LITMIR.BIZ

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hiding out, not from his own emotions and certainly not from Jess.

      Still, after several days of not following his usual routine or answering phone calls from his friends, he wasn’t all that surprised to answer his door one night and find Mack on his doorstep.

      “You’ve skipped lunch for three days running,” Mack said, looking him up and down. “You haven’t called me or Jake back.”

      “You can’t have been too worried, given how long it took you to come and check on me,” Will noted.

      Mack merely frowned at the comment. “You don’t look sick, so what’s going on?”

      “I got behind on my paperwork,” Will told him.

      Mack didn’t look as if he believed him, but he was already wandering around the apartment with a distracted expression that told Will something else entirely had brought him over here tonight.

      “Is something on your mind?” Will asked him.

      “Not really,” Mack said. “You have any beer in this place?”

      “Always,” Will responded, barely concealing his amusement. Since they’d been of legal age and he’d had his own place, he’d always kept beer on hand for Jake and Mack. “Help yourself.”

      “You want one?”

      Will shook his head. “I’m good.”

      Mack returned with his beer, but he still didn’t sit. He continued to pace, pausing only to stare out the window at the sliver of a view Will had of the bay. When he sighed heavily, Will couldn’t stand it any longer.

      “How’s Susie?” Will asked, feeling his way.

      Mack shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

      “What do you mean, you guess? Haven’t you seen her?”

      “Yesterday,” Mack said. “She was fine, then. I haven’t spoken to her today.”

      Will knew all about being patient when one of his clients was dancing around a tough issue, but in his personal life he tended to be more direct. He hated watching Mack working so hard not to say whatever was on his mind.

      “You know,” he began, “we could play twenty questions for a while and eventually I’d hit on whatever’s bugging you, but it would be easier if you’d just tell me.”

      Mack stood across the room, his back to Will, still staring out the window. “Susie asked me something yesterday that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.”

      “Something about your relationship?”

      “No, we were talking about newspapers, you know, the way they’re struggling, that kind of thing.”

      “Okay,” Will said slowly, still not following. “And?”

      “She asked me what I’d do if I ever lost my job as a columnist for the paper in Baltimore.”

      Will stared at him. “You think your job’s on the line?” he asked, startled. No wonder Mack looked shaken.

      Mack’s column was one of the most popular in the paper, as far as Will knew. The guy’s picture was plastered all over bus benches in Baltimore, for heaven’s sake.

      Mack had gone from being a celebrated local athlete to writing about sports in a town that loved its teams. He was as much of a celebrity now as he had been on the gridiron during his all-too-brief professional career. It was one of the reasons he was such an eligible bachelor and why Will and Jake both thought it was so astounding that he’d given up all those fawning women in exchange for a relationship with Susie that he refused to define.

      “My job’s secure,” Mack said, though he still looked troubled. “At least for now. But I can’t deny that the business is changing.” He turned and faced Will. “What the hell would I do if I lost it?”

      “You’d find something else,” Will said confidently. “Remember when you blew out your knee and ended your football career? You were convinced your life was over. Then you wrote a couple of pieces on speculation for the paper, and the next thing you knew, they’d hired you. That’s the way life is. When one door closes, another one opens.”

      Mack gave him a disgruntled look. “Could you save the clichés? Besides, it’s not as if there’s another newspaper around I could jump to. They’re all cutting back.”

      “There are TV stations,” Will reminded him. “You’re a good-looking guy. You could work on the air. Besides, aren’t you getting way ahead of yourself? There’s nothing to indicate that you’re about to be fired. That is what you said, right?”

      Mack nodded but then gave him a bleak look. “But the paper let half a dozen reporters go today. It happened out of the blue. It almost felt as if Susie had been tapped into some sort of ESP gossip mill.”

      Will lifted a brow. “Really? You believe that?”

      “Well, come on. She’s the one who brought it up yesterday, and then, boom, today things started happening. At the paper we hadn’t even heard any rumors that there was a possibility of cuts. More people were eliminated from the production side, too. They didn’t even offer buyouts. They just fired those with the least seniority. What if this is the start of the belt-tightening?”

      “Then you’ll deal with it,” Will assured him. “Baltimore’s not the only city in the country. There are a couple of papers in Washington. That’s not far away.”

      “There have been massive buyouts over there, too,” Mack said, still not consoled. “The long-term future for the whole industry is on shaky ground. Everybody’s scrambling to see if they can stem these tides of red ink.”

      Will studied him. “What are you really worried about, Mack? Is it your job? You must know you’d have options outside of newspapers or TV. You could come back here and coach, if you really wanted to. I know the high school principal has talked to you about that.”

      Mack didn’t look relieved, so Will took another stab at what he thought was really behind his friend’s mood. “Mack, is this really about having to move away at some point and leave Susie behind?”

      For a moment, Mack looked startled. Then he grinned, almost looking relieved to have Will cut to the chase. “Damn, you’re good.”

      Will laughed. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks. As for Susie, despite your failure to admit that the two of you actually have a relationship, you’re the only ones who don’t seem to know that you do. I’m not saying I want you to lose your job, but maybe it would be the wake-up call you both need to face how much you mean to each other.”

      He met Mack’s still-troubled gaze. “Or you could just face it now and get on with having the kind of relationship you both really want. Then if something changes with your career, you’d be facing that together.”

      Mack shook his head. “Susie’s made it clear she’d never date a guy like me.”

      “A player?” Will assessed.

      Mack nodded. “She doesn’t want to get lumped in with all the other women I’ve dated and dumped.”

      Will rolled his eyes. “Haven’t either of you noticed that you haven’t been a player for quite a while now? Unless I’ve missed something, you haven’t been on a date with another woman since you and Susie started spending so much time together.”

      “I’m pretty sure she thinks it’s a fluke,” Mack said.

      “Okay, it’s just you and me right now and I swear I will not repeat this or throw it back in your face later, but for once just say it. Do you love her?”

      To Will’s astonishment, Mack looked genuinely startled by the question. “Everybody knows I don’t do love,” he said a little too quickly. “Or commitment.”

      “And yet for three

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