Settling Up (11 page)

“I should probably get going.” I rubbed my hands up and down my yoga-pant-clad legs, smiling as big as I think I ever had. “Thank you so much, Jess. Ryan.”

Before I knew what was happening or could figure out a way out of it, Jess had lunged forward on the couch and captured me in another tight, squeezing hug.

“It was so good to meet you, Lauren. Come again. Any time. A lot.” She pulled away, her face holding the same warmth and kindness I’d come to love in Mack’s.

“I will. Definitely.” I stood up, Mack mirroring my action. “Thank you, again, for everything.”

I waved goodbye and Mack followed me out the door, walking me to my car. I turned to face him just as he rocked back on his still-just-in-socks feet and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Thanks for coming, Laur. That was really fun.”

I normally wasn’t one to have a ton of emotional impulses, but if I did, I rarely acted on them, especially with someone not in my family. But at that moment, the only thing I wanted to do was grab Mack and pull him into a big hug. So I did.

I lunged at him, kind of like Jess had toward me moments earlier, and squeezed my arms around him, tight. He must’ve had great reflexes, though, because he managed to get his arms up and out of the way before I enveloped him. Then, after a fleeting moment where his body went slightly rigid, he leaned into me and let his arms drop, wrapping them around my shoulders.

“Thank you.” I mumbled into his sweatshirt, hoping my words were still intelligible through the fabric. “Your sister is amazing. I feel so special that you would bring me here.” I pulled away, smiling up at him.

“So you’re not going to trade me in for her, then?” He winked, the light reflecting off his eyes from the light on the porch, fading for a second.

I swatted at him. “Oh, I adore her, but no. You’re stuck with me.” I attempted to wink back, but had a feeling it didn’t come off as smoothly. Luckily, it was dark, so hopefully it wasn’t too noticeable.

“Good.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and turned me toward my car. “Regular Blackjack date tomorrow morning then?” he asked as he opened my door.

I shrugged. “Sure. I suppose. Or we could go get coffee again. Or do something else. What time do you have to go in?”

“Not until ten. Coffee would be good. How does nine sound?”

“Great. Same place?”

After saying yes, he made sure I got into my car safely (helping me with my tire and murderer check) and then ran back to the porch, waving behind him as he did. I smiled, not caring that it was late or that I would be up early tomorrow. Tonight was going to keep me on a high for a good while.

M
ack had
a latte waiting for me when I walked in to the coffee shop the next morning.

“Can you get any better?” I asked, trying my hand at the winking again.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” he said, motioning for me to sit down in the seat opposite from him. “You got something in your eye?”

Well, I guess that answered that. “Er — yeah. Got it, though.” My shoulders slumped forward.

He nodded.

“Thank you again, for yesterday. How fun was that?”

His face lit up and pulled into a smile that warmed me down to my toes on that overcast morning. “Fun.” He dipped his chin in a nod. “I’m glad you liked them.”

I scoffed. “How could I not? Jess is amazing — like a-maze-ing amazing — and Ryan is so laid back and nice. You must spend a lot of time with them.”

“Yeah, but it was nice to have someone who was there for me.” His lips pulled up into a smile.

I nodded, placing my hand on his and squeezing tight. “Hey,” I said, shooting my hand forward and pushing up his sweatshirt sleeve, having seen the bottom of his tattoo peaking out from underneath. “Tell me about this. I wondered about it the first day we met. I mean, I know you like rock climbing, but I would expect you to get… rocks, not trees tattooed on your arm then.”

Mack’s face tightened slightly and he moved like he was going to cover the ink back up, but then stopped. He took a slow breath.

My heart stopped. Rock climbing. He had been rock climbing when Tess had… “Oh my gosh. I’m sorry, Mack, I —“

Mack put up a hand to stop me. His head moved back and forth, once in each direction. “No. Lauren, it’s fine. I can talk about it.” He caught my gaze, held it. “But first of all, rocks? Really? How many people do you see walking around with tattoos of rocks?” A deep laugh that started in his throat and moved up through his face, made my shoulders settle back once more.

I tipped my head. “I don’t know. I guess none.”

“I climb because I love the feeling of being smaller than everything around me. I love seeing nature from a different angle. I love trees and climbing has always given me a different way to appreciate them. ”

I nodded. That made sense.

“Do you have any others?”

His eyebrows gathered together and he cleared his throat. His hand landed on his chest, right above his heart, and he nodded. “One for Tess and Emily. It’s what Tess had wanted to name the baby if she’d been a girl. Which, of course…” His voice wandered off, like it was unsure how to say anything more.

I squeezed my hand tighter around his. I pressed my lips firmly together and fiddled with the sleeve on my coffee with my free hand, not sure if I really wanted to say what I was about to say.

“We should go on a climb with that group. The one that girl, Carol, told us about at the gym.”

He hesitated at first. “Really? You would go with me?”

I licked my lips and nodded. “Yes. Yeah. Don’t expect much, though.”

His eyes brightened. “Thank you, Lauren. I’ve been wanting to get in touch with them, I just can’t even think about it without my damn brain bringing up the fact that it was the reason I was gone.”

My face scrunched together in sympathy. “Mack, you can’t keep doing that to yourself. If Tess was as lovely as she sounds, she would want you to be happy. I want you to be happy again. You’re such a great person and it kills me to see you beating yourself up still. I know you’ll never be able to forget, but she would want you to move forward.”

I took a sip of my drink as I waited for his reaction, as I watched him.

He nodded his head. “I know. She would. You’re right. It’ll make it easier if you’re there with me, too.”

I patted his hand. “If you thought I was funny before, just wait until you see me try to climb.”

He laughed, the light returning to those blue-gray eyes. “I don’t know. You seem pretty scrappy. I think you could do a fair job at clinging onto the side of a mountain.”

“They don’t call me Sinclair the Sloth for nothing.”

Mack and I laughed and talked of lighter faire the rest of our time that morning until he had to head off to work. A warmth spread through me out to the tips of my fingers at the thought that I might have helped out my friend. Sure, Jess had said getting Mack to talk about his wife had been a huge step, but this felt like something tangible, something good I could see. He was going to get out there, climb again. And I had helped him do it.

The only thing that could make the day even better was the knowledge that I had a date with Adrian after work.

A
drian picked
me up at my office after my last class of the day (and after I’d spent a few minutes in the restroom changing into a black dress and applying some makeup to give myself an out-on-the-town look). His apartment was in the city, along with the majority of date-worthy restaurants, so it seemed silly for me to take the ferry all the way home.

He knocked on the door even though it was open and I was facing that direction (because I may or may not have been staring at said doorway… waiting in earnest for him to show up).

“Good evening.” He bent forward in a bit of a bow.

My knees wobbled and I steadied myself on my desk, but the motion turned out looking a lot like I was curtsying back to him. He smiled that movie-star-smile at me and held my gaze.

“Are you ready to go?” He held his arm akimbo, an invitation for me to slip mine through.

I bit my lip, but didn’t trust my legs to work right around all of this chivalry, so I just nodded, staying put.

He laughed, walking toward me. “Remiss of me, making you come to me.” He shook his head and sidled up next to me so I could thread my arm through his. “You look absolutely stunning, Lauren,” he said, leaning down, his breath tickling, moving the hair by my face.

My body stiffened. Hair. Hairs. Bald spots. Adrian was tall. The perfect height, in fact, to see my lack of hair quite clearly. Heat and probably redness spread across my neck and chest. My free hand patted at the top of my head, making sure my comb-over was in working order. I relaxed as I felt around. It seemed to be just fine. As long as there weren’t any strong gusts of wind, I would be okay.

I smiled up at him, nodded, and we headed out.

I know that I threw out the list, but I couldn’t help but bring up the familiar thing in my mind-files as we proceeded to the restaurant. Adrian drove us in his impeccable car to a fantastic little French restaurant downtown. He even ordered in French which was sweet (not that I couldn’t have ordered, knowing the language myself, but it was the thought that counted). And Adrian was polite to the wait staff, I noticed with a sigh of relief, visions of my date with Ben flashing uncomfortably through my mind.

He lifted his mouth into a smile, settling back, and grabbing his glass of wine. He lifted it in the air toward me and I mirrored his motion.

“To the beginning of a hopefully very great thing.” His eyes held me tight as he took a sip.

I smiled back. This man was the absolute answer to my list-specific dreams. I couldn’t keep the this-is-too-good-to-be-true thoughts from shouldering their way into my brain, making me over think things (as usual), but I ignored them as well as I could.

“So how was your dinner last night?” Adrian asked, taking another sip of his wine.

A huge smile split across my face and my chest felt all warm and bubbly. “Oh, just wonderful.” I shimmied back into the thoughts of Jess’s house, almost wishing I was back on her couch, clad in comfy clothes, chatting about family and work and life.

“You met with a friend, right?” He watched me, trying to remember the details of my plans, a consideration that didn’t go unnoticed by me. I loved that he was trying.

I nodded, smiling. “I did. A very good friend. Well, we went to their sister’s for dinner. It was the first time I’d met her and it was a lot of fun.”

Adrian smiled. Satisfied with my answer. However, he was the only one at our table who was. One of my words, even though I had pushed it out, seemed still stuck in my throat, causing extreme discomfort. I had said, “their” instead of “his”. Why had I done that? I certainly hadn’t planned to, my relationship with Mack was definitely nothing more than one of the better friendships of my life so far. Then why had my brain hid the fact that my friend was a guy from Adrian? He seemed open minded. He seemed mature. He seemed like just the kind of guy you would feel okay about telling you have a guy as a close friend.

I pulled in a deep breath as I pondered the feelings ping-ponging around in my brain, the worries bouncing around in my chest.

Adrian, luckily, moved the conversation onto the topic of another one of the professors in our department, asking questions about his latest book and if I’d read it. Sighing, I fell into the familiar comfort of discussing a piece of writing, quoting what I still remembered of the text. Before long, our food arrived and the night only got better from there.

This man across from me was smart, kind, everything I had ever hoped for. We moved on from literature to discuss our favorite deceased mathematicians, having a rollicking debate in the middle about Cantor’s theory of infinite sets, by the end of which we both wore rosy cheeks and smiles.

He placed a gentle hand on my back as we left the restaurant, and leaned in to kiss me softly before he opened the car door to let me in. My senses tingled as they took in the softness of his perfect lips, the spicy smell of his cologne, and the strength in his arms as he wrapped them around my waist.

“Apologies, Lauren. I’m normally not this forward. I simply cannot keep myself in line around you.”

I bit my lip and assured him that it was absolutely no problem. No problem at all.

T
he wind whipped
my hair about my face as I pressed my cheek up to the rough surface after having mistakenly pulled away for a second to shake my head in response to Mack’s question.

“I’m good right here,” I said — er — grunted from my baby koala clutching position on a small boulder, eyes clutched closed equally as intently.

“You sure?” Mack asked, his voice echoing around me off the various rock faces.

“Yes, I dare not move lest I fall to my untimely death.”

Mack’s chuckle bounced around me. “Laur. You’re like three feet off the ground.” His voice grew louder, but his tone softer and I felt a warm hand land on my lower back, supportive and firm.

I peeled open one eye, then the other. Then I let my head swivel slowly to the side, hoping to heck that my peripheral vision would kick in any time. It did. I could see Mack’s smiling face, his wind-swept blond hair, and the rosiness of his sun-kissed cheeks. I blinked. He looked like a happier version of Mack than I had seen in all the weeks I’d known him, in all the outings and get togethers we’d had. The change startled me and I lost my balance.

“Oomph!” I made a sound like a clog hitting a wall after being thrown at a spider-variety home intruder as I landed in Mack’s arms.

“I gotcha,” he said, wrapping his arms around me and staggering back.

I opened my eyes again (because I had closed them once I realized I was falling to my untimely death). But after a quick survey of my surroundings, and a few good stomps of my feet on the solid ground, I found I was quite alright.

“Oh,” I said, blinking. “How high did I get?” I turned around and looked up at the giant boulder I’d been clinging to moments before. I pictured myself having almost made it to the top of the twenty-foot-high giant.

“There.” Mack pointed to just above eye-level.

I pushed my lips forward in disappointment. “Oh. Hmmm… well we mathematicians are rarely known for our upper body strength.” I smiled at the laugh this elicited from Mack and went further. “It’s actually part of the contract I had to sign to gain membership into The Guild of Mathematicians, you know. Only an hour of physical activity, yearly.” Mack raised his eyebrows in an is-that-so? way. “And that’s really only for things like running on a treadmill in a gym. This rustic outdoor stuff is highly frowned upon in The Order.”

“I thought it was a guild.”

“Exactly. Obfuscation.” I waved my hands in front of my face, wiggling my fingers.

Mack laughed. “Well I have signed no such contract and I’m going up there.” He pointed at the top of the boulder.

“There?”

“There.” He kept pointing. Then he moved forward, launching himself up much farther in his first move than I’d gotten after five (moves and minutes).

I watched Mack’s thick arm muscles flex in bands under his skin just as it had that time in the climbing gym as his body lifted itself up and up the face of the boulder. But unlike the gym, this time there was no falling, no letting go, no giving up. He made it all the way to the top. I stepped back, crossed my arms in front of my chest, and nodded my head, impressed.

“Pretty good there, mister,” I called up as he clapped his hands together to get rid of extra chalk and got to his feet. “You know, Adrian loves to play golf.”

I could tell Mack heard me, but he leaned forward, hand to his ear, and turned his head to the side. “Sorry. Can’t hear you from all the way down there. If you want to talk about Adrian, you’re going to have to come up here.”

After a minute of shaking my head, pacing, and pouting, I came to the realization that it was decidedly less interesting down here without Mack. I looked around for the rest of the climbing group we’d come with, but they were all in groups tackling other boulders or (in the case of some of the more experienced ones) the tall rock faces of the surrounding mountains.

I bit my lip and looked up. Mack was sitting now, looking out over the rocky outcropping. Even the air looked like it was crisper up there. My fingers curled into fists and I gave the air a little one-two punch before stepping toward the boulder again and giving it a second go. I kicked at the big foam pad that was supposed to break my fall now that there was no Mack on the ground to do that, and found my first foot holds, pushing myself up a few feet.

Mack must’ve heard the scrambling sounds of my feet, because he started to coach me, his voice pointed down at me like an overhanging rock.

“There’s a pretty good grip at your one o’clock.”

I felt around, my fingers clasping over the pretty-good-grip, and used it to pull myself up further. It took a lot of hard work, but I managed to keep my eyes open this time, listening to Mack’s voice like it represented a finishing line.

“Reach toward that big hold to your ten o’clock now.”

And through his coaching, a few pauses to catch my breath, and one or two I’m-going-to-quit moments, I made it. Before I knew it (which in reality was more like fifteen minutes), I was reaching up, feeling Mack’s hand close around mine to help me up the last little bit to the top.

I blinked. Stood. Stumbled a bit. Mack’s arm wrapped around my waist and his smile wrapped around my heart.

“You did it! I knew you could.” He pulled me closer to him.

A smile spread across my face, one I wouldn’t be able to stop if I tried. “Well, there goes my Guild membership. They’ll kick me out for sure.”

A warmth spread throughout my body as I looked out on the wild. Sure that I was steady now, Mack sat down and I plopped next to him. A few of the other climbers in the group cheered and waved when they saw us up there.

They were a nice group. We had all met at a local breakfast spot before driving out to the climbing area together, the seven of us. I had caught blond Carol, eyeing Mack throughout breakfast, especially after we’d introduced ourselves as friends. The lady still rubbed me the wrong way, even when her damn bouncy hair was braided back. I mean, she should know that Mack was unavailable. His wife had only died five years ago. The guy was obviously still in love with her. He wasn’t ready to date. Carol needed to back off.

I sighed. I guess it wasn’t the worst thing in the world that someone was interested in Mack. I just couldn’t pinpoint why it was making me so mad. I had found Adrian, with whom I shared so much in common. Mack deserved the same. And a hard-core rock climbing chick
did
seem perfect for him. But I also didn’t want to ruin this moment; it was quite possible that bringing up dating would turn Mack’s wonderful smile downward, reminding him of something that maybe he wasn’t ready to think about yet. And so I decided to leave it for another time.

“This was a super easy climb for you, wasn’t it?” I said after I’d waved like crazy at the other climbers, realizing that even though it had felt hard for me, this was my first time climbing and I had made it up (with a lot of grunting and help, mind you), so it couldn’t have been very high on the difficulty scale.

“That doesn’t matter. It’s fun being out here again. Thank you for coming with.” He rested his arm across my shoulders and I leaned into him.

“No prob, Bob. It’s what friends are for, right?” I shrugged, looking back out at the picturesque scene in front of and around us. But I could still feel Mack’s gaze focused on me.

“I’m glad I met you, Lauren. Really glad.”

I turned back to look at him, sensing a tone in his voice I had only heard once or twice in our more emotional conversations during coffee dates.

“Me, too.” I smiled, my mouth pulling up to one side. I hadn’t said anything while it was happening, but besides the intense not-wanting-to-fall thoughts I’d been thinking during my climb up, the only other thing in my mind was the fact that today seemed like too much of an analogy for Mack’s and my relationship, him guiding me, pushing me to do new things, accepting my limitations without judgment, being that voice directing me to better things. I knew it was cheesy, but did that matter so much when things were oh-so-very-true?

“As much as she loved that
I
loved climbing, Tess would’ve never come out here with me. She hated the outdoors. Too many bugs, she said.” He chuckled.

And although I loved to hear him talk about Tess, it felt like each time he did I was only reminded how much I wasn’t like her, how different I was from Mack’s type. I shook my head wondering where that’d come from. Why did I care that I wasn’t Mack’s type? I had Adrian. I was happy. He and I were compatible.

He shoved me with his shoulder. “Hey, meant to tell you that your hair looked quite full on the top, you know, from my perspective up here.”

I beamed. “Thanks!” I had started taking a bunch of supplements to help even things out, as per my doctor’s orders after receiving the results of my blood work. It already felt like it was working and my bald spots seemed to be filling in even after a week. “My one problem now is that some of the hair growing back in is gray. But I suppose hair is hair. I can’t be picky about what it looks like if I want it.”

Mack nodded. “Gray hair makes you seem distinguished, I think.” He winked at me.

My eyes scanned his blond hair, but if he had any gray hairs, they were too hard to spot, blending in with the lightness of his natural hair color.

“There are eleven,” he said, noticing me looking at his hair.

I giggled, glad I wasn’t the only one growing them and then we both sat and looked out at the view. I followed his gaze as it wandered across the wild landscape in front of us and nodded, understanding why he loved this.

“It is beautiful up here.”

After a few more moments of sitting in happy silence, I bit my lip as a terrifying thought came to mind.

“Wait. How do we get down from here?” My body tensed and my heartbeat became more like a drum in some sort of latin-based form of music.

Mack smiled, still looking out at the trees and said, “I got you. I’ll help you.”

And for some reason, just like always, his words calmed me. My body settled and I leaned back into him. I knew he did.