Chapter Seven: Change

Mac

CHANGE

Performed by Christina Aguilera

When we left the office and the bathroom, I couldn't help the grin I had on my face. For Eli. He was going to be a dad. He'd already acted like a dad since I'd known him, but now he was going to be a real one. With a real kid. He'd be awesome at it.

Ava frowned at my smile. "You're a shit," she said before heading to the stage where Brady was just finishing up a song and calling for her.

Ava still looked pale, but she climbed onto the stage and joined him while they sang the song that was about Eli and Ava when they'd first met and then left each other to follow their bigger dreams. I turned to watch Eli at the bar as Ava sang. He'd stopped to watch her like he had every time since I'd known them. He couldn't help himself. It was like the world drifted away when he was watching Ava sing. I had never really gotten it until I'd kissed Georgie. The whole world had receded when our lips had touched. Just like it had receded when we'd been squeezed into the bathroom together, a few moments before, with my hand on her leg.

When the song was over, Ava spoke into the mic.

"Fourth of July might not be the start of a new year. It might not be your typical resolution type of day, but it's certainly a day that began this amazing country of ours. And recently, I had some good news. News that will change things for me."

Eli was frowning and making his way from behind the bar toward the stage.

Ava was watching him. "I wasn't going to say anything today. I was going to wait, but then someone found out my secret, and he can't keep his mouth shut,"—she threw a glance my way—"so I better get it over with."

Eli stood on the floor in front of her while she looked down at him.

"Doodles, do you remember when we met, and I started calling you Dad?"

Eli's hands went to her bare legs, pulling her closer to the edge of the stage.

"Well, congratulations. You're going to be a real one."

It took a minute for him to get what she was saying. Then, his face broke into that huge smile that Eli rarely wore unless he was around Ava. He pulled her from the stage and was kissing her before anyone could have said two words.

Behind the bar, Lacey pulled out a mic they kept back there for just these sorts of occasions. "This round is on me! I'm gonna be a grandma again!"

Cheers for the free drinks. Cheers for Ava and Eli's parenthood. Cheers for Lacey saying she was a grandma when she really wasn't either of their parent. I couldn't help it. I turned to Georgie who'd been standing next to me the whole time and hugged her, picking her up off her toes and hugging tight.

It was such good news.

Georgie didn't even resist; she just hugged me back.

But then I realized whom I was hugging and set her back down. She brushed at her star-spangled dress and moved away toward Ava and Eli and the crowd who was clapping them on their backs and hugging them.

Ben and the band sang a cover of "Life Changes" by Thomas Rhett, which was such a perfect reflection of this moment, while Brady quietly disappeared down the hall to the back door and the dark SUVs, heading on to Phoenix.

The air felt jubilant, because it was.

? ? ?

It was late, but everyone was still wired by the time we got back to the house after closing down the bar. We made our way down to the firepit with a bottle of champagne and the fixings for s'mores.

Truck raised his glass and said, "Here's to having a little Eli running around in less than a year. May he have all of his mother's spunk and none of his father's grumpiness."

"Asswipe," Eli griped, but he was grinning. He hadn't really stopped since Ava had broken the news at the bar .

"You aren't going to be able to continue to cuss like that anymore," I said, smiling. "You're going to be just like me, modifying your language."

"Why are you modifying your language?" Truck asked.

"Dude. Politics. Can't run my mouth on TV."

"I can't believe you actually think you're going to get elected," Truck said, picking up where he'd left off earlier in his harassment of my goals.

"I'd vote for him," Ava defended me.

"It's slightly frightening," Eli responded.

"It's frightening that I'd vote for your friend?" Ava asked.

Eli shook his head. "No. Yes. Just the thought of Macauley here running our country."

I stuck my hand to my chest. "That hurts."

"Convince us then," Georgie said, joining the conversation for the first time. "Tell us one thing you're going to do."

"Save the planet. World peace. Solve the hunger crisis."

Everyone laughed, but I didn't.

"You sound like you should be onstage at the Miss America competition," Georgie said.

It hurt just a bit, but it was true that my statements were simple. Maybe even bordering on the ridiculous. Preposterous. Immature. And that was all on me, because I'd always joked about it with my friends. I'd teased about my plans and about sowing my oats before becoming the family man who was needed to run for office. I hadn't meant it to sound so calculating. Yet, it was. There was more to it than just that. More to me. I didn't want to run for office for the power or the glory. I wanted to run for office to make a damn difference. I might not have had the full plan yet, but I knew we could get there as a nation.

Georgie seemed to sense my emotions, because she said, "Weren't you already out there saving the world in the Navy?"

"It isn't the same."

"Now wait a minute―" Truck said just as Eli added, "It is."

"Come on. You both know I don't mean to say that serving in the military isn't a great way to make a difference. I'm just saying we need more than that. We need someone in government who can pull everyone's heads out of their as―buttocks, so we can work together instead of separately."

"I can't believe you have that much faith in our country," Truck said.

"No politics," Eli chimed in before Truck or I could get riled up over anything. "You're never supposed to talk politics or religion with friends."

"That's going to pretty much be impossible to stick to if Dickwad runs for office," Truck griped.

I turned the conversation because Eli was right. We didn't need to go down this road tonight. I raised my glass and brought us back to the joy we were celebrating. I said, "To Ava and Eli and Baby Wyatt. May he be brought into a world that has righted itself from the cliff it's falling off of."

"May she have health and happiness on top of all the love that she'll have with you two as parents," Georgie said .

"To Baby Wyatt, whatever gender, and to Eli and Ava for bringing us all together," Truck added.

We clinked glasses, and Ava took a small sip before raising her glass. "To good friends, to Georgie's new chapter going back to school, and Mac's new chapter leaving the Navy."

"School?" I breathed out before I could help myself.

"Georgie's going to law school," Ava said for her. Georgie had told me her undergrad had been pre-law that first night on the beach, but she'd stopped me from asking more questions, and I hadn't pushed. I thought I'd learned everything I needed to know once she'd told me about her family.

"Nice! Congrats," Truck said, sticking up a hand that Georgie high-fived. "Now Mac will have someone to bail him out when he gets caught with his pants down with his campaign manager's wife."

I snorted. "So not going to happen."

"Why can't his campaign manager be a female? Couldn't he be caught with his pants down with her? Or maybe her husband? It would make the story just ever so slightly more modern," Georgie teased Truck.

He blushed. "True. That was very old-school, sexist of me. Who do we really want him to get caught with his pants down with?"

"No one!" I said with force. "No one. I'm clean as a whistle and am going to stay that way."

"I think Mindy from the DoD might not see it that way," Eli smirked at me.

Mindy had been, perhaps, my one mistake. I hadn't intended it to be anything more than the casual get- together that I'd had with all my other partners. But she'd been the one who had stuck for about a month. It wasn't until we'd met up for our fourth Friday that I realized she already had wedding bells in mind. She was a civilian contractor I'd worked with, and she knew who my dad and my grandfather were. Knew that Dani was working for Guy. Knew that I was planning on working for him, too. She'd put three and three together and got five hundred million, somehow.

"Mindy has nothing to hold over me. Not one note."

"Because you're a jerk who doesn't write notes?" Truck teased.

I winced again. I had been careful over the years with anything I put in writing. Even when I'd been in college, I'd written every essay with the idea that it might, someday, come to light when I was running for office. It was the same with pictures I took with people. I was very cognizant that they wouldn't disappear and that, if I ever announced I was running, every a-hole who I'd ever been around would come running out of the anthill with their pictures of me.

Eli had never really given me a hard time about it. But Truck, the guys in my first unit, and the JSOC folks, like Nash and Darren, rode my ass every time I refused a group selfie when we were at a bar or drunk on the beach. Even when we'd had poker competitions on the USS George Washington , I'd carefully leaned back out of the picture when they were taken. Darren had told me I was like Michael J. Fox in the reruns of Family Ties, where he'd had a Ronald Reagan picture on the wall of his bedroom. And he was right. That had been me with presidents on my wall .

Ava said, "Don't bang on his dreams, Truck. Here's to Mac. I'm counting on you to fix our planet, create world peace, and solve the hunger problem, because I want our baby to live in that world."

Everyone clinked glasses again, but Ava's words settled into my heart. I had a niece and nephews from my two oldest sisters. I had cousins with kids. We were a big family. But not once had the thought of me handing over a world to those little ones hit me as hard as it did when Ava said those words. I'd wanted to make our world better. And now I had another, more important, reason to do that. For Baby Wyatt and all the other babies who might come our way.

I pulled the bag of marshmallows out, and everyone focused on toasting the little bits of heaven till they were the perfect color instead of being focused on me and my rose-colored wishes for our country. While the rest of them ate the marshmallows with chocolate and graham crackers, I ate them sugar for sugar, one after the other.

Georgie was watching me with a half-smile.

"Sweet tooth." I shrugged. I'd already told her that once, but it felt like it needed repeating.

"I think you just mean a sugar tooth, because chocolate and graham crackers are certainly sweet, but the syrup you doused your French toast in and the marshmallows you're pounding down are really just pure sugar," she said.

"Remember that time we came back to his dorm room and found him pouring the box of sugar straight into his mouth?" Truck smirked at Eli.

"God, yes. Or how about the time we had to literally pull the third box of Captain Crunch out of his hands so he wouldn't O.D. on the stuff," Eli replied.

"This is quite a serious problem," Georgie said to me, her smile easing into my soul and opening up all my nerve endings so I could feel the blood pounding through my veins way more than the sugar I'd inhaled. And I knew she was right. This was a serious problem, and it had nothing to do with sugar at all.

? ? ?

I was groggy from alcohol and lack of sleep the next day when my alarm went off. It was early, but I wanted to be on the way and out to sea before the day got later. Before the sight and smell of Georgie had me deciding to stay another day…and another day after that.

The temptation of her was growing.

I hit the shower and then packed the few things I had. When I got to the kitchen, Truck groaned at me from the couch where he'd been sleeping.

"What the hell time is it?" he asked.

"About five thirty."

"And you're up because?"

I was running. I couldn't risk being around Georgie another day. She'd had this hypnotic pull on my soul since the first time I'd seen her standing above the crowd in her salon in New York.

If I stayed, I'd just want her more. Every moment I'd had with her since arriving in Rockport had my heart beating out a tune that talked of futures tangled together. It made me both a jackass and a chickenshit that I was choosing the life I'd always pictured for myself over that. Over the possibility of a future with someone I could love.

But if I wasn't going to give up my career plans for Nash—who'd been my brother in blood—I wasn't going to give them up for a woman I'd met three times in my life. I couldn't cross that bridge, because if I gave it up, all the years I'd spent working on those dreams would have been for nothing. A waste.

"I'm leaving," I told Truck.

"What? I just got here."

I nodded. "Dani needs me."

And I knew he wouldn't argue with that. Truck understood siblings needing you. He'd do anything for his brother.

"You can come with me if you want," I told him.

"You making me choose between my two best friends?" Truck chided.

"We all know that I'm the favorite."

Truck snorted.

"Think of it this way," I added. "The two lovebirds are going to be even more lovey-dovey now that they know there's a little Wyatt on the way. You'll be stuck around that."

"I'll be stuck around Georgie."

I tried not to react. Tried not to let it show how much that one comment pissed me off and made me hate myself all at the same time.

"She just dumped some guy. Don't think she'll be ready for everything Travis Dayton has in store yet. "

"Not because you want her for yourself?" he teased. I looked up and knew I hadn't been able to hide it from him. The desire. The emotions that rolled off of me when she was in the room. I looked down the hall, making sure the doors to the bedrooms were still shut.

"Can't happen."

"Why not?"

"She's one of Ava's best friends. I'm walking down the aisle with her in October. Shag-and-bag would just backfire." I shrugged.

"What if it wasn't a shag-and-bag?"

I groaned. "Are you coming or not?"

"You're leaving now?"

"As soon as I can say goodbye to the happy couple." And I inwardly hoped that would be before Georgie emerged from the room. I could escape fairly unscathed that way.

My phone pinged.

brAT: Have you left yet?

ME: Shortly. Trying to convince Truck to come with me.

brAT: The family would be happy to see him.

ME: But not me?

brAT: We like him better than you. You didn't know that ?

ME: This is why you don't have a boyfriend.

brAT: Who has the time for a boyfriend?

This was so like Dani. She was the only single one of my three sisters. She was focused on her career, just like I was focused on mine.

ME: Is our roommate there yet?

brAT: No, I told you, might not be till the end of the month.

ME: Right. I'll be home about the same time.

brAT: Be safe out there on the high seas. Don't get abducted by pirates.

ME: **muscled, shirtless pirate GIF**

brAT: **puke emoji**

ME: Again. Why you don't have a boyfriend. Pirates are supposed to be hot.

brAT: Do we need a press release about you being gay?

ME: That's just rude to the gay community. They wouldn't want me.

brAT: You're right.

ME: Love you.

brAT: Love you, too. Be safe, for real.

I looked over at Truck. "Dani says the family would rather see you than me."

"Well, that's because they're smart."

The master bedroom door crept open, and Eli emerged. He looked like I felt. Tired and gritty.

"Hey, thought I heard your voices," he said.

"I'm just heading out. Truck here has decided to come with me because I'm the best friend," I teased.

"That's it. You're both out of the wedding." Eli pretended to growl.

"I hadn't agreed to go with the douchebag yet, but if I'm out of the wedding that easily, maybe I should," Truck said, getting up and shoving things into his bag.

"You want us at that wedding; you need us at that wedding," I teased, using my very best Jack Nicholson voice.

They both groaned.

"We use words like honor, code, loyalty…" I continued, and Truck threw a shoe at me.

"Just go with him. We both know we'll only hear whining for months if you don't," Eli said.

"I don't whine," I retorted.

Once Truck was packed, we hugged Eli and told him to give Ava a hug also.

"And Georgie? Should I be sharing the hugs with her as well?" Eli asked with a knowing look. Both my friends knew me better than I ever gave them credit for. They knew I was running with my tail between my legs. It killed me a little, knowing that I may very well look back on this moment someday and be filled with regret for what could have been .

But it wasn't enough to make me stay.