Chapter 15
MAC
Ididn’t sleep well. No nightmares this time, but my mind. Would. Not. Shut. Off.
It ran the same loop from the parking lot: Arek’s face when I told him he mattered without being useful. The way his eyes had gone bright and his hand had stayed on the door handle like it was the only thing keeping him upright.
And before that, the bleachers. My hand on his neck, the warmth of his skin, the tension in the muscle, the way he’d gone completely still under my touch. Like a man who’d been carrying something for so long that the sudden absence of weight was more disorienting than the weight itself.
I’d reached for him without thinking. That was the part I couldn’t get past. My body had moved before my mind caught up, and the last time that had happened…
No. That was different. That had been violence. This had been the opposite. This had been my hand finding someone who needed steadying. But the not-thinking was what scared me, the involuntary nature of it. The way my hand had known where to go before I’d decided to send it.
At four a.m., I gave up on sleep and went through my routine.
Stretches. Coffee on the porch. The valley below was dark except for the faint cluster of lights that was Forestville, barely visible through the trees.
Somewhere down there, in a craftsman two blocks off Main Street, Arek was sleeping.
Or not sleeping. Lying in a too-big bed staring at the ceiling, the way I was staring at the valley.
I needed to see him.
Not on Saturday, not on some scheduled visit with coffee and a porch and the comfortable structure we’d built around our time together. Now. Today. I needed to be in his space, near his noise, near him.
Fuck, I didn’t know what to do with that need.
It didn’t fit the architecture of my life, which was designed for solitude and silence and the absence of need.
Needing things was dangerous. Needing people was worse.
I’d spent five years systematically eliminating need from my life, and here it was, back again, sitting on my porch at four in the morning, wearing green eyes and a tired smile.
I drank my coffee and tried to think about something else. Cabin 4’s subflooring was done but needed sealing. The electrical work with Cas was scheduled to start next week. Trail markers on the south loop still needed—
Arek’s porch needed painting.
I’d noticed it the first time I’d been to his house, the peeling paint, the bare patches where weather had stripped the wood.
It was an old, prewar craftsman, and it deserved better than it was getting.
Arek was too busy taking care of everyone else to take care of his own house.
Plus, his hand wasn’t built for a paintbrush the way mine was, and my injured hand could manage a brush even if it couldn’t swing a hammer yet.
It was practical. It was a project. It was what I did.
Because of all the renovations, I had plenty of paint.
It took me far longer than it should’ve to choose a color, but I finally settled on a warm slate gray that would suit the original woodwork of Arek’s house.
I loaded the truck with my sanding tool and sanding sheets, paint, brushes, rollers, tarps, and painter’s tape.
Then I waited until it was a halfway decent time to show up and drove to Forestville.
I parked outside his house at eight-thirty. They were up. I could tell from the kitchen light, the muffled sound of music, and Kace’s voice, which operated at approximately the same volume. I got out, unloaded the supplies, and started setting up.
I was taping a section when the front door opened.
Arek stood in the doorway in sweatpants and a T-shirt, his hair wrecked from sleep, a coffee mug in his hand, looking at me with an expression that moved through several stages in rapid succession—confusion, recognition, surprise, and then something that cracked open across his face like a sunrise, warm and unguarded and so nakedly pleased that I had to look away.
“Mac.” He looked at the paint cans, the tarps, the tape. “What are you doing?”
“Your porch is an embarrassment.”
“What?”
“Peeling paint, bare patches, no sealant. The wood’s going to rot if it doesn’t get attention.” I tore off a strip of tape and pressed it along the edge of the siding. “I can’t do my own cabins with one hand. Might as well be useful somewhere.”
“You drove down here at eight-thirty on a Sunday morning to paint my porch.”
“I was up early.”
He stared at me. I kept my attention on the tape because looking at him in the doorway with his sleep-wrecked hair and his bare feet and the raw, unperformed version of himself that existed before the day’s mask went on was doing something to me.
“At least let me get you some coffee,” he said.
“That’d be good.”
He went inside. I exhaled.
I started sanding, working along the railing where the old paint had bubbled and cracked.
The sanding block fit my good hand, and I could brace with the injured one, and the rhythm settled me the way physical work always did.
Sand, brush, sand, check. The wood emerging underneath was solid, good bones beneath the neglect.
Arek came back with two mugs and sat on the top step, which put him at my feet while I worked on the railing.
He’d put on shoes but hadn’t changed out of the sweatpants, and his hair was still a disaster.
The morning light made him look younger.
Softer. The lines around his eyes smoothed out, and his jaw relaxed in a way I had never seen during the day.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he said.
“I know.”
He took a sip of coffee. The morning was cool and over the sawdust, I could smell cut grass and the faint sweetness of someone’s garden down the block. Forestville on a Sunday morning was quiet in a different way than my mountain, the hush of a town still waking up, stretching, taking its time.
“How’s the hand?” Arek asked.
“It’s much better.”
“Good. No gripping heavy tools yet.”
“A paintbrush isn’t a heavy tool.”
“I mean it, Mac.”
“You always mean it.” It came out softer than I intended. I focused on the sanding.
The screen door banged, and Kace appeared, still in pajamas, his hair even worse than his father’s. “Mr. Heald! Why are you painting our porch?”
“Because it needed painting.”
“It’s Sunday.”
“Paint doesn’t care what day it is.”
Kace considered this, shrugged with the total acceptance of a teenager who’d decided the world was weird and he was fine with it, and went back inside. Thirty seconds later, I heard the sound of cereal hitting a bowl with the force of someone pouring gravel.
Arek was smiling into his coffee. His real smile.
I looked away and kept sanding, using the sheet sander for the larger surfaces and anything flat. Because of the dust, I put on a mask and protective glasses. Fuck if after all the sand I’d inhaled while deployed I was gonna get more shit in my lungs.
Arek disappeared inside, probably also to escape the dust flying around. Once I was done, and it had all settled, he popped back out, still not dressed. My notice of that was filed away, along with all the other thoughts and sensations I couldn’t label.
The first coat went on smoothly. I’d been right about the color—the warm slate gray sat against the original woodwork like it belonged there, like the house had been waiting for it.
I worked methodically, section by section, brushing with long, even strokes.
The paint was of good quality and it covered well.
Arek put down his second cup of coffee and reached for the second brush, and I said, “Sit down.”
“I can—”
“You can sit down and drink your coffee.”
“Mac, it’s my porch.”
“And I’m painting it. Sit.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and sat back down with a look that was equal parts exasperation and something else, the bewilderment of a man who didn’t know what to do when someone took care of him.
The great caretaker, taken care of. It sat on his face like a foreign language, recognizable in shape but incomprehensible in meaning.
It took me a moment to recognize the feeling that accompanied that thought.
It was satisfaction, but not the kind I got from finishing a cabin or setting a fence post. This was warmer, more personal.
The satisfaction of doing something for this man, of watching the tension leave his shoulders as he sat on his own porch step and drank his coffee while someone else handled things for once.
I painted. The morning moved. A neighbor walked by with a dog and waved at Arek, who returned the gesture with the automatic warmth that was his default setting. A car passed. The church bell rang from two blocks over.
It was Jules who came out next, holding a glass of water, which he set on the step near my paint tray.
“Thanks,” I said.
He nodded. Then he stood there watching me work, those dark eyes tracking the brush strokes with the focused attention he gave to everything. After a minute, he said, “Can I help?”
“You ever painted before?” I asked.
“No.”
“You want to learn?”
Something shifted in his face. A flicker of surprise, as if he’d expected me to say no. “Yeah. If you don’t mind.”
I handed him the second brush. “Start with the spindles. Thin coat, top to bottom, follow the grain. Don’t load the brush too heavily. You want it wet, not dripping. Like this.”
I demonstrated on one spindle, slowly enough for him to track every movement.
Jules watched closely, a student who intended to get it right the first time.
Then he dipped his brush, tapped the excess on the rim exactly as I’d shown him, and painted his first spindle with a careful, steady stroke that was better than most adults would’ve managed.
“Good,” I said. “Clean line. Keep that pressure.”