Just Rules (21 page)

Mac stood up, determined to make things clear, but the words that came out of Susan’s mouth left him speechless.

“Don’t worry, Quin. It’s nice to see you again, and you too, MacMurray.”

Was she acting as if nothing had changed between them? Why? He swallowed and nodded his head.

“Are you OK, Susan?” Patricia asked looking right at her. “You’re a little pale.”

“Yes, I’m just tired.”

“Are you meeting someone here?” said Patricia, still talking to her.

“No, I saw you pass by and I came in to say hello.”

Mac was about to start shouting at any moment, and he looked Susana in the eye, giving her a warning. He had agreed not to tell Tim until he got back from Paris, but he didn’t agree to turn their relationship into a secret.

And that’s how he felt right now, as if what they were doing was bad. And he couldn’t stand it.

“And you, Mac, are you waiting for someone?”

“That’s what I thought, but apparently I’m mistaken,” he muttered not looking at Susan.

“Why don’t you two stay to have dinner with us?” said Patricia.

“No, I…”

“Come on, Susan, I feel like catching up —insisted Patricia— and surely Mac and Quin will find a way to distract themselves by talking about the team.”

“What do you say, Mac, will you stay?”

He waited for Susana to say something. Was she really going to pretend that there was nothing going on between them?

“I don’t know, Patricia, I don’t want to be a bother. And the truth is that I’m tired.”

Yes, she was going to keep pretending. Mac didn’t know whether to storm out of there at that very moment or start drinking like a fish.

“You’re not a bother, sweetie —said Quin— and the truth is that I would like to talk with Mac. Stay for dinner you two, come on, don’t make us beg.”

“OK,” agreed Susan.

“Sounds great to me,” said Mac, setting his drink on the bar after chugging it.

Fifteenth rule of American Football:

Safety:
when the defense tackles an offensive player in possession of the ball within his own end zone.

Quin put a hand on his wife’s waist, guiding her to the table. Mac had to close his fists so he didn’t try to do the same with Susana, although judging by the way she picked up the pace to avoid him, he would have had to tackle her as if they were on the field.

Mac was dumbfounded, hurt, confused, and very angry.

Yes, she said that she didn’t want to tell Tim over the phone, and he agreed to it, although grudgingly, but Mac made it clear that he didn’t want to be a secret.

He wanted the whole world to know that they were together.

And he didn’t understand why she didn’t want the same. Worse yet, it tormented him to think of why she was acting that way.

Did Susana want to get back together with Tim?

“Here is your table,” said a waiter to the four of them, pulling out a chair first for Patricia and then for Susana.

The two women sat down next to each other in front of their respective significant others.

Significant other? Funny!

They spent a few minutes looking at the menu and Mac heard Quin and Patricia commenting on a few dishes. His heart was beating so hard that it was about to beat right out of his chest.

They ordered dinner and some wine. Mac was staring at Susana and he could tell she was nervous. His neck was pulsating, and he squeezed his napkin with one hand. She was the one who had put them in that situation, he thought angrily, and she was the only one who could get them out of it.

“I’m happy to see that you’re doing well, Susan,” said Patricia.

“Thanks,” she answered curtly.

“So tell me, this glow you have, is it because of Parker? A cousin of mine saw you in the opera —explained Patricia— I think the two of you even stopped to chat with her and her husband Bob. He went to the university with Parker.”

Susana instinctively looked at Mac before answering. He was clenching his jaw so hard he was going to break a tooth if he continued. After hearing Patricia say that Parker was the reason why she was looking so happy, he surely wasn’t going to be able to keep holding back.

“No, Parker and I are just friends.”

“Just friends?” The other woman didn’t believe her. “My cousin says that you two make a good couple, and I’m quite sure that Parker is interested in you. And now that you’re not engaged…”

The sound of Mac’s chair scraping across the floor interrupted them.

“Excuse me —he said, standing up— I just remembered that I have to make a call.

“Are you OK, Mac?” Quin asked.

“Just fine.”

He left the table and walked toward the bar where he had been waiting for Susana before.

How long had his happiness lasted? Ten minutes?

He chose a stool where neither Quin nor his wife could see him from the table and he sat down and ordered another whiskey.

There he was again, waiting for Susana, although the scenario was quite different than before. What would have happened if he had chosen another restaurant? Or if Quin and Patricia had had arrived a half an hour earlier or a half an hour later?

He grabbed his glass and took a sip.

He had to stop torturing himself like that. His relationship with Susana couldn’t be so unstable. He needed it to be solid; his feelings deserved it.

“Kev.”

He heard his name but he didn’t turn around. He knew she was behind him. He hadn’t doubted for a second that Susana would come after him. Was it to apologize? Was it to demand him to continue to remain quiet? He didn’t know why.

Susana didn’t say anything, and Mac couldn’t stand the silence.

“Why, Susana?”

“You’re Tim’s best friend.”

He shook his head and she took it as though he wasn’t satisfied with that explanation.

“It’s too soon.”

It was another excuse, and Tim shook his head again.

“Tell me one thing, Susana,” he began, not taking his eyes off his drink. “How would you feel if I had gone to the opera with another woman, or if Quin had congratulated me in front of you for hooking up with someone?”

She didn’t say anything, and Mac slowly turned around until he was facing her.

“This morning I was inside you, Susana. I made love to you, and you kissed me. And now you’re capable of denying that I even exist? You’re capable of having me right in front of you and not touch me. You let Patricia, a woman we both care about, think that you’re single and that you’re more than willing to continue seeing that Parker guy. I want to know why. I deserve to know why.”

“The press still asks me about Tim and there are people who still feel sorry for me. They don’t say anything, but I know that they think I’m the poor, unfortunate girl who was left at the altar by the handsome, rich, untouchable football player.”

“You’re not an unfortunate girl, Susana, and you know it. I’m sorry the press keeps bothering you, but I don’t see what that has to do with us.”

“If they know that we are together, I’ll be the laughingstock of the T.V. channel when you leave me.”

“When I leave you,” repeated Mac, feeling his heart split in two. Despite the fact that she had apologized for having judged him and that she had passionately made love to him, Susana had never seen the real Mac. If she had looked him in the eye just once, she would have realized that it was impossible for him to leave her.

“Yes,” she continued, oblivious to the pain that was obliterating him on the inside. “I don’t want to be known as the girl who slept with the two star players of the Patriots. My professional career would never recover from it.”

Her professional career.

“You could be known as the girl that went out with one of the Patriots and married another,” suggested Mac, looking directly at her
.
“Or perhaps you’ll be the one to leave me, just like you are right now.”

Susana opened her eyes
and let out a breath before answering.

“That’s nonsense. You don’t want to marry me.”

Mac hadn’t thought about it until that moment, true, but the fact that she would reject the idea so quickly made him sick to his stomach. Now Susana’s behavior made a lot more sense; her reluctance to tell Tim that she was with him, all of those nights that she didn’t want to leave the house, the weekends they spent holed up in his cabin.

Susana was just having fun with him. She was doing what people do when they get divorced, or when someone gets dumped weeks before they are supposed to get married. She was having an affair.

And he, so stupidly, fell in love.

For him, falling in love meant everything. Susana meant everything to him.

Mac turned around and grabbed the glass of whiskey again. He looked at the amber colored liquid and breathed slowly. Sooner or later the pain would go away. She never said that she wanted to leave him, but he needed to be sure.

“What do you want from me, Susana?”

“Can’t we just be how we have been until now?”

Part of him wanted to say yes. He could settle with that and surely if he slept with her every night he would end up convincing her to give them a chance. However, it wouldn’t be long before they would argue. In a few weeks there would be the team dinner to celebrate the new season and he was planning on asking her to go with him. Now he knew for sure that she would say no. They would get into an argument and Susana would end up leaving him. Or worse, she would ask him to hide they were together and he would die a little more inside.

“No,” he said, basically for himself. “We can’t.”

He emptied the glass and stood up. He left a fifty next to the glass and looked at Susana one last time.

“Tell Quin and Patricia that something came up unexpectedly. Stay and have dinner, please. In the meantime, I’ll go to your apartment and get my things.”

“Kev, I… —she stuttered— I don’t understand.”

“I know,” he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll leave the key inside.”

He choked up on the last phrase. In that moment it was very painful for him to think that a few days ago Susana had given him a key to her apartment, and yet that night she was incapable of holding his hand in front of Quin and his wife.

He walked out of the restaurant without looking back.

The next day, Mac packed his suitcase and went to his grandmother’s ranch in Texas. He called his parents to let them know. They stopped by there every now and then, and he didn’t want to scare them. His mother, Meredith, asked if something was wrong, and he was able to convince her that he was fine, or at least that’s what he thought anyway. After a brief interrogation session, his mother gave up, thank God, but she told him that his little brother, Harrison, would also be there.

Mac bought the first ticket he found and was bound for Texas that same night. He didn’t want to stay home waiting for Susana to show up.

And he didn’t want to be tempted to grab his car keys and show up at her apartment and tell her that he would be fine with
continuing with the way things were
. If he agreed to that, he would end up hating her. And if he begged her to give their relationship a chance, and she accepted because she felt bad, she would be the one who ended up hating him.

He and Susana were never going be.

She had affected him so much that he hopped a plane to Texas instead of staying in Boston taking care of business and trying to figure out how to forget her. He was furious, with her and with himself, and his rage continued to build up throughout the flight.

Why the hell hadn’t he argued with Susana? Before, they argued about the pettiest of things, from anything from the name of a color to ice melting on the poles, but last night he couldn’t say anything to her.

No, it wasn’t that he didn’t’ know what to say to her; it was that he didn’t want to say anything. What good would it do to try to convince her? If she didn’t feel the same need to be together as he did, the best thing to do would be to forget about her as soon as possible.

But did she really not feel the need to be together? Was she going to give her next lover those same kisses, that same passion? Would the next one be Parker?

The plane landed and when Mac walked out of the arrivals gate he found his not so little brother waiting for him. The two men hugged each other and Mac in that instant thought that going there was the best decision he had made in a long time.

“You didn’t have to come meet me here, Harry,” he said to his brother as he let him go.

“That’s stupid, Kev. Let’s go. Grandpa is waiting for us. I think he wants us to have breakfast, or dinner together. I still haven’t gotten used to the time change.”

Mac looked at Harry and saw the huge dark circles under his brother’s eyes.

“How did you manage to get out of there?”

“I escaped.”

Harry worked in Washington as a political advisor, which meant that he traveled a lot and that nobody knew exactly what he did.

“Is everything going OK, Harrison?”

“I’m working it out, Kev,” he answered, while starting his SUV.

“And what about you? Are you OK?”

“I’m working things out, too.”

They didn’t say anything for the rest of the ride
.
They didn’t need to. Mac looked out the window at the Texas landscape and was thinking that he should call his brother more often.

When Susana walked into her apartment after Mac had left her by herself to have dinner in Paper Moon with Quin and Patricia, she told herself that she wouldn’t notice his absence. In the end, she and Tim had been together almost a year, and when he left all of his personal belongings had fit into a cardboard box, which was still on the floor of one her closets.

Mac wasn’t going to get a box.

She opened the door and had to steady herself against the wall so she didn’t fall down. She couldn’t breathe. It was as if Mac had taken the air with him. She looked around the dining room and had to close her eyes when she remembered that he had made love to her on top of that table. The kitchen was even worse. That was where he had told her how he got into playing football, and they were also there the day he left after hearing her phone conversation with Pam; the first time that she didn’t acknowledge his existence.