beer. “I’m still not sure I buy it myself. Truthfully, there’s still this little voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me this is all some elaborate viral marketing scheme or something.”

“Maybe,” he nodded. “But that cruiser looked real enough to me, so somehow, I’m thinkin’ that ain’t the case.”

“Yeah, me neither,” she conceded. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

The two sat quietly for the next few moments, taking in the tranquil ocean scene around them and enjoying the salty night air. Like Lee, Mac had also grown up loving the water, and always jumped at any opportunity to get back to it.

“So how are you, Lee?” she asked, brushing a single strand of windblown hair from her cheek and shifting to face him. He responded with a half-smile then turned away, and she could all but read his thoughts as he stared into the dark gulf overhead.

****

As emotionally tumultuous as her decision to leave L.A. had been, Mac was soon faced with a harsh reality upon returning home—she was by no means the only member of the group embroiled in a major life crisis. Not long after touching down in Tallahassee, she’d been startled to learn that Lee’s four-year marriage to Karen had gradually eroded to a very dangerous point, and it was widely believed by the select few in the know that a split was all but imminent. As Danny told it, the two were once inseparable—the “perfect couple.” But something had obviously happened because, as time passed, they’d visibly begun to drift, and once whispers of an affair began to circulate, Mac grew increasingly worried for Lee whose physical state—overweight, pale, and weary-eyed—was enough to confirm her fears as to his deepening state of depression. She’d always known him to be the “happy go lucky” friend to all—upbeat, positive and self-assured—but his ever-growing withdrawal from his friends concerned her dearly because nothing could be more out of character for him. When pressed about his reclusiveness, he’d always assured them that everything was fine and that he was just stressed out by his dissertation, but she knew better. On the rare nights when he would accompany Danny out to the bar, he was noticeably quiet and detached, and that alone was a far cry from the friend she knew.

On the night the situation finally came to a head and Karen confessed to the affair, Mac recalled getting the cringing phone call from Danny, alerting her to what had happened. Slamming down the phone with such force that it cracked the receiver, she snatched her car keys from behind the bar and barked instructions to the assistant manager to cover the rest of her shift as she bolted through the door into the torrential downpour outside. Within minutes, her car skidded to a halt in front of Lee’s house just ahead of Danny’s patrol car, and the two scrambled through the front door to find a devastated Lee Summerston—rain-soaked and shivering—sitting silently on his couch, head in hands and teetering on the verge of a complete mental collapse.

“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.”