33. Mac
I’m out on the back deck when I hear the hum of the engine coming down my road over the dull wash of the ocean. Dinner’s made, the outside table set.
All that’s missing is Shelby.
It’s been two weeks since Oysterfest.
Two weeks since Nadine came crashing back into our lives.
Two weeks since Shelby left.
It’s been, frankly, two weeks of hell.
I stand up, perking my ears to see if the car is pulling into my driveway or just passing by. It’s a ways off, still.
Nadine’s been staying at the inn and has taken her son out exactly one time since she’s been back, and he came home in tears. When I tried to get him to tell me about it, he told me he was fine.
I nearly lost it. Not at him, of course. But he didn’t see it that way.
We’ve regressed. In a bad way. He’s back to eating in his room most nights, unless Annie’s able to coax him out. Yesterday, when he came home from school, he slammed the door so hard a picture fell off a wall. The only good thing that came out of that is that he asked if I could drive him to school the next day. It was the best twenty minutes we’d spent together since Shelby left, even if neither of us said a word.
The car’s definitely pulling into the drive. I rise up off my chair, heading through the house. Nate’s at the top of the stairs. “Is that her?”
“I hope so,” I say. Desperately.
Behind me, back on the deck, I hear the door to the shed opening. Annie’s staying there right now, back in the room that was made for her. It feels weird having her there, even though that was always the point.
As I step out the front door and see Shelby’s Jetta pull in next to my truck, my chest throbs.
Nothing’s changed about the way I feel for Shelby. If anything, I love her more than ever, which I didn’t think was possible, since I was already so gone I had to hide my fucking tears when we were last together in my bed. I love her for everything she already was, but for not faltering during the shit show that was Oysterfest? For putting up with my contained fury at seeing Nadine again when she thought she could sweep back into Nate’s life? She’s a goddamn saint. She even stood strong as Nadine batted her eyelashes at me, then looked all hurt when I told her firmly that I was with Shelby. Nadine’s not a bad person. She’s not cruel or evil or catty or any of those things. She’s just…messed up. She always has been.
I crunch over the gravel to Shelby’s car and open the door. I practically pull her out, wrapping my arms around her so hard she looks up at me with worry.
“Hey,” she says softly. “That bad?”
“Yes,” I say. “But I’m better now that you’re here.”
“Tell me?”
“It’s fine.” I promised myself I wouldn’t dump everything on her this weekend. I promised myself I’d just enjoy our time together. I stroke her hair, soaking in her face. “I love you. I just missed you.”
When we kiss, I can almost forget how shitty everything is around me.
Dinner is prawns and steak I made on the barbecue, along with a salad made by Annie and Nate. We eat outside in the warm summer evening. By all accounts, it’s a perfect night, with Shelby by my side, her hand on mine between talking or eating or sipping our wine. She and Annie get along like a house on fire, and Nate’s back to talking like he was before Shelby left.
“So how’s it going with work?” Annie asks. “How was that thing you had to do?”
They talked before Shelby left about the launch event she was going back for.
“It was terrible, actually.”
“What?” Annie laughs.
Shelby tells us about how everything went wrong. How Clientzilla had a meltdown on stage. But how she and her team managed to turn it all around. “They’re incredible, honestly. I was so proud of them. And it felt so damn good to be in the middle of it again. Just like at Oysterfest.”
She looks so happy it hurts.
But something irrational flashes inside me too. A petty jealousy, of the thing that lights her up.
“Actually,” she says, looking at me with something like an apology. “Because of how things went, I’m going to need to stay back there a bit longer than I thought.”
She already told me she’d need an extra couple of weeks to wind things down at work and pack up her place. I offered to come down to help, but she insisted she was fine. “It’s mostly work stuff, and besides, you’re too busy at the Dinghy. And with other stuff.”
She was talking about Nadine.
But the last thing I want to do is deal with Nadine.
“How long?” I ask, proud of myself for managing my tone so I don’t sound as fucking devastated as I feel.
Shelby holds my hand. “Realistically? Probably another month.”
The table falls silent as Shelby’s news lands on us. Nate scrapes his food across his plate like he’s done eating.
I pull my hand away. I put another dresser in my room. A bedside table with her favorite books. A little potted lemon tree in the corner. I picture staring at those things without her for another month.
“I can come up on the weekends, though,” Shelby says, clearly scrambling to try to revive the mood.
I’m being a dick. I should help her. But I down the rest of my beer. “It’s a long drive,” I say.
“It’s not bad. Only three and a half hours, including the ferry. Totally doable.”
I clench my teeth and nod. I won’t fight her on it. But I get up to clear the table. I’m done eating.
As Shelby and I sit down by the fire pit later under the sunset, I try so hard to just enjoy her. Everything, in this moment, is as it should be. Shelby’s here, at home with us.
But when her arm lands on the arm of her chair next to mine, it feels nothing like it did that first night we sat here.
“Nadine says she’s moving back,” I say.
“Oh,” Shelby says. There’s a long, empty space where I want desperately to tell her I’m sorry for the way I’m being. To beg her to forgive me.
“She won’t,” I say, my voice bitter.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because Nadine never stays in one place for long. She just crashes into people’s lives and then peaces out.” I take a swig of my beer but find it empty. Thank Christ I didn’t bring the whiskey down here. I’d be chugging it from the bottle.
I drop the bottle onto the grass. It’s unlike me not to set it neatly next to the things I’m bringing back upstairs.
I can feel Shelby’s eyes on me. I can practically hear all the questions.
We talked a little about things before she left. I told her about how Nadine was a few years older than Annie, how she’d gotten her into all that trouble. But when she came back to town all those years later, she seemed to have done okay—she was in a moderately successful rock band. Men at the bar she’d found me at in Swan River were ogling her. But she only had eyes for me.
“Were you in love with her?” Shelby had asked.
“No,” I said. “Never.” My heart had broken that she’d had to ask me that.
I was too ashamed to tell her I’d been lonely. Depressed. Drunk. It was my mom’s birthday. It’s why I was drinking out of town. It would have only been her forty-fifth birthday. She was so fucking young when we lost her. When I lost her.
“It was one night,” I told Shelby. “One terrible, broken, shitty night.”
Now she looks at me with concern.
“Fuck,” I say out loud, rolling my hand into a fist on the armrest.
I sit up before she can touch me, leaning over so my elbows are on my knees.
If she touches me, I’ll fall apart.
I rub a hand over my head. I’m furious at myself that I’m right back where I was. I promised myself I’d be calm this whole weekend. That I wouldn’t let Nadine’s presence be felt. But I’m so fucking angry.
“It’s seeing Nate get his hopes up that upsets me the most,” I say, my voice a croak. “He’s had so many people leave him. Nadine. His grandmother, when Nadine picked him up and dropped him here last year. Nadine a-fucking-gain.”
“She might stay?—”
“She won’t!” The words are harder than I mean. “And I don’t fucking want her to.”
I feel so fucking ashamed.
Which makes the words I say next even more absurd. “It sounds like work is going well.”
A beat passes. Shelby doesn’t say anything for a moment. “It is, actually. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.” I reach for the empty beer, forgetting I finished it.
“What?”
I stand up, grabbing the stick for the fire. I poke at it a little too hard. The logs come tumbling down, sparks flying.
“You don’t want to be here,” I say.
“What are you talking about?”
I hear the anger in her voice.
“I’ve been watching you, Shelby. This whole time.” I try to fix the logs, tipping the burning stumps over. One rolls to the edge of the pit. “Fuck.”
“What do you mean?”
I toss the stick down, turning around. “You’re so good at what you do, Shelby. It makes you so happy, and the fucked-up thing is, it makes me happy to see you loving it.”
She frowns, her expression confused.
“It’s why I can’t make you move up here. I can’t ask you to give that up.”
“Mac, it’s just a job.”
“But it’s not just a job to you, is it? It’s the company you built yourself. You told me you started it to prove to your parents that you were competent without your sister, right? That you could do things without her guiding you like she always used to?”
Hurt dances across her face with the golden flicker of firelight. She told me that in the dark, in her room, weeks ago. We both made quiet, deep confessions that night. We both cried. It was one of my favorite nights with her. And now I’m throwing it in her face.
But I’ve been thinking about this. Maybe since even before Nadine came back. “It doesn’t make sense, Shelby. You love the job, but you love Vancouver too. You always talk about your favorite ramen shop and that bookstore with the section all about boats you keep telling me I’d love.”
“Because of you!” she exclaims. “Mac, I love the boat section because it reminds me of you.”
“I don’t even have a fucking boat!” I snap.
She rears back, her face so hurt.
I’m so fucking ashamed. But we’re here now. Where I knew I had to take this. “I can’t have someone else leave him, Shelby.”
“I’m not going to leave him, or you. I love you. I love Nate.”
“It’s not enough.” My voice cracks. People who love still leave. They drown, even full of love. “I can’t tie you down here. I’d just be…clipping your wings.”
“Mac, what the hell is happening here? Are you breaking up with me?”
Even though the words tear through my every cell, I say, “You should go home, Shelby. Tomorrow.”
Shelby stands up. “I thought I was home, Mac.”
The words are like a fucking knife in my chest.
I turn around so she can’t see the way my eyes are red, my nose burning. I keep turned around, because if I look back at her again, all this pain will be for nothing, and I’ll be dreading this moment for however long she stays.
“Stay here tonight. I’ll go sleep at Cal’s.”
“You’re sabotaging us, Mac,” she says. She’s furious. I can hear it.
“Goodbye, Shelby.” I have to be a dick. It’s the only way she’ll leave. I need to walk away now, down the steps to the beach, away from her so she knows I’m serious.
My heart feels shorn from my body. Like it’s torn on all its edges. I can’t leave her like this. I can’t let her go thinking I don’t love her, can I?
I’m so fucking weak that I turn around, ready to drop to my knees and beg her not to go despite what I just said.
But she’s already gone. I don’t move. Even from here, I can hear the sound of her engine revving a few minutes later. She never unloaded her bag from the car.
Maybe she knew that I’d do this, or maybe she never wanted to stay.
I sink to the ground, hitting my forehead with my fist for even thinking that.
I pull my phone out of my pocket, and my wallet. Then I call every local hotel, one by one, and book a room in her name. The inn, Widow’s Walk, the motel. I even call a few places in Swan River. The people who know me all ask if I’m okay, and I tell them yes, I’m fine. Totally fine.
When that’s all done, I stand up, reach for the beer bottle lying in the grass, and whip it as hard as I can down to the beach.
I fucking hate beach litter. I hate glass litter the most. I won’t leave it there. But as it smashes down below and I walk down after it, I hope I cut my hands to shit when I pick up all the pieces.