Condensation formed on the metal shower fixtures and the off-white tile in the staff locker room that Mac and Hannah found themselves in. Mac sniffled as he sat on a stool under the steamy cascades, wiping away his tears: exhaustion from the night before and the realization that Rajiv and the Brunch Illuminati had ruined his first night out at The Phone Booth had finally caught up to him: no amount of pho, Gatorade, coffee, and Red Bull could bring him back from this spiritual devastation.
“Maaaaac, c’mon. Please stop crying? We were having so much fun before Rajiv showed up. We got season tickets for life! And not every date at the ballpark ends with getting invited to Giants Postgame Live… C’mere, Babyboy. Lemme scrub your back. Lemme dote on you a little. You said when we first met that we were stuck together, for better or worse, and you’ve done WAY MORE than your fair share. Let your badass girlfriend wash your back. You want me to do it with my boobs?” Hannah teased from behind, her breath tickling his ear. He used to HATE when she did that, but now?
Is this what they call a kink? I think I just caught a whiff of her pheromones… Fucked up, man.
Mac processed her wild request, too stunned by chaos and breasts to say anything quippier. “Hannah… Okay. You’re right. Today was pretty epic despite getting Rajiv’d again. And your boobs are magnificent. Yeah. Maybe that’ll make me feel better.”
Hannah kissed his temple, stealing a move from his playbook. “Alright. They gave us all the time in the world… Not everybody gets to do this at The Booth, so let’s make it count…”
---
Cameras flashed as they walked hand in hand towards their seats on the panel in their newly-cleaned matching aviators and fresh Giants swag, joining the Giants players and coaches. Hannah’s concealer on his neck, applied earlier that day, had all but washed off. The Giants players and coaches all smiled at them, thankful that the spotlight wasn’t on them for once.
“Whoa!” Hannah plopped Mac into her lap and held his waist. Her teddy bear. Her 165-pound, 5’ 8”, former high school kicker nicknamed “Heart Attack Mac” teddy bear.
“Hannah! Hannah! How long have you been together with Mac?” A precocious short, young, blonde journalist from TMZ blurted out.
Showtime, Mac. This is why we crammed PR responses this afternoon before the game.
“Together? Bleh. Gag me with a spoon. We’re just coworkers,” Hannah answered, not even gracing the question with a crumb of candor and honesty.
Nice try, blondie. You’ll NEVER get a straight answer from us. New Guantanamo Bay could waterboard her with kerosene in front of me and I STILL wouldn’t say shit. I’ll help you cap all the haters, Cheer Captain.
“Yeah. This is just homie stuff. So what if we’ve only known each other for two weeks, live together in a safe house in Salt Ponds of all places, sleep in the same bed, eat meals together, hang out all the time, and do other stuff as well to relieve the INSANE tension between us?” Mac followed up with a trademark Heart Attack smirk. The type Mac knew burned Hannah up on reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.
“But—”
“Next question,” Hannah hammered on.
Another, more serious journalist from SportsNet Central picked up the banner for his fallen comrade. “C’mon. I’ve been married more than 30 years. Multiple ways to use enhanced interrogation techniques on a cat but that’s love, big girl. It takes like max, ten minutes to shower. Y’all were in there from like the seventh-inning stretch until the end of the game. Please explain yourselves?”
“I hate maple syrup. It’s sticky, brown, and it gets everywhere. So I had to… get creative with washing his back. He couldn’t do it himself because he was crying too much. Had to cheer him up. You’d be crying as well if you were OBSESSED with the Giants and your first time out at the ballpark ended with you covered in sticky stuff under the Coke slide thanks to a rat named Rajiv and the Brunch Illuminati, roasting Dodgers fans and players and setting a kiss cam record notwithstanding.” Hannah adjusted her sunglasses, chilling. Nobody but Mac read her signal. It was time to test fire their relationship neuralyzer on national television.
“Eheh! Thanks, Cheryl. Never would’ve gotten the syrup off my back if you didn’t help me. You really know how to cheer your colleagues up.” Mac giggled and kissed her temple.
Hannah melted, her face a burning cherry blossom-scented Yankee Candle doused in lighter fluid under her shades. “Davey… I’m so glad we’re coworkers. I don’t know how I could ever live the rest of my professional life without you. It’s just so… Convenient.”
I can’t believe that works every time…
“Yeah. Convenient. That’s the story! We get along super well! Professionally.” Mac shot covering fire as Hannah pushed and capped the point.
“AUUUUUUUUUGH!” A lesser correspondent from ESPN, probably expecting to cover another chapter in the Giants and Dodgers’ storied rivalry, gave up and left the room: the psychic pain was too much for him to bear.
“Cheryl? Davey? You gotta be shitting me… They… Have pet names,” he mumbled under his breath, dry heaving in the hallway before spilling his guts. “BLAAAAAARGH!”
Nice. A big chance here! Gotta score it.
Mac found the biggest camera in the room and mugged it. “Wow, ESPN’s sure gone downhill. Every day they find a new low… Sports betting ads were just the tip of the iceberg… Get it together! We’re just a couple of coworkers who stopped a brunch bomb at the game tonight. Aren’t you gonna ask about how the Dodgers blew a two-run lead with N$6B worth of arms and gave up FOURTEEN runs in the sixth inning? At 24 Willie Mays Plaza of all places where power hitters go to DIE? The wind was even blowing IN like the long-dead Soviet Union test-fired Tsar Bomba in McCovey Cove tonight. HOW?!”
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Another type of pandemonium took over the press room.
“HUH?”
“WHAT THE FU—”
“For the love of God…”
“Ay, Dios mío…”
Hannah accelerated the breakup of the media’s narrative shuttle with a solid rocket booster fuel-powered smirk on a one-way ticket to the lower gates of comedy heaven. “What? How are we together? We’ve never said the dreaded three words in public with a total stranger serving as witness. Them’s the rules!”
Mac held Hannah’s hand on the thrusters steady with his unconditional support, old Swissair-style. “And even if we do say the words unqualified we always cross our fingers behind our backs. We have to practice SO much, especially because we don’t mean it!”
A familiar-looking Japanese woman in a black hoodie and hacker goggles sat in the back, deep in an animated sublingual conversation with her AI daughter while she recorded the whole press conference with her visor, sporting fake press credentials for Mac and Hannah’s fanfic site. She busted a gut at something Eureka said, who was probably just abusing her TTS Boganshitpostese accent to say something delightfully unhinged about their sex life. She raised her hand.
Tar and Eureka? Right. I need to thank them for gifting us these tickets. Had a great time tonight!
Mac pointed her out. “Tar! Thanks for the tickets, girl! You had a question?”
“Yeeees. I really can’t believe these people think you’re actually in love. I wouldn’t be running a fanfic site about you with my daughter if you guys actually were. Just to confirm, you’re NOT in love?”
“That’s goshdarn fuckin’ right bestie! True friend right there! That’s why she’s the MVP! That’s why she’s the GOAT! The GOAAAAAT!” Hannah replied with renewed vigor, the taunting eyes behind her shades almost burning through the lenses.
Mac raised an eyebrow and belly laughed in her arms. He knew Hannah lifted heavy at the gym AND in matters of public perception. All he had to do was alley-oop while she SHATTERED the backboard, sending the bit back to hell.
Another wave of a media shit tsunami hit, finishing off the survivors.
“NO, NOT AGAIN!”
“WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!”
“TERRORISTS!”
A panicked reporter broke all press room decorum, phoning a friend: “GET TO A TV NOW AND FLIP ON THE GIANTS GAME, ANY SPORTS CHANNEL!”
“BUT THEY’RE SO HOT TOGETHER?!”
Mac found Hannah’s eyes beneath her limo-tinted specs as they shared their first laughs together in front of the whole nation. “Let’s go home, Cheer Captain, all that stuff you did last night is starting to get to me. Shall we?”
Hannah stood Mac back on his feet and held his outstretched hand, leading them away from the panel. “C’mon then. Tar can drive us home in Weasel. Your truck should have enough gas to get us back down the Peninsula.”
---
Mac woke up with a face full of boobs, hanging onto Hannah as she carried him up the stairs to their safe house: the elevator was still out of order, just like it had been last week, and the week before that, and the week before that…
Freakin’ slumlords man… Where do all their margins go if they’re not even investing in proper maintenance? I really wish the ADA was still around… And this is the best-maintained building in the whole damn neighborhood… Oh well… More time with Hannah? Yeah. Think positive, dude!
New jersey-smell and white bar soap caressed his nose, a far cry from Hannah’s now-usual peonies and cherry blossoms. Baseball. And Hannah. Different, but still breathtaking. Still Hannah. Just a barbarian queen and the prince she kidnapped, taking the historic definition of honeymoon verbatim from the dictionary.
He yawned, snuggling into Hannah some more. “Sleepy.”
“I know, Babyboy. You know how you asked me to speak more French at home? Well how about I let you lay your weary head on my lap and I sing you a lullaby?”
“Isn’t that kinda lewd? Like lewder than what we did in the locker room?” Mac mumbled into her chest.
Hannah chortled, rocking her man in her arms as she carried him up the third of five flights of stairs. She bit her lip. “Didn’t you say the same thing when I LOCKED your fingers in mine while we made out for the first time? You jelly-headed, construction equipment-brained boy. I literally suplex-flipped you on top of me so I could get a better angle. I GRABBED your ass with my other hand and you just melted into it some more. Lewd… You’re a silly little fucker, you know that?”
Mac’s smile shone and got through to Hannah despite the stairwell lights that always didn’t feel like showing up for their regularly scheduled night shift and somehow still hadn’t been fired. “Huh. Never thought of it like that. So glad we get tomorrow off thanks to your 9/80 scheduling… Need a recovery day bad. These last few days have been really good, but really hectic. Maybe if we stay home tomorrow, nothing bad will happen.”
She carried him up the fourth flight of stairs, cracking up. “Don’t count on it. You’re gonna have to teach me how to cook for us… Shall I pull the massage table out as well? I’m pretty damn good at killing knots myself, but I still can’t compete with you. I’ll pick up the slack so you can rest.”
Mac groaned a pained smirk at Hannah. “We’re gonna need to work on your PR. That sounded like a threat.”
Hannah just laughed.
Finally, they reached the top of the stairwell: the fifth floor. Hannah readjusted her grip on Mac as she hip checked the door open, taking care not to drop her precious cargo. In short order, they reached their safe house door. Hannah handed Mac the key, making sure to hold him up with her other arm as he let themselves in.
Shoes off. Then a change into pajamas. Brushing teeth, flossing, and washing their faces came next. Last call for the bathroom. Reading lights on. All choreographed in a blurry seven-minute pit stop.
Mac turned around and put his arms around Hannah. “Hannah?”
“Yeah?” She stared back with half-shut, breathless eyes, fighting sleep herself.
Does… She always make sure I fall asleep first? I never noticed that before. Cute…
“Does your offer still stand? I forgot that Coca-Cola was caffeinated.”
“Haaaah… Cet homme… C’mere,” she sighed as she got up, kneeling on the bed and patting her lap.
The weird winds of spring howled outside, tossing about a hapless Amazon delivery drone buzzing by their window. But inside? Mac knew.
