How I Spent My Summer Vacation (30 page)

I privately acknowledged that I had come to the beach to rest and to think the two of us through, and it was Mackenzie who’d wound up with both the time and the ability to do so. And he obviously had. Despite being a poetry lover, Mackenzie wasn’t exactly quoting the Passionate Shepherd and saying “Come live with me and be my love”—but he was nonetheless saying “Let’s get this moving forward.”

And scaring me more than anything else had this week—or year.

Was it possible that I was the one who wasn’t ready? That I counted on our never having the Big Talk or reaching crucial junctures? That I needed distance while Mackenzie needed partnership—the way the arcade computer had said?

“Well, hey,” he said. “Don’t panic. Since we both have time off now, I was thinkin’ we could try this somewhere else, you know?”

He sounded like pure mush, farina with a few consonants, but he was giving me an out, a compromise solution.

“Mandy,” he said. “I don’ really need nursin’ a-tall. Been trainin’ on crutches and I did fine.” The words drizzled out, consonants vaporized. His speech was in meltdown.

The man cared.

“You deserve a vacation,” he said.

I laughed, even though it hurt. “Nobody deserves another vacation like the one I just had. Or, in fact, the one you just tried to have. Could we call it something else?”

“Agreed,” he said softly. “So how ’bout we call it a start?”