Chapter Eight. Sam
chapter eight
SAM
“Well now,” I say, looking Mackenzie up and down as she crosses the bike path to meet me outside the Central Park Boathouse. “The walk of shame sure gets interesting when you spend the night with a… radioactive dairy farmer?”
Mackenzie glares from under the fuzzy neon-pink cow print bucket hat she is rocking outside in the eighty-five-degree early August heat.
I will myself not to stare at the rest of her, but in my defense, she’s in denim shorts and one of those tight sporty black crop tops that make it damn near impossible to look anywhere else.
“It has a twin with your name on it.”
She reaches into a tote bag and, sure enough, out comes a second one. That can only mean it was one of the pieces Thunder Hearts was styled in, their neon and glitz loud against Candy Shard’s matte blacks and leather.
“Ah, sorry,” I say. “I have a chronic condition called ‘self-respect’ that makes me allergic to that hat.”
“Hope you brought an EpiPen, then,” she says, getting on her tiptoes to put it on my head.
I dodge by ducking to the side and then down low, so our eyes are level. It’s been two weeks of nonstop meetings with Mackenzie and the label trying to firm up the direction for the demo we’re working on. You’d think I’d get used to the zap of those blue eyes crackling on mine by now. No such luck.
“Not on your life,” I tell her. “I’m still cleaning your glitter out of my ears from the last tour. I draw the line at neon.”
Mackenzie holds her ground inches from my face, putting her hands on her hips. “You want us to keep a low profile? Then we’re not broadcasting all…” She makes a sweeping gesture over me. “ This in broad daylight.”
She has a point. It’s New York, where nothing makes people more determined to not pay attention to you than looking like you want attention.
Still, I can’t help it. “All this , hm?” I ask, also gesturing at myself.
She rolls her eyes as she sets the hat back in her bag. “For what it’s worth, you’re more ridiculous than this hat could ever be.”
I slide on my sunglasses as we walk over to the line for the rowboats, but it turns out we don’t have to worry about anyone recognizing us. The only other people here on a hot weekday are a group of older European tourists and some junior high kids distracted by a video about hypnotizing squirrels.
I pick up the pace so I’m right beside her. “Careful there. You almost broke a rule,” I say.
Not that I’ll ever enforce them. The whole “no teasing, no tricks, no touching” thing seems about as realistic for us as a “no shoes, no shirt, no service” sign at a boardwalk pizza joint at the height of summer. But I won’t be any less smug when she breaks them first.
Mackenzie answers without missing a beat. “I’ll preemptively add one, then: the rules don’t count if you’re being a dope.”
Interesting development. The kind that makes me wonder if she’s also spent the last few weeks thinking not just about our rules, but how satisfying it would be to break them.
“This tall lug and I would like to rent two boats for an hour,” Mackenzie tells the rowboat attendant.
The attendant’s eyes shift from Mackenzie to me to both of our hats back to Mackenzie. “Two separate boats?” she asks.
“One boat,” I counter. “What are we gonna do, shout lyrics at each other across the water?”
“It was two last time,” Mackenzie points out.
Last time was over two years ago, when we weren’t surrounded by teens and tourists, but a film crew and makeup team and a buzzing camera drone capturing all the angles of the two of us as they filmed the music video for “Play You by Heart.”
“Eh. They told us to revisit it, not re-create it.” I put my hands up lazily. “And I can’t man those oars alone. I’m counting on you to be the muscle here, Sparkles.”
Mackenzie eyes the water without answering. The sun pokes out from behind a cloud, gleaming against the loose strands of her hair, the shine of her full lips. Leave it to Mackenzie to look like a damn museum portrait even in the ugliest hat I’ve ever seen.
I have to shake the thought fast, and there’s one surefire way to do it—piss her off.
“Unless you’re afraid you won’t be able to resist me,” I say, tilting my gaze at her from under my sunglasses.
Mackenzie lets out a snort, turning to the attendant. “If I bring back a boat and he’s not on it anymore, you’ve got my back, right?”
The attendant laughs and pulls up one boat with two life jackets inside. Mackenzie watches it bob without getting in. I make a show of offering her my hand and she blinks at it in surprise, then rolls her eyes.
“We are not going fast,” she tells me pointedly, easing herself into the boat.
“Why’s that?” I ask as I follow.
The attendant interrupts before she can answer, leaning in to push us off the dock. “Wait, so— are you guys dating?” she asks.
“Oh, sure,” says Mackenzie breezily. “Just not each other.”
The boat attendant’s eyes widen, looking over at me. I shoot her a wink. “One of these days she’ll admit she’s wildly in love with me.”
Funny how Mackenzie and I say we’re not doing the “will they, won’t they” bit anymore, but even now we can’t help but fall into it. Only this time it feels like a buffer. I can’t deny the way I feel about Mackenzie, but at least this helps keep it at bay.
But damn, this isn’t helping. Once we get on the lake it’s the kind of beautiful that looks like we were dropped into a rom-com set.
I take the oars and row us toward the sweeping bridge that cuts across the middle of the lake, but no matter where I look, the awe on Mackenzie’s face is the best part of the view.
It would be downright romantic, if I weren’t sitting across from someone who just threatened to dump my body into the lake.
“So the dating thing,” I say. “Does that mean Corporate Ken got a date number two?”
I’ve resisted the urge to ask for days. Apparently, all it took was one offhand comment from a stranger for all that resolve to disappear.
Mackenzie pushes a stray curl back into her bucket hat. “His name is Grayson,” she reminds me. “And yes. Well—as soon as things calm down.”
Fair enough. The last two weeks have been so busy that I’m mostly running on fumes and leftover cake batter.
The label didn’t just bite on the idea of us as a duo, but latched on and sprinted with it.
We’ve spent so many hours pitching concepts with the marketing team that we might be common-law married to all of them now.
Some meetings ran smoother than others. We all agreed on an alternative/indie sound off the bat. But then they kept showing us mock-ups of album covers with enough sexual tension that they were a shade away from making me blush.
In the end we compromised. Instead of reviving our not-quite-romance, we’d retrace our steps. Each song would be centered around some place of significance to us, whether we were there together or on our own. Now Haunts is a work-in-progress concept—hers, mine, and ours.
The kicker? They want a demo from us within the month, followed by a showcase with a hand-selected audience from the label. It should be top of mind, but I’m still stuck on the Grayson thing.
“He’s not your regular type,” I remark.
Mackenzie doesn’t take the bait.
“Four o’clock,” she says instead. She tilts her head toward a couple on a rowboat not far from us, who are very unsubtly taking our picture with a camera phone.
I wave and they draw back, embarrassed. But not nearly as much as they are when Mackenzie does her usual schtick, which is whip out a camera and take a picture of them right back.
Only this time it isn’t with her phone, but with a bright pink Polaroid camera I remember her tossing around backstage between Serena and Hannah and Divya on our joint tour.
“Sorry!” one of the girls calls.
Mackenzie just tugs the picture out of the camera and waves her off with it. “We’re even!” she calls back.
Then she turns to me, camera up to her eye again. “Do something interesting.”
I raise my eyebrows at her. “I’m boring you already?”
“Isla said they want pictures of us writing in each of the haunts for the album art,” she says, taking a shot. “Let’s get it over with while we can still tolerate each other.”
I glance at the interior of the boat. The benches are wide enough for two people, but the fit would be snug.
“Only way we’re going to be able to get in the frame without touching is if one of us sits below the other,” I say, not-so-innocently.
The last thing I’m expecting is for Mackenzie to spread her legs out. “Go on, then,” she says, gesturing that I should lower myself to sit between them.
I raise my eyebrows. She raises hers back.
All right, then—guess I asked for this.
I secure the oars and slide off my seat, settling into the hot metal of the bottom of the boat.
Not one part of us is touching as she backs up on the seat, but if anything, it only makes the closeness more pronounced.
To feel the heat of her legs on either side of me. To hear her voice just above my ear.
Masochism is my middle name.
“You take it,” she says, handing me the camera and pulling off her hat. Her hair tumbles down so far that it brushes my arms. “You’ve got the better angle.”
She leans down for me to take the photo, but she’s got me so distracted that the odds of us both being in the frame are anybody’s guess.
“Let’s get some shots on our phones for insurance,” I suggest.
I reach for the phone in my back pocket, and it rocks us just enough that when she pulls the phone from her tote bag, she loses her grip on it. I lunge before it hits the water, jostling the boat so that Mackenzie is knocked over to the side.
The next thing I know Mackenzie is literally hitting the deck, dropping until she’s on top of me, her eyes crushed shut.
“Shit shit fuck mother fucker ,” she bites out, in a string of curses so impressive even seasoned New Yorkers double take. The boat rights itself, but she’s not done. “Fucking fuck .”