13. Packing and Pep Talks
PACKING AND PEP TALKS
CHARLIE
I love Mackenzie’s place. It’s so cool that she lives in an apartment built inside her sister’s garage! But only for a few days longer. Livi, Mackenzie’s sister, Maggie, and I are all here with her, in the bedroom part of her apartment, helping her to pack up everything before the wedding.
Well, everything except for the laundry basket, where she’s put everything she’ll need between now and the wedding, and the suitcase already packed for her honeymoon to the Azores Islands in Portugal.
The Azores are remote and peaceful, and they’re off the radar in the best way. I’m excited that they’re going there.
“Check this out,” Mackenzie says as she grabs a big manila envelope from her suitcase that has Top Secret stamped across the front. She opens the flap and pulls out a briefing folder. “Knowing how obsessed I am with spy movies, Jace made our honeymoon itinerary into an operation briefing!”
Of course, I already know this—Jace put everything together himself, but he needed a good amount of help getting it all formatted just right and looking official.
And since computers are my jam, I got to read it all.
It’s fun to hear Mackenzie talk about it, since I didn’t actually get to see him give it to her.
I miss having him on comms when he does cute things.
“It’s got ‘Important Mission Contacts,’” Mackenzie says and turns the folder to us, showing a photo of Jace with the words THIS GUY written under it.
“And then each of the next pages lists what we’re doing each day of our honeymoon, each as a ‘Mission’ with its own ‘Mission Objectives.’ And it has time-stamped ops schedules!
We’ve got things like taking in the volcanic islands and lush greenery, checking out crater lakes, hot springs, black sand beaches, doing some whale watching, hiking through calderas, scuba diving for shipwrecks, and canyoning.
“And there are micro operation objectives, too.
Like ‘Successfully kiss operative while laughing’ and ‘Execute three swoony glances.’ And it has an Operation Gear Checklist with things like ‘Standard Issue Sunglasses (for surveillance and sunset admiration), Evening Attire (in case of emergency tango needs), and Backup Flip-Flops (in case of beach-based ambushes).’
“And look! There’s even a map of the area!” Mackenzie says, turning the page and putting the folder on the bed for us all to see. “It has locations marked and labeled—Known Rendezvous Points, Suspected Scenic Overlooks, and Potential Extraction Sites.”
Maggie, Livi, and I are all looking at it with wonder. And, okay, longing. This place looks amazing! And I love that Jace had the idea to create this for Mackenzie. It’s so sweet.
“This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” Livi says, poring over the briefing.
“Remember back before Jace,” Mackenzie says, “I used to ask every guy I dated if he could choose to go on a vacation to the beach or the mountains, which he would choose?”
Maggie nods. “Because you wanted to know if they wanted to relax on vacation or have an adventure. And you always hoped he would choose adventure.”
Mackenzie grins. “My biggest dream was to find someone who would hike with me. Or maybe even canoe. Can you believe that I get to go on an adventure honeymoon like this? This is so far beyond my wildest hopes and dreams!”
It’s so fun seeing all of Mackenzie’s excitement as she’s moving on to the next stage. I can tell that she loves this place, but she loves my brother even more. So, she’s leaving a place she loves to move onto something better, doing things she loves even more. It’s kind of beautiful.
And it makes me want it, too. It surprises me how much I want it, because I’ve never really felt its pull before. I don’t know if it’s because of Owen or not, but it makes me want to be more open to a relationship with him.
Livi finally tears her eyes from the operation briefing to meet Mackenzie’s. “Someday, I tell you, I’m going to find a guy who will be just as perfect for me as Jace is for you, and we’ll go on a honeymoon this perfect for us.”
“Speaking of which,” Mackenzie says, “how did your fancy date with your boyfriend go last night?”
“Not awesome,” Livi says, flipping through more of the briefing. “We broke up.”
“You did?” I asked. “I thought you really liked him.”
“Well, I did, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out.” She hands the folder back to Mackenzie and then goes back to folding the clothes hanging in the closet and putting them in a box, like she didn’t say that she just broke up with the guy she’s been gushing about for weeks.
“And?” Maggie says.
“Get back to packing, and I’ll tell you.”
I swear, we all forgot that was what we were doing for a moment. I keep working on boxing up Mackenzie’s shoes—the girl has a lot of shoes. Super cute ones, too.
“Okay, so Javier planned this fabulous date—a murder mystery on a yacht in the Baltimore Inner Harbor.
We got assignments of what character we were supposed to play ahead of time, and I was a nineteen-twenties courtesan.
So I was wearing a scandalously short flapper dress, and Javier was dressed as a nineteen-twenties gangster.
“As part of it, during the dinner, they handcuffed me and Javier together. I didn’t think it was such a big deal, but apparently it was to Javier.
I knew he was claustrophobic, because we played ‘Guess my phobia’ once.
” She stops in the middle of folding a blouse to give us a look.
“Guess what his clue was? ‘I don’t like being trapped in small spaces.’ I’m like ‘Come on! You’re not even making this hard! ’”
“What was the first clue you gave him about yours?” I ask.
“That I don’t like hiking in rainforests.”
“Ooh. Good one,” Maggie says.
“Right? Because then you’re like, what could it be? Giant spiders? Snakes? Heights because there might be cliffs? The fear of forests? Or trees? Of animals? Heck, even what humidity does to hair .
“Anyway, I thought the key phrase in that sentence was ‘small spaces.’ Nope!
The key word was ‘trapped.’ So, the handcuffs made him feel trapped, and claustrophobia—or, I guess, cleithrophobia —was activated and on steroids.
I noticed at first that he was really focused on his breathing and nothing else.
I asked if he was okay, and he said, ‘No.’
“Then he started full-on hyperventilating, stood up, and started pacing away. I followed, of course, since we were handcuffed together. Then he started really freaking out and shouting, ‘I need these off! I need these off!’ So the woman pretending to be the officer hurried over with the key to free us, and the key broke off in the lock .”
“Oh, no,” Mackenzie says.
“Luckily, a guy from the yacht came over with some big ole bolt cutters. He was in the process of using them—the cutters were open, the chain between our cuffs was in the open part of the cutters… And Javier passed out.”
I gasp.
“He fell forward, taking me down with him, which was totally fine. But he landed on the bolt cutters, cracked a rib, and the pain from the cracked rib woke him up, screaming.
“Of course, we didn’t know it was a cracked rib yet, so someone called nine-one-one, we docked at about the same time the ambulance arrived, and I took him down to the ambulance.”
Livi gets distracted by trying to figure out how to fold a jumpsuit, and it seems like she’s done with the story. So I say, “Wait. You said you guys broke up. That doesn’t sound like a breakup.”
“Oh, that’s the best part! So, right as the EMTs were saying that they thought Javier had a cracked rib, his mom showed up . I don’t know how she even knew to come. Javier never pulled out his phone, so he didn’t tell her. She must’ve been listening to a police scanner for the area where he was.
“And she was glaring at me like the broken rib was my fault. Then her eyes went to the one half of a pair of handcuffs that each of us was wearing like they were bracelets, then to my courtesan outfit and his gangster outfit, hardcore judgment in her eyes.
“She stayed quiet until the EMTs blocked Javier’s view of us. Then she came up to me and said in a low voice, ‘If you are ever around my son again, I swear I will send self-exploding glitter bombs to your place weekly for the rest of your natural life.’”
“She did not,” Mackenzie says.
“So what did you do?” I ask.
“I told him we couldn’t see each other anymore.
I mean, if there had been a lot of potential in our relationship and I could see marriage and babies in our future, then we could’ve addressed the threatening mom issue.
I didn’t, and I decided I didn’t need the kind of toxicity she was exuding in my life.
” She finally figures out the jumpsuit and puts it in the box, then looks at us.
“It’s okay, though. I’m going to find the right guy, and I won’t stop looking until I do. ”
I grin at her determination. “I hope you find someone who is the best of the best.”
“What about you?” Livi asks. “Anything happening with you and your cute neighbor?”
Is it crazy that my heart gets all fluttery just by Livi mentioning Owen?
“Yes and no. There have been so many little things happening daily. Like last night, the power went out, and he came over, so I wasn’t alone in the dark.
He brought cookies with him, and we told some soul-baring stories.
We even shared a moment at the end that might have turned into something amazing. ”
“But you got interrupted?” Maggie asks. I nod, and she fans herself and says, “Oh, I love a great interrupted moment!”
“And we’ve been leaving sticky notes on each other’s side of the plastic wall.
When I woke up this morning, there was one waiting for me that said, In case of another blackout, please consult your emergency neighbor kit: 1.
Flashlight, 2. Cookies, 3. Me . Is it weird that I’m wishing for another blackout?
“And then just before I came over tonight, I needed a new roll of paper towels from on top of my fridge, and I couldn’t reach it.
We don’t have a stool, so normally I would just drag over a chair from my kitchen table and stand on it.
But since they’re all currently holding or trapped by my cabinets, I couldn’t.
“I knew that Owen was home, so I just asked him through the plastic if he could come over and help. And I swear the guy bounded right over in two seconds, happy to do it.”
“And?” Livi prompts. “When he reached up high, did his shirt rise a bit and show you a sliver of stomach?”
I look down, blushing but totally smiling.
“Yes. Okay, but what if he ends up not being the right guy? Because you can’t totally figure out if they are the right guy before you start dating them.
And then if we broke up, cue a lot of neighbor awkwardness because we’d still see each other every day.
I mean, we’d still share a wall. One that will hopefully be a real wall again soon.
” Plus, there’s the part where I am investigating the guy who is paying for the restoration on the building that means so much to him.
That makes being interested in Owen at all feel so wrong.
“I dated and then broke up with a guy who was my neighbor once,” Maggie says.
“You dated a neighbor?” Mackenzie asks, seeming incredulous that there was information like that about her sister that she didn’t know .
“Yeah. It was a secret relationship.”
“When?”
“In high school.”
“Seriously? Who ?”
“Brady Rigsby.”
Mackenzie gasps. “You dated Brady Rigsby ? Brady Rigsby, as in the guy who peed in our garden?”
“Okay, that was one time, and he was four.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”
“It wouldn’t have been a secret if I had.
Anyway, since I’d been obsessed with Brady before the breakup, I knew his schedule well.
So after we broke up, in order to avoid the awkwardness, I timed my comings and goings so precisely that for six weeks, I didn’t so much as catch a glimpse of him.
It was like emotional air traffic control.
I could land a plane with those avoidance skills.
“And then after that, I just mastered the ‘neighborly nod.’ Not too friendly, not too cold. Just a perfectly neutral chin lift. It’s the international signal for ‘I no longer emotionally spiral when I see you.’
“Here’s the thing that took me way too long to figure out: awkwardness doesn’t last. Regret does. If you’re scared it won’t work, that’s okay. But don’t let that stop you from finding out if it could.”
“That’s a very good point.”
“So you’re going to go for it?” Mackenzie asks, with way too much hopefulness in her voice.
I nod. “Well, I kind of already committed to that, so yes. That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you—I asked him last night if he’ll be my plus-one at your wedding.”
I’m suddenly surrounded by hugs and very excited women. Mackenzie is grinning at me. “I bet you’re really not going to regret it.”
I’d like to think that she’s right.