"well don't you know that you're his favorite worst nightmare?"
[exposition.]
Macey McHenry lived on schedules.
Ever since she had joined the CIA's field agent division at the ripe age of twenty-one, she surprisingly always knew what to expect when she stepped foot in the Langley office. She knew how many security checkpoints she'd have to pass (three), how many coffees her boss drank every day (five), how many heads would undoubtedly turn when she strutted by (four), and how many floors she went up the elevator to get to her office (eleven).
However, today was different. Because her solitary ride up the elevator was interrupted on the third floor, by the worst kind of distraction she could think up.
"Room for one more?" In all of her years, no voice rose her heart rate level through pure irritation like Zachary Goode's. Even if she hadn't seen him in years, it was almost alarming that a voice could have such an affect on her.
Rolling her bright eyes, she slammed her hand on the 'close' button. "Sorry," she said with an overly sweet smile, "we're at maximum asshole capacity: zero."
Instead of closing quickly like they should have, his strong hand pushed the door back and the rest of him sidled in. Now that she had an up close look, Macey noted that Zach was still so completely Zach: constantly bemused, smirking, handsome, and above all, annoying.
"We haven't seen each other in three years and that's the first thing you say? I'm willing to forget that, McHenry," he said with a grin. He gave her the once over. "So, you're CIA now?"
She scoffed and pressed the "eleven" button. "No, Zach, I'm just wearing this ID for kicks." She paused and raised an eyebrow. "Is that a surprise?" Truth was, Macey joining the CIA so young was a surprise to everyone. But, she had proved everyone wrong by breezing through the training and becoming Abigail Cameron's prized protege. The fact that her life as a senator's daughter had given her a certain level of access when it came to foreign affairs was only a plus.
"Yeah, it kind of is," he replied honestly. "I'd expect an heiress like you to be off doing your nails on the French Riviera or something." Just another example of why she couldn't stand Goode.
Macey smoothed out her blouse and turned to face him. "What a coincidence, I was actually just in the French Riviera," she mused with a half smirk. "The nail file came in handy when I took down a known drug cartel boss." Her lips curled. "Fancy that."
Zach looked at her quizzically. "I'm sure a gun would have been more helpful?"
She shrugged nonchalantly, silently cheering herself on. "I ran out of bullets."
"That's mildly terrifying," he noted, "and sexy." Macey fought back the urge to blush and vomit. But then again, that was the sort of effect Zach had on people: he could simultaneously compliment and disgust you, depending on who he was talking to. For Macey, it was always both.
She wheeled the conversation back to him. "So, what has the Great Zach Goode been up to?" she asked dryly.
He yawned. "What do you think I've been up to?"
"Word is that you've been deep undercover in Portugal trying to bust a human trafficking ring." Her upper lip curled in a sneer. "Apparently, you've also been seen handling presidential security for the World Cup."
Time seemed to slow down in the elevator. "You forgot that I was just in Shanghai, trying to get intel on some energy companies with very dirty money," he said, his eyes flickering with mischief.
Macey pursed her lips. "All rumors, I suppose?"
He looked her dead in the eyes, and she could feel the ground shifting underneath them. "Any good spy knows that all rumors have their roots in the truth. You know that better than anyone, McHenry."
If she had the chance to reply, Macey probably would have retorted with a snappy "you don't know me at all", flipped her hair, and proceeded to pretend that Zachary Goode didn't exist until she reached the eleventh floor.
But she didn't.
Because that's when the elevator broke.
[breakdown.]
"Shit." As expected, a harshly whispered expletive was the first thing Macey uttered once she heard the noisy creak of the elevator shaft and subsequent stopping. She could handle being stuck in an elevator fine. She could catch up on her voice mail messages or finally finish the crossword puzzle hiding in her purse.
But being stuck in an elevator with him? Not an option.
The only solace was the he seemed to feel the same way. "What the hell?" he murmured under his breath, pushing every elevator button in hopes that one of them would push the cart back up.
She scoffed. "Smart move, Goode. Why don't you break the shitty thing even more?"
"I'm pressing the 'help' button, O She of Little Patience."
Macey groaned in realization. "The CIA maintenance team has been updating the elevator system this week. The intercoms and help buttons haven't been fixed yet." She huffed. "Therefore, you pressing every button in sight won't do a thing, O He of Little Common Sense."
"Calm down. It'll be up in running in a few minutes. Relax, babe," he answered simply.
"The elevator just made a sound not too different from my garbage disposal," Macey snorted, "and for the love of God, don't you ever call me babe again or so help me I'll make taking down a drug boss with a nail file look like a day at the beach compared to beating you'll get."
Instead of shutting up (good) or backing down from fear of her carrying out her threat (better), Zach gave her that quizzical stare she was so accustomed to receiving from him. The raised eyebrow. The half-grin. The lidded eyes. It was all so familiar, and all the more frustrating.
"I see you haven't lost your touch."
[eleven minutes passed.]
Eleven minutes and thirty-two seconds, to be more accurate. "A few minutes", the misleading bastard.
Sighing, Macey decided that it was time to use some of the CIA training and rescue herself. A quick glance around the elevator told her the following: it was a rather cramped (4.5 ft x 6 ft), smelled musty (due to the lack of ventilation), and did in fact reach maximum asshole capacity (one Zach Goode). The most important thing it told her, however, was the fact that no ventilation system meant no typical escape method. She would simply have to get creative.
"What are you doing?" Zach asked with a yawn, seated comfortably in the corner with his legs stretched out. Playing around with his phone, he appeared as if he was hanging around a stuck elevator by choice and not by some sick twist of fate.
"Trying to figure out how to get out of here," she responded dryly while inspecting the tightly bonded elevator doors, "and what are you doing?" She put on a mocking game show host voice. "Let me guess, trying to figure who you're going to be doing tonight?"
He shook the comment off. "Wrong." He paused and grinned devilishly. "But if you know the secretary's number—"
"Say it with me, Goode: you disgust me." She promptly turned her back from him, even though she was fully aware that doing so was futile, seeing as the elevator seemed to get smaller by the minute.
She needed an escape about eleven minutes ago. With a low grunt, Macey spilled the contents of her purse out in front of her: a phone, a bulky makeup bag, an unloaded (and therefore useless) pistol, plane ticket stubs, an issue of Elle, and a half eaten granola bar. They say that CIA agents need to be resourceful, but this was just ridiculous.
"Here's a better idea," he said after observing her attempts to find out the chemical composition of her perfume, "why don't you just call someone and have them get us out of here?" Her cheeks tinged at the fact contacting someone wasn't her first escape idea (she was going to create a bomb out of makeup contents in her purse and hope for the best, go figure). Maybe when you're so used to taking the less conventional route, you forget the straight-forward path in front of you.
Without another word to him, she picked up her CIA-secure cell phone and dialed the front desk service. Thankfully, they picked up right away. "Macey McHenry speaking," she said briskly into the other line, "there's a problem with elevator 4B, we're going to need maintenance up here."
The soothing voice on the other side replied, "What's the problem, exactly?"
She shot a dark look at Zach before saying, "The elevator stopped and I'm trapped in here with a Mr. Zachary Goode. Either maintenance fixes it in the next five minutes or I'm blowing it up. Your choice." She pressed the "end" button without waiting for an answer.
Zach studied her bemusedly. "Do you always talk to people like that, or does my presence have some sort effect on your hormonal system, causing you to go all angsty on who's ever in your path?"
"Sorry to break it to you, but you've never had any sort of effect on my hormonal system," she shot back fiercely, her fists curling up out of habit. Zach let out a chuckle.
"Not even that time in Dubai, where we both—"
"No. Not even. Never."
[thirty-five minutes passed.]
"You know," Zach mused, "maybe if you hadn't talked to the desk jockey like that, maintenance would have fixed this by now. Just putting it out there."
"Fuck off."
"Language, Macey."
"Ves a la merda."
[fifty-eight minutes passed.]
"Please tell me," Macey said slowly and deadly calm, "that you are not lighting a cigarette in this elevator." The second Zach had reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out a silver tin, Macey knew that this would be the straw that broke the camel's back. It was like he posted a "Macey, please maim and or kill me" sign on his forehead. It was a given.
His lighter flickered, and the flame barely touched the cigarette before igniting the tip. He inhaled deeply, with eyes closed in what could only be described as pure euphoria and contentment, before exhaling the smoke into the stiff air. Immediately, the elevator smelled strongly of cigarettes and it took all Macey had to not start coughing.
"False," he said as he took another drag, "I am smoking a cigarette in this elevator. Big difference."
A few moments passed before Macey muttered lowly, "I thought you had quit." Her voice was mixture of anger, awe, and disappointment. Only someone who knew Macey extremely well would have been able to detect the latter.
He smiled wryly. "And I thought you stopped hating me." He blew a bit of smoke in her face defiantly, as her eyes followed the gray wisps of polluted air to the ceiling—only to evaporate in seconds. "Guess we were both wrong."
[one hour and three minutes passed.]
"Are we really not going to talk to each to other?" Zach's voice interrupted Macey's zen mood as she flipped through Vogue for the tenth time. Of all the questions he could have asked her, that one was both surprising and expected.
She refused to play along with whatever game he was trying to entertain himself with. "What are you talking about? Unfortunately, we have been talking to each other or else I've been putting on a one-man play."
"You telling me to 'fuck off' in Catalan isn't what I meant by talking," he answered dryly. Then, something in Zach shifted and if Macey hadn't witnessed his eyes darken with some sort of emotion Zach Goode did not usually express (anger? sadness? regret?), she wouldn't have believed it.
With a deep sigh, he said rather quietly, "It's been three years, Mace."
"Three years and five months," she said without missing a beat, "but who's counting?"
"It wasn't my choice to leave. I got recruited for an overseas mission—"
"Fresh out of the Gallagher Academy? Get real. You just left, and you didn't even have the respect to say goodbye. Any information I've gotten on you has been secondhand, and it sucks to get information about your best friend secondhand." Now, Macey was exploding and spilling with words she had never planned to say to him. But, even if it hurt, it was true. She was the one who had to sit and listen to everyone she was close to excitedly discuss Zach Goode's alleged latest exploits, be it espionage or women. It was sickening, to be so out of the loop.
He ignored her cutting tones and accusations. "We used to be best friends—"
"Yeah," she scoffed, her voice rising slightly, "back when you weren't such a self-absorbed, arrogant, womanizing, pompous..." She struggled for a moment for the perfect word to end her tirade. "...ass-hat."
He snickered a bit. "You still say ass-hat?"
She had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop a runaway grin. He didn't deserve a smile from her, not after everything. "No. Now, when I want to describe someone with ass-hat like qualities, I call them Zach Goode."
"Oh please," he shot back, rolling his eyes in contempt, "don't act like you haven't changed either."
Macey's eyes narrowed in a glare. "I haven't changed at all—"
"Are you serious? Look at yourself!" he declared with exasperation. "You're still as selfish, controlling, entitled, and overconfident as you were three years ago. CIA badge or not."
For about a minute, the two of them simply sat in anger. In fact, for Macey, furious was a much better word to describe it. How dare he say that? For three years, she had gone without a word from her so called best friend. He had lost all rights to ever call her out on anything ever again.
But, she couldn't stop herself from asking one final question before shutting Zachary Goode out of her life again. "So why were we friends in the first place, if we're both clearly terrible people?"
To her surprise, Zach didn't skip a beat before replying, "Because two negatives make a positive, McHenry. And two of us negatives made one hell of positive."
[one hour and ten minutes passed.]
Finally, the maintenance team showed up. When a crackling voice came out of the intercom, assuring them that help had come and the two of them will be out in a few minutes. Macey was too exhausted to make a snappy comment to them, criticizing their work ethic and threatening to sue for mental stress under the circumstances. But she didn't. And Zach didn't make a dry joke about the hour they were stuck together and how everyone would assume the worst when they walked out together.
Somehow, they managed to get in the elevator as former friends and hostile acquaintances, and leave as murderous enemies. Only Macey McHenry and Zach Goode could have pulled that one off.
"We're sorry for the wait," one of the maintenance men said when the doors of the elevator finally opened, letting the stagnant cigarette smoke out into the stale air of the CIA office. His bored expression told Macey the apology was only a formality.
"You're not the only one," she said simply, gathering her purse and smoothing out her hair.
Simultaneously, she and Zach both stepped out of the elevator as if they were nothing more than two unfortunate souls stuck together in an office nightmare. Which they were, but so much more.
They turned to face each other in a business-like manner. Stoic faces. Hard eyes. Tense lips. "Have a nice day, Mr. Goode," she said simply, extending her hand out for him to shake it. She only did that for the sake of appearances, as half the office was discreetly watching them.
He took her and shook it, and in the palm of her hand, Macey felt him slide something to her. "You too, Miss McHenry," he replied, before turning on his heel and walking to the other side of the office as if they hadn't just encountered one of the strangest hours of their lives.
When she walked back to her desk, Macey smoothly opened the note without anyone detecting her doing so. It was a wrinkly piece of paper, but the messy scrawl was familiar to her as her own. Where did we even get the word ass-hat? Meet me at 9:00 at the cafe across the street to discuss this important, pressing matter. -Z PS: I wasn't in Shanghai or Portugal or anything like that. I was home."
"M,
And then for the first time in a long time, Macey smiled because of Zach and not in spite of him, as she added the meeting to her beloved schedule.
an: hmm, well that sort of sucked, didn't it? well, i'm kinda doped up on cough syrup and i just wanted to write this...so yeah it's written.
zach and macey would be best friends in an ideal world. i would've explained their friendship more, but i would rather write about macey swearing in catalan. :)
i'm gonna try to update stuff and i'm probably gonna delete some old stories, so watch out for that.
i hope you guys like this! or just didn't hate it. because i'm kinda iffy on it. but yeah, tell me what you think!
buenos noches,
ashaaaa (killed the radio star, yo) :D
ps: who the hell is this nick guy everyone keeps writing about? i will make you a virtual sandwich if you can explain this to me.