37. Mac
For a two-hundred-and-good-amount-of-change-pound man, I feel light as a goddamn feather. I don’t even care that people are staring at me as I walk down the street in this skintight outfit. I’ve got Shelby on my arm.
Shortly after that moment in her room, she got that look on her face again—the worried one—and I was sure things were going to slip again. Hearing her sob like that—it ripped the seams from my newly patched heart.
“Mac,” she said, “this doesn’t solve our problem of what to do about our future.”
But relief flooded through me when I realized that was all it was. “Come here,” I said, grinning and getting her up. “I have a plan for that.”
We walk to her office through her little neighborhood, and I soak it in as if I’m here for the first time. Because, in a way, I am. I look at the shops and the leafy trees and the diversity of people in a way that isn’t just fleeting, as a tourist, but like it could be home for me too.
Not that I’m giving up on Redbeard.
“Finally,” Nate says when we arrive at Visionary Consulting. Annie’s there too, and Stu, to Shelby’s abject shock. “What? I know my way around a city block,” Stu gripes.
Annie explains Stu’s part in the plan, including the part about me buying Stu’s house all those years ago.
“Sure doesn’t look like it much anymore,” Stu says.
“The bones are all there,” I say defensively. “And the floors, and the banister, and the layout.”
Stu waves a hand.
“Mac,” Deanie says. “Can we focus on the job at hand?”
“Right.” I walk over to the whiteboard I bought this morning at the giant office supply store. “You know I could have bought this at two a.m.? You really can get anything you want at any time in the city.”
“Who the hell needs office supplies at two in the morning?” Stu asks.
“Beats me,” Nate says.
Deanie, Annie, and Shelby exchange amused smiles. City girls.
But when I turn the board around, Shelby gasps.
“Nate helped me with this,” I say. “And Annie.”
“Oh my God, it’s a murder board,” Deanie says.
“What?” Stu asks, confused.
Shelby laughs, looking close to tears again. Only this time, it doesn’t rip my heart out to see it.
“It’s what Deanie calls my brainstorming boards,” she says. She looks at me. “You made one for me.”
I nod, trying to remain chill, even though I feel like a kid showing off a project. “Yeah, we mapped out all the options. Plus space for your ideas.”
Shelby’s eyes dance over the board, examining it thoroughly, like she wants to memorize it. There are lists of options in different colors, everything from Nate and me moving to Vancouver and giving up everything, to Shelby getting a float plane pass and commuting.
“It was Annie’s idea for you to do work-from-home stuff,” Nate says. “That’s what she does.”
Annie shrugs. “It’s pretty common in publishing. So is hybrid. You could get a boat to make travel faster.”
Shelby’s eyes light up. I picture her on a motorboat, zipping into the marina for a day in the city. Fuck, she’d look sexy driving one of those James Bond–looking wooden ones, her ponytail flapping in the wind.
“Maybe I could keep my apartment in the city with that one,” she says. “For all of us. You could talk to all the restaurant people,” she says to me.
“Or just eat,” I say, just as happy with that option.
“And Nate, we could visit the gaming companies. Or the game design schools in a few years!”
Nate’s eyes practically bug out of his head. Then he remembers himself. “Yeah. I guess that’d be cool.”
She runs her hands over the pictures Nate cut from magazines and newspapers. Planes and boats and the city and a small town. A happy family living in a camper. A couple getting married.
“That one was Nate,” I say quickly.
“You said it was okay!” Nate protests.
“You don’t have to decide anything today,” Deanie says, clearing her throat.
I flush. I don’t care what Deanie says. If Shelby wants it, I’m down. I know it in a way that makes it clear I’ve thought it all along. One day, I’m going to make Shelby my wife.
“Just know,” Deanie says, “that we’ll support anything you choose. A consultant role, an arms-length director, a satellite office, special projects only…I know it seems like there’s only one way to do things, but if anything, you’ve taught me hard things are totally doable. Sometimes it just takes doing them. Plus, you’re still our leader, Shelby.”
It takes her a long moment before she nods. “Okay,” she whispers.
I glance at the others. “Do you think we could have a minute alone?”
“Of course,” Annie says. “Come on, Nate. Deanie says there’s ice cream.”
I close the door behind them. “You okay?” I ask when we’re alone.
“Mac,” she says, “can we really make this work? Commuting is hell, everyone says it.”
I walk over to her, brushing a loose strand of hair off her face. “We won’t be doing it the way anyone else does. You’ll find the secret sauce, Shelby.”
She smiles, her expression so hopeful I want to remember it always. To somehow save it and show her any time we have doubts.
I run a thumb along Shelby’s jaw. “We can have it all, Shelby.”
When I kiss her, she tastes like that hope. She tastes like the promise of a life that will work out however we want it to. I send the thought over to her. We can have it all. And this time, I think we both believe it.