Chapter 19
MAC
I’d kissed Arek Jacobson. In his kitchen.
With his boys upstairs, his dish towel on the counter, and the remnants of chicken parmesan on the stove.
I’d put my hand on his jaw and my mouth on his mouth, and he’d kissed me back with a sound that I was going to hear every time I closed my eyes for the rest of my life.
My body was still running on the warmth of it, like an engine that had been cold for years and was finally, finally turning over. I touched my lips with my fingertips, a gesture so unlike me that I almost laughed. Almost.
At the house, I parked and sat in the dark cab for a minute.
The stars were out, thick and bright, the way they only got at elevation, away from the light pollution of towns.
I had looked at them countless times, yet it felt different tonight.
This time, I was sitting on top of a mountain with the molecular memory of that man’s mouth on mine.
It took a while before I went inside, and by that time, I was exhausted.
I headed straight for my bedroom. After changing, I washed my face, then stood with the toothbrush in my hand, aware that I was about to brush away the taste of Arek.
I didn’t want to. Such a silly thought, the kind a teenager would have.
I was fifty-one years old, for fuck’s sake.
Still, it took me a minute before I could do it.
In bed, in the dark, the silence settled and the processing began. I had kissed a man. That was a fact. My mouth on his, my hand on his jaw, and it had felt…
I searched for the right word. It had felt right. Not strange, not disorienting, but like the most natural thing I’d done in years. Like my body had been waiting for exactly this and had simply needed my mind to catch up and get out of the way.
His mouth had been soft, wet, gentle. His hands on my chest had been warm. The sound he’d made, that quiet, involuntary whimper, like something breaking free, had gone through me like current through wire.
I lay in the dark and let these facts exist. I had feelings for Arek Jacobson, and those feelings had a physical dimension that I had acted on, and acting on them had felt like coming home to a place I didn’t know I’d been missing.
The fear was there too, living alongside the warmth like a permanent tenant, paying rent in panic attacks and sleepless nights.
What if I’d just complicated the most important relationship I had?
What if the wanting ruined the friendship we’d built?
What if I woke up tomorrow and the clarity of this moment had dissolved into doubt?
But the fear was quieter than usual, drowned out by the memory of his forehead against mine and his breath on my lips. It wasn’t only friendship for him either.
I slept, a dreamless, deep sleep without nightmares. Hell, I slept until six-thirty, which was practically noon by my standards. When I opened my eyes, Arek was the first one on my mind…followed closely by my son.
Two days.
My son was turning sixteen in two days, and I’d promised to call him. The thought of hearing his voice hit me somewhere so deep I had to sit on the edge of the bed and breathe through it.
I could do this. I’d texted Boden and survived. I’d walked into Fir’s office and asked for help. I’d stood in Arek’s kitchen and told him the truth. Three impossible things in a single day, and I was still standing. One more. I could do one more.
But the call scared me more than any of it. Texts were safe. You could draft and delete. You could control the words, choose them carefully, edit out the tremor in your hands. A phone call was live, real-time. His voice and mine, with no buffer, no backspace, no way to unsay the wrong thing.
What if I froze? What if I heard his voice and went nonverbal, the way I sometimes did when the emotions stacked too high? What if he asked a question I couldn’t answer, or said something that cracked me open and made me fall apart while on the phone with him?
I needed someone there. The realization came with the same clean clarity as the kiss. I needed someone next to me. An anchor. Someone whose steadiness I could borrow if mine ran out.
I picked up my phone.
When I call Boden on Friday, can you be here?
I sent it, set the phone on the nightstand, and waited. My chest was tight. I was getting more practice at being vulnerable and asking for help, but it still felt like peeling off skin.
The response came in under a minute.
Yes. Of course. Whatever you need.
No hesitation, no qualifiers, no questions about logistics or timing.
Just yes, of course, whatever you need. I sat on the edge of my bed and held the phone and felt the tightness in my chest release, not completely, but enough.
Enough to breathe. Enough to face today, tomorrow, and Friday.
Enough to know that when I dialed my son’s number, the man I’d kissed last night would be sitting next to me, and that made the impossible feel merely terrifying.
Thank you.
You don’t have to thank me for wanting to be there, Mac.
I read that twice. Then I got up and started my day.
The day passed in a blur of physical work and anticipation, and so did the next one. Cas was at the campground for the electrical work, and my hand was finally in working order, so I framed the interior walls in Cabin 5, losing myself in the measurements and angles that had always been my refuge.
But even the work felt different now. The rhythm of the hammer and satisfaction of a square joint were still good, but they weren’t the only good things anymore. There were other things now.
There was a therapist in Monroe whose office had called to confirm my first appointment in two weeks.
There was my ex-wife, who’d texted me to let me know Boden was looking forward to my call, that he’d appreciated my reaching out.
I’d needed a few minutes for my heart rate to come down after that one.
But most of all, there was an ongoing text thread with Arek, who sent me a photo of his lunch with the caption, eating real food per your instructions.
I’d scratched my head, wondering what the etiquette was between not-quite-friends but also not-yet-otherwise-labeled, then sent him some pics from the cabin renovations.
And so we went back and forth with short messages and pictures, with quick check-ins and well-wishes for sleep, for a quiet workday for him.
The latter had been a mistake, he pointed out.
I’d been instructed to never use the Q-word again.
Apparently, it invited all kinds of evil to descend on doctors and hospitals everywhere. Duly noted.
By Thursday night, I’d cleaned the main house with a thoroughness that bordered on compulsive.
Not for Arek, because he wouldn’t care. But the act of preparing, of making the space ready for something important, steadied me.
I swept the porch. I set out both chairs.
I made sure the good coffee was ready to brew.
I went to bed early and lay in the dark, running through scenarios.
Boden picking up. Boden not picking up. Boden picking up and being angry.
Boden picking up and being silent. Each scenario branched into sub-scenarios, and I played them all out until I realized what I was doing—tactical planning for a phone call with my son, treating it like a mission brief—and I forced myself to stop.
This wasn’t a fucking mission. It was a conversation with a boy who missed his father. And the only objective that mattered was showing up. But it took me a long time to fall asleep.
Friday morning, Arek’s BMW came up the service road at nine. I was on the porch with coffee, watching the valley, running through the calming breathing exercises I hadn’t used in years, and he climbed the steps and sat in his chair.
He’d brought pastries from Brianna’s. Croissants and the apple pie I liked, and a bag of krentenbollen. My usual, in other words. He set the bag on the table between us and poured himself coffee from the pot I’d left on the railing. Then he sat back, looked at the valley, and was there for me.
I loved him for that. Not the word I’d used yet, not aloud, maybe not even fully in my own head. But the feeling was there, deep and solid, and it had his name on it.
“I don’t know what to say to him,” I said after a while.
“You don’t have to have a script. Just talk to him.”
“I haven’t heard his voice in five years. What if it’s different and I don’t…?” I stopped. Swallowed. “What if I don’t recognize my own son’s voice?”
Arek looked at me, his green eyes steady and warm. “You’ll recognize him, Mac. He’s your son.”
“What if he doesn’t want to talk? What if he picks up and it’s awkward, and I can’t—”
“It will be awkward. Five years is a long time, and the first conversation isn’t going to fix that. But it’s a beginning, a first step. The first of many.”
I took a breath. The mountain air, clean and cold, filled my lungs. “The first of many.”
“That’s the promise you made. Not that it would be perfect. That you’d stay.”
Fay had told me to call at ten. Boden was off today, for some reason, and he’d be up by then, she’d said.
At ten, I picked up the phone. Arek was in his chair, three feet away, his coffee in his hands, his eyes on the valley. He was giving me space without giving me distance.
I found Boden’s number. My thumb hovered, for a fraction, but then I pressed call.
It rang. Once. Twice. Three times, and my chest was so tight I couldn’t breathe.
“Hello?” A voice. A boy’s voice, but deeper than I expected, with a slight rasp at the edges, tentative and guarded.
My son’s voice. Changed, matured, six years older, yet underneath the new depth, there was something I recognized instantly, the way you recognize a melody even when it’s played in a different key.
My vision blurred. I blinked hard. “Boden.” My voice came out rough. “It’s Dad.”