Chapter Ten. Mackenzie #2
There were rules: You could only guess once, and you could tell your guess to Rob. Most importantly, if you were the one with the Sweet Spot on you, you had to lie and pretend you were in the game, too.
Those rules aside, it was straight-up chaos.
We were accidentally-on-purpose barging into each other’s dressing rooms to see if we could spot tattoos, hiking each other’s shirts up between songs, just short of using interrogation tactics we’d seen in crime procedural dramas to trick the Sweet Spotter into confessing.
“How’d you even figure out it was me that time?” Sam asks.
I prop my elbows on the bar, making a show of examining his face. “You’ve got a tell.”
Sam’s eyes are both amused and disbelieving. “I do not.”
“You do,” I say, leaning in. He raises his eyebrows as if to challenge me, and I raise mine right back. “For instance. Remember when Divya’s puppy interrupted a live broadcast at the Moonbeam Awards?”
Sam lifts the rim of his cocktail to his mouth, betraying nothing. “It rings a bell.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have been the one who snuck him backstage in that giant emo leather jacket of yours, right?”
There it is. Whenever he’s trying to pull a fast one, he has this little corner of his mouth that turns down like he’s trying not to smile. All I had ever had to do was loudly mention Sweet Spot within earshot of him and he’d give himself away just like he is right now.
“I knew it,” I say.
“Know what?” Sam’s brow furrows as it hits him. “Wait—did I do it right then? The ‘tell’?”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” I say.
Sam sets his cocktail down, laughably indignant. “You have to tell me what it is,” he insists.
“And lose my one advantage over you?” I say, tapping the photo. “Not a chance.”
“From where I’m sitting, you’ve already got plenty.”
When I look up, our faces are close enough that I almost startle. Not at the distance, but how natural it feels to want to lean in and close it.
“For instance,” he says, “it’s one thing that you knew when I had the Sweet Spot. But you always had an uncanny way knowing where .”
My cheeks flush. I may have sworn upside down and backward I was immune to Sam back in the day, but it sure never stopped me from glimpsing him all sweat-soaked and throwing clothes off himself on the way to his dressing room to make sure.
“Can’t give away all my secrets,” I say, lifting my chin.
“Secrets plural, huh?” he asks. “Wouldn’t have expected that from a goody-goody pop princess.”
Little does he know the biggest secret of all is looming in the air right now—the bartender is using Tick Tune to play a Seven song over the speakers.
“I’m full of surprises,” I say.
Sam grins. Our faces are still close enough that we’re suspended in a wordless challenge. Like if one of us moved, we’d be acknowledging that we’re too close for friends .
Sam really does catch me off guard then, leaning in so sharply that for a split, wild second I think he might try to kiss me. Instead, he reaches over and grabs my Take 5 bar, not breaking eye contact as he takes a smug bite, fully aware of what he just did.
“I’ll get them out of you eventually,” he says, tongue skimming over his teeth. “But first I’m getting my tax for that cake slice you stole.”
I lean back against the bar, feeling my heart pound where my elbows meet the cool surface. “Don’t you live on top of a literal bakery?” I ask.
“Not just any bakery, but the best in the city,” says Sam. “Play nice long enough, Sparkles, and I might convince Lizzie to give you a discount.”
The pride in his voice is unmistakable, the same way it is when he talks about Ben, or when he talked about his mom when we were on tour.
“You love her,” I say about Lizzie.
“Course,” says Sam, without missing a beat.
“So why weren’t you guys ever serious?”
I’ve always been curious. Even before I realized I’d fallen head over sparkly boots for Sam, I couldn’t understand it—not just how Sam wasn’t interested in relationships with the women he was “having fun” with, but one he seemed to be good friends with.
Sam seems mildly surprised by the question, but answers it just the same. “Neither of us wanted to be. Especially back then. I was on the road and Lizzie was backpacking.”
I nod, but there’s still an itch here that I can’t ignore. One that I’ve been trying to scratch by writing Seven’s song. One that makes me keep digging now, to see if he might say something that makes it stop.
“Why weren’t you serious with anyone?”
It’s a question that felt impossible to ask back then. Like it would give him some power over me, even acknowledging that I was curious. He’d file it away and know that I lied when we first met—that he had an effect on me after all.
But Sam ducks his gaze like I’m the one with the upper hand. “Aw, c’mon. We were in a punk rock band. Where would the fun have been in that?” he asks.
My arms stiffen against the bar. “Sure.”
Sam must clock my disappointment in his answer, because he rubs the back of his neck sheepishly and tries again.
“Honestly, I just knew there was no room for it. When I do something, I do it all the way,” he says. “So I couldn’t be a relationship guy.”
It’s a strange, belated relief to hear him say that. Maybe because it makes more sense than any of the reasons I thought up at the time—that Sam was just a player, or incapable of that kind of love. It didn’t seem in line with the rest of him, but this does.
My next question is treading into unfamiliar territory. Maybe even dangerous. But if I don’t ask it now, that itch is going to linger the same way it has for the past two years. Not just the what if? we had onstage, but the what if? we briefly had off of it.
“Do you think that’ll ever change for you?”
He’s not fully meeting my eye, torn between me and the last bit of his drink. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment. “But it just—depends.”
“On what?” I press.
Sam still won’t look at me, but he doesn’t shy from the question, either. Just considers it for a moment.
“You know when it feels right,” he says. “The whole ‘lock, click’ thing.”
“Lock, click,” I repeat.
Sam nods, his eyes distant but his words firm. “Maybe you don’t know what you’re walking into, but the key goes in so easily that it’s like you’re already home. So you just know.”
Neither of us speaks for a long beat. I’m not worried about the itch anymore. It’s something else that makes me keep digging—something I thought I’d buried, but might be pressing against new ground, starting to bloom.
“And you’ve had that feeling before?”
Sam’s eyes meet mine then. There is none of the usual heat in them, no bite. Like he isn’t just looking at me but letting me look, too.
“Yeah,” he says. “I have.”
We are both very still as the words settle between us with an unexpected weight. It’s nothing I don’t already know. Sam is perfectly capable of falling in love. Just not with me.
My eyes sting, but it’s my heart that spills over. Lyrics are starting to form on some invisible page. Not the kind Mack & Sam would write, but the kind Seven would.
I clear my throat, tucking it away for later. Sam’s watching me until he isn’t, turning back to his drink and clearing his throat, too.
“Well, now that we’re getting all deep here, I need to ask you a very serious, personal question,” he says. “You know—friend to friend.”
I pull in a breath to collect myself, then turn so I can narrow my eyes at him. “All right, friend .”
He’s back in full mischief mode again. “This unexpected writing session. Your date with Grayson later.” He gestures to my underwear, his lips curling into a smirk. “Are we both sabotaging you in a highly concentrated effort to seduce Santa Claus tonight?”
My laugh is so unexpected it borders on a cackle. “Can’t a girl bastardize the Christmas spirit without having an agenda?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says, far too pleased with himself for getting a reaction out of me. “But if there’s a better story, then I want to hear it.”
I consider saying, Laundry day , and leaving it at that. But we’re friends now, according to Sam. And what’s a mildly risqué underwear explanation between friends?
“All right,” I say, straightening up. “It’s called—trademark pending—the Christmas Underwear Test.”
Sam leans in, eyes flickering with amusement. “Oh, this is gonna be good.”
“Good? You mean genius,” I correct him. “The underwear acts as a buffer. It’s not that it’s stopping me from hooking up with anyone—it just stops me from hooking up with anyone who isn’t right for me.”
Sam opens his mouth like he has a dozen questions, but nods. “Christmas cockblock,” he repeats, putting a finger to his temple. “Got it.”
“If I’m too embarrassed to let them see the underwear, then they are not worthy of rocking around my Christmas tree. But if I decide I’m comfortable enough for them to see me cosplaying as Mrs. Claus? Then I know it’s time to find out who’s on the naughty list.”
Sam is doing such a terrible job of not laughing that he has to put down his drink instead of sipping it. “And you have to resort to this particular brand of nonsense because…”
“You saw what happened to all my relationships,” I say. “I fell madly in love with any guy who knew the right things to say. My inner compass was like a damn pinwheel.”
Sam shrugs. “Or maybe you just believe the best in people. Nothing wrong with that.”
He says it so casually that I’m not expecting it to hit as deeply as it does. People have called me a lot of things over the years. Foolish. Naive. Slutty, even, when they were being particularly vile.
But the way Sam puts it feels like it isn’t a weakness, but a strength.
I swallow hard. “Well, that’s rich, coming from the one person I didn’t,” I joke, so I don’t bring down the mood.
He uses his foot to spin the bottom of my stool so I’m directly facing him. “But I’m growing on you now.”
He is, dammit. But maybe that’s a good thing. I have thought myself in circles about the way we ended before we began, but I never once considered a friendship on the other side.
“Trial basis,” I remind him just the same. No matter what we are to each other, I can’t help but want to keep him on his toes.
But Sam is unperturbed. So much so that he’s leaning back and smirking pointedly at me.
“What?” I ask, at my own peril.
He shrugs innocently. “There’s just one factor you’re not considering here.”
“Which is?”
He takes his time leaning back in, like he’s relishing what he’s going to say before he says it. “You just explained the whole thing to me. So wouldn’t that make me a man who passes your little test?”
Well, shit. I cross my legs and lean back, trying to seem like someone who isn’t simmering from the heat in his eyes.
“Aw. Don’t tell me my sagging Christmas underwear got you all hot and bothered.”
So much for catching him off guard. As usual, he’s living for it.
“Giddyup, jingle horse,” he says, the words patently absurd but his voice hypnotically low.
This is circling the drain on that whole “no teasing” rule we had in place.
Then Sam’s teeth graze his lower lip, as he watches me watch him, and suddenly we’re not breaking the no teasing rule at all.
This feels like something else. Something that has my blood rushing and my cheeks burning and my eyes lingering on his lips, stained red from my cocktail like I branded him.
“Sweet Spot,” he says, his voice so low it rasps. “If we’re going to write a song about this place, that should be it. That’s the memory that sticks out to me the most.”
“Me too,” I say.
Maybe it’s just because Sweet Spot was fun. But maybe it’s because even when Sam and I barely ever acknowledged each other, Sweet Spot was the one exception to the rule.
My phone buzzes with a text. Neither of us moves. When it buzzes again, my eyes skim the screen.
“It’s Grayson,” I say. “They’ll be wrapped up in ten. Shit.”
Sam waves me off. “Ten minutes to write a three-minute song?” he says. “We’ve pulled some crazier stunts than that.”
He reaches over the bar to grab a receipt pen and a cocktail napkin, writing the words “SWEET SPOT” in all caps before handing the pen over to me, like he’s issuing a challenge. It’s our old dynamic, but with a new twist—not wanting to prove him wrong, but to prove him right.
The next ten minutes slip out from under us in a blur.
Like we’re suspended together in this place’s past and present—the bright camera flashes and syrup-sweet drinks and late nights that shifted into moments like these, where the lights don’t burn and the drinks don’t sting and a new sweetness lingers.
Sam hums. I write. I don’t know who breaks the rule first, but when my phone goes off again, we’re hovered over the napkin so close that the back of my shoulder is pressed against his chest.
“Shit,” I mutter, but don’t move away.
Sam doesn’t, either. “You can’t go until we get a picture.”
“Of what?” I ask.
He takes the pen out of my hand. “Hold still.”
He leans in, gently setting the tip of the pen on my arm and slowly, carefully drawing a lopsided candy in the same spot his temporary tattoo was when I caught him years ago. When I shiver it doesn’t have anything to do with the sensation of the pen on my skin.
“There,” he says. “Now you’re the one with the Sweet Spot.”
We get the bartender to quickly snap a picture of us, re-creating the old one from the bar. Just after she snaps it my phone buzzes again, letting me know Grayson is waiting outside.
“I’ll type up what we’ve got later tonight,” I tell Sam.
He hands me the napkin with our lyrics on it. “You might be a little busy there, Rudolph.”
I brace myself for him to follow it up with some choice remark about Grayson the way he always did about guys I was with, but he’s got nothing. He just meets my eyes with a smile that doesn’t reach his own.
“Might be,” I say lightly.
Turns out I’m fresh out of remarks, too. It feels off-kilter for us. But maybe that’s part of this new chapter of “mature, mutually supportive friends.”
And that should be a relief. My arm is still tingling where Sam drew the Sweet Spot on me, but his words left a more permanent mark.
Whatever it is I needed to finish that last song from Seven, I should have it now.
A clear answer. A tidy end. We got caught up in the heat of the moment during that kiss, but we were never going to be anything more.
No—that’s not true. We’re a team now. And despite everything, I like working with Sam. This is the best-case scenario.
And that’s what I tell myself as I leave the bar and meet Grayson in the early evening light.
That’s what I tell myself as I politely kiss Grayson goodbye outside my building at the end of the date, and walk back in alone.
That’s what I tell myself as I start another draft of Seven’s final song, and the melody takes on a new feeling entirely—one that chases the edge of every lyric, like a song I haven’t written yet, but know better than any I’ve ever heard.
A song that sounds an awful lot like lock, click .