Chapter 23
Chapter twenty-three
Mac
The cabin door closes behind me.
I stand in the dark for a moment. I do not turn the light on.
The dark is easier and I have always been good at finding my way around in it, have always been better in the dark than in the light, which is something Daniel used to say about me that was not meant kindly and that I have spent nine years deciding not to think about.
I think about it now.
I sit on the edge of the bunk. The same bunk.
The bunk that smells different than it used to, that has been warmer than it used to be, that I have been pretending not to notice for weeks because noticing would require me to think about what it meant and what it meant was something I was not ready to look at directly.
I am looking at it directly now.
I am looking at all of it.
It was a dare.
Four words. I have been saying them to myself since I walked out of the mess hall, quietly and precisely the way I do everything, and each time they land in the same place and each time that wound opens up a little more and lets a little more of the poison in.
A dare. Rory Gallacher stood at my door at eleven o’clock at night and knocked and offered himself and the whole thing, the whole entire thing, was a dare.
Not a choice. Not Rory seeing something in me that was worth seeing, worth approaching, worth the risk of knocking on a door at eleven o’clock at night.
Not that. A dare. A card game and a lost hand and a forfeit, and I was the forfeit, and I opened my door and I looked at him and I thought this boy came to me, specifically to me, chose me out of everyone on this rig, and I was wrong.
I was so completely and catastrophically wrong, and I let myself hope anyway, and here we are.
Here we are.
I think about the wonky smile. The way it came out sideways that first night, not quite landing the way his smiles usually land, and I read it as nerves, as Rory being uncharacteristically uncertain, and I found it, god help me, I found it endearing.
I found it endearing because I thought he was nervous about approaching me and the idea that this loud bright boy had worked up the nerve to come to my door because he wanted to, was something I held onto without knowing I was holding onto it.
It was a dare.
He was nervous because he was doing a dare.
He was nervous the way you are nervous before something embarrassing and absurd, not the way you are nervous before something that matters.
And I stood there reading it as something it wasn’t because I was already, even then, already gone, already lost, and I just didn’t have the word for it yet.
I know this place. I have been here before.
Not this exact bunk in this exact dark on this exact rig, but this place inside myself, this particular quality of silence after the thing you were afraid of has happened and turned out to be exactly as bad as you feared.
I know the geography of it. I know the first stage, which is this, the sitting very still in the dark with the full weight of it pressing down.
I know the second stage, which is the going through the motions, getting up and doing the job and being MacLeod because MacLeod is the thing that functions when everything else doesn’t.
I know the third stage, which is the long slow recalibration back to something that works, the rebuilding of the thing that got dismantled, the careful reinstatement of all the distances.
I have done this before. I know how it goes.
Daniel and Fraser.
I let myself think about the kitchen. I do not usually let myself think about the kitchen, but I am apparently doing this properly tonight, sitting in the dark on the edge of the bunk with the full weight of it, so.
The kitchen. The particular quality of the silence when I walked in and knew before I saw anything that something was wrong.
The note on the table in Daniel’s handwriting, which I had always loved, neat and precise like mine, which should have meant something, because two people who organize spice racks and need even numbers on the television volume, we should have understood each other.
We should have been the same, except that Daniel found my ways charming at first, and then frustrating, and then something to be laughed at over the kitchen table with my best friend.
Harmless banter. Just a joke. Can’t you take a joke.
I took the joke. I always took the joke. I am very good at taking things.
The note said I’m sorry and I know this isn’t fair and Fraser and I and then some things I have not read again since the first time because once was sufficient.
Sufficient. That word. I have been making things sufficient for nine years, and it has worked. It has been enough. It has been the shape of the life I chose, and I chose it with both eyes open and I have never regretted it.
I thought I would not survive it. Not in a dramatic way, not in any way that requires intervention, just in the practical sense of not being able to see how a person continues after something like that.
But I did survive it. I continued to come out here and I worked and I made the rig the shape of my life and the years passed and I was fine, or I made something that functions like fine, and I did not let anyone close enough for it to happen again.
Until Rory Gallacher knocked on my door at eleven o’clock at night with a wonky smile and a dare.
I close my eyes.
He is twenty-two years old. He is loud and warm and bright, and he has a laugh that makes rooms better just by existing in them.
And he explained small talk to me in terms of dogs wagging their tails, and I thought about it for the rest of the day.
I thought about it for several days after that.
I have thought about a great many things he said for longer than is sensible, storing them in the place I keep things I will not examine, which has been getting rather full lately.
I thought he came to me because he saw something worth approaching.
I thought, underneath all the sensible things I kept telling myself about chapters and rotations and twenty-two years old, I thought that Rory Gallacher had looked at me, the man everyone walks carefully around, the man who brings the shadows into rooms, the man whose husband and best friend found him easier to leave than to love, and seen something anyway.
Something that made him knock on the door.
Something that made him come back. Something that made him bring porridge on a rest day and stand on a helipad in the dark and kiss me with his hand holding the front of my jumper like he needed something to hold onto.
Last night, I felt the full force of my love for him and allowed my foolish hope to ignite.
I was going to wait for Rory to fall in love with me.
I thought we fitted together. I believed our chapter might turn into the full story.
I thought he was the one. I thought he chose to knock on my door and explore his horizons.
It was a dare.
None of it was a choice. All of it was a forfeit.
He did see me, and he saw I wasn’t enough.
Here we go again.
Except it’s worse this time. That is the thing I have been circling and not saying and am saying now, in the dark, to nobody, because there is nobody here and there never has been and that is something I have made my peace with many times and will make my peace with again.
It is worse because I knew better. With Daniel, I was young, and I had not yet learned what I cost the people who try to love me.
I had no armor then. The armor came after, was built from the rubble of that kitchen, piece by piece over nine years, and I wore it every day and it worked, it kept me functional and self-sufficient and safe.
And then Rory Gallacher dismantled it piece by piece without even knowing he was doing it.
Northern Lights and breakfast porridge and dogs wagging their tails.
I let him. I stood there and let him because it felt like something I had not felt in nine years, and I was so tired of not feeling it.
I knew it was going to end. I knew I was a chapter.
I made my peace with being a mere chapter in Rory’s life because a chapter was more than I had allowed myself in a very long time and it seemed, for a while, like enough.
It was not enough. It was never going to be enough.
The voice that told me so, the one I refused to listen to, was right, and I was wrong, and I am sitting in the dark on the edge of a bunk that smells of someone who was never actually choosing me and I am thirty-eight years old and I know better and it has made absolutely no difference whatsoever.
I do not cry.
I want to be clear about this in my own head, in the dark, where nobody is watching and nobody will ever know.
I do not cry. I sit on the edge of the bunk and I hold the full weight of it without flinching, the dare and the kitchen and the note and the nine years and the particular cruelty of having the armor taken apart by someone who didn’t even know they were doing it.
And I do not cry because I am MacLeod, and I take things quietly and I always have, and I will keep taking them quietly because it is the only way I know.
But I sit in the dark for a long time.
The rig hums. The North Sea does its thing. The world continues its comprehensive indifference.
At some point, I put my headphones on and I lie down. The volume is set to its highest level. The music is loud. It should be loud enough to drown out everything. The rig, the world, the sharp biting pain clawing at my heart.
It’s not enough.
I don’t sleep.
In the morning I will get up and I will run the rig and I will be MacLeod, which is what I have always been when everything else fell away. I am reliable and constant and sufficient.
Tonight I lie in the dark and I let myself know, just once, just tonight, that sufficient is not the same as enough, and has never been, and never will be, and I have known this for nine years and kept going anyway because what else is there.
Knowing you are unlovable is far too heavy a truth to sit with.
But just tonight, I will sit with the truth.
Tomorrow I will be fine. Tomorrow I will pack the truth away. Tomorrow I will put the armor back on.
I will make it be fine. I always do.