I stood up. “Okay, that’s enough. We’re going home.”
“Wait a minute,” Daniel said, standing too. “I’m not afraid of him.”
You should be. I tried to communicate the thought with my eyes but I supposed our relationship hadn’t progressed far enough to get to that point.
I tried one last time to be the voice of reason. “Let it go,” I said. I turned to Mac. “Both of you. I’m sorry he’s being an ass, but it’s not worth it.”
“There’s where I’d disagree with ya, love,” Mac said. “I think yer little friend needs to be taught a bit of respect.”
Faced with the sudden new reality that he was actually going to have to fight this hulking Irishman, Daniel made a decision in his mind. It was one that any reasonable person would have told him was completely inadvisable. He must have assumed that, with one good punch and the element of surprise, he could end the fight before it even began. The problem was, as Daniel’s fist collided with Mac’s face, while he did have the element of surprise, the punch was far from good. It didn’t even stumble the much larger man. Instead it transformed Mac’s expression from one of anger to one of complete wonder, wonder at this slim kid who dared to sucker punch him.
But the expression only lasted a moment. Because then Mac brought his own fists up and showed Daniel, and the rest of us, exactly what one good punch was capable of.
1
Mac
One Year and Four Months Later
* * *
Here’s an analogy for ya:
You ever find yourself in the car with a buddy, barreling down the highway at ten or twenty over, having a good time and talking shit, the both of you just trying to forget about tomorrow? And has it ever happened that, at some point between the mile markers, you see, just out of the corner of your eye, a crazy chick in a Jeep going just as fast but also she’s got her face in her phone and she’s driving with her knees while smoking a cigarette, and she’s in the lane beside you but you can just tell by the way the wheels are starting to drift that she’s about to enter yours? And your buddy driving the car doesn’t see or know that his whole world is about to get screwed in the ass and there’s no time for a warning, nothing you can do to stop it except grab the wheel and get him out of the way before all of you — your buddy, yourself, even the stupid chick in the car — go up in flames?
Ever had that happen to you?
Well, its been a long damn time since I rode in the front seat of a car, but I don’t have to be barreling down the freeway to know when disaster is about to strike. And a warning shout isn’t going to do any good because, as much as I love my buddy, he has to be the densest motherfucker I’ve ever met in my life.
Otherwise why the fuck would he be getting married?
Henry’s private jet hurtled us toward Mexico and insanity and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I sat in a chair toward the back of the plane and carefully watched Sam’s eyes, looking for signs of a mental breakdown. They still looked like his, sparkling with the same humor as before. But there was no way that was still Sam inside. The guy I befriended so many years ago would never have gone through with this madness. And he was only thirty-three for Christsake! That was way too young to get married. Hell, he was too young to have a steady girlfriend, another mistake of the past year and a half.
I took another sip of my scotch. It was my own brand, my original recipe, the one I’d made my fortune on. There was a comforting familiarity in it, and I needed the stability right now as the rest of the world went crazy around me.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t have anything against Beck Harris. She was… fine. Gorgeous, cute accent, seemed smart and driven and all that ‘important’ bullcrap. I tried my best not to hold anything against her while they were dating. It wasn’t her fault Sam had gone and convinced himself he was in love. He was sick, that was all. A fever of the brain and maybe the heart that had convinced him that, since he was at the top of his game professionally, he had to go screw up his life in some other way to even the scales.
Any issue I may or may not have had with Beck came after he’d proposed and she’d just encouraged the sickness by saying yes.
I’d tried to throw some hints Sam’s way. Isn’t it strange that Beck met you her very first night in New York? Didn’t she have close to nothing before you? Hey, NYT crossword, ten letters — another name for the prospectors that went to California in 1849? Starts with a “g”? End with a o-l-d-d-i-g-g-e-r? But as subtle as I was, Sam never seemed to get the hint.
And to make matters worse, they’d decided they didn’t want to wait to get married. Instead of staying engaged, they were just jumping right into it. I mean, damn. At least give yourself some time to change your mind. By the time they realized it wasn’t going to last, they’d have already screwed everything up for all of us.
The others might not want to admit it. Hell, maybe they didn’t even know. But I’d been through this before and I knew that, when one guy in a group of friends got married, that was the beginning of the end of all of them. By this time next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sam was completely gone from our lives. And who knew which of the others would catch the bug from him?
I watched Sam cross the plane, moving to sit next to Henry. Poor old fool. He had no idea what was coming.
“Looking a little menacing there, sport.” I stiffened; the voice whispered into my ear like the devil on my shoulder.
But no, it was just Twain. He’d popped up over the seat behind me. I hadn’t realized he was back there, probably passed out.
“I’m thinking,” I said stiffly. When he didn’t move out of my ear, I added, “Don’t you have something to snort?”
Twain snorted as if following my cue. “We’re going to Mexico, baby. I’m doing a tolerance break.”
Tolerance break, my ass. Twain didn’t know the meaning of the phrase, and that was pretty rich coming from me.
“Come on,” he insisted, moving away from my ear and instead leaning over the back of the chair next to me, bringing his face sideways into my peripheral vision. “Talk to the tinker. Tell me your troubles and woes.”
Twain was the odd one out in our social club, the Knights, and I supposed that should make me feel sorry for him. I didn’t though. He fit our only two parameters — be under thirty-five and be a self-made billionaire — but his inclusion only made me wish that we had more rules. Like a minimum age.
Twain was about five years younger than the rest of the Knights and the only one who didn’t work. All that money combined with unlimited time and fame was more a disservice than a gift. I wasn’t exactly building the Mac Walsh brand too much anymore, but I was at least the head of the board. There was a reason to throw on a suit a few times a week and not be trashed out of my mind every day.
Twain, on the other hand, had started selling his book series when he was seventeen. I hadn’t read any of ‘em — I wasn’t a big reader — but it seemed like everyone else in the world had. And those that missed the books had definitely seen the movies. Why he needed to be a part of a low-key club like the Knights was beyond me. He had enough Hollywood parties to go to, enough starlets and models hanging off his arm.