Chapter Nine #2
Everyone turned to me. “Louder.” I shrugged. I wasn’t ashamed of that. “Volume is energy. Energy means I care.”
“So how do we work with this information?” Goldie murmured to her clipboard, pen moving.
Marc was quiet for a moment. Then his gaze found mine, clearly running the calculations of what my answer might be. “If Delaney’s getting louder, something isn’t being addressed clearly. I’d need to step in and stabilize the situation.”
Immediately, my hackles rose. Stabilize. Like I was a loose wire sparking in the corner.
“Stabilize the situation?” I asked, too quickly, the words sharp in my mouth.
Marc blinked. His composure slipped—just for a second. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never once seen him caught off guard.
“He’s not judging you,” Glamma said quietly.
“I’m not.” Marc’s voice was careful. Not defensive—just precise.
“Everyone gets overwhelmed. I manage it differently. There are times I need to self-regulate.” A pause.
“If you’re escalating, it means something important isn’t landing.
Or someone is giving you trouble. That’s worth paying attention to. ”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Sat with that for a second longer than felt comfortable.
Okay. That was actually … reasonable.
I hated that it was reasonable.
“Next question,” Martha dealt from the stack. “Do you plan or pivot?”
“Plan,” Marc said, with the speed of someone of whom this required no deliberation.
“Pivot,” I said, equally automatic. “While the universe may have a plan, we need to improvise to receive the good things coming to us.”
His left eye twitched.
There it was.
“The universe,” he said slowly, “doesn’t file permits.”
“No, but it does occasionally arrange for the permits to get lost in a flood and force you to improvise, so…”
Goldie snort-laughed into her wine.
“The universe,” Marc said with the controlled patience of a man talking himself off the ledge, “is not a reliable event coordinator.”
“And someone having a death grip on a spreadsheet isn’t either, because the second one thing goes sideways, they short-circuit.”
“I don’t short-circuit.”
Glamma made a strangled sound like she’d turned her scoffing into a cough.
Marc shook his head. “At least I don’t rely on the whim of the universe to make things succeed.”
Asshole. “Having a healthy dose of positivity and putting our intentions out into the universe isn’t me not putting in the work that’s needed. It’s allowing for opportunities to land in your lap to make those dreams happen.”
Martha beamed like she was watching her favorite drama. “So one of you builds the spreadsheet,” she said, making a note, “and the other burns the sage to clear the negative energy of the room. It looks like you’re fully covered.”
“Why are you a planner, Marc?” Glamma asked, her voice carrying that gentle authority that made you answer because it was expected.
He went still for a moment. Just a half-beat. “So things don’t fall apart.” He said it simply, very matter-of-fact. “I can anticipate issues in advance and resolve them before they become problems. If I understand how people will likely react, I can address it before it escalates.”
I waited for the punchline. For the add-on about how other people couldn’t be relied on to manage themselves, which was the subtext I’d always assumed lived inside that particular quality of his.
It didn’t come.
He has to think hard about how people will react.
I turned that over in my head. Held it up to the light of the last twenty years and looked at it from a different angle.
“Marc’s always needed more structure than most,” Glamma said, her voice a cross between fondness and being matter-of-fact too. “His brain likes blueprints.”
Marc’s posture shifted almost imperceptibly. “Glamma.”
She waved him off. “It’s not a state secret, sweetheart.”
“I process things differently,” Marc responded, his tone clipped—not embarrassed, but like he was braced for incoming criticism. “It can sometimes make things challenging. I’ve gotten better over the years, with practice.”
Oh.
I thought about all the summers. All the arguments.
The way he seemed to get more rigid the more chaotic a situation became.
The way he double-checked details that most people would consider over-kill.
The way he sometimes said the wrong thing with complete sincerity, like he’d calculated the correct response but the delivery had gotten lost.
How had I never questioned why? I’d just decided what it was—ego, control, condescension—and filed it away.
I was embarrassed to admit it, even just to myself.
But as much as I thought I understood Marc, my anger toward him ran so deep that when he got under my skin, it was easy to forget what I knew.
I was starting to think my filing system was broken.
Glamma’s arm brushed against mine.
I stared at the table. I couldn’t do anything else. Now I felt like the asshole.
Then she hummed as though she could read my thoughts and approved of them.
Goldie picked up the next card. “What’s the one thing that makes you feel competent?”
“Having all the information and being able to act on it,” Marc answered.
Simple. Direct. To the point. No emotion.
Pens moved across clipboards. I thought about it. Information was security for him. Not ego or arrogance—it was armor. The same way my noise was armor. Different style. Same function.
I took a breath and let it out. “When someone trusts me to handle something without questioning my every choice.”
I hadn’t meant to say it with that particular nuance. I hadn’t meant to make it personal. But the room was apparently operating on an honesty-only policy, and I’d gotten caught in their well-thought-out trap.
No one spoke. It was the kind of silence that had weight—not awkward, but deliberate. As though giving our responses room to settle within us.
Marc stared at me. A steady gaze.
There was none of that familiar defensiveness in his face. None of the polite dismissal I’d gotten used to over the years.
He gave me a nod of understanding.
Just once. Small. Genuine.
And that was infinitely more dangerous.
“My turn.” Glamma plucked a card with the satisfied air of a woman who’d been waiting for this one specifically. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d stacked the deck. “If your partner makes a mistake during the event, how do you respond?”
“Fix it. Then debrief afterward.” Marc.
“Reassurance first. Fix it after.” Me.
Silence. Our eyes met across the table.
How were we going to make this work?
Every answer we had was the complete opposite of each other.
Marc raised an eyebrow. “Reassurance before correction doesn’t solve the problem.”
“And correction before reassurance creates a new one.” I crossed my arms. “If you swoop in and just fix someone’s mistake in front of a crowd, you’ve embarrassed them.
You’ve made them smaller. Now they’re less capable of doing the thing correctly, not more, because they’re managing shame on top of the original problem.
You reassure, you move on, you debrief privately afterward. ”
He opened his mouth.
Shut it.
“That’s a valid point,” he finally said.
I stared at him. “Did you just agree with me?”
“I acknowledged the validity of your reasoning. Those aren’t the same thing.”
“They’re adjacent.”
“They’re related.”
“Same thing!” I sputtered. He was so infuriating.
“Not the same thing.” The corner of his mouth quirked—barely. Enough to make me wonder if he was baiting me.
“Well,” Goldie announced to the room, setting down her pen, “this is basically foreplay for enemies.”
A strangled sound escaped my throat.
Marc grunted.
Martha’s expression went carefully neutral. Gladys looked skyward as though asking for help from a higher power. Glamma was practically vibrating with delight.
“Okay, last two,” Martha said, and slid the next question closer to herself. “What’s something people misunderstand about you?”
Marc was quiet for a moment. Far longer than the other questions. “That I’m cold.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Because my immediate impulse was to say “are you kidding me?” and then the memory of Ruby Night surfaced. Nora, the diner waitress with tired eyes. Her two kids. The way Marc handled that situation with a care so matter-of-fact it almost read as ordinary.
Except it wasn’t.
“You weren’t cold with Nora,” I said. “Her and her guinea pig situation.” I paused. “You were actually—” The word kind felt like it exposed his softer side more than he’d want. “You were good with her.”
He shrugged. “She needed someone to be.”
I found the tablecloth suddenly fascinating.
“What about you?” Martha asked.
I drew in a breath, hating how shaky my exhale sounded.
“That I’m …” I traced my finger along the edge of my wine glass.
“Too much. I know people think that. Too loud, too intense, too—” I gestured vaguely.
”More than most people want to deal with.
” I didn’t often share that about myself with others.
I didn’t like being this vulnerable, but the same way it had earlier, I couldn’t stop the words from pouring out of me.
“Whoever thinks that is wrong,” Marc stated simply.
I lifted my head.
Marc watched me. His voice had been completely flat. Unemotional. He stated a fact. The kind that didn’t warrant a discussion.
The back of my throat grew tight.
“He’s right, you know,” Glamma said quietly beside me.
I blinked hard. I was not going to cry at this strange ambush dinner.
I was not. My parents loved me—I knew that, I’d always known that—but I learned early on that love didn’t preclude being a lot.
You could be loved and still be slightly too much for a room.
I’d learned to compact myself. To strategically dim.
To lead with sharpness because at least that gave people somewhere to focus the discomfort that my more expansive self seemed to create.
And then there was Marc, at a dinner I hadn’t entirely consented to, telling me flat out that anyone who thought that was wrong.
“You are exactly enough, Delaney. Anyone who’s suggested otherwise can kindly escort themselves off a very short pier.” Glamma patted my arm with the authority of someone who had, in fact, personally escorted people off piers.
My eyes shot up to meet Glamma’s.
“There she is,” she added softly, and something in her expression said she’d been waiting for this version of me to show up all evening.
She clapped her hands together. “Appetizers. Drinks. Those fun mixed ones.” She stood, and the four women rose like a coordinated unit, filing through the far door with the quiet purpose of people who had accomplished exactly what they set out to do.
Martha poked her head back in. “Need anything before we return?”
“No thank you,” I said.
Marc shook his head.
The door swung shut.
The room was suddenly very quiet.
“That felt … invasive,” he said.
“You’re free to leave,” I said dryly.
The corner of his mouth lifted. “No, I’m not. Glamma would hunt me down before I reached the car.”
“You’re not wrong. Maybe slip out the back?” I couldn’t stop a smirk from crossing my face.
He shook his head. “She has resources. Like the FBI.”
“She has Gladys,” I said, and fake shuddered. “Which is worse.”
The almost-smile flashed again. There one second and gone the next, like he remembered he wasn’t supposed to do that around me.
For twenty years, I’d been fighting a version of Marc Kingsley I’d constructed at age ten from the worst possible moment I could remember. I’d maintained that version with considerable dedication. Kept it well-fed and polished.
But I was starting to suspect the real one was considerably more complicated.
Which was the most inconvenient thing that happened to me all year.
And given my year, that was saying something.