To Mac, his part of their plan for the Wednesday afternoon mid-week summary was simple: distract Tar long enough for Hannah to snatch a record from the crate underneath her record player.
Easy. Tar likes computers and stuff. I like trucks. We can talk about computers in trucks? Yeah. Hannah looked pretty mad and was grumbling something about Tar, her bike, and Craigslist yesterday. Gotta help her get back at mean ol’ Tar. She’s just a girl!
“Tar. You’re an expert on computers and old electronics and stuff right? What would it take to install like a better stereo in my truck? Hannah’s been complaining that I’m still listening to AM radio. She wants me to get a stereo with Bluetooth.”
Tar raised an eyebrow from beneath the thick frame of her computer glasses and chuckled while nudging them up.
Okay. She took the bait.
“You’d have to find a unit that fits your center console. Is your stereo skinny or fat?” Tar asked, gesturing with her hands their approximate sizes.
“Skinny.”
Crossing her arms, Tar slouched in her chair and narrowed her eyes, maintaining sober, perfect eye contact, dissatisfied in-law style: one that never seemed to be happy with him no matter how much Hannah hyped him up. “You have a standard-sized unit. I’ll help you look for one at Best Buy after this meeting if you’d like.”
Mac felt something warm and squishy on his shoulder. Hannah? Oh. She’s already done. Why did she make pressing her boobs against my shoulder the signal again? Ah, whatever. She smells great!
“Uhh, I guess that’s all we have time for today Tar! Yeah. I’ll hit you up on the group chat in like...” A red-faced Mac snapped around to face Hannah, now glommed on his arm, and shared a look. “In uhh, two, three hours?”
Hannah frowned at this.
Damn it. She isn’t playing fair!
“Okay… Maybe tomorrow?”
“Eheh!” Hannah giggled at this.
Mac’s brain stopped working. “Hey Hannah? I c-can’t drive if you’re clinging to me like that. Can you at least wait until we get home?”
“Get home and do what, Heart Attack?” Hannah teased, smirking like Lola Bunny and poking a sly finger at Mac’s cheek.
After wriggling for two seconds in vain hope of getting free, Mac accepted his fate. At least I can negotiate here. Hannah always says yes to me.
“I can chill on the couch watching the Giants game tonight and you can play on your phone? I’ll even let you lean against me like last time. You’re always in a great mood whenever we do that. Maybe we can even drink some beer while we chill?” Mac suggested.
Hannah mocked the way Mac always scratched his chin and looked up and to the left while he was thinking, then piled on even more smugness on her visage. “Hmm, that does sound relaxing after a long day of planning the next heist. Maybe after the game we can…” She leaned in closer, almost biting his ear off like Tyson did Holyfield, and whispered, “Make out and post another picture on the forum as well? You’re always in a great mood whenever we do that.”
Mac whimpered as he whipped around, every part of himself from the collarbone up the color of match heads. “Hannah, p-please…”
Pshooooo! Tar adjusted her chair’s height, but Mac felt it in his soul that he knew why she really did it. Thanks Tar! You can be so cool sometimes.
“Ahem! Hannah dear, please don’t corrupt the office angel too hard,” Tar deadpanned, not even bothering to look away from her workstation.
A phantom force started DRAGGING Mac towards the garage door and out onto Lakehaven Drive towards Weasel’s parking spot just down the street. “Of course bestie! Love you!”
“Love you too, Hannah. Please let him drive safely.”
Without looking back, Hannah flashed her the peace sign with her free hand and slightly loosened her death grip on Mac’s shoulder as she hooked him off the stage. Behind him, Mac swore he heard Tar sigh a long one before triggering a cascade of catastrophic giggle blowoff valve failures and previewing a stream of deep-fried MP4s of construction noises.
She’s probably talking mad shit about us to Eureka and writing a rough of a rough draft of their next chapter right now… Oh well. The lines between me and Hannah have NEVER been clearer. Let them think what they wanna think. But why do they find jackhammers so funny whenever we’re near them? Are they like secretly construction weebs or something? The Freightliner M2 106 Plus with a stake side bed is a CULT CLASSIC, I get it, but they only laugh at those memes whenever we’re around… I must be too dumb. Guess I’ll just ask Hannah when we get home.
---
For the seventh game in a row after the Giants hit a walk-off grand slam against the Dodgers as they started making out for the first time on Hannah’s ultra luxe Le Corbusier couch, the Giants were winning again. Not that that mattered when Hannah’s favorite spot in front of the television became Mac’s side ever since that night. Feeling her rustling around, she pulled out the spoils of war from her Whole Foods tote bag: a square foot of brown with a lonely microphone in the foreground.
“What did you steal this time?” Mac asked, reading the text on the album art. “Hmm. Trace by Son Volt… Sounds cool.”
Hannah adjusted her snuggle technique so that her arms once again found their rightful moorings on Mac’s shoulder. “Yeah. Tar had this baby wrapped in the type of thick-ass plastic you use to move a prized antique couch. Wanna mute the rest of the game and listen to it? They’re up by like eleven to the Rays at the top of the eighth inning. It’s a done deal, despite this team having the most exciting closers in baseball for forty years running. Besides, this one is probably full of bangers…”
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Mac trembled. Hannah noticed. “Are you okay? Your face is red as hell. Do you have a fever or something? Should I cook noodle soup with kisses blown into it and feed you like you did for me?”
Reaching for the remote on the ottoman, Mac muted the television. Hannah had a good point. “No, I was just kinda… getting embarrassed because you said that you wanted to post another make-out picture to the forum after the game in the meeting with Tar earlier. I was just thinking about the last time we did that and… The game’s about to end, so… Uhh… Is that really the mood?”
Hannah looked up at him, her arms now fully pinning his arms to his body, critically failing at making the pretty, blinking face that always got him to do what she wanted. Mac’s seen The Expression before. It was the Kubrick stare every career small-time fence made when they finally punched their ticket to the big leagues: moving up into hustling bipped Hermes and Louis V. bags ripped off from the most gullible, romantic tourists who still held onto the myth that visiting San Francisco was worth a damn in 2050 from flipping N$350 burner cars and N$450 shaving kits sourced from the Antioch and Pittsburg Kia Boyz and the Dublin Boulevard Super Target Khans.
“Babyboy, you can’t be embarrassed about these things. We’re fighting Eureka, Tar, Gordon, and the whole goddamn Internet. Get it together! How about this? Why don’t we practice? No cameras. I’ll put this record on and we can just cuddle for now so you can get used to it. How about that?”
“Fine… But if the music’s good we actually like, listen to it. Deal?”
Hannah kissed him on the cheek. “Deal.”
---
Mac nervously glanced over at a sniffling Hannah wiping away a singular, badass, action movie star-tier tear and then checked the track list on the back of the album for the song that filled their safe house with the wails of a pedal steel guitar. That sound always took him back to all the wasted afternoons spent picnicking and playing with his friends on the shores of Shoreline Lake with his family. Back when Dad could still move around under his own power and Mom was still alive and well. But Hannah? She was another story.
Huh. “‘Catching On’”? Now that I think about it, she started acting weird during “‘Tear Stained Eye’” and she was kinda shaky when she flipped it over to the B-side… “Hannah? Are you okay? Did I do something? I don’t ask you enough…”
“Yeah…”
“You sure?” Mac spoke softer now, as if saying the words louder would break her.
Hannah paused, burying her now soaking face into Mac’s sleeve for a second before mumbling again. “Just… Please stay with me like this. At least until the album ends. I don’t wanna be alone. It’s scary.”
“Sure. Anything you need.”
For the rest of the song and for the next one, Mac kept his promise as Hannah wept on his shoulder. Then the last song came on. Hannah wiped away her tears with a snotty sleeve, wordlessly slipped Mac out of her armlock, and offered her hand to him. Mac took her up on it.
Crackling from the bookshelf, Sennheiser speakers warbled out the first lines of “Mystifies Me.” “Stay a while and work it out of me… We got time and we can cause it to…”
Leading them to their private dance floor between the ottoman and the television, Hannah’s hands found their way to his waist while his found her shoulders as they settled into simple, slow, synchronized rocks back and forth. For the third time that day, Mac was dangerously, comfortably close to Hannah once again.
Jay Farrar’s raw-but-warm voice rolling into the next lines masked the sound of their delicate shuffle on the hardwood. “Just give me a sign, I’ll take your word… I’ll learn anything you want me to…”
Focus on counting, dude. One and two and one and two and… Eh. She probably doesn’t notice that I’m all up in her cleavage. I’ll just relax and let her have this… I like her like that more anyways. It’s nice being best friends with somebody who’s way stronger and taller.
“You look so fine trueeeee…” The needle caught a warped groove and distorted the music. Mac braved a peek up at Hannah. She cracked the tiniest of smiles through her drying tears as she swayed them once more around the living room.
I think that’s good. She’s smiling again.
“No one mystifies me like you do…”
As the last stanza faded out and the record began to skip, Mac looked at her again. Pop. Pop. Pop. Hannah lifted Mac’s chin and stooped down, not satisfied with only one successful heist on the day. He closed his eyes. Po— The automatic needle lifted up and returned to its resting perch.
Mac didn’t remember much after that. Just that it was long, deep, and tender. That when they broke apart for air, they were breathing hard and raring to go again. That he felt some shame he was that turned on.
“Oh…” Mac stared, his eyes the size of the moon. “Hannah?”
Hannah provided little reassurance. “You know Mac, it’s alright that you’re a little hard when we kiss. You know I love you…”
Pause.
“Uhh… I mean that P-PROFESSIONALLY! In Minecraft. Fingers crossed. I SUPER don’t mean it at all! I uhh… Just decided that we need to start practicing saying that to each other in private if we wanna be more convincing in public! Yeah. That.” With her eyes, lips, and her normally thunderous, planted legs shaking, she looked down at Mac waiting for him to say something back. Anything.
Then another long, awkward pause. Four seconds that stretched into eternity.
“Sure. Let’s roll with that for now. Same.”
Mac paused as if his brain needed extra time to think of something grand to say, just to say “I kinda wanna kiss you some more now…”
This time, Hannah didn’t hesitate. Space and time blurred again as Mac’s feet left from under him and found themselves around Hannah’s toned waist. He felt the gap between his jeans and T-shirt press against the spackled wall as he closed his eyes once more, sampling Hannah’s flowery perfume as if the peonies and cherry blossoms went extinct yesterday. Long since dormant, the turntable lay in wait for the record on deck that would never come, its needle arm saluting the silent television flickering Giants Postgame Live on their faces in solidarity with its fellow witness. The vintage incandescent bulbs above the dinner table shone overhead, softening the harsh white glare from the screen on their smoldering jaws and cheeks, noses and ears, eyes and lips.
They broke apart. Hannah spoke first, tearing up again. “Sorry. I lied to you. I was crushing on you hardcore from the day we met and I can’t believe I almost used you as chum for corporate sharks. You’re the best person that’s ever happened to me. Please forgive me? And can we just PLEASE never say ‘I love you’ in public?”
Mac buffered, going through the whole range of possible human emotions in under five seconds. He blinked.
“Wha— Uhh… Why?”
“Our enemies can—”
Sighing a loving smirk, Mac interrupted her for the first time in his life, his voice barely above a whisper. “Cheer Captain… We’re in private. It’s plain to see that I'm just some chump who doesn't know what the hell is going on. I’m sorry as well. It shouldn’t take us slow dancing to an old country ballad from sixty years ago and you kissing me like that afterwards for me to finally get that you like me romantically. We literally met because of a worldwide conspiracy by the Brunch Illuminati to steal brunch from poor people disguised as CG&E’s statewide energy crisis that’s been going on for more than a decade strong. We’ve been holed up in a safe house in Salt Ponds, of all places, for two weeks. We’ve been sharing a bed for half that under the pretense of me getting better rest for missions. We’ve kissed and done other stuff… More than several times already. For fuck’s sake, Eureka and Tar made a fanfiction forum about us because they couldn’t handle how much we flirt. And it went viral as soon as they brought it online because they thought they could get away with not doing their homework on Rajiv of all people. Please be honest with me? God knows I need you to tell me something true for once.”
“FUCK! Okay. It’s too cringe! Eureka, Tar, and Gordon keep teasing meeee…” In a useless final gambit to preserve the last scraps of her dignity, she pulled Mac in for another kiss and held his legs tighter as she cheated over to the bedroom door. Mac broke them apart and realized for the first time that day that he was in physical danger.
Mac kicked and thrashed with no luck: he was stuck in Hannah’s honey hug, and he was about to be eaten alive. “WAITWAITWAIT! Hannah! Stop that! It tickles! AAAAAAH! I promise I’m never gonna say it in public! Please! I beg you!”
But Hannah was never going to let him go again.
“At least be gentle…” Mac conceded.
Another ear bite. “You really thought you could say and do all that and leave me with blue ovaries? I'll teach you something about what happens after French kissing to our song, Babyboy. BED. NOW.”
Our song? Aww, Hannah… Yeah, that song was pretty much perfect… WAITWAITWAIT.
Slam! The door frame shook with the force of a shaped charge of C-4 breaching it for expedited ingress. In that moment, Mac realized something else: that he finally cracked Eureka and Tar’s construction cipher as Hannah dumped him onto their bed. At this point he was just another load of aggregates out of a train car, waiting for all time if he needed to, to be sorted into the appropriate pile in the yard.
“Jackhammers…”
[This ending was left intentionally blank.]
