Chapter 14 #2
The gym emptied slowly amid the usual post-game milling, parents finding kids, coaches debriefing, the gradual unwinding of collective adrenaline.
Kace was somewhere in the scrum of teammates, and Jules had gone to find him.
Fir and Tomás left with Josiah after a warm goodbye, and Auden and Keaton herded Milton toward the exit, Auden nodding at Mac as he passed.
And then it was just us. The bleachers were nearly empty, the court lights still blazing, the gym settling into its post-game quiet.
I was sitting with my elbows on my knees and my head slightly down, and the performance that had been running all day—all week—was finally, mercifully shutting off.
I could feel it powering down, system by system, like a building going dark floor by floor.
The smile. The warmth. The reflexive availability.
All of it draining away and leaving behind the thing that lived underneath, which was a tiredness so profound it felt geological.
“Arek.”
Mac’s voice, rough and low, beside me.
I lifted my head. I meant to have my face together, to have the mask back on, the warmth rebooted, the “I’m fine” loaded and ready.
But I was too slow, and Mac was too fast. His eyes caught mine in the gap between the performance ending and the performance restarting, and whatever he saw in my face made him go still.
I don’t know what he saw. Exhaustion, probably. Maybe the loneliness underneath it, the ache of being surrounded by people who needed you and having no one to need. Maybe just a man on a bleacher who was so tired of being fine that the word had lost all structural integrity.
Whatever he saw, Mac didn’t look away. He held my gaze with those blue eyes that had never once, in all the time I’d known him, pretended to be anything other than exactly what they were. “When’s the last time someone asked how you were doing and actually wanted the answer?”
My throat closed. One sentence, and the wall I’d been patching and reinforcing and maintaining for months buckled. Not completely, but enough that my breath caught, my eyes burned, and I had to look at the empty court because looking at Mac was suddenly impossible. “I’m—”
“Don’t say fine.”
I closed my mouth.
Mac’s good hand settled on the back of my neck.
His palm was warm and rough with calluses and broad enough to span from one side to the other, his fingers curving around the muscle that connected neck to shoulder.
It wasn’t a pat or a clap. It was a steady, deliberate, grounding pressure that said “I’m here” in a language older than words.
My entire body went still. Every system, every reflex, every piece of carefully maintained machinery came to a sudden halt, like someone had pulled the plug.
What was left was a man being touched by another man with an almost unbearable gentleness because Mac’s hands were built for hammers, wood, and the precise violence of renovation, but he was using them on me like I was something that needed care rather than force.
I didn’t do any of the things I always did, like fill the silence, deflect with humor, redirect the conversation, take care of the other person. I sat there with Mac’s hand on my neck and let someone hold me up for ten seconds.
Ten seconds. That was all. Then his hand slid away, and the air where it had been felt cold. I straightened up and blinked. The gym reassembled around me, and the moment was over. Except it wasn’t. My skin still burned where his hand had been.
Kace burst through the gym doors with Jules in tow, flushed and euphoric. “Dad! Did you see overtime? Did you see the floater? Mr. Heald, the floater!”
“I saw it,” Mac said. “You stopped thinking.”
Kace beamed. “I stopped thinking!”
“Don’t make it a habit in other areas,” I said. My voice came out almost normal, and Kace groaned.
The four of us walked out of the gym, and if my hand brushed Mac’s sleeve as we went through the door, well, that was because the hallway was so narrow.
In the parking lot, Mac’s truck was parked three spots from mine. The boys loaded themselves in, Kace still narrating every play to Jules, who bore it with the patience of a saint. Mac and I stood across from each other.
“Thank you for coming,” I said. “Kace won’t shut up about this for a week.”
“He played well. The overtime possession was smart.”
“He’ll be thrilled you said that.”
“You should eat something. An actual meal. Not a granola bar.”
I stared at him. “How do you know about the granola bars?”
“You mentioned Dr. Everett called you out for it. And you look like a man who’s been running on caffeine and stubbornness for a week.”
His blue eyes were direct and unblinking, and I saw something in them I hadn’t seen before—or hadn’t let myself see. Worry. He was worried about me. Mac, who had enough of his own damage to fill a mountain, was standing in a parking lot worrying about whether I’d eaten. “I’ll eat.”
“Good.”
He turned to go, then stopped and turned back.
His face was a war between the granite and something underneath it, something that wanted out.
“You do a lot for people, Arek. Everyone in that gym has a story about something you did for them. Some referral, some late-night phone call, some appointment you squeezed them into.” He paused.
“But I didn’t see anyone in those bleachers checking on you.
Except Dr. Everett, maybe. And he’s too polite to push. ”
The parking lot was quiet, but my ears were buzzing, low and persistent.
“I’m not too polite,” Mac said. “So I’m telling you. You look like hell. You’re not eating. You’re not getting true rest and downtime. And you won’t tell anyone because you think needing something makes you less useful, and being useful is the only way you know how to matter.”
Each word hit me like lightning.
“You matter without being useful,” he said. “And if you don’t figure that out, you’re going to burn down to nothing, and this town will lose the best thing it has.”
He held my gaze for one more moment. Then he got in his truck and drove away, and I stood in the parking lot, my hand on the door handle as my vision blurred. His voice echoed in my head, in my chest, everywhere.
You matter without being useful.
Like it was the simplest truth in the world.