Better Off

by Tanya Chris

  “You’ve been keeping this place afloat with your own money, haven’t you?” Mac had always known the business model wasn’t viable. His instinct had told him as much from the very beginning, but he’d allowed his growing awareness of Hailey’s education and intelligence to sway his initial judgment.

  “What there was of it,” Hailey admitted. “My savings are gone now, everything that was worth selling has been sold, and I’m no longer a good credit risk. Hailey’s Comic wouldn’t have made it past the end of its lease anyway.”

  Mac had suspected as much, but the defeat in Hailey’s voice killed him.

  “I just wanted to finish the school year,” Hailey said, his hands rubbing soothing circles over Mac’s back as if he knew how close Mac was to falling apart. “People were counting on me. I don’t know where those kids are going to go now.”

  Being careful to stay completely silent, Mac let his tears fall.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mac was at his wit’s end—sleeping poorly despite having Hailey snuggled up against him, not eating because his stomach rebelled at the thought of food, forcing himself through workouts that felt like punishment, and liking that they felt that way.

  Hailey acted as loving toward Mac as he always had, gave him his full attention once the store closed, treated all his customers with that same attention and love. Someone who didn’t know how brightly Hailey’s eyes ought to shine might have been fooled, but Mac wasn’t.

  After spending a few mornings towing Hailey around to rental properties, Mac had to admit defeat. Every option was either too far out or was so small and poorly maintained it made the space Hailey’s Comic currently occupied look like a Barnes & Noble superstore.

  Berating himself even as he did it, Mac poked through Hailey’s records until he learned the full truth of the situation. There was no reason to feel guilty about getting him evicted, because he couldn’t afford to stay. He was deep in debt and getting deeper every day, with no prospects for paying any of it back. How he managed to walk around with a smile on his face carrying that kind of debt load, Mac couldn’t understand, but there was zero chance of any bank lending him the money to start up again somewhere else.

  Mac would lend it to him, of course. Mac would give it to him. Mac would happily subsidize Hailey’s Comic wherever Hailey wanted to relocate it if only Hailey would stop moping around like his life was about to end and want to relocate it.

  And so Mac kept tracking down rental properties and Hailey dutifully toured them, but in the meantime everything in the store was on sale for basically free and Hailey spent more time trying to find new locations for after-school programs and AA meetings than for himself or his store.

  “Where’s he going to go?” Julia-Louise asked when Mac had finished summarizing the situation for her.

  They were at his loft, Mac being too restless these days to sit around waiting to be served and having grown out of the habit of eating out in general. They sat on one of the couches that looked out over the river in the distance, eating Chinese food directly out of cardboard containers. He’d left on a single lamp to provide enough light to eat by, but otherwise the room was dark, only the ghostliest reflection of their own selves wavering against the city view through the bank of windows.

  “He doesn’t even think about where he’ll go. Hailey is the least of Hailey’s concerns.”

  “Will he come here?”

  “I wish, but I’m not hopeful. I’ve extended the invitation several times, and he…. I think I’ve got to accept that he doesn’t want to live with me, Jules.”

  “You’ve only known each other a couple of months. It’s a reasonable precaution on his part.”

  “Precaution. You make it sound like I would hurt him.”

  “You are kind of dangerously obsessed. Promise me you won’t kidnap him if he won’t come willingly.”

  Mac didn’t promise. “I don’t suppose you’d invite him to live with you?”

  “I would. For both your sake and his. But I’m not sure why he’d want to.” Julia-Louise lived even farther from Ball’s End than Mac did, way out in the suburbs where Mac hardly went and it was unlikely Hailey would want to go either.

  “Maybe it’s just me he doesn’t want to live with.”

  “Oh, stop sulking. I doubt it’s anything personal. What does he say?”

  “That he needs to be there to wrap up the store, to take care of loose ends. That Ball’s End is home to him.”

  “So believe him. He doesn’t strike me as the type to play games.”

  Mac shook his head. “Just because he lets me sleep there doesn’t mean he wants me there. Not me personally. He lets everyone in. He’s a magnet for stray animals and lost causes. I just happen to be one of them.”

  “Come on, Gregory. There’s a difference between letting people talk about books in a corner of your store and having sex with them.”

  “He likes how I look. He’s been honest about our chemistry. But I don’t think it goes much beyond that. Physically, I’m his type, and he never pushes anyone away, so I show up and he takes me in.”

  “But it’s more than that to you?”

  “Much more.” If he could find a solution to the problem of 502 Main Street, maybe he could get Hailey to see him as more than an easy hookup and another lost soul, but he was running out of time.

  “So if he wants to be in Ball’s End, and you want to be with him, the answer seems obvious. If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, etc.”

  “What, move to Ball’s End?”

  “Think of how cheap it would be. You could put the money you saved to good purpose. Hailey would like that.”

  “I’ve already got plans in that direction.”

  He hadn’t told Hailey yet—was waiting until everything was definite—but the bottom floor of 502 Main Street would now house a community center, escalated up from Phase II so there’d be a spot for all Hailey’s side projects. Until Audra could drum up enough corporate sponsorship to foot the bill, Mac would be funding it himself to the tune of a couple hundred thousand a year.

  “You give a lot of money away.”

  “As much as I can,” Julia-Louise agreed. “Thinking of upping your charity game?”

  “It’s not like I don’t give.”

  “I know.”

  “And it’s not like I couldn’t give more,” he admitted with a sigh. “Why does it feel so scary?”

  Hailey had given everything—sold his clothes, eaten other people’s scraps, gone without a car or a television, lived in sixty square feet at the back of a store with two mugs and two plates and one chair, brushed his teeth in a public bathroom, and walked up three flights of stairs to shower in water that flipped between scalding hot and freezing cold without notice.

  A couple hundred thousand a year would hardly be noticeable to Mac. If he didn’t give it away, he’d only funnel it back into the business or let it sit in a portfolio at a brokerage where it would make money that would make money, none of which would ever be used for anything other than making more money, and yet the thought of giving it away made his heart clench. How did Hailey do it?

  “Money’s sort of a burden that way,” Julia-Louise said. “It wraps chains around you.”

  “It’s not like I’m attached to status symbols,” he reminded his sister with a gesture at her handbag. “Hailey says that’s a knockoff, by the way.”

  “Damn it. How did he know? They told me it was so good no one could tell.”

  Mac ignored the question of how Hailey knew in favor of the more pressing question. “You bought a knockoff on purpose?”

  “Well, sure. There’s a five-thousand-dollar difference between the real thing and this, which is five thousand dollars that can be put to better use. I have to maintain a certain look to be able to exert the social influence I have, but I don’t have to waste money doing it.”

  “Jules.” He couldn’t believe Hailey had known more about his sister’s financial situation than he had. “A
re you in trouble? Is that why you live out in the boonies? Let me help you.”

  “I’m fine. I’m just choosing where my money goes. Like Hailey does, though admittedly to a lesser degree. I don’t need a Fendi bag to be okay, and I guess Hailey doesn’t need a car or a loft.”

  Or three square meals a day or a change of underwear. Surely there was a compromise to be had, a way in which Mac could assuage his conscience and buy Hailey’s love without sacrificing too much convenience or making his own financial future uncertain. A designer bag might be an indulgence, but having a reliable source of income and a comfortable nest egg wasn’t. That was just plain practicality, a trait for which his Scottish ancestors had always been known.

  Julia-Louise and Hailey were both very brave. Mac didn’t know if he could be so strong, not even to the extent of moving to Ball’s End. Live in a one-bedroom walkup? Do laundry, cook meals, be daily inconvenienced by on-street parking and annoyed by noise and crowds and litter-strewn sidewalks?

  And have Hailey. At least until Hailey found out how Mac had betrayed him.

  “I did a bad thing,” he confessed.

  “I think you need to tell him,” Julia-Louise said when he’d finished explaining his role in Hailey’s eviction. “You can’t walk around with this between you. Frankly, you look awful.”

  “I know.” He put his container of kung pao chicken on the glass coffee table. He hadn’t managed to eat half of it before the conversation had turned his stomach.

  “What do you think will happen if you tell him?”

  “He’ll never forgive me.”

  “That doesn’t sound like him.”

  “He doesn’t need to know.” Hailey had accepted Declan’s subterfuge without question. What had happened had happened.

  “You need to tell him for your own sake.”

  Mac shook his head. Telling Hailey wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. But moving to Ball’s End? That he could do.

  He got out his phone and typed a painfully slow email to his real estate agent. Julia-Louise huffed about how rude he was being, but he waved her off. He was only taking her advice—well, some of it—and if you couldn’t be rude to your sister, who could you be rude to?

  Mac held his breath as he turned the knob. He’d yet to see the place himself, so he could only imagine what horrors lurked behind the scuffed wood door, which at least seemed sturdy enough to withstand a kick-in attempt.

  “Just find me the closest thing you can get to 502 Main Street,” he’d told his agent. “I don’t care what it looks like or how small it is.”

  Which meant that if it was a disgusting hovel with worn-through green shag and walls covered in crayon, he had no one to blame but himself. The only condition he’d given her was that she had to use fair means to acquire it—no dropping his name, no bribing the landlord to evict another tenant, no starting a bidding war. He didn’t need Hailey finding out he’d acquired the place through underhanded methods.

  So this was the moment of truth. He pushed the door open and let out his breath at the innocuous interior.

  “Why are we here?” Hailey asked after an uninterested glance around.

  “This is my new apartment. Ours, if you’ll share it with me.”

  “You’re going to live here?” Hailey took a second look, as if seeing it through Mac’s eyes this time.

  And okay, it was small. From where they stood just inside the doorway, Mac could easily see across the living room to what must be the bedroom and through the pass-through into a kitchen that wasn’t much bigger than the inside of his car.

  The carpet was a low-pile beige-and-blue nylon Berber—hideous, but new—and the walls were a uniform off-white, unmarred by scuff marks or children’s artwork. The cabinets in the kitchen gleamed of fake wood, and the Formica counter that separated the kitchen from the living room was trying much too hard to pretend it was granite. Honest Formica would’ve had more appeal.

  But it was fine. Small, ugly, and fine.

  “This isn’t exactly up to your standards.” Hailey headed for the tiny kitchen, and Mac joined him at the spot where the carpet transitioned to a linoleum patterned in yellow flowers.

  “I can’t express how little I give a fuck. I’ll sleep in an alley if that’s where you’re going to be. Or kidnap you from it.” Despite Julia-Louise’s admonitions to the contrary, he entertained fantasies of it—of carrying Hailey off and refusing to let him free again until he promised to make his own well-being one of his priorities. “I just want to be where you are. Please don’t leave town when the store closes. Please stay with me.” He hated how desperate he sounded, but he was exactly that desperate.

  “You rented a shitty apartment in Ball’s End so we could live together?”

  Mac nodded.

  Hailey turned to face him, and his eyes were as bright as they ought to be. “Seriously, Greg? This is the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

  “And I didn’t kick anyone out to get it. I swear.”

  “I know. Inez has been trying to rent this unit ever since the murder-suicide.”

  Murder-suicide? Really? Okay, that was fine. It was fine. It explained why the place was so clean, actually. “Does it bother you?” If he had to, he’d send his agent out to search some more.

  “Nah, I’m not superstitious, and Inez will appreciate the income. She offered me three months’ free rent if I’d move in.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t have been able to afford month four. Greg, are you sure about this?”

  “A hundred percent. I’ll rent my own place out as an Airbnb. Whatever I get, we’ll give it away. Any charity you want.”

  “Well, you having some extra money to donate is a nice side benefit, I guess.”

  “What’s the main benefit?”

  “Being able to stay in Ball’s End, obviously. My handsome knight.” Hailey framed Mac’s shoulders in that way he liked to, smoothing the fabric of his shirt over them, reminding him to stand up straight. “Not everyone has a rich boyfriend to fall back on, you know.”

  Oh, God. Hailey was going to tell him no because it wasn’t fair or something. “Couldn’t you have a rich boyfriend to fall back on?”

  “I guess I do.” Hailey tapped their noses together. “You really want to live here?”

  “Will you live with me?”

  Hailey nodded.

  “Then I really want to. Let’s check out the bedroom.”

  He bundled Hailey up in his arms and dragged him through the living room to where the bedroom ought to be, and sure enough the apartment had the requisite number of bedrooms and bathrooms, which was one of each.

  Mac’s loft had two bathrooms and he lived there alone, but the shower looked big enough—barely—for two men, and the bedroom looked big enough—barely—for a full-size bed. Not his California king, but something more spacious than the futon on Hailey’s floor.

  “I don’t know where all your clothes are going,” Mac joked as Hailey peered into the old-style closet in the corner, empty other than a metal bar that spanned its width. He adored the way Hailey was casing the place as though there were a lot to see. “Do you like it?”

  “I can’t believe I’m going to have a shower again. You know this building has laundry in the basement?”

  God, was Mac supposed to do laundry in the basement? But Hailey sounded so excited about the idea that he couldn’t worry about it right now. “I wish this place had come furnished.”

  “No, you don’t. You’d be paranoid about bed bugs. I caught you trying to check under my sheets that first night.”

  “But if there was a bed here, I could fuck you on it. Or you could fuck me.”

  “We have a wall.” Hailey pushed him up against one of the empty walls of what would become their bedroom. “And we don’t have lube or condoms, but there’s other stuff we can do.”

  Mac soon had his arms full of a giddy Hailey, who giggled as he kissed. “You’re happy?” he asked
between Hailey’s assaults on his mouth.

  “Really fucking happy. I know this doesn’t solve everything, but thank you. I was going to live with Yolanda, maybe. Or Edgar. I hadn’t even had time to think about it, but I knew I didn’t want to leave here. I didn’t want to leave you.”

  Bliss.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mac jogged down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He’d made too many terrifying trips up the creaking elevator yesterday to feel like risking it today. Four flights down was nothing. A good way to get his blood moving. Anyway, he paid for a gym. It would ironic to turn down a chance for free exercise.

  It was three long blocks from their new place to his parking space behind Hailey’s Comic. Where he was going to leave his car once 502 Main Street turned into a construction zone, he didn’t know, but he’d figure it out. Money smoothed over a lot of potholes, and no obstacle could daunt him today.

  “Hey, Miguel,” he called to the teenager waiting at the bus stop in front of the church. He waved at the rest of the kids, some of whom he recognized, but he didn’t stop. He was excited about getting back to work after a couple of days off. He never took time off, but he’d decided the fastest way to get Hailey into the new apartment was to supervise the move himself. Last night, thanks to two days of wrangling movers, they’d slept on a bed intended for two adults in a bedroom that was all theirs.

  The new place was absolutely postage-stamp-sized, smaller than it had looked empty, which was why he’d made so many elevator trips yesterday. Some of the furniture had gone up only to come straight down again. He would be making do without a lot of things he’d previously considered indispensable, like nine-tenths of his wardrobe, but it was only temporary, and he didn’t really give a shit.

  All those cupboards full of fancy serving dishes. As if he’d ever served anyone. The last person to eat at his loft had been Julia-Louise, and they’d used cardboard containers and disposable chopsticks. And then there were the knickknacks—doodads with no purpose whatsoever that had been chosen by his designer. He couldn’t even describe them now that they’d been out of sight a few days. There’d been books he never read on shelves he only walked past, sports equipment for sports he’d stopped playing a whole career ago, clothes for events he hated attending. His loft had been full of irrelevancies.