Fuck.
I’ve never said those words out loud before.
It’s terrifying how much Mac brings out of me. How much I want her to know me. It’s terrifying how I don’t feel in control of my heart that’s racing to catch her. To keep her. Worried that at any moment she might come to her senses and ditch my ass.
“Hey.” Then she takes my hand, and all I can think is that I’d stand in traffic for this girl. “Let’s make a pact: We won’t let each other become our parents. The buddy system never fails.”
“Deal.” It’s so corny I half manage a laugh. “Seriously, though. Don’t waste this moment. If your heart’s telling you to follow something—go for it. Don’t let anyone hold you back, because life is too damn short. Build your empire. Slay dragons.”
“You should put that on a T-shirt.”
Daisy comes back, curling around Mac’s feet. Guess she finally ran herself ragged. I put her on the leash as Mac and I sit in the sand. A comfortable silence falls between us. I don’t understand how she manages to instill equal parts chaos and peace inside me. When we’re arguing, sometimes I want to throttle her. She drives me mad. She does crazy shit like climbing metal ladders during lightning storms. And then suddenly we have moments like this, where we’re sitting side by side, quiet, lost in our own thoughts yet completely in tune. Connected. I don’t know what it means. Why we can yell at each other one second, and be totally at peace the next. Maybe it just means we’re both nuts.
Or maybe it means I’m falling for her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
MACKENZIE
A few days after my hotel inspection, I meet up with Steph and Alana at a sandwich shop in town. Seems strange that a couple of weeks ago we were barely on speaking terms, and now we chat almost every day. It started when Steph looped me into a group text with Alana to share some pictures of Evan on their roof fixing the hole from the storm. His jeans had ridden down, revealing half his ass, and she’d captioned the pics with: Someone’s doing a half-ass job. Then Alana shared a funny screenshot from BoyfriendFails, and—although I was worried it might sound like a brag or serve as another glaring allusion to the topic of money—I confessed to the girls that I’m the one who created those sites. Luckily, it only made them like me more.
“Settle something for us,” Alana says, gesturing across the table with a pickle spear. “True or false—Cooper has his dick tattooed.”
I almost cough up a french fry. “What?”
“A few years back, there was this story about some chick who got banged on the roof of the police station on Fourth of July weekend,” Steph says beside me. “And there was a picture going around of a dude with a tattoo on his dick, but we never nailed down who it was.”
“You didn’t ask Heidi this question?”
The girls stare at me with apprehension.
“What, was I not supposed to know about that?” My tone is glib. I’d thought it was obvious those two had been hooking up at some point in the recent past.
Steph and Alana exchange a look, silently debating how to respond.
I offer a shrug. “It’s fine. I get it, she’s your best friend.”
“They didn’t date or anything,” Steph says as a consolation. “It was, you know, friends with benefits.”
For Cooper, maybe. But when it comes to those types of arrangements, I know that one person, without fail, is always more invested than the other.
“Heidi’s still got a thing,” Alana adds flatly, never one to mince words.
I’d already suspected that unrequited feelings or maybe a breakup was the source of Heidi’s irrational hatred of me. My instincts are rarely wrong about these things, so Alana’s confirmation is almost vindicating.
“I figured,” I tell them. “But maybe she’ll be ready to move on one of these days. Cooper said there’s some guy interested in her? Jay something?”
That earns me two groans.
“Don’t get me started on that one,” Alana gripes. “Yeah, I want her to get over this Coop thing so life can go back to normal—but Genevieve’s brother, of all people?”
“Who’s Genevieve?”
“Evan’s ex,” Steph answers. “Gen lives in Charleston now.”
“I miss her,” Alana says, visibly glum.
Steph snorts. “So does Evan. Otherwise he wouldn’t be trying to bang her out of his system. Or rather, bang everyone else.” She flips her ponytail over one shoulder and turns to grin at me. “It’s all super incestuous here in the Bay. Evan and Genevieve. Heidi and Cooper—although thank God that’s over. Friends shouldn’t hook up, it’s just asking for trouble.” Her gaze pointedly shifts to Alana. “And then we’ve got this bitch here who keeps going back for seconds with Tate? Or are we on thirds now? Fourths?”