Settling Up (4 page)

“You okay?” I asked, hand on the seat buckle, but not yet sure if I should press the button.

Mack closed his eyes. After a second, he nodded. Then, in what seemed one motion, he unbuckled and got out of the car. It took me a second to catch up, but I fumbled after him, jogging to catch up as his huge frame sped toward the building and in through the front doors.

“
G
ood evening
! How can I help you?” A blond woman behind the counter smiled big as we approached. Her name tag read, “Carol”, but it was her hair that made me hate her.

I really wished I didn’t so closely resemble a drowned rodent as I took in the golden waves cascading onto her shoulders as her perfect hair bounced around her smiling face.

If the next thing out of her mouth was, “I just finished up shooting a shampoo commercial” I would’ve nodded. Who needed that much hair in normal life? And how the heck was it so shiny? (Let’s take a moment to remember again the state of my hair: drenched with sink water, angry-red scalp, plastered to my head to avoid any bald spot sightings.) Moving from adoration to annoyance, I narrowed my eyes at the woman.

She leaned forward, sticking her chin forward slightly as if in question. That was when I realized that neither Mack nor I had yet to say a word in response to her very normal business question (me, because I was greedily ogling her hair, and Mack, because he looked like his heart was just about ready to climb out of his throat).

He swallowed. Hard. “Can we just pay to use the practice area?”

She smiled again and nodded, pulling some bags from under the counter and handing them to Mack. Her eyes focused in on him as he took the black, strappy bags with little pull ties on the top like sleeping bags. I know I wasn’t great with reading people, but after Carol’s third eyelash flutter and her second hair flip, I could tell while I had been ogling her hair, she’d been ogling Mack. This made me narrow my eyes at her a second time. Not that Mack was my type, but still. Was it
that
obvious that we weren’t
together
together? We could’ve totally been together.

I stepped forward. Mack handed her his card and her I-probably-rock-climb-every-day arms flexed as she ran it through the machine, her hair bouncing around as if she was still shooting that commercial.

Mack turned around, but hadn’t expected me to be standing so creepily-close to him (because who would?) and he crashed into me. I found out what was in the bags he was holding.

Chalk dust exploded up into our faces. After what seemed like an eternity of coughing, blinking, and pawing at my eyes, the cloud cleared and I could see Mack. White chalk dust had settled on his eyebrows, eyelashes, and his hair. I’m sure I looked similar.

His chalky face scrunched together, those eyes crinkled in the corners, and he burst out laughing. I couldn’t help but catch onto the low, loud, booming sound, and found myself laughing along with him. After a few moments, however, we’d composed ourselves and had steadied the laughter to mere smiles. My smile widened, however, as I noticed the tightness that had come over bouncy Carol’s face as she looked at the mess we’d created.

“Sorry.” Mack chuckled. “I’ll clean this up.”

She shook her head, smile returning. “No, no. You two go have fun. I’ll get it.”

Mack widened his eyes at me, handed me my own chalk bag, and then motioned for me to go ahead of him into the gym. We walked through a section where the ceilings rose to ridiculous (if you ask me) heights and people clung to craggy fake rock faces while others on the ground held safety ropes.

Then we entered a much more reasonable area with much less vertigo-inducing ceiling heights. Fake gray rocks jutted out of these walls too, but to a greater extent so they formed overhangs and looked like giant boulders stuck into the building. The whole area was surrounded by a tiny pebble sandbox of sorts. I know it was to cushion your fall, but I couldn’t help but think that you were still falling
off
a rock
onto
rocks.

Mack headed toward the wall. I undid the closure at the top of my bag, pinched a bit of chalk, and tossed it over my shoulder for luck. Then I followed after Mack, stopping when the squishy plastic gym floor turned into pebble sand box.

“I’m just going to watch for a few minutes, K? Decide on a strategy.” I kicked my toe at a loose rock.

“Sure.” Mack’s face peeled into a grin as he looked back at me, but then he turned around and approached a particularly craggy looking fake rock.

I had been most parts kidding about the strategy thing (feeling quite sure that climbing anything you didn’t have to was silly and not in your best interest in the first place), but watching Mack for those first few minutes, I realized I had been wrong to kid. The muscles in his back flexed and poked out so they were visible through his white shirt. His arms looked akin to rope you might find on a large shipping vessel. My mouth dropped open as I watched.

Before I knew what happened, Mack dropped to the pebbles below. A grunt escaped him.

“Mack!” I ran over to him. He’d gotten a good ten feet up. Having never been one to get myself in situations where I was climbing anything I could easily fall off of, I wasn’t well-versed in how bad that kind of fall was.

By the time I reached him, he was sitting up, feet flat on the ground as his head dipped down low, close to his knees. His hands raked through his hair and across the back of his neck.

I placed a hand on his arm. He jumped, but looked up at me. Those crinkly eyes that had been so happy before were rimmed in red, wide and wild. Those flashes of pain and sadness that had been so fleeting before now sat deep in the grayness of his eyes.

“Are you okay?” I knelt next to him, my knees crunching down into the pebbles.

On top of sadness, his body emanated a heat from the work it had done for those few minutes. The smell of his cologne intensified, made me want to curl up next to him.

Mack shook his head.

“Tell me about it. Are you hurt? Where?”

He cleared his throat. “I thought I could…” His voice cut out and he shook his head, looking away from me.

I let my bottom plop all the way into the pebble pit, so I could meet where he was looking.

“Mack. Please tell me. You were a listening ear when I needed one. Please let me be the same for you.”

He nodded. “Okay.” That same tight and pained expression washed over his face, but instead of staying, it softened slightly and he sighed. His blue eyes almost seem to darken and he shook his head. “My life pretty much ended five years ago. Ever since, I’ve just been wandering around. Unsure why I’m still here.”

I wrinkled my forehead and leaned toward him, quelling the urge to put my hand over his.

Mack rolled his shoulders back and winced, pebbles crunching under his body. “I haven’t talked about it in a while, but, I got married eight years ago.”

My gaze flicked to his ring-less finger in question, but I stayed silent.

“Tess and I lived together in Utah. I was an EMT and she was a counselor in a local elementary school. We’d been married for three years when she got pregnant. We were over the moon.” Mack looked down at his hands as he talked, his tone flat and pained even as he said the phrase “over the moon”. “She was only five months along when I left for a rock climbing trip with some buddies. She said she would be fine. We were out camping with spotty cell service, but the second night, I got a phone call from the hospital.” He clenched his jaw, tight, for a second. “She’d had a complication with the pregnancy. There was a lot of blood. I needed to get there as soon as I could.” His fingers clenched together into a fist. “I ran back to where my car was parked at the trailhead. I drove like a maniac back to the city. But…” His eyes finally met mine and he shook his head. “I lost both of them.” The mistiness of repressed tears, clouded over his expression. “It had been a little girl.” He swiped at his face.

My heart felt like it was ripping in two. Here I had been complaining about thinning hair and bad date prospects when this guy in front of me was going through some of the deepest sorrow I could imagine.

“That was five years ago. I quit climbing. I thought I could go back to work, but…” He shook his head. “We got called to help a pregnant woman and I froze. After that, I knew I couldn’t continue, couldn’t put people in danger just because of my past. So I moved up here, learned how to deal and found jobs where I could. This was the first time I’d tried climbing again. I thought I could move forward, but...”

I couldn’t take anymore. I leaned over and wrapped my arms around him, tight. He lifted a hand and set it on my arms encircling his chest.

“I’m so so so sorry, Mack. I had no idea.” I squeezed even tighter. “That’s terrible.” I let go and met his steel blue eyes. “I can’t even…” What could I say to someone who’d known so much pain?

He lifted his mouth into a slight smile. I could tell it took all of his effort and that there wasn’t any happiness backing it.

“I’m okay. Or, I’m getting there. It took me quite a few years to forgive myself for not being there for her.”

“But she was only five months along! You couldn’t have known,” I protested.

He placed a hand on my shoulder and nodded. “I know. It’s still hard. Everyday. But I’ve learned to be happy about the time I got with Tess. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but I miss her every day.”

“What was she like?”

Mack’s face lightened. “She was tiny and loud, came from a huge Italian family. She was funny as hell and could hold her own in a fight.” He smiled.

I laughed. “She sounds like my complete opposite.”

“No, she would’ve loved your sense of humor. You two would’ve had that in common. It’s actually why I’m really liking hanging out with you, Lauren. You make me laugh, make me forget about my problems.” He watched me and I nodded, conceding. Mack shook out his shoulders. “Whew. I haven’t told that to anyone in quite a while. It actually feels pretty good to get it out.”

I nodded. “For sure. I’m so glad you told me. You can’t go through something like that alone.”

“My sister lives up here, actually. She and I are pretty close and she was able to help me through the worst of it.”

My chest tickled with a warm happiness, knowing how wonderful sisters could be.

I put my hand over his and stood up, pulling Mack with me. The pebbles under our feet made us unsteady for a moment, but then we got our balance.

“Well, I think you were very brave for even coming here.” I patted him on the back and we started to walk toward the entrance.

Blond, bouncy Carol furrowed her eyebrows as we approached the counter. She hadn’t even finished mopping up the cloud of chalk that had settled in the entrance.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

Mack nodded. “I’m just trying to get back into this. Today wasn’t the right day to try. Thank you all the same.” He placed our chalk bags on the counter and we turned to leave.

“I’m part of a local climbing group.” Carol’s voice stopped us at the door. “You’re free to come join us anytime. We have an online forum where we plan hikes and chat with each other. If you’re interested.” Her voice grew quiet at the end.

To a normal person, it would seem as if she were shy, but I knew this Carol’s game better than that. I could see right through her. I also couldn’t forget that she still didn’t know if Mack and I were together or not (heck, maybe we emitted a very friends-only vibe, but I doubted it).

Regardless of my issues with Carol, I was proud of Mack as he nodded, walked back, and took a card she had for the forum site.

We drove back to my car at the Casino in silence, but it wasn’t awkward. It was the kind of silence that was full of rightness, full of the knowledge that all of the important things had already been said for now and we were okay until something else came up.

And even though I normally hated the thought of listening to other people’s problems (they only helped to add to my anxiety normally), I was so happy to listen to Mack, so happy he’d opened up to me.

I got in my car smiling. I’d never met anyone who had the power to make me feel so okay, so not weird, so not anxious before. And what earlier seemed like it might go down in history as one of my worst days, ended up being one of my favorites to look back on; the day Mack and I truly started to become friends.

I’ll admit that after I’d gotten out of that casino bathroom, I had begun to doubt Mack’s settling up, change your list advice. But after spending the evening with him and discovery all the ways I had misjudged him, I knew for sure that I wanted to try, and that I would be taking my new friend’s advice about tweaking my list as soon as I could.

B
etsy’s fingers
wiggled in the air as I laid the printed list in front of her.

“Oh. My. Gosh. You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to cut this thing up.” She looked over at me. “Because I love you.” She put a hand on my shoulder, losing most of the blood-lust in her gaze, her eyes softening. “And it was holding you back. This Mack guy is some kind of miracle.” She waggled her eyebrows at me. “I think you should just go out with him.”

I shook my head. “Don’t do the eyebrow thing. He’s my new Rachel. Plus we would NOT work together.”

Betsy tipped her head and her gaze flicked to the list, then back at me.

“Not even once I make these changes. Believe me. We are complete opposites.”

Betsy rolled her eyes. “Sure. ‘Cause you’ve known him for all of four days and spent probably a few hours with him total, so you know everything there is to know.” The sarcasm in her voice flattened. “It’s that kind of ridiculous thinking that got you in this debacle in the first place, you know.”

I swatted at the air in front of her. “He’s becoming a good friend and I don’t want to lose that. You know I have a hard time with friends. Plus, I’m completely not his type. He was telling me about his late wife and she’s like my complete opposite.”

“Okay. Okay. I see I’m not making any headway there. Let’s gut this sucker.” She picked up the pen that sat on the table in front of her and uncapped it ceremoniously.

“Calm down. We’re not gutting, by the way. Just changing percentages.”

Bets let her head wobble from side to side to show me she heard some of that and then read the first item aloud. “Must be physically attractive. Now, I think we should lower the percentage weight on that. You know, looks aren’t everything.” She eyed me.

“Oh really, Mrs. I-can’t-believe-my-husband-is-such-a-stud?” I eyed her right back.

Her cheeks flushed pink, but she shook her head. “Josh being super hot is only
one
of the
many
things I love about him. And so not the most important. Hence my suggestion.” She put a star next to the number one, but dropped the percentage down ten points.

“Okay, here’s what I’m talking about,” she said, pointing to number two. “Three languages? Is that
really
that important?” Her brown eyes watched me.

“I want to be able to travel,” I said in defense, but when Betsy’s face didn’t change after a few seconds, I sighed. “Okay, I guess you could change it to ‘Knows another language or shows interest in learning’.” I breathed through the clenched feeling in my chest, clinging to Mack’s words.
Don’t look at it as settling down, think of it as settling up
. He had been pretty sure that by settling on some of these standards, I would come out on top. For some reason, I trusted him.

Betsy nodded in triumph and lowered the percentage while she was at it.

“Okay, let’s lower this a
bunch
.” She scratched out the percentage of the item about height, eyeing me and saying, “I agree it would be nice, but there are a ton of couples who love each other very much and the girl is taller. I know you like to put a number on things, but you don’t want to come off as shallow.”

After that, Betsy’s pen moved onto the next item about books. She raised the percentage on that one. My eyebrows went with the number.

“You really do need someone who loves reading. I agree with that one. You do so much of it, if your guy doesn’t I’m not sure what he’s going to do half the time.”

I nodded, glad she saw the importance of that. Our parents spent most evenings reading quietly at different ends of their couch.

It took Bets another few minutes to tweak the rest of the list before she brandished it toward me, a give-it-a-chance smile sitting squarely on her face.

“Give it a chance,” she said slowly as my eyes narrowed at the thing, looking for the differences like one of those Highlights pictures we used to look at when we were younger.

I questioned a few things and I disagreed with another few, but overall I felt a nod moving my head up and down as I looked. I added up the percentages in my head to make sure they still totaled one hundred. After making sure of that (and getting over the mild freak out that I no longer knew this list and its percentages by heart like the old one), I looked at Betsy and said, “Looks good.”

She craned her neck forward. “Really?”

I nodded. “Yep. While I’m here, can we look online together so that you can help me look at the dating sites? I feel like I don’t know what I’m looking for anymore.”

Bets looked at the clock behind us. “Sure thing. The girls should be napping for another half an hour.” She popped over to the desk in the corner of the room and grabbed her laptop, pushing it toward me.

I logged into my top three sites, pulling up the guys who I’d almost dismissed, but who might very well make it now that Bets had gone over the list. I pushed the laptop toward her, closing my eyes, not sure what she would think about them.

After a silent few seconds, I peeked one eye open. Betsy had her lips pressed forward discerningly, and her finger scrolled around on the track pad. I opened the other eye and leaned close to see which guy Betsy was looking at.

It was Thomas Harding, a local financial planner who had only been at it for a few years, having changed career paths after finding the corporate world too confining and corrupt.

“What’s wrong with him?” Betsy pointed at the screen.

“Number six.” I bit at my lip.

“He switched jobs. You can’t fault him on that. He wasn’t happy and is still doing something super respectable.”

I nodded. “I know. Plus, I think he’d still be okay because of the new percentages.”

Betsy clicked the message button and said, “Good, ‘cause you’re going out with him.” Her fingers started flying over the keys.

I attempted to swallow the doubt that stuck in my throat and hid my shaking fingers under the table. “Sure. Ha! That’s great.” I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide the redness creeping up my neck, but I was sure that Betsy expected that at this point.

She eyed me, smirking, but her fingers did not let up on the keys. Finally, she seemed to press a more-final-seeming key and turned to me.

“K. Now we wait to see what he says.”

I pulled in a deep breath and nodded.

“You’ll be fine. Now, let’s look at this next guy.” She clicked around some more and her face pulled into a smile. “Oh, what about this one?”

I craned my neck so I could see the screen. “Which one are you looking at now? The dentist?”

“No. This guy.” She swiveled the computer toward me, her eyes wide and sparkling.

The screen was full of a picture of a burly man covered in tattoos, substantial arms crossed in front of his equally substantial chest. My heart fluttered nervously.

“He lives in the city and loves art, good wine, and his cat.” More waggling of eyebrows.

I was already shaking my head.

Betsy sighed. “Really? Why? Are you sure your still not thinking about your old percentages? I dropped that tattoo one down to five percent, you know.”

She was right. Instinctually, I had gone back to my old numbers. My new list was supposed to open up new dating prospects. I tried to give the guy a chance.

“Let me see.” I read the rest of his information and had to admit that it seemed like he met all of the new screening look-fors.

I felt a soft hand land on my shoulder. I looked over at Betsy who had her eyebrows furrowed and her head tipped to the side. Uh oh. That was her I-need-to-tell-you-something look.

“What? What is it?”

“I’m just — I — well…” She bit her lip. “I want you to give him a chance, Lauren.”

Before I could argue that I had been about to give him a chance, that he
did
meet my new criteria, she kept on going.

“Honestly, Laur. I love you and I know that the real reason you have this list is because you love lists, you make lists for anything you possibly can, and I know you’ve seen Mom and Dad and the great relationship they have. I know you want that. I just don’t want you to come off as vain or high-and-mighty, you know?”

I opened my mouth, but she had more.

“You don’t know this, but I read your diary once when you were away being a counselor at math camp in high school.” She cringed. “I read that one of your greatest fears is not finding the right guy, a compatible guy.” Her hand was still on my shoulder and she began rubbing it across my upper back. “I get that. I know relationships can be tough when two people aren’t compatible, but compatible doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be the same person.”

I put a finger up, wanting to say something, but Betsy grabbed my finger and looked at me hard.

“You have to give people a chance. The guy of your dreams is out there, but most likely he’ll surprise you. There’s not a formula or a list that can guarantee you’ll find him. It’s just going to happen by you letting yourself let go of all of this control and letting yourself be open to finding him.”

Her hazel eyes held mine.

“Can I say something now?”

She nodded.

“I’ll go on a date with him. I would’ve told you that, if you would’ve stopped for a second through that whole -- whatever that was.” I swatted a hand at her and smiled.

“Really?” Betsy’s shoulders dropped in surprise.

I nodded. “He seems nice. You’re right. Tattoos shouldn’t be a big deal and the rest of his information looks promising.”

“Wow.” Bets shook her head. “Whatever Mack said to you must’ve made some crazy difference.”

I shrugged. “He fits the list from what we can tell from his profile. Send him a message.”

I was
acting
very nonchalant, I know, but the truth was that Betsy’s little speech had been dead on. I wasn’t doing any of this because I thought I deserved better, or was better than anyone else, but I knew she was right that it could easily come off that way. I really just wanted to find the right person and waste as little time (mine and his) in the process. It was hard, though, letting go of the idea that compatibility didn’t have to mean we were exactly alike. I swallowed the doubt and tried to let the new list do its thing.

Betsy got to work typing. We sent one other guy (the dentist from the city) a message, but before we could log off, an email from Guy Number One, the CPA came through.

“He wants to know if you can meet tonight.” Betsy’s fingers were frozen, hovering over the keys while she watched me for my reaction.

My neck felt red and hot. Tonight? That was, well, soon. I had class until five, so it would have to be a later dinner or maybe just drinks. I started making a list of pros and cons in my head.

“Making plans for tonight is perfect because you won’t have time to chicken out or ‘think’ your way out of it.” Betsy watched me, knowing she was adding to the pro column of the list she inevitably knew I was making in my head.

“And, it shows that he’s into you, too.” She added another.

I picked at my nails. My face flushed as I realized there were a whole lot more items in the pro column than the con column. Not to mention that the con column was mostly full of my fears instead of actual quantifiable reasons.

“Okay.” I nodded. “Did he say a place or do you think he’ll mind if I recommend one?”

Betsy shook her head, her body tensed with excitement that I was going along with this. “He didn’t say. And if he minds you putting in your two cents about where to go, he’s a jerk.” Her fingers began flying across the keyboard again. “I’m telling him yes and that you’d like to recommend…” She looked up at me.

“Block 16.”

At this, Betsy gave a chin-dip of approval. “Nice variety, not too expensive, cute and romantic atmosphere.” Then she continued typing and pressed enter when she seemed to have come to the end.

Just as she did, we heard a small voice come from Lilly’s room upstairs.

“Oh good,” Bets said, standing up and brushing her hands off on her pants. “The girls are up. We’re going on a road trip to your place so we can help you pick out an outfit.” I didn’t even have time to answer her before she spun on her heel and headed for the staircase singing out, “Girl’s, we’re going to Aunty Lauren’s house.”