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Will was out of his chair the moment the red light went out. He half-ran out the studio door heading for the control room, but when he reached the hallway, Mackenzie was already waiting for him. Apparently she had had the same idea.
He skidded to a stop and just stared at her. A surreal silence hung between them. He couldn’t quite believe this was happening. The eager, bashful smile on her face said that she couldn’t either.
“Mrs. McAvoy,” he offered.
She beamed, and didn’t miss a beat. “Mr. McHale.”
Hearing those words made his heart beat faster than any live-to-air countdown ever would.
A soft chanting rose in his awareness. “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” It was the guys in the control room, who had turned to watch them. Before that, Will hadn’t been sure there was anyone else in the building. It was just him, the camera, and Mackenzie’s voice in his ear tethering him to reality, promising him that tonight, finally, there was something waiting for him on the other side of the studio lights. For the first time in five years, the audience that lived in the lens wasn’t all he had.
“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” It was becoming a thing now.
“Shall we?” he said.
“I suppose,” Mac relied with a playful shrug, as if a little show was the least they could do.
Will wrapped his hand behind the back of her head and pulled her in. Mackenzie’s hands found a grip on his shoulders, and as they kissed Will got a better idea. He wondered if Mackenzie felt the smile stretch over his lips in the second before he dipped her. She broke the kiss long enough to giggle in surprise as the control room whooped and hollered through the glass behind them. When he pulled her up she was blushing hard and smiling so wide she couldn’t stop.
Herb and Joey and everyone poured out of the control room and offered their congratulations again. They took all the handshakes and pats on the back that they could hold in the short walk down the hall.
“Thank you all for your hard work tonight,” Mackenzie said as they reached the doors to the bullpen.
“We’re off for a week now, right?” one of the guys joked.
Another replied, “See you tomorrow.”
Mackenzie looked at her watch and corrected, “See you tonight.”
When Will checked his own watch, he saw it was a little past two in the morning.
Will and Mackenzie followed the controllers out as they filed into the bullpen. The producers there cheered for them again, and there was another quick round of congratulatory pats and handshakes, but Will could see that the party and the night was starting to take its toll. There were plastic cups and empty champagne bottles all over the desks, crumpled napkins and crumbs from whatever snacks the producers had managed to rustle up from the break room. Everyone looked pleased but exhausted.
Charlie came up and patted Will on the shoulder. “That was one for the books kids.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Mackenzie said, then raised her voice to the whole bullpen. “Now go home and get some sleep!” When the herd wasn’t moving fast enough for her she added, “Don’t expect we’re going easy on you tomorrow.“
“Yes Ma’am,” Jim said with a little faux salute.
“Oh god, is that what’s going to happen now? People are going to call me ‘Ma’am’?”
“No Sir,” Don replied, already heading for the door with his bag and coat.
Mac responded with a playful frown. “I don’t want to see any of your faces for at least five hours.”
Will felt like he should chime in, so he added, “Good work people. We couldn’t have done this without you. I mean individually, probably, yes we could have done it without you. But collectively? Definitely not. Go team.”
He received a few mixed nods and polite smiles, and Mackenzie was shaking her head and trying not to laugh. Maybe it wasn’t one of his finer speeches, but if he has used up all his charisma on the proposal, he could live with that. He could definitely live with that.
When everyone really did start to disperse, Will nodded toward his office. “Let me grab my stuff.” Mackenzie entered her own office and found her coat and hat in something of a daze. As long as the broadcast was going, as long as the champagne was being poured and the congratulations kept coming, she knew it was real. Here, farther away from the plastic cups and the cigar smoke, the buzz of the evening was starting to fade.
Her office remained untouched by the party outside. Last time she had been in here, she had been single and sure that Will would hate her guts forever. In fact, he had just told her as much. Mackenzie reached quickly for the ring to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. She thought it unlikely, but perhaps in her sleep-deprived state she had hallucinated the whole thing.
No, it was definitely there on her finger, cool to the touch and glittering brightly even in the low light. It was real. So what now?
Mackenzie grabbed the Louis Vuitton she kept packed as a go bag under her desk. She was heading for the door when a thought crossed her mind: What if this wasn’t what Will was expecting? It was silly, she knew. But…what if it wasn’t? She dropped the bag on a chair in her office and walked the thirty feet to Will’s door.
Then she did something that had never occurred to her to do before, which was knock. She rapped lightly on the glass with her knuckles and Will answered the door with his eyebrows making a valiant attempt to reach his hairline. Clearly he though this behavior was strange.
“Yes?” he said, still buttoning up his shirt. He had changed out of his broadcast suit, which would be brought out for dry cleaning, and back into the slacks and button up he had arrived in.
“Can I ask you a stupid question?”
Will opened the door further to let her inside. “That depends, who does it make look stupid, me or you?”
“Me, probably.”
He gave up on the last few buttons and leaned back against the edge of his desk. “Ask away.”
“Am I coming home with you tonight?”
Will just stared at her, then let out a small snort. “Seriously? We got engaged two hours ago.”
“Two and a half,” she replied. “And I realize that, but we haven’t actually been dating in over five years.”
“Five and a quarter.”
Mackenzie frowned playfully at his reply. “Anyway, I don’t know what the “ex-lover to fiancee” etiquette is.”
“I think that demographic might just us.”
“And?” She waited for an answer.
“And what?”
“Am I coming over or not?”
“Mackenzie,” he said as if the answer was obvious, but that just infuriated her more.
“Look, I’m overwhelmed and sleep deprived and a little bit drunk so please just give me a straight answer!”
As she got more worked up she started to flail her arms. Will stepped off the desk and put his hands on her shoulders so she had to drop her arms back down to her sides.
“I thought the invitation to stay over tonight was included in the ‘Will you marry me?’ but yes. Yes I would like you to stay over tonight, if you want to.”
“Obviously I want to.”
“Alright then.”
“Alright.”
She started to walk out of the office then turned back to Will. “Because you know, you could be expecting that we’ll wait until the wedding or that we’ll start slow not just jump back in, or—”
Will approached her, cutting her off. He was looking so earnestly at her that she swallowed the rest of her thought.
“Do you want to take things slow?”
“No,” she mumbled like a child being forced to recite an apology.
“It’s not a test,” Will said, “I’m asking. Would you be more comfortable with this if we took it slow?”
“No,” she said more surely.
“Would you be more comfortable if we waited all together?”
“No!” That one was definitive.
Will gave the half-mouth smile he gave when he’d won an argument. “So come on then.”
Mackenzie nodded, finally reassured. She dipped back into her office and grabbed her bag. When she returned to the bullpen he was waiting with his coat on and a satchel over his shoulder. By now the staff had cleared out. They walked through the abandoned desks together and stepped into the empty elevator. As the doors slid over the messy, deserted newsroom, Will took Mackenzie’s hand. She squeezed back.
She only released her grip when the doors opened in the lobby. Although they had announced their relationship to the entire department, not to mention the CEO of the company, it felt too new and too strange to show to the world out here. Will pulled his hand away too, and Mackenzie wondered if that was in response to her movement, or because he felt strange about this too. The newsroom was their home, their high ground, their comfort zone. In the newsroom, tonight had been perfect. Who knew what they faced out here?
They walked together out of the revolving doors. Two town cars waited for them, as they did every night. Will nodded to the one in front and held the door for Mackenzie as she climbed in. He followed after.
“Home?” the driver said when they were both settled.
“Yes, thank you Martin,” Will said.
“And you, Ms. McHale?”
“She’s uh—” Will began but got flustered. “Home is fine.”
Mackenzie could have sworn she saw Martin give Will a small, knowing nod in the rearview mirror. She shot a look at Will but he only shrugged. Martin put the privacy screen up but before it was finished rising Mackenzie heard him speak into the radio. “Got them both tonight.”
It wasn’t entirely unusual for the two of them to go somewhere together after work, but it was almost three am now. The only place either of them should be going was home.
Will only lived a few blocks from the studio, but even at the late hour there were cars to navigate and lights to wait for. The glow of downtown Manhatten drifted over the seats. Mackenzie kept her eyes on the city passing outside, turning the ring back and forth on her finger the whole way. She couldn’t seem to stop.
Will, she noticed, was watching her. Every time she looked his way he averted his gaze, but as soon as her eyes found the window or the floor or the ring again, he looked back at her. She got the sense that he wanted to say something, but since she was quiet, he seemed content to follow suit.
A thought kept churning over and over in her mind. As the car turned onto Will’s block, it finally fought its way out of her mouth. “I never want you to tell me, alright?”
“Hm?”
“I never want you to tell me what made you change your mind.”
“I didn’t—”
The car pulled up to the curb and the screen rolled down. “Will there be anything else tonight?”
“No, Martin. Thank you.”
Will grabbed Mackenzie’s bag and climbed out of the car, turning back to offer her a hand. When the doorman raised his eyebrow, Mackenzie took the took the Louis Vuitton off of Will’s shoulder and said, “You look ridiculous,” though she knew as well as he did that that wasn’t what the doorman’s look was about.
They stepped into the elevator. It was once again a quiet, empty ride.
About halfway up, Will spoke. “I didn’t change my mind.”
Something fell hard and fast in her stomach. “You didn’t?”
“No,” Will said, grabbing her arms as if he sensed her panic, “I did. I definitely did. This?” He gestured between them. “All good. I just wouldn’t call it changing my mind.”
“What would you call it then?”
“I would call it, I don’t know, changing my heart. A change of heart. Hmm those expressions don’t work the same way.” The last bit was clearly more to himself.
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference—” The elevator opened and they stepped out into the darkened hallway. Will lowered his voice as they passed the other, silent doors on the floor and headed toward his, last on the left. “The difference is…I don’t know what the difference is, but there is one, and it matters.”
“Then tell me what it is!”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You just said—”
“Linguistically it matters. Physically, for you and I, it—” They arrived at his door. Will gave her the ‘one moment’ finger and fished for his keys. He open the door as quickly as he could, though somewhat clumsily in his haste, and whisked her inside.
Will turned to Mackenzie and said at a more normal volume, “Are you okay?” He placed his bag down on the bench by the door, and she did the same. “Are you okay with all of this? I know it was fast.”
“Of course I’m okay with it. I think I might still be floating.”
Will pulled his coat off, pulled a hanger from the hallway closet, and hung it neatly on the bar. “Because you’re acting pretty weird right now.”
“Weirder than normal?”
He shrugged, weighing the options. “A little bit, yes.”
He offered his hand for Mackenzie’s coat. She slipped out of its sleeves and let him hang it up. He stepped farther into the living room and Mackenzie followed him.
“I’m not sure what the protocol is,” she said in a small voice.
Will turned to her. “There is no protocol! There is no etiquette! It’s just you and me. It’s whatever we want.”
Mackenzie met his eyes, then looked away. Will could see a sheen of tears starting to collect, so he put his wide, warm palm on her cheek and brought her back to look at him. “Mackenzie, if you’re unhappy with this—”
“I’m happy!” she shouted. “I’m ecstatic. This has been the best night of my life.”
“Okay…” Will said, not sensing the problem.
“And I’m terrified.”
“What?”
“I’m so scared.”
“Why?” Will asked. “Have I done something?”
“Yes you’ve done something!” she shouted and smacked him lightly on the chest. “You’ve given me the only thing I’ve actually wanted for the last five years!”
“I’ll try not to do that anymore,” he joked, but Mackenzie didn’t stop.
“—and I don’t know how I got it!”
“Ah,” Will said with a knowing look.
“Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m thrilled and I’m flattered and I’m floating on air, but—”
“You’re waiting for this to collapse on itself.”
“A little bit, yes.”
Will placed his hand on Mackenzie’s shoulder and, when she nodded her approval, pulled her into a deep hug.
“What did I do to deserve this?” she muttered into the folds of his shirt. “I understand what I did to wreck things the first time—believe me, I understand. But I don’t know what made it better. Why now?”
“You didn’t—You don’t deserve it,” Will said. She looked up at him with those big, pleading eyes and he continued, “And you don’t not deserve it. It was never about that. I thought it was, but I was wrong.
“Look,” he went on. “You were right; I was punishing you. I didn’t realize I was doing it, but I was. I guess I thought that at some point there’d be some threshold where I’d see that you’d suffered enough. But that doesn’t exist. There’s no penance you could offer because it’s already done. The mistake was its own punishment.”
“What does that mean?”
“You did everything right,” he said, “except for the things…” He trailed off and tried again. “Look, Genoa showed—”
“Genoa?” she repeated. She stepped back to look at him quizzically, and Will could see the surprise on her face. “We’re getting married because of a misreported war crime?”
“We’re getting married because I finally understand that sometimes we do the best we can with what we have and we still fuck up,” he said. “Massively,” she emphasized.
“Massively,” he echoed. “We’re getting married because I don’t want to keep holding you to your worst—your only—mistake. Not when everything else was so good. Not when I love you this much.”
He leaned in to kiss her but Mackenzie shook her head. Her eyes were focused on something past his shoulder.
“I’m so afraid that if I push on this too hard or too fast it’ll all come tumbling down again,” she said.
“Is that why you’ve been so skittish?” he asked. “Because you think I’m going to change my mind?”
“I’m not skittish. That’s not a word that anyone has used to describe me, ever.”
“What would you call this then?” He gestured at her to indicate her behavior that night.
“Sensibly reserved,” she declared. Then Mackenzie added, in a much smaller voice, “I think you could.” The fear and honesty on her face made his chest ache. “What’s to stop your mind from changing back?”
“I told you,” he said, “I didn’t change my mind.” Will looked up suddenly and snapped his fingers. “That’s the difference. You change your mind; it’s something you do. It’s an action. It’s logic. You can think yourself into a change of mind and out of it again.”
“Yes, and—”
“But you have a change of heart,” Will continued. “It happens to you. There’s nothing you or I could do to make it happen, and they’re nothing you can do now to set it back.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” he assured her, never breaking her gaze. Her face glowed brightly in the half-lit apartment, the tears of fear and relief and overwhelm shining in her eyes. She looked like she wanted to believe him, but Will wasn’t sure that she did.
“Let me ask you this,” he said. “What’s the worst thing you could possibly do right now?”
“Cheat on you and break your heart and ruin my chance at happiness forever,” she said as if this was a standard answer.
“Are you planning to do that?”
“No,” she said emphatically. “Absolutely not.”
“Then we’re good.”
Mackenzie studied his face for a moment in what seemed like disbelief, and then she kissed. She stood up on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck as she kissed him deeply. Will could feel the warm tears finally run down her cheeks.
When they parted, Will tucked her hair behind her ear and she gave an embarrassed laugh. “You’re sure you want this?” she said, gesturing to herself. She was smiling, but Will could hear the genuine question under the joke.
“Yes,” he said. “More than anything I have ever wanted before, and more than anything I could ever think to want after.”
She pressed her head into his chest, and this time the tears fell harder.
“Hey,” he said softly.
Mackenzie wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “I’m just really happy, alright?”
It was Will’s turn to chuckle softly. “Alright.”
He had never thought Mackenzie looked as beautiful as she did tonight in the moonlit glow of the apartment, flat hair and tear-stained cheeks and tired eyes and all. Will ran his thumb under her eyes. The dark circles she’d been collecting all day were getting worse.
`“You’ve been up for, what, thirty-six hours now?” he said.
“Something like that.”
“Why don’t we just get some sleep. Tomorrow we can—”
Mackenzie cut him off by grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him toward her. “Like hell.”
She pressed her other hand to the side of his face and kissed him again, more intensely this time. Will’s arms found their way from her shoulders to the small of her back and he pulled her as close as he could.
When they came up for air she whispered, slightly out of breath, “And Billy?”
“Mm?” was his only reply as he moved to suck on her neck. His fingers threaded through her hair.
“Go slowly.”