Chapter Nine: High Hopes
Mac
HIGH HOPES
Performed by Panic! At the Disco
Truck and I spent a week out at sea together. We fished, swam, and pulled into ports to eat at dive bars. We just hung. Truck expanded on his desire to get out of Hawaii. I had a feeling there'd been a girl there who he'd been seeing and broken it off with, but he didn't want to elaborate. I didn't force it. If he wanted to talk, he would.
His baby brother had been in some trouble with the law in the small town in northern California that they'd grown up in, and Truck was in the middle of trying to get him straightened out. To get him on a course that didn't lead to serious jail time. Truck wanted to settle somewhere his brother could come stay for a while.
We didn't have that kind of trouble in our family, for whatever reason. Maybe because all of us kids had known exactly how it would impact our family if we'd messed up that badly. Our grandparents and parents were in the political and media's eye on a regular basis, and news of our screw-ups would have been plastered everywhere.
When Truck and I neared St. Petersburg, Florida, I sent a text to my buddies, Nash and Darren, to see if they wanted to meet up before Truck and I continued our journey down toward the Keys. Even though they were part of Joint Special Operations Command as members of a top secret S.E.A.L. Team Six squadron and would normally be stationed with the rest of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group out of Virginia Beach, they'd been stationed at MacDill due to classified Special Operations Command needs for the last two years. Long enough for Darren to bring his wife and baby down to Tampa.
NASH: Why would we want to meet up with you, traitor?
DARREN: Traitor or not, we may need him when he's in office someday. We better schmooze him now while we have the chance.
NASH: I don't schmooze.
ME: Truck is with me.
NASH: Well, hell, why didn't you say?
We met at a restaurant that we often frequented whenever I was in town liaising between DoD Naval Intelligence and SOCOM. When Darren walked into the restaurant with his Captain America charm, eyes turned. His wife, Tristan, didn't even bat an eyelid at it. Maybe because she was equally blonde and beautiful on his arm. She had their newborn baby girl, Hannah, swaddled up against her chest. They were the perfect, all-American family. Born in the heartland, serving their country. They were people country songs were written about.
Nash followed them in. He was the dark to their light with demons from his past that had followed him into his present. Demons that had him always picking the wrong women even when he craved what Darren had. Family. Love. Home.
"How are things?" I asked after we were all seated with drinks in front of us, except for Tristan who was still breastfeeding their little one.
"Shit. They're still trying to vet that op you've talked them out of twenty goddamn times," Nash said.
Darren cleared his throat. "It won't go through. The numbers are never in favor of it."
"The moneymen are drooling over it. They want the channels it will open." Nash glowered.
"It won't happen," I told them, taking a swig on my beer. "I've shown them the odds."
"Yeah, but you're not there anymore," Nash groused.
"If you really believe Mac had that much sway with the powers that be, then I have a bridge to sell you that goes all the way to Hawaii," Truck said.
It warmed my heart that Truck was really sticking up for me even when it sounded like he was putting me down. In his own way, he was telling Nash to back off. But my heart still clenched a little at the thought of letting Nash, Darren, and all the JSOC teams down. I'd left. It had been harder than I thought.
After dinner, Truck and I drove with Nash to Darren's house where we were challenged to poker. Nash and Darren had been trying to beat me since I'd first been stationed on the USS George Washington and they'd been catching a ride. They'd already been S.E.A.L.s by the time I'd met them, and even though we'd only been on the ship together for a few months, we'd become friends—friends who cheated at poker in order to beat me, but still friends. Ever since I'd called them out on the "cheating scandal," they'd been determined to win on their own mettle. I was equally determined to not let it happen. Long after Tristan had put the baby down and gone to sleep herself, the four of us stayed up, trying to best each other in Texas Hold ‘Em.
My phone buzzed.
brAT: Where are you?
ME: At MacDill with Nash and Darren.
brAT: Tell the otters I said hello.
Dani liked to bust their chops about being cute and cuddly sea creatures instead of hardened S.E.A.L.s.
"Dani says hi," I told them.
The men all grunted.
"Tell her she still owes me a beer," Nash said. And of course, I didn't, because there was always an undercurrent to Dani and Nash's conversations that I didn't encourage.
"What does Angie think about that?" I asked, referring to Nash's girlfriend of at least a year. Maybe more .
"I don't know, let me ask her," Nash said, waving his phone with a wicked grin that proved exactly why I didn't leave him alone with my sister.
ME: What's up?
brAT: Roommate moved in.
ME: That sounds ominous.
brAT: Only you would read dark and dreary into my words. Everything is good. You'll like her. She's got sass.
ME: Great. Just what I need. More women with sass in my life.
brAT: You know you love us. When can we expect you to make an appearance?
ME: In another week or so. I'll stop in Wilmington to store the boat, and so everyone in the family can see Truck before he flies back to Hawaii.
brAT: Okay.
ME: Do you miss me?
brAT: **puking GIF**
ME: So, you really, really miss me, huh?
brAT: Just for that, I'm going to leave bugs in your bed .
ME: You wouldn't infest the apartment.
brAT: Sigh. You're right.
I put my phone away.
"She still working for that senator?" Nash asked.
I nodded. "Yep. But only until I can snake her away to run my campaign."
"God help us all. Mac the politician." Darren grinned.
"Just for that, I'm taking all these chips," I told him as I turned over my winning hand. Everyone groaned. I swept the chips over to my pile and added, "Anyone think they can beat me yet?"
"One day, Macauley. One day." Darren smacked me on the shoulder.
? ? ?
Early the next morning, Truck and I left Darren's house with a promise that we'd see each other again over Labor Day weekend. My family had a tradition of tennis and poker tournaments that were spread over the long weekend, and Tristan's family lived close enough to my family's homes in Greenville for them to stop by as long as their PTO held out. I hugged my friends goodbye and then was quiet while Truck and I put out to sea again.
"They're a good group," Truck said.
"Yep."
"Why the long face?"
"It's harder than I thought it would be. Leaving," I told him truthfully. "But I'm doing it for important reasons."
"For the Baby Wyatts and Baby Darrens of the world," Truck said softly.
I nodded. "Yep. They deserve a better country than the one we've deteriorated into. I want our nation to be worthy of them."
"If anyone can do it, it's you, Mac." That choked me up, and Truck saw it. He laughed and said, "Don't go all Home Alone and cry on me now, Macauley."
"You wish," I said.
"I wish that you'd cry? Only so I could rub it in when I see your sisters. That way, they would never let you live it down."
"They already have enough over my head."
"Siblings always do."
I sat, looking out at the ocean, the breeze in the sails sending me careening toward my new chapter. And for some reason, it made me think of Georgie and her own new chapter that she was starting. As if we had gotten to this juncture in both our lives, not by accident, but by fate. Yet, I'd left her behind, sailed away from her on purpose. Because it was obvious that politics and Russians didn't mix. That thought hurt almost as badly as leaving the Navy and my S.E.A.L. buddies. The thought that I couldn't have her and the life I wanted all at the same time.