And approaching Mae—god, he’d really fucked things up with her from the start. Didn’t want her to feel like she was just his second choice, now. She was always reading romance novels. She deserved a better start to a relationship than…whatever the mess of the last week had been. Whatever the mess of the last two months had been, maybe.
Did he ask her on a date?
He hadn’t been on a date in what felt like a decade. Had never been very good at them, even when he was younger.
God.
A mess.
And then Friday afternoon hit him in the gut.
Maybe it was something about the turn in the road, on his drive home from the post office. The slant of October light through his windshield, the glint of it off the ocean in the corner of his eye. Or perhaps his slow brain had simply finally had enough time for things to sink in.
A few years ago, he’d looked death in the face.
And here he was, next to the Pacific Ocean, safe and fucking alive, feeling bummed because he’d only been able to sleep with a gorgeous man for two fucking years. Feeling conflicted, or guilty, orsomething, because a beautiful person who made him laugh somehow wanted his sorry ass, too.
If you had told the Dell McCleary of three years ago, newly moved to Greyfin Bay, still recovering from multiple surgeries, nothing but hollow and a little stunned inside, that in a few years he’d be surrounded by the ocean breeze and the dogs that made up his heart, feeling a little sad that his attempt at polyamory didn’t quite work out, he would have simply dissociated the entire thought.
Luca had let him go.
Luca had maybe let him go weeks ago.
And Mae was there, waiting. Like she’d always been there, waiting, in his ADU, in his damn Main Street property, inside his skin since she’d first shown up at his doorstep over two months ago.
Life was short.God, life was short. If he hadn’t learned that, what was even the point of anything?
What the hell was hewaiting for?
Except one tiny detail snagged in his brain. Luca in his cabin, sayingyou’re not obligated to me.Dell was pretty sure they were safe, butpretty surewasn’t good enough for Dell. Wasn’t good enough for Mae. He glanced at the time on the dash.
With a squeal of his brakes, he turned around in the parking lot of the Fin Inn and turned north again, toward the clinic in Lincoln City.
* * *
Mae sat on the kitchen counter, eating out of a carton of Ben & Jerry’s (prohibitively expensive out here on the coast, but every time Mae waffled in the frozen aisle of the IGA, Jesus nudged her shoulder and said,“I am TELLING you—”). It was a bit of a precarious thing, sitting on the counter; she had to help herself up with a footstool, and her big ass just barely fit before the cabinetry bit into her back.
But she’d discovered recently that it was worth it to sit on this corner. From this corner, she could see around the edge of Dell’s house, where the sun peeked through the trees on its way down the horizon. Shining on Dell’s overgrown patch of lawn, over the landscaping between his space and hers. She could best picture the ocean here, past that grove of trees, down, down past a few more, until you reached the highway, and then sand: as close to the sun as one could come.
And so Mae sat and ate her ice cream and watched the sky turn peach, and told herself she was just fine.
It was just fine that Dell had barely said two words to her since last Tuesday, over a week ago now, the day he must have spoken to Luca. She had meant it when she’d told him he could take his time, but she hadn’t thought she’d be so thoroughly shut out while he processed. She had thought, perhaps naively, after their conversation in his bed, that perhaps they could process whatever had happened together.
But of course, Dell was still Dell. She’d witnessed how he processed things. And so it shouldn’t have bothered her that he’d only shown up at the shop intermittently, this past week. That he’d barely even looked at her when he had.
She…well, she missed him. The shop was quieter without the sound of his saws and drills and sanders in the background. He felt almost more remote to her than when she’d first moved in. Remote enough that her doubts began to get the best of her. Maybe, instead of bringing them closer, going to Portland and the night she’d spent in his bed had only spooked him. Maybe something had changed between them, something that couldn’t be recaptured now.
Maybe she’d have to drink all of her future matcha lattes alone.
Which, she reminded herself with another shovel of ice cream, was okay.
It had been a bonus. Seeing Dell sing at Moonie’s. Getting to hold him that night.
It was okay if all of this had only been a bonus.
His silence would hurt less soon. She was sure of it.
The sound of Dell’s truck swept up from the road like an incoming wave, ending with the close crunch of gravel, the abrupt quiet in the cutting of the engine. A moment of stillness, like the holding of a breath before the air was punctuated by the slam of his door. The dogs barked. Mae bit her lip, wondering where he was coming from. What he was wearing today.
