21. Shelby
Islide into the seat in the booth across from Richard with two glasses. One’s a Belgian beer; the other’s a club soda.
“So this is it, huh?” Richard says with that voice I hate. The one where he sounds like he’s being casual, but there’s this tiny bit of judgment threaded through it. “I thought your mom was exaggerating.” He takes a big sip of the beer. Then another. “It really is a dump, though. I guess it’s a good thing you’re here.”
I fight the rage that flares through me. “Keep your voice down, Richard. And it’s not a dump.”
I glance over at Mac’s office, to where he disappeared a moment ago. Where he worked so hard today, going along with all my seemingly unhinged questions. People are rarely so engaged in this stage of the process. They question it, check their watches. Talk about having to get to other meetings. They only thank me for it later, when they see everything come together. When they see that why permeate their whole business plan and feel it at the end.
But Mac—he felt it today, I’m sure of it.
Then things got weird.
The door’s open, but I can’t see inside from here. He’s probably at his desk, his big frame making his computer look like a toy.
Richard scoffs. “All right, maybe it’s not a dump-dump. But this place is two steps away from wooden seagulls and crab-traps on the ceiling.”
He waves his hands up to the rafters.
“What’s that chain in the airport called? It’s so fucking gauche. Anyway, your mother was aghast. She was sure you’d be back in a day. We all were.”
He’s not usually an absolute dick like this. Inattentive, sure. Snobby, definitely. But spitting?
He sways a little in his seat.
And drunk?
He takes a giant gulp of his beer. There’s only half of it left.
Richard doesn’t drink much, but that little beer couldn’t make him this drunk. He came in here already shit-faced.
I grit my teeth. In five years, I’ve only seen him like this three times. The first, he tried to have sex with me. We’d only been dating for a few weeks, and I wasn’t ready. I was actually thinking of breaking up with him. When I said no, he broke down sobbing.
“You’ve seen my parents?” I ask, only because I’m still formulating what I really want to say to him.
“Only at the club.” He’s talking about the yacht club.
He glances around the Dinghy, clearly comparing it table for table with the restaurant there. Where this place is hearty white ceramics and beer steins, that place is all silverware and crisp white linens and different wine glasses for different grape varietals. It’s expensive clothes and fake laughter and posturing.
“I’ve done a few rounds with your dad, of course,” he says.
“Dinners too, I guess.”
He laughs but doesn’t deny it.
I sit back in my booth, drumming my fingers on the tabletop. I’m not surprised he’s spending more time with my parents than I ever did. I used to joke with him that he was only dating me because of them. He laughed it off, but a paranoid part of me was convinced it was true.
Now I’m almost certain.
Richard taps his fingers on the side of his glass, almost like he’s mocking my fingers on the table.
I drop my hand to my lap.
He drains his beer. “I need another.” He shoves the glass at me.
His eyes are slightly glassy but still focused on me. Boring into me. It’s a challenge. He wants me to be his server. To humiliate myself.
This isn’t him.
“Were you drinking before you got here?” I ask. Because I’d rather he just be forthright.
Richard shrugs.
Then he meets my eyes. And that’s when I see it—the pain there. The smallest part of me softens, feeling guilty for thinking so uncharitably about him.
It’s gone a moment later, though, when he pushes the glass into my hand. “I said I need another.”
I pick it up and set it out of his reach, like he’s a child. “Why are you here, Richard?”
“Because I had to see it for my fucking self. Bryony Jones, MBA, CEO, living in butt-fuck seaside nowhere.”
Heat rips through me. “Fuck you, Richard,” I say through gritted teeth.
“You don’t even like places like this. You’re a restaurant snob.”
“I like the kinds of restaurants we used to go to, Richard. But I like these kinds of places too. I like this place. It’s possible to contain multitudes.”
I glance toward Mac’s office. To where a man twice the person Richard is contains so many multitudes in that stormy, beautiful face he takes my breath away.
“I want another beer, Bryony.”
“You’re being an asshole, Richard. This isn’t you.”
“And this isn’t you!” Richard shouts, making me rear back in my seat. Lana meets my eyes from where she’s standing at the point of sale machine. “What the fuck are you doing here, Bryony?”
I hold up a hand, letting her know I’m okay. Lunch is over, and there are only a couple of other customers in the bar, both local fisherman—distant relatives of Mac’s. They both look at Richard like he’s the kind of fish they’d toss back into the water.
I rub my temples. He deserves an explanation, at least. “I’m sorry for the way I told you, Richard. I didn’t exactly prepare for doing what I did. I know the way I left was…”
Richard’s eyes are red. “Insane?”
I nod. “Yeah. I guess. But I should have taken a break from work—from my family—before going off the deep end.” I hesitate. “And I should have ended things between us a while ago.”
Richard gives a mean smirk. “But you didn’t. You couldn’t. You said we were taking a break because you couldn’t stand to really call things off, Bryony. I know how you are, okay? You have these little bouts of moodiness, then you go right back to the way things were, and everything goes back to normal. This time, you just went too far.”
I curl my hands into fists under the table. Moodiness? Those are just feelings. Normal human feelings a Ken doll like Richard wouldn’t understand. Actually, that’s an insult to Ken dolls. “I didn’t change my mind, Richard,” I say, choosing to rise above picking things apart. “I broke up with you for good.”
“It was that wedding, wasn’t it?” Richard muses as if I didn’t say anything at all. “Tim and Charlotte. You saw them having their big wedding, and I saw the way you looked at me. Like you were so devastated it wasn’t you.”
That was the second time I saw him shit-faced. I lean forward, flattening my hands out on the tabletop. “Richard, you came on to a bridesmaid at that wedding. That’s why I was looking at you like that. You wouldn’t let her see us too close together because you wanted to give the impression you were single. Do you know how insulting that was?”
Looking at Richard now, I can’t fathom what I ever saw in him. Why I made so many excuses for his shitty behavior. It wasn’t really that I didn’t think I was a loveable, was it? It was that my life felt like it needed all those pieces to keep glued together. Me being CEO at work, giving up all the parts of my job I loved even though it nearly broke me. Me staying with Richard because my parents wanted me to—at least, Dad did. Mom didn’t really express an opinion either way. But I also stayed with him because I thought he kept me contained. I thought he calmed me down when I threatened to go off the rails. He kept my expectations reasonable, my sights logically close. But really, I realize now, being my whole self with Mac—and we’re not even together—that a partner’s not meant to be a stopper. Richard didn’t calm me. He kept me small. I only thought I was too much—too big, too expressive, too excitable—because I was.
To him.
I think of Mac, looking at Nate and me with wonder when we made a mess of the kitchen. At him watching me today as I bounced around the whiteboard, barely able to write as fast as our ideas came. Whooping when we landed on something great. He doesn’t squish that in me.
He loves it in me.
Richard glances sideways, then grabs his glass and shakes it in the air. Little drops of beer splatter on his face, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Can I get some service in here? Mine sucks.”
I shake my head firmly at Lana.
I look back at Richard. He still hasn’t acknowledged what I said about what he did at that wedding—how he disrespected me so profoundly.
He sees me finally and makes a pshaw sound. “Really? You’re jealous? I told you. That was a misunderstanding.”
Jealous. Heat rushes through me. I should have lost it on him then, but I didn’t. So now’s the next best time. I don’t yell when I speak next, but I don’t bother trying to protect his dignity anymore by keeping my voice down either.
“You kept saying it was a misunderstanding. So I tried to convince myself of that. I mean, I don’t know why I bothered. My parents tried to convince me of that too. But it wasn’t, was it? You wouldn’t even hold my hand on the dance floor, let alone dance with me.”
“I can’t help it that you’re so attached, Bryony. That you needed to mark your territory at that wedding. Or why you felt you had to have a nervous breakdown to get my attention.”
That heat grows into a fiery inferno. “Richard,” I say, my voice quiet with a calm fury. “You’re out of your mind. Are you forgetting the part where I broke up with you? You called me enough times, so I know you got it.”
I feel the tiniest bit of guilt that I never answered any of those calls. But I knew he’d just be freaking out.
But all my pity vanishes when he smirks and waves his glass again.
“Seriously, the help is terrible around here.”
Suddenly a shadow appears at my side. A big shadow. And the glass pops out of his hand.
“My apologies, sir,” comes the gravelly voice attached to the hand now engulfing the glass. “I have a policy that I don’t let my servers look after assholes.”
Relief floods me. Gratitude too. And something else I can’t name.
Richard’s eyes are wide as he looks Mac up and down. He has to crane his neck to see the top of him beside me. Then he registers that he’s been insulted.
“What the fuck? You can’t talk to me like that.”
“He can, but he shouldn’t have to,” I say. I slide out of my side of the booth. I should leave it alone. But I don’t know that he will if I don’t close this for good. “You didn’t answer my question. Do you remember me telling you it was over?”
Richard sputters. “You didn’t mean it.”
I slide my hand into Mac’s. It’s huge and rough and takes mine without a microsecond of hesitation. “I don’t want to be with you, Richard. Is that clear enough? I never want to see your face again.”
I have to give Richard some credit. He doesn’t even consider Mac’s size before turning bright red and jumping out of the booth. Mac takes a step back to give him space to leave, tucking me slightly behind him.
“You’re fucking him, aren’t you?” Richard asks, incredulous. “You’re trying to forget me, so you’re fucking a redneck. Was that why you came all the way out here? Because no one else would say yes back home?”
Mac seems to grow even bigger in a matter of seconds. “I’d advise you to think very carefully about whether you want to continue talking right now.”
“This is none of your fucking business!” Richard says.
My heart beats hard in my chest, my eyes threatening to well with tears at what he just said. He always knew how to hurt me. I’ll give him that.
But I blink them away. I refuse to let him see. “Richard,” I say calmly. “You need to leave.”
Richard sneers but doesn’t move.
“You heard her,” Mac says. “Get the fuck out of my bar.”
“What are you going to do? Beat me up?” Richard sneers. “She’s my girlfriend.”
“God dammit!” I say, this close to a yell, before Mac can say anything.
It’s one thing for him to be an ass. It’s another for him to provoke Mac and ignore me, like he’s always done. Like my parents have always done, as if my opinion—my life—doesn’t matter in the slightest.
Well, I’m done being nice now. I can’t do it anymore. “I told you very clearly that I don’t want to be with you. I don’t know how much clearer I have to make it.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it, bitch?—”
Mac’s arm lifts, and I’m sure this is the last time I’m going to see Richard with a full set of teeth. I don’t hesitate.
I place both my hands on Mac’s shoulders, tugging hard at him so he turns away from Richard. “Mac. He’s not worth it.”
He really isn’t.
But Mac’s jaw is so hard I think he’s going to crack his molars. “I can’t let him talk to you like that, Shelby.”
His expression is so pained that, for a moment, my breath catches. No one has ever understood my feelings the way Mac does. No one’s looked at me like me being hurt hurts them.
“I can’t let him do that,” Mac rasps. His eyes are on mine, beseeching me. Looking for permission. But I can’t let him hit Richard. Mac could seriously hurt him. Richard would press charges. Mac’s whole world would change, just because he was trying to protect me.
Even through his anger, through Richard raging at his back, Mac looks at me in this knowing way, like he sees all the thoughts flittering through me and he has all the time in the world to wait for me to come out with what I have to say.
I tell myself this is for Richard. So he can see how serious I am. But it’s not really. It’s all for me.
I rise up on my toes, press my hands to Mac’s rough cheeks, and bend his face down to mine.
It’s just a brushing of lips against his—so soft against the rough tickle of his scruff—but a feeling rushes through me that I can’t begin to describe. It’s like…rightness. Like fitting. Like kismet.
Kiss-metI think inanely.
When I pull away, I’m slightly dazed. But Mac looks even more so. He’s blinking like he’s in shock. But I see his dress shirt tightening against his arm as if it’s being pulled back; I can hear shouting behind him.
It’s Richard, losing his mind. Trying to pull Mac away from me.
He’s like a squirrel trying to pull down a tree.
My eyes stay locked on Mac’s, and I can’t help it. I smile.
Mac brushes a hand against my jaw, his thumb grazing my cheek.
“Just one minute,” Mac says. “Gotta deal with something.”
He turns around just as Richard throws a fist. Mac neatly dodges it, Richard’s arm flying high and wild.
Mac claps a big hand on Richard’s shoulder and whirls him around. Holding Richard’s collar with one hand and the back of his pants with the other, Mac quite literally lifts the smaller man up off his feet.
Lana’s already at the front door, sticking the wedge under the heavy wood so it stays propped open. She steps aside as Mac carries Richard out, arms and legs kicking.
“You can’t do this!” Richard shouts.
“Think he already is, buddy,” Lana says as they pass by.
For a tense moment, I’m sure Mac’s going to throw Richard bodily onto the beach. That Richard’s going to get hurt and sue, and all the things that kiss was supposed to prevent will happen.
But Mac sets him down on his feet. Except he doesn’t let go of Richard’s collar. He leans in and says something in Richard’s ear.
Richard goes still, then looks back over his shoulder at me.
He’s still red in the face, but in the outside light, I see them gleam. He’s crying.
Mac lays a hand on Richard’s shoulder again, but this time it’s not to turn him around; it almost looks like a touch of comfort.
But then, Richard shrugs him off. He lifts both hands up into middle fingers, waving them at Mac and thrusting his hips out as he does it.
Lana bursts out laughing.
I’ve never heard her laugh like that.
“Oh my God,” I say, slumping onto the bench seat as Richard storms away.
Mac follows at an easy pace, both of them now out of my line of sight.
Lana taps the doorstop out with her toe, letting the door close. Then she comes right over to me.
Seeing my expression, she quickly sobers. “Oh, Shelby. I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. When I look at her again, I smile. It turns into a laugh a moment later. I flatten my hands against my face. “Ugh, I’m so embarrassed.”
“Why? That was incredible. Kissing Mac was a stroke of genius, though Chip did look fairly heartbroken.”
My cheeks heat. I hadn’t even registered that there’d be witnesses to that. I drop my hands onto the table, feeling the grooved woodgrain against my fingertips.
“Mac’s out there to make sure your guy doesn’t drive,” she says kindly.
“He never leaves a job undone, does he?”
“Nope.”
But when she sees I’m still shaken, she squeezes my hand. “Listen, people are very good at hiding. But something I’ve noticed working in a bar this past year is that sometimes people really show their true colors when they’re drunk. Chris calls it ‘wearing their insides on the outside.’ Have you seen him drunk before?”
I nod.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
I sigh, thinking of the incident with the bridesmaid. “You know, I think he thought I was head over heels for him, and yet he was always trying for someone better than me.”
A beat passes. Then Lana says, “Speaking for myself, I think there are some people who look at us and only see the things we’re insecure about. They use those things as…footholds to walk all over us to make themselves feel better. To exert power over us. Those people are generally miserable and make us feel like we need them, when really, they need us.” She laughs drily. “That was my ex-husband, to a tee.”
It’s almost eerie how on the nose that is. Richard knew every one of my weaknesses. I made myself vulnerable to him and he used those things to keep me down.
“Now the best people,” she says, “they see through those things we worry about. Or they don’t see them at all. They help us see that we’re so much more than what we see as our failings. That’s what my kids do for me.”
“I think I want to spend more time with your kids,” I joke.
“You’re absolutely welcome to. They’d love you. But honestly? There are good people right under your nose.”
Heat runs through me. She looks me in the eye in a way that makes me know she’s not talking hypothetically.
Suddenly all I can think about is Mac.
A question tugs at me, the same way the heat from that barely-brush of a kiss still tugs at my lips.
“Lana?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s Mac like when he’s drunk?”
Lana looks at me and smirks, like she knows exactly why I want to know.
She leans back in the booth next to me. “He gets soft, Shelby. That’s how Mac gets when he’s drunk. I only ever saw it once, after he found out he was a father; after he got over the shock of it. He still didn’t say much, but he teared up. Told us his heart was…what was it? Broken and grown all at once.”
My chest hurts, and I realize I know precisely how that feels.
The door swings open then, and we both look over.
I hold my breath.
Lana squeezes my hand once more, then slips from the booth.
Mac stands there for a moment, letting the door close softly behind him.
His eyes on me.