Will beats Mack to the punch when they get in the car – he already knew they had the same guy because he's the one that ordered the uber, so he basically cheated, whatever – already smiling as he slides right into his same spot in the back seat.
“Hey, man, long time no see,” he says, and Mack rolls his eyes, “how’s the family?”
The driver gives him a little laugh, and Will grins fiendishly across the back seat at Mack. Something in his tone is sincere enough that the driver takes it as an actual question, though, and then they’re going back and forth about the guy’s kid who’s starting college in the fall, and Will tells some half-truths about finishing his Communications degree online so he can “travel more”. He glances at Mack when he says that, and Mack feels heat rise in his cheeks and something pleasant twist in his gut at the inclusion-exclusion of it.
Will says, “Hey, do you mind if we take a quick detour?” and his new best friend says sure, of course, where do you need to go?
He starts giving directions, and Mack gets distracted thinking about all the space between them and whether or not the driver – “Emmanuel, but you can call me Manny,” – thinks it's weird that he's letting Will do all the talking, so he doesn’t even notice where Will is taking them until they’re idling in a mostly-empty liquor store parking lot.
“I’ll just be a sec,” Will tells Manny, then turns to Mack. “Give me your wallet.”
“What? No,” Mack says. He puts a protective hand over his pocket.
“Mack,” Will pouts, big shiny blue eyes working their magic. Usually that’s all it takes to get Mack to fold – and Will knows that, has used it against him more than once, the sick bastard – and this time is no different, because Mack is weak, weak, weak when it comes to Will, but Will’s opening his mouth to speak again, and Mack kinda wants to hear what else he has to say.
He gets as far as “Eighteen point eight–” when Mack cuts him off.
“Jesus Christ, fine,” Mack says, rushing out like it’s all one word, and shoves his wallet into Will’s waiting palm.
Will slips out of the car, grinning like the idiot he is, and Mack watches him jog across the parking lot. He can’t really see much through the window of the store, just the vague bob of a blonde head weaving in and out of aisles, so he turns forward in his seat again. He catches Manny’s eye in the rearview mirror. He's got one eyebrow raised in a question Mack kinda thinks this stranger has no business asking, but the silence is unbearable, so he rolls with it.
“We, uh,” he finds himself saying, “we work together. And I just got a new contract. Big raise.”
“Oh,” Manny says, “so everything’s on you now, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Mack says, punctuates it with a laugh that’s more of an exhale than anything with actual humour in it.
Manny doesn’t say anything to that, because Mack never really learned how to do this kind of small talk, not like Will does it. Will can talk small until the cows come home, can find something in common with anyone, can bend and twist into whatever shape makes him relatable and charming. Sometimes Mack wonders if that’s what he’s doing with him, reshaping himself into whatever Mack wants, but he figures they’d probably argue a lot less if that were true.
“He’s gonna get one soon, too,” Mack says, and he’s honestly not sure why. Just can’t sit in the quiet, he supposes. “A raise. Big one, too, probably. He's, um, really good at what we do.”
“Maybe he’ll buy dinner for once, then,” Manny jokes.
Mack thinks about every time they’ve gone for dinner and Will has kicked him under the table for even reaching for his wallet. Every early morning drive-through coffee Will has paid for because he’s closer to the window, dude, it just makes sense, you can get lunch after practice. Every lunch-after-practice that has somehow ended up on Will’s DoorDash account instead of Mack’s.
“Ha, yeah, maybe,” Mack says.
