Chapter 7 Mac
Chapter seven
Mac
The crowd swallowed us as we entered Pike Place Market—tourists with cameras, couples holding hands, and a kid shrieking about the pig statue. Voices layered over each other, laughter, haggling, and someone singing "Jingle Bells."
For some, chaos is cover. For me, every shoulder brush was exposure. Every turned head held the potential for recognition.
Eamon's voice cut through the noise. "You good?"
"Yeah." It was an automatic response.
He didn't look convinced, but he didn't push, adjusting his position. He moved closer, his shoulder almost brushing mine as we moved deeper into the market.
The vendor stalls pressed in on us—flowers in galvanized buckets, jewelry on velvet, and someone selling scarves that smelled like wet wool. Holiday lights wove through the ironwork overhead—white and gold, nothing garish.
We stopped at a corner where the crowd split. Some turned left toward the fish market, and the others right toward the lower arcade. Eamon scanned, and I pretended not to notice.
"Cider," I said.
He blinked. "What?"
"There's a vendor. Near the main arcade. They do spiced cider this time of year." I nodded toward the left corridor. "I'm buying."
"Mac—"
"Not up for debate."
His jaw tensed. It was that thing he did when he wanted to argue but knew he'd lose the battle. I'd learned that tell three days in. Along with the beard-touch when he was thinking, and how his voice dropped half an octave when he was worried but trying not to show it.
I'd studied Eamon since his arrival.
"Visibility risk," he said finally.
"Everything's a visibility risk." I started walking before he could counter. "Consider it an operational necessity."
Behind me, I heard him exhale.
We found the stall near the flower vendors, tucked under an awning strung with orange bulbs. The vendor was older, bundled in flannel and a Seahawks beanie, stirring a massive pot that sent the aroma of cinnamon and cloves into the cold air.
A chalkboard sign promised "Artisan Spiced Cider—No Artificial Anything."
"Two," I told her, pulling out my wallet.
"Cups or thermoses?"
"Cups."
She ladled the cider into paper cups printed with pine trees and added cinnamon sticks. She handed them over, and I passed one to Eamon.
He took it like I'd handed him a live grenade.
"I'm working."
"You're also dehydrated. Drink."
"You're not my doctor."
"Lucky for you. My bedside manner's terrible."
His mouth did something that almost qualified as a smile. There it was, the crack in the armor.
He raised the cup. Steam curled between us, smelling like Christmas nostalgia.
Our fingers brushed when I adjusted my grip. Heat shot up my arm and settled low in my belly. His eyes darkened—he felt it too.
Not an accident this time.
His eyes met mine over the rim of his cup—steady, searching. "Thanks," Eamon said quietly.
We stood there together, drinking cider that was too hot and tasted like every Seattle winter I'd ever survived. Eamon's shoulders dropped half an inch—something adjacent to ease.
It was the first real softness between us.
I wanted to press into it. See how far it could bend before it broke.
Instead, I finished my cider and dropped the cup in the recycling bin. "Come on. There's something I want to show you."
"What—"
"Trust me."
We made it twenty feet.
The main arcade opened ahead—vendors hawking salmon and halibut on ice. They were the famous fish-throwers in their aprons and rubber boots. Tourists pressed three deep at the counter.
"Holy shit—you're Mac McCabe!"
Every muscle in my body locked.
I flashed an automatic smile. It was a reflex that bypassed conscious thought. My shoulders squared. I raised my chin and made eye contact.
It was the posture I adopted on every magazine cover, in every post-game interview, and every time someone pointed a camera and expected me to be Mac McCabe, Inspiration.
My brand.
The guy appeared thirty-ish. He wore a Mariners cap and had a tech company badge clipped to his jacket. Harmless. Excited. Already pulling out his phone.
"That diving stop against the Dodgers—ninth inning, bases loaded—" He gestured as he relived it. "Unreal, man. Absolutely unreal."
"Thanks. Appreciate it."
"You made history." He spoke as if he were announcing a new revelation, like I hadn't lived inside that word for three years, inhabiting it like a second skeleton. "First openly gay MVP. That's—God, that takes guts."
I maintained the fixed smile. "Just doing my job."
"Can I—" He raised his phone. "Quick picture?"
Every cell in my body screamed no. Not here. Not now. Not when I'd started feeling like a person instead of a monument.
It was too late. Saying no would require explaining why.
"Sure," I said. "Quick one."
I stepped up beside him. He angled the phone. I plastered on the smile they always wanted.
The camera clicked.
"Thanks, man. Seriously. You're an inspiration."
"Just trying to play good baseball." That was my standard exit line, the one that signaled conversation over without being rude
He grinned, already texting the photo to someone, and walked away glowing.
My heart hammered against my ribs as the crowd closed ranks around me.
How many of them had watched the exchange? How many phones had I missed? Was anyone filming?
"Mac."
Eamon's voice was low and steady.
I blinked. "Sorry." I rubbed my face. "I'm—sorry."
"How often does that happen?"
"Every time I leave the house. Sometimes multiple times a block."
"You handle it like training," Eamon said.
"It is training." I spit the words out. "Smile. Make eye contact. Sound grateful. Don't give them a reason to write think-pieces about how fame changed you or success made you an asshole."
Eamon was quiet for three seconds. Long enough to feel the weight of what I'd said.
"Every smile?" he asked.
"Every single one." I looked at him. "The only currency I have is likability.
The second I stop being the happy, grateful, historically significant gay baseball player who makes everyone feel good about their progressiveness, the story changes.
Then I'm difficult. Ungrateful. Not handling the pressure.
And suddenly I'm no longer an inspiration—I'm a cautionary tale. "
Eamon didn't answer. He started to scan the crowd again.
"He was harmless," I said.
"That's not the problem, is it?"
I looked at Eamon. He'd already figured it out.
"No. It's not."
"There's something more."
"I don't know how to turn it off," I said quietly. "The performance. Even when I want to."
Even when I'm with you.
The words were internal, but I suspected Eamon heard them anyway.
"The cider," he said after a moment. "Back at the stall. That was real."
"Yeah."
"How often do you get to be real?"
I laughed—sharp and humorless. "You're standing in it."
"Come on," he said. "Let's keep moving."
He positioned himself between me and the thickest part of the crowd, and the gesture said everything his hands couldn't.
We walked deeper into the market. My pulse still hadn't settled. I still had my smile carved into my face. My muscle memory wouldn't let it release.
In the lower arcade, the market shifted.
Less fish and flowers, more antiques and oddities.
Used bookstores with titles I'd never heard of stacked in the windows.
A shop sold vintage records. Something that might've been a head shop, a candle store, or both appeared on the right, with a cloud of patchouli thick enough to taste.
The tourist crush thinned. Families headed back up toward the main level, slouching toward dinner reservations and hotel lobbies. The people who remained moved more slowly, browsing instead of snapping photos. Locals, maybe. Or travelers who sought weird over picturesque.
We turned into Post Alley—a narrow brick corridor strung with Edison bulbs that glowed amber in the twilight. Music drifted from somewhere, an acoustic guitar and a voice performing something slow and off-season. It wasn't a Christmas song. Something quieter.
The vendors began packing up. A woman folded jewelry into velvet-lined cases. A man stacked watercolor prints of the Sound. My shoulders relaxed.
We passed a stall I'd walked by a hundred times—ceramics, hand-thrown, the kind my mother would pause over and touch.
The vendor was older, gray braid over one shoulder, wrapping pieces in newspaper with the efficiency of someone who'd done it ten thousand times.
She wrapped mugs and bowls and yunomi tea cups, glazes in blues and greens, and that iron-oxide orange that looked like rust and fire.
I stopped. Eamon stopped near me and waited.
One of the mugs caught light wrong. The glaze had crackled in the kiln, lines running through blue like fractures in ice, and the handle sat slightly off-center. Imperfect. Honest. The kind of piece my mother would call alive because it showed the maker's hand.
She'd love it.
The vendor caught my eye. "Help you?"
"How much?" I pointed at the mug.
"Thirty-five."
I pulled out my wallet.
"Gift?" the vendor asked, already reaching for tissue paper.
"My mom."
"Good taste. Does she do ceramics?"
"Teaches it. Community college."
"Then she'll see the crackle. That's manganese in the glaze. Happens when you fire too hot, but some of us do it on purpose." She smiled, handing over the package. "Controlled accident."
"She'd like that." I took the bundle—surprisingly heavy, solid, and real. "Thank you."
The vendor nodded and went back to packing.
When I turned, Eamon was staring. Not at the alley. At me.
His throat moved. A flush climbed his neck.
"What?"
He touched his beard. "Nothing. Just—" He stopped. Started again. "Your mom will love it."
His voice had dropped half an octave. And he was looking at me the way he had in the training facility, like he'd found something he hadn't known he was looking for.
Like the man buying a cracked mug was more complicated to resist than the one who'd made history.