Chapter 12
twelve
After I close the door behind her, I collapse into a beanbag and relive everything I did wrong from our date to the moment she walked out on me. Then I go back further and torture myself with the memory of hurting Cynnie at playgroup. Then I go get a bottle of Jim Beam.
Cynnie sends me a text an hour later.
Cynnie: I’m home safe. Thank you again. Talk soon?
I text back, unable to think of anything profound. Unable to distill everything I’m feeling into words that won’t send her running for the Appalachians.
Yes.
I say nothing more and sink deeper and deeper into my bottle of Jim Beam.
I’m still in the beanbag, with pins and needles up to my ankles, when I wake. The bottle of booze is half-empty next to me and my mouth tastes like cotton. I pick up my phone from where it’s fallen into my lap, hoping for a text from Cynnie.
Lindy: Where are your slides?
Fuck, it’s Friday. I’ve completely lost track of the days, lost in Cynnie. I haven’t done anything for class today. Not my homework, not the slides, not any prep for the presentation at all.
I could tell Lindy I’m sick and put it off.
But that’s not me. Never has been.
I’ll have them to you in an hour. Sorry for the delay.
I text back and haul myself upstairs to the shower.
I send a dozen slides to Lindy with six minutes to spare, then spend an hour doing my homework, before I let myself check my phone again.
Still nothing from Cynnie.
I cave.
Hope you’re okay?
The dots don’t bounce. She doesn’t respond. I turn off my phone so I don’t check it every five minutes and pack up for class.
My presentation’s only supposed to be for fifteen minutes, but I spend the whole hour answering questions from my classmates and Lindy, who grins like a loon as he lobs question after question.
I swear he prepared more for this than I did.
At the end of the hour, he dismisses the class but waves at me to stay.
“You got time for nachos?”
I probably have all the time in the world.
“Yeah, just let me check my phone.”
“Waiting for a girl to call?” he asks with an evil lift to his grin.
“Something like that.” I pull my phone out of my bag. An email from Logan with an attachment, but nothing from Cynnie. “Yup, plenty of time for nachos.”
Lindy waits until we’re seated before he says, “She didn’t call.”
“No, she didn’t.” I shrug it off.
“And you’re fine.”
“Of course, I am.”
“That’s why you look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
I run my hand over my face. My eyes were bloodshot in the mirror after my shower, and my beard needs a trim, but I didn’t think I looked that bad. “Thanks.”
“Come on, nachos fix everything.”
Nachos don’t fix everything, of course. But nachos and an hour of tech talk with a guy who really speaks my language make me feel a little better about being ghosted.
Lindy suggests a project we could work on together, not that I need the extra credit, but it’s nice to have him treat me as an equal.
I agree readily and he says he’ll shoot me over what he’s coded so far so I can play around with it.
That gives me something to look forward to.
The text I get as I’m heading back to my apartment makes me feel even better.
Master Chief: I’m at Manny’s. You up for a run?
Mac’s finally arrived. Hot damn.
Whup your ass, old man.
Mac doesn’t rise to my bait. He never does, even though he’s a ferocious competitor.
Master Chief: Meet you at your place in thirty.
He probably doesn’t need my address, since he’s visited more than once.
But I text it to him anyway. Since I don’t have a guest room, Mac usually stays with Manny or Logan.
I wonder if he’s staying with Manny because Logan and Emmy are taking a time-out from everyone.
I also wonder if that’s a strategy Mac would agree with.
Mac’s not a time-out kind of guy. But he was married a long time, even if it was to a woman who makes Cersei Lannister look benevolent, so he probably knows all the tricks.
I wonder if he knows a trick to get Cynnie to talk to me.
I hydrate while I wait for Mac, since it’s stupid to go running in August with as much alcohol as I’ve poured into my body over the last two days.
I’ve mostly cleaned up since Cynnie left, but there are still two blankets folded on the couch that I haven’t put away.
Wishful thinking that she might come back.
I still don’t understand where I went wrong. Everything was so damn good for three days and then, bang. I feel like we fucking imploded and I still don’t know where I went so very wrong.
Mac’s arrival is as understated as the man himself.
A simple text to let me know he’s at the front door.
A quiet knock on my apartment door. Mac is never flashy.
I let him in and wrap him in a hug, pounding on his back.
Mac’s nearly twenty years older than I am.
I’ve known him for coming up on a decade, but I swear he looks the same as the first day I saw him at Mayport Base.
Strong, straight, square-faced; bright blue eyes that pick apart any excuse before you give it.
His brown hair’s gone ashy and there’s more silver than brown in his beard now, but he’s the same man I’ve looked up to since the day we met.
He thumps me on the back before releasing me. “How are you, Maxie?”
“Good, sir. How was the trip up?”
Mac shrugs. “No peanuts. Didn’t there used to be peanuts on civvy flights?”
“Couldn’t tell you, sir.” I haven’t flown on a commercial flight in a very long time. My trips out of the country for Ness were all charters. “I thought you were coming up on your bike?”
Mac scrubs a hand through his crewcut. “’Fraid not. There’s always one more thing to take care of, isn’t there? Looks like I won’t be able to move up until next month. I’m looking at two apartments while I’m here, though.”
“Sorry to hear it, sir. If there’s anything you need me to do, just let me know.”
“Thanks, Maxie. I will.”
Mac’s already in his running gear, so after he fills up his water bottle from the filtered water in my fridge, we head out.
One of the reasons we’ve always run together is that our strides are similar, and Mac keeps pace with me as I take him on a five-mile loop along the East River Greenway.
We pass the Riis projects and I find myself telling Mac about Tyrone and Dakota.
Mac smiles fondly. “You’ve made a good place for yourself, Maxie,” he tells me.
I nod. I am in a good place now. Far better than when I got out. But there’s something missing. Hesitantly, I tell him about going to Logan’s playgroup, meeting Cynnie, and having her over for dinner.
“Sounds like the start of a good connection,” Mac says as we reach the half-way point and turn back. “Take it slow. No jumping into the sack until you’ve figured out what you both need.”
Fuck.
We run in silence for a minute.
Mac shoots me a side-eye. “You already slept with her, didn’t you?”
I nod. I want to protest that it just kind of happened, but it sounds flimsy even in my own head, and isn’t a Dom supposed to be in control? Did I blow it right from that first night?
“Well, can’t undo what’s been done,” Mac says pragmatically. “How are things going now?”
“She’s ghosted me. Disappeared.”
Mac grunts. “You let her get away with that?”
“I—” I guess I have. “I’ve reached out but I haven’t pushed when she didn’t respond. I don’t want to come off like a stalker.”
Mac wrinkles his chin as he considers. “I haven’t dated in a long time, Maxie. Not sure I’m the right fella to give you advice.”
“But? There’s a but in there. I can hear it.”
Mac chuckles then huffs until he regains his steady breathing. “But letting a subbie get away with not communicating with you? Big mistake. Show up at her damn door if you have to. Take flowers, sure, but make her tell you what’s going on.”
“Just show up? What if she calls the police?”
“Then leave. Pretty sure she won’t, though. There’s no way for you to know what’s going on with her until you’re face-to-face. Could be nothing, but it’s more likely something. You can’t deal with it until you know what it is.”
I see the wisdom in that. I have no idea if Cynnie is ghosting me because she’s done with me or because of Jun or for some other reason. Until she talks to me, I have no way of knowing, and this limbo is killing me.
“What if she tells me we’re done?” I ask, because that’s the possibility I fear the most.
“Ask again. Make damn sure. Some gals want to be chased. If it’s a hard no, then you’re done. Always respect a lady’s wishes. But just disappearing on you? That’s not telling you anything, yes or no.”
That idea lights a fire in my belly. Although it all went wrong in the end, Cynnie loved me chasing and catching her.
Even pinning her down. I still feel like I did something wrong the last time I fucked her, but I’m no longer sure if it was pinning her down and railing her.
She seemed to love every second of that.
“What do you think about the whole thing?” I ask, hesitantly. “The Daddy Dom thing?”
“What I think is probably not as important as what you think, Maxie.”
“I’m struggling,” I admit. It’s hard to force the words out and that’s nothing to do with our pace.
“Because?” Mac asks.
“There are things about it that feel completely right. Like protecting my little. But there are things that feel . . . not wrong but not a perfect fit.”
“Like what?” Mac asks.
“Logan dresses Emily in these little pink dresses all the time,” I say, fumbling for how to explain the pieces that appeal to me but also have little jagged edges that haven’t aligned in me. “I don’t want to do that.”
“I’ll be straight with you,” Mac says, with a huffing chuckle. “His pink fetish makes my eyes bleed. I don’t see the appeal. But it’s not what I think that matters. It’s what works for Lo and Emmy. Find what works for you, Maxie.”
“How do I know?”