Page 68 of Falling into Place
“That’s true.” She checked her watch. “I’d better get going, I don’t want to be late. See you later, Dr. Martin.”
“Yeah. See ya.” He watched her walk away with a frown, then shook out of it and retrieved his phone.
He had work to do.
When Brooks walked into Macy’s house later that evening and found Mark and the boys gone again, he panicked. The last time that had happened, he basically signed away all his free time for four months.
“Why do you look like that?” Macy asked from where she lounged in the armchair.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to turn around and leave a Brooks-shaped hole in my front door.”
“You invited me for dinner, but the boys are gone,” he admitted. “That doesn’t usually work out well for me.”
“I’d argue it’s worked out pretty well for you,” Sasha said from the kitchen doorway. “But they’re here. They’re just upstairs.”
He narrowed his eyes. It was too quiet for that to be true.
“Transformers-movie marathon,” Macy added, reading his skepticism.
“Can I go up there instead?”
“No,” Macy and Sasha said in unison.
He crossed his arms, but his little show of resistance didn’t faze either of them. Macy stood and gestured for him to follow. “Come on. Food’s in my office.”
“In your office?” Why would they have dinner in there?
“We can spread out around my desk. I thought it was fitting that we meet in there for this. Anyway, it’s just frozen pizza, so it’s nothing fancy.”
Frozen pizza meant they probably weren’t going to ask him for any favors tonight, so he followed her.
Macy’s office was the one room in the house that was off-limits to the kids, so it was by far the tidiest. She sat in the padded leather chair behind the desk while Brooks pulled up an accent chair for Sasha and an ottoman for himself. He was trying to be chivalrous, but it was so low that he ended up at nipple-level to the edge of the desk.
Behind Macy’s head, the three large frames hung where they always did, but when he saw what was displayed behind the glass in the third one, he groaned. “Oh God, why did you do that?”
Macy twisted around to regard the enlarged image as she spoke. “My brother was basically the centerfold in our magazine. Of course I was going to show it off.”
“No one else comes in here! And for God’s sake, donotcall me a centerfold.”
“Fine. Main story, then.”
“You usually only put up the covers.”
“I made an exception for a full-page photo.”
“I still don’t understand why it had to be so big,” he grumbled. Though deep down, it was kind of cool to see himself beside his mother, forever captured in the frame beside his, pride for everything she’d accomplished clear as day on her face.
Macy just smiled and divvied up pizza onto three paper plates.
“I’ll get straight to the point so you stop stressing out,” Macy said to Brooks, and Sasha nodded her support of this plan. “Sasha’s been afraid to jinx it so she hasn’t said anything, but I wanted to let you know the Bachelor series is working. Everyone’s talking about it. And therefore, everyone’s talking aboutLiveOKC.”
“Really?” Brooks said, pleasantly surprised. He’d steered clear of the articles and posts, trying to focus just on the dating app. Maybe the comment sections would give him a boost, but he knew they could be nasty, too. He figured he didn’t need that kind of feedback.
“Really.”
“Wood, please,” Sasha ordered, and the three of them dutifully knocked their knuckles against the desk, even though neither he nor Macy were particularly superstitious.
