Better Off

by Tanya Chris

  “You remember the Bakers? I was fourteen that summer. We used to go to their house on the Cape almost every weekend.”

  The Bakers had a son about Mac’s age, and Mac steeled himself to hear that Pete had forced himself on Julia-Louise, but that wasn’t where she went.

  “Mr. Baker had a habit of… touching.”

  “Touching you?”

  “My shoulders, my back, maybe rubbing my thighs like ‘ooh, you’re going to get a sunburn, look at that.’ And he made comments. How cute I was or how much the boys must love me.”

  “That’s… not so bad.”

  “It was gross. And unwelcome. I spent the whole summer trying to avoid him. I hated going there.”

  Mac remembered that, remembered being annoyed at her for whining about going to the Cape when he loved spending weekends at the beach with Pete.

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I couldn’t figure out what to say or who to say it to. He was a grown-up, and he wasn’t really doing anything. You just said yourself it wasn’t so bad.”

  “I shouldn’t have.”

  “I think Mom noticed. I never told her, but she caught him looking down my shirt one day. He passed it off like I’d dripped ice cream down there, but she knew. After that we stopped going. And you remember when I was on the board of the Philharmonic for six whole months? They’re always crying about not being able to get women on the board, acting like we don’t have the fortitude to keep up with their schedule, but it’s toxic. They talked over me, interrupted me, never gave anything I said any credence, expected me to pour out tea like it was fucking Pride and Prejudice. Trust me when I say that rich men harass too.”

  So Mac got it now, but he still walked Julia-Louise to her car on Wednesday nights because it was a chance to see her and because he felt like he hadn’t been paying enough attention in the past.

  People around the neighborhood were coming to recognize him—waving to him on the sidewalk or saying hello if he was working in the stacks, even the AA guys who he technically wasn’t supposed to know were AA guys but you couldn’t help seeing people coming and going.

  But Miguel still wasn’t having him.

  “Greg,” he said now with his usual cool nod, before proceeding to exchange a rapid-fire series of what appeared to be friendly jibes with Hailey in Spanish.

  “Love you, kiddo,” Hailey said with a final clap on Miguel’s shoulder. Mac watched him leave with a frown. He still suspected there was jealousy involved, but maybe it was only his own.

  “He just doesn’t know what to do with you,” Hailey said, reading Mac’s mind as always. “He knows I’m gay, and he’s cool with it on, like, an academic level, but now it’s in his face, and he doesn’t know how to relate to someone who’s his friend’s boyfriend. It’s not a social construct he has a pattern for. He’ll come around.”

  “Boyfriend,” Mac repeated, his mind catching on that single word. He pulled Hailey in front of him and lined their hips up square to each other. “Am I your boyfriend?”

  “You’re certainly my something at this point. Do you have another word you prefer?”

  “Actually, I don’t. I’ve been thinking about it.” He’d never had a male significant other before, having only been in publicly acknowledged relationships with women. “Boyfriend is so juvenile.”

  “Partner? That might be too serious.”

  “It’s not too serious.” He loved the permanence it conveyed. “But I have business partners, bunches of them. It’s a word that already has a meaning in my life.”

  “Well, you can think about it.” Hailey gave him a quick kiss, then moved away to start the process of shutting down the store. “No hurry.”

  “Actually, there is. I’ve got this thing coming up, and I was hoping you’d go with me.”

  “Oh?”

  Mac paused. Once he’d extended the invitation, he wouldn’t be able to take it back, not that Hailey would even want to come. He didn’t know why he was asking. Declan said it was because he was trying to sabotage the Ball’s End project, and maybe he was right.

  Phase II planning had ramped up in the face of Hailey’s continued obstruction of Phase I, but Mac’s heart wasn’t in it. If they couldn’t secure financing, they wouldn’t be able to complete it, and then Edgar wouldn’t be forced from his apartment. There had to be a better way, but Mac hadn’t figured it out yet. In the meantime, there was this dinner.

  “I have to take some people out next week,” he explained to Hailey. “They’re potential investors. It’ll be mainly social, with maybe ten minutes of business while we’re waiting for coffee at the end.”

  “And you want me to be your date?” Hailey turned from the front door where he’d finished locking up with a surprised expression. “I’d have to get someone in to watch the store.”

  “Miguel can do it.” Mac had learned that Miguel covered on the rare occasion Hailey left during business hours. Miguel wasn’t quite sixteen yet, and Mac suspected Hailey paid him under the table, but he ignored all that. Maybe if Mac took Hailey out more often so that Miguel got more hours at the store, Miguel would learn to like him.

  As it turned out, Miguel had a curfew, so it was Yolanda who filled in. Mac saved her a bus trip by picking her up, which gave them an awkward fifteen-minute drive to get to know each other. She was reserved with him—no hugs and no colloquialisms. She spoke an English any doctor might have and made polite conversation about the chances of an early snow on Saturday.

  It wasn’t until they got to Hailey’s Comic that Mac caught a glimpse of the woman he’d met at the patisserie, when she greeted Hailey as if she hadn’t seen him in years. The two of them whispered into each other’s ears—about him, Mac was certain—and then Yolanda tucked a pencil through her braids and stationed herself behind the cash register.

  “Thanks again,” Mac said.

  “It’s nothing,” she said with a wave of her hand. “We help each other out around here. Bring me back a doggy bag from that fancy-ass place you’re going.”

  Which was why Mac asked the maître d’ to put an entire torte aside for him. Rob and his wife, Brianna, arrived while he was placing the order, and he introduced Hailey to them. Since they’d never finished that conversation about labels, he settled for placing a hand on Hailey’s back to convey the relationship.

  “Oh!” Rob said. “Sorry, I didn’t realize—that is, you, uh….”

  “He means nice to meet you.” Brianna extended her hand. She was Rob’s second wife, considerably younger and very pretty. But then Mac was there with Hailey, who was also considerably younger and very pretty.

  Rob pulled himself together enough to shake Hailey’s hand when his wife had finished with it. The maître d’ showed them to their table, and by the time they were all seated and drink orders had been taken, Rob had recovered enough to try again.

  “But, so, forgive me,” Rob said. “You’re not seeing Lauren anymore? You and she always seemed so sympathetic.”

  “We were a lot alike,” Mac agreed flatly.

  “Well, opposites attract, don’t they, dear?” Brianna tucked her arm through her husband’s as Mac darted a nervous glance over at Hailey. He’d dressed in that formal-ish outfit that must be the only one he owned and had his hair down. He’d asked Mac whether it should be up or down, and Mac had picked down because he liked it better that way himself and fuck what anyone else thought, but now that he had Hailey and Rob at the same table, he wondered how he’d ever imagined this could work.

  “Tell us about you two,” Brianna said. “How’d you meet?”

  “Hailey owns a store in the building we’re renovating in Phase I of the Ball’s End project. I went down to talk to him about it.”

  “Oh my God, that’s so romantic. The tycoon and the small-business owner. It practically writes itself.”

  “He even caught me with my shirt off,” Hailey joked.

  Brianna laughed. “Moving from rom-com to porn. What kind of store?”


  “A used bookstore.”

  “Oh my God. You’re like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. Does Mac give you business tips that ultimately work against his own best interests?”

  “Mostly ones that work in his best interests,” Hailey said, but Brianna had hit too close to the truth to be comfortable. Declan never stopped reminding Mac that his relationship with Hailey was doing him no favors.

  “How is the project going?” Rob asked.

  Mac cleared his throat. “We’re a little stalled by an unforeseen complication.” Which happened to be sitting next to him. “You know how these administrative delays can be. That’s why we’re moving forward with Phase II on an accelerated timeline.”

  Next to Mac, Hailey stilled. By mutual agreement, they didn’t talk about the project during their time together, so Hailey didn’t know about the changes being made to the timeline because of his refusal to leave.

  “We’d anticipated we could buy out leases,” Mac explained to Rob, “but we’ve run into some reluctance to, uh, vacate early with Phase I, so for Phase II we’re going to buy the building earlier and allow the leases to expire naturally.”

  “It never ceases to amaze me how some people think their personal situation supersedes the general good,” Rob said with a dismissive shake of his head. “You remember that woman in New London? All the way up to the Supreme Court. That would be before your time,” he told Hailey and Brianna.

  “I’m familiar with the case,” Hailey said.

  Of course he was. Kelo v. New London was a key precedent when it came to development.

  “Well, I’m not,” Brianna said. “What did the woman in New London do?”

  “Refused to leave, much like the thorn in Mac’s side in Ball’s End. There was a developer with plans to revitalize the area with some nice middle-class housing. The city claimed her property under the eminent domain clause.”

  “Eminent domain,” Brianna repeated. “Isn’t that for highways and things? I didn’t know they could just take your house and sell it to a developer.”

  “That’s why the case went to the Supreme Court,” Mac explained, greeting the appearance of the waiter with silent gratitude. Hailey hadn’t said anything yet, but Mac couldn’t expect that to continue. After the interruption, Mac hoped they’d move on to another subject, but when the waiter left, Rob went straight back to the New London case.

  “They offered her a fair price, as I’m sure C&G is offering whoever’s botching up the works in Ball’s End.”

  “The woman was attached to her house,” Mac said in an attempt to keep Hailey from jumping in. “It was a nice location, and she’d put a lot of sweat equity into it. She didn’t want to move.” The parallel to Yolanda was too obvious for him to miss.

  “Well, I don’t blame her,” Brianna said. “A home is more than a house. We just finished a kitchen remodel that took absolute ages, and if someone tried to make me move now, I’d cut them. Have a little compassion, Rob.” She jabbed her husband in the upper arm with a ring-bedecked finger.

  “Now, now.” He caught her hand. “Compassion’s fine on an individual basis, but what about progress? This woman’s attachment to her little pink house had to be balanced against the general good. Which was how the Supreme Court ultimately ruled.” Rob raised his glass to Mac, expecting him to toast the decision with him. The decision had definitely been hailed as pro-business. Mac had trotted it out at more than one planning committee meeting himself.

  “So cruel.” Brianna pulled her hand free from Rob’s to give him another jab.

  “No one’s advocating torture—reasonable limits apply—but the good of the many has to outweigh the good of the few.”

  This was why Mac had never questioned his ethics before. The people he associated with weren’t racists. Most of them weren’t even Trump supporters, though some might have voted for him, and many of them made donations to both parties through their businesses. Mac did. Or rather, C&G did. It just made sense. Whichever party was in power, C&G had to work with them.

  “Well, I think it’s awful. What do you think, Hailey? Aren’t these two awful?”

  Mac held his breath. As if the subject weren’t bad enough, there was the patronizing way Brianna and Rob assumed Hailey knew nothing about it.

  “Do you remember how the New London case came out?” Hailey asked Rob.

  “We won,” Rob said, as if he’d been personally involved.

  “After that.”

  Rob’s amusement dropped, and so did his interest in the conversation. He made a production of receiving the salad being placed in front of him, asking for ground pepper and freshly grated Romano cheese.

  “So what did happen?” Brianna asked Hailey when the waiter had cleared away again.

  “The developer couldn’t secure financing. The project never got off the ground. All the property the city of New London took away from its rightful owners has been sitting there ever since, of no use to anyone.”

  “Awful,” Brianna repeated.

  “Well, that won’t happen with C&G, I’m sure.” Rob glanced up from his salad with a nod for Mac.

  “One hundred percent completion rate,” Mac agreed. The point of this dinner was to sell Rob on investing in the project, after all. Hailey didn’t say anything to that, so Mac took advantage of everyone else having their mouths full to turn to the subject of Rob’s kids by his first wife.

  When the time came to get back to business, he was reluctant to tempt fate again. The waiter had cleared their dinner dishes and taken their coffee orders. Brianna had hemmed and hawed over dessert and ultimately decided no, but Hailey had ordered a piece of chocolate cake.

  There’d been a time when Mac had been surprised by how much Hailey could eat, but now he suspected Hailey was on the constant edge of hunger. If he ate anything other than what people brought to the store—whether it was the book club leaving hummus or the ESL group paying for English lessons with home-cooked meals—Mac hadn’t seen it.

  “So about the Ball’s End project,” he finally worked up the courage to say. That was why he was there, after all. Phase II couldn’t move forward without a big influx of cash, which they needed earlier than anticipated thanks to Hailey.

  “I’ll have to look at the revised figures,” Rob said. “This idea of running the building as a rental property while you wait for the leases to expire is bound to impact your bottom line.”

  “We think we can leverage short-term leases to keep occupation high during the rundown period, so we’re not expecting a change to the bottom line. We just need an earlier investment.”

  “And time is money, as you very well know. Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter. While you’re showing compassion to the current tenants, making our little darlings here happy, I could be earning a faster return on my investment elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want my name in the paper for evicting widows and orphans, but at the end of the day, money’s money, and you’re not going to talk me into putting some stranger’s welfare ahead of ours, Brianna.”

  Brianna made an exaggerated pouting face, but Mac could tell her interest in getting involved ended there. Rob wouldn’t suffer at home for taking a pro-capitalism position, whereas Mac would pay in guilt if not recrimination, and it didn’t even sound like he was going to get an investment out of this.

  “C&G has always done right for me,” Rob said, surprising Mac at the last moment. “Send over the prospectus and I’ll have my lawyer and accountant look at it. You know I’ll back you if I can. How long have we known each other?”

  “Grade school,” Mac supplied, not sure if he was relieved or disappointed that Rob might still be on board. The waiter brought their coffees and Brianna jumped on the subject of grade school, and when Hailey had finished the slab of cake he’d ordered, Mac paid the bill and they rose to make their farewells.

  “I’ll have to stop in and see your store,” Brianna told Hailey. “Oh, wait. It was in one of those buildings you’re ripping apart,
wasn’t it, Mac? Well, once Hailey’s settled somewhere new, be sure to let us know.”

  “Of course.”

  If Hailey was still speaking to him then.

  Chapter Twelve

  The atmosphere in the car was so strained that Mac almost forgot he was driving. He kept waiting for Hailey to say something, more than a little concerned about what it would be. He’d gone into the evening knowing that bringing Hailey was a risk, that Hailey might derail the conversation with unhelpful doses of reality, but he’d behaved perfectly.

  Even when provoked, he’d kept his opinions about urban development to himself. He’d been polite, charming, a better foil to Mac’s tendency to be too dry in social situations than Lauren had ever been, playing the companion role perfectly and without appearing to be playing anything, because Hailey genuinely liked talking to people.

  He’d oohed over Brianna’s cat pictures and sympathized with Rob’s son’s struggle with choosing which colleges to apply to, supplying some of his own stories about the admission process. If he’d been angry with Mac about Rob’s less-than-charitable attitudes, he hadn’t let anyone know it.

  But now they were alone, and Hailey sat dark and broody in the passenger seat.

  “Are those people going to be evicted early because of me?”

  “Huh? Which people?”

  “The people who live at 710 Main Street. Phase II. You said you’re buying the building early.”

  “So we can let their leases run out. So we don’t have to kick them out. They’ll get more warning this way, and if their leases expire before renovation is scheduled to begin, we’ll let them stay month-to-month. It’s the best I can do, Hailey.”

  “But is it because of me?”

  “Because of what you’ve brought to my attention, yes.”

  Hailey shrank farther into the corner of car.

  “It’s not— Hang on.” Mac pulled the car over and did his best to gather Hailey into his arms across the console. “It doesn’t accelerate the timeline of anyone having to move out, if that’s what you’re thinking. It just means we’ll be able to move everyone out in an orderly, predictable fashion rather than what happened with your building. The transition will be smoother. I think that’s a good thing, don’t you?”