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He texts me while I’m at work.
Mackenzie:
what are you up to?
Annalise:
Mapping genomes
Mackenzie:
I love it when you science
I text him while I’m curled up on the couch, and he’s playing a late show.
Annalise:
Do you own a ruffled shirt? And if not, would you ever consider wearing one?
Mackenzie:
Are you watching Runaway Duke again?
Annalise:
Possibly
By mid-December, we’ve established a routine: weekends, we hang out in bed, living off Harmony’s baking and whatever takeout we ordered the night before until it’s time for Mackenzie to head out for his show. Sometimes, I even go with him. There’s an official Annalise seat at the groupie table, and the bartender, Jodi, knows my Diet Coke order.
On weekdays, I go to work. When I get home, we eat dinner together, and on the nights he has a gig, I go downstairs to hang with Koko in her store.
Koko returned from Japan at the beginning of the month. Her dad made a full recovery, and all of the vintage treasures she bought that wouldn’t fit in her suitcase have been arriving in boxes through the mail.
Tonight, I’m helping her sort through the last of them even though it’s a Monday and Mackenzie is home. I have left him upstairs working on a song that he’s hoping to send to Edwin Stark from the Rydells with strict orders not to message me until he’s done.
“You two are so damn cute it makes me want to vomit,” Koko says when she catches me reading my phone. “Then cry because I will probably die alone or get a dog so it can alert the authorities so that they find my body instead of it eating me like a cat.”
She flops down on the counter in front of me, dropping her head into my lap.
“Maybe you could call Zee?” I pat her head, unsure of the proper protocol.
She lifts her head. “Who? Oh, that guy from Mac’s band? Yeah, no. I am not picking up what he’s laying down. I need someone who understands the inner workings of my mind. Someone who gets me, ya know?”
I do. I knew before that I liked Mackenzie and found him attractive, but I never realized what it felt like to have someone make my coffee in the morning, just the way I like it. Or someone who knows that look I get on my face when it’s been a hard day at work, and I need fifteen minutes to decompress before I’m ready to talk about it. Someone who understands that I might get quiet or even weepy over silly things like the sound of a passing motorcycle or the smell of vanilla perfume.
“So,” says Koko, pulling out a sheer white shirt and holding it up to her body, “what are you and Mac going to do when you move?”
Koko’s question startles me, and I have to ask her to repeat it.
“When you leave for school,” she clarifies. “Is Mackenzie coming with you?”
She’s called out into the light the one dark spot in our relationship. I am leaving in less than three weeks—across an entire ocean—for two years.
“I don’t know. We haven’t exactly talked about it.” I think both of us are doing the same thing, acknowledging on some level that it’s going to happen and then shoving that thought to the back of our minds as far as it will go.
“Our relationship will probably start to fizzle out soon enough, right?” I say, although I don’t really believe it.
“What are you talking about?” Koko throws the shirt, hitting me in the chest.
