Mac and Lucy have a talk.
/
He was gone for two days and Lucy was pissed; she was going home in four days and time was precious, at least to her it was. Sure that he was out fucking some whore because he felt some kind of fucked up guilt about her she went looking for him on the second day. He would be easy to find, that red piece of shit he drove stuck out like a sore thumb wherever he went, but she couldn't find him in town.
She couldn't find him and his phone was off and now she had no choice but to track down Walter. Pulling on her hiking boots she cursed him again and cursed herself for letting this happen. All their lives it had been her following after him begging for attention and she could see how that wasn't going to change. She didn't like that feeling now, it was all changed between them, he could hurt her so easily.
Lucy busted into Walter's place and as usual, Walter was behind the bar serving the few customers that hung around in the daytime. His eyes went to his niece and he nodded to her, signaling her to step to the end of the bar away from the customers. She was way underage to be in there and Walter wasn't trying to get the cops called again. When she got to the end of the bar he enveloped her in a warm hug, he had a place in his heart for this fatherless girl, always had. For the life of him Walter couldn't figure out why she followed his son around all her life, but it was what it was and Lucy helped keep Mac under control, even if she didn't know it.
Walter knew the signs, his own sister had been bipolar and had self medicated when she had to with alcohol and drugs. He suspected there was some kind of mental issue with his son, but what, he didn't know. The boy was lucky to have someone like her, who clearly adored him, faults and all. He gave her a sweet gleeful smile that lit up his eyes and leaned on the bar.
"What's going on, Pequeñita?" Little one; he had called her that all her life.
"Looking for your jerk son."
"Me too," Walter raised his eyebrows, "When you find him let him know I need him."
"Is he out in the caves fucking off you think?" She asked, "I'm heading there next."
"No!" Walter stepped forward and touched her shoulder, "No!, I'll go, you don't go there Lucy, you hear me?"
"But you have customers..."
"I'll go out there once Rosie gets here, she's due in at two, OK?" He told her, "Stay out of the caves alone, it's no place for you Lucy."
She nodded with understanding, Mac had told her the same thing, more than one time, even if she carried the boot knife all the time, he said stay away, unless he and only he was with her.
"When you see him tell him I said ¡vete a la chingada! " Fuck off.
Walter smiled and walked back to the bar, "Will do Pequeñita," He grinned, "Will do."
/
Mac showed up that night after getting an ass reaming from Walter when he got there at two fifteen and found him and his friends wasted on his product. There weren't any girls there, but there had been, whether they had been willing or not willing Walter didn't care, but he cared that they were smoking up the profits.
Mac used to be so much better about that, trustworthy, but in the past year or so Walter had noticed he was using more than usual, except when she was around and that was very interesting. The summertime was when he got the best work out of him, he only smoked pot then, drank some, no big deal, and he stayed calm, not all tweaked out like in the winter time. Right or wrong, Lucy kept him off the harder stuff and she didn't even know it. But she was leaving soon and it was clear his son was preparing himself for her absence again.
/
Lucy lit into him the minute he walked into the house before Mac even got his boots off. Once they were off she followed him down the hall and into the bathroom, bitching the whole way. Both of their mothers were out that night at bingo and it was a good thing because she was looking for a fight. Mac had been dreading her departure, and one hit turned into a three day bender with three girls from town, but he couldn't tell her that.
"Trying to get a look at my cock again?" He teased and brought his hands to his buckle to undo it in an attempt to diffuse her anger, and it worked. Her eyes followed his hands and the sound it made stirred her, but she forced herself not to react.
She put her hands on her hips, "I've seen it."
"Up close." He grinned at her and quirked his eyebrow as he stripped out of his clothes. She tried to ignore the fact that he just shucked his clothes off in front of her like it was nothing. It was hard to ignore, he was hard to ignore.
"I'm leaving in four days did you forget?"
"No, I didn't forget," He stepped into the shower, "I work tomorrow, then just you and me, I got ya something, you'll like it I promise," He reached for the curtain and grinned at her, "Join me?"
She crossed her arms over her waist and rolled her eyes, "I'll pass."
"Alright, your loss." He laughed and brought the curtain back across the bathtub and laughed some more as she stalked out of the bathroom. She wasn't mad anymore though, he could tell, she would have smacked him if she was still mad.
/
"You're looking so good Lucy." He whispered the next night as she walked into the dark room. After a minute he got up from the kitchen table where he had been sitting drinking a beer and started to walk towards her. It was late, he had been working and Lucy had waited up for him.
"And you're welcome to look, Mac," Lucy replied as she walked towards him with a smile and a book in her hand. She had on a sleep shirt and shorts, and made no effort to hide herself from him; she had stopped wearing a robe in the beginning of the summer. Going braless had been on purpose too, she could get away with it and it helped stir the pot.
Mac thought she was this innocent flower, untouchable and she made a concentrated effort that summer to prove to him it wasn't so. It was manipulation, she knew that, but she wanted what she wanted.
"Our mothers used to put us in the bathtub together when we were kids, I've looked plenty. " He grinned down at her, that grin that was just for her, and she couldn't help the way he made her feel. Her body was on fire all the time when she was with him and summer was over now, she had to leave.
"We were babies, you psycho." She laughed, and smiled up at him, he was a good foot taller than her now.
"All the same. I ain't opposed to it now." Mac continued as he raised his hands over Lucy's head, splaying them on the wall above her and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Lucy looked up at him, god, he was so fucking sexy.
"Will you call me and text?" She asked.
"Don't I always?" He kissed her neck softly, one, two three times, ran his nose over her skin and breathed in her scent.
"I'll miss you."
"I'll miss you too," He whispered, "You're the only one I love."
Lucy considered his words as they lingered in the air between them. She knew him well enough to know he was trying to tell her something, something important. Something that maybe he didn't want to tell her but felt like he had to. Something she was sure she didn't want to hear.
"What?" He asked when her eyes narrowed slightly and she crossed her arms at her waist.
"You're trying to tell me something aren't you?"
He shrugged, but he knew he was busted.
"That your way of letting me know you're gonna be fucking other girls?"
His teeth raked over his bottom lip as he looked down at his feet for the answer to that question, and finally, he nodded and so did she, "It wouldn't look good if I suddenly changed."
"How convenient for you."
"Come on, Carina don't be that way." Mac said, "This ain't something we can flaunt all over this town."
"Fine," She replied with a slight hiss of jealousy, "Make sure you dump whatever skank you're boning every June."
"Deal." That had been easier than he thought, but he didn't want to lie about it to her. He knew himself well enough that he couldn't go without for ten months. He also really didn't want anyone knowing about them, that was looking for all kinds of trouble.
"It would be better if we weren't tied down to each other all year anyway, this can be just for the summers." She changed tactic and acted like she didn't care, like maybe she would do the same thing, and as she expected he wasn't happy, "There's this guy who likes me back home... he drives a mustang," Adding the detail about his car and the assumption to be made that he had money was not Lucy's style at all. She had never cared for those things before, but she said it just the same.
"So," He murmured and raised his eyebrows at her, "Some LA hood rat is lookin good to you?"
"He's a football player..."
Then his face changed and he gripped her sleep shirt and pulled her closer to him. He wasn't rough, but he wasn't exactly gentle either; just enough to let her know how it was going to be.
"Try it and see what happens." He growled, bringing his face to hers.
"You don't scare me, Mac." She met his eyes, she knew how he could be sometimes and she knew how to handle him.
"Don't you fuck anyone Lucy," Mac warned and his voice actually scared her a little now, he was snarling, like if she disobeyed there would be consequences.
"No," She replied quickly, it had backfired on her and brought out something in him she hadn't liked. "I won't."
"You belong to me," He said, "You're mine, you're the only one I love."
"I was always yours to have and you were always mine." She murmured the words to the poem they had read together years ago and he remembered it. He smiled at her then, and let go of her shirt; Lucy kissed him softly then whispered, "I have always loved you more."