by Chloe Cox
“What is with you?” she asks. Her voice is muffled against my chest.
I take a deep breath and let her go long enough to speak. “I didn’t know who it was,” I say. “I didn’t know who was on the ground.”
Harlow props her chin up on my chest and looks up at me.
“Marcus, I’m fine,” she says.
“Doesn’t matter. Not letting go.”
I smile down at her, not wanting her to get stressed out, or more stressed out than she already is. I know she can hear my heartbeat, how it speeds up whenever she touches me, how it’s hammering now. Finally she giggles slightly and I laugh with her, both of us sounding kind of punch drunk.
“Ok, well, at least bring me upstairs,” she says. “I need to get to bed.”
I don’t need to be told twice. I lift her up and let her bury her face in my neck, knowing she loves it when I pick her up like this. She told me once that getting lifted off the ground, knowing she’s in my control—it’s a comfort thing and a turn on all at once. And after that night of the break in, I’m not likely to forget about something like that.
“Don’t worry,” I say, walking up the stairs with her in my arms. “I’ll let you sleep.”
“Hmmm,” she says.
I mean to let her sleep, I do. Just so long as I get to hold her while she does, that’s fine with me. But we get up to her bedroom and she kicks her shoes off and I set her down on her own bed, and then it starts. Harlow kisses me. It starts small and sweet, but she feels the urgency in me. She takes my face in her hands and pulls back, looking at me, her face serious.
“I’m ok, Marcus,” she says again.
“I know,” I say. I sound like I’m choking on the words. I don’t want to think about a world where she isn’t ok.
So Harlow kisses me again, deeper, longer. And pretty soon I’m just ripping my clothes off and hers, too, just needing to feel her skin against mine, needing to cover her body with my own. It’s not until we’re both naked and Harlow’s moaning into my neck, begging me to put it in, that this wave of desperation washes over me, this need to make it right—only I know I can’t.
“What’s wrong?” she asks me.
I shake my head, not knowing how to say it. Not knowing how to put all those years of missing her, of hurting her, of wishing it could be different into words. Of wishing that I had been different. That I had been better.
“Don’t ever forgive me,” I say. “I don’t deserve it.”
I see the tears well up in her eyes, and her lips part. She reaches up to touch my face, and damn it, damn it, I’ve made her sad.
“I love you,” I tell her. “I love you more than I’ll ever love anything. Do you know that?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
I want that to be enough. I want so badly for that to be enough. But I wouldn’t feel like this if it were.
“Love me,” she says.
That’s all I’ll ever do.
18
HARLOW
The fundraiser and Community Action Night—its official name on the flyers Shantha and I put all over the neighborhood—is a huge success.
Even with Shantha’s black eye and split lip, she’s still swinging behind the bar, leaving me free to go out and, as she put it, “shmooze.” I think under any other circumstances, with all these politicians and people in suits, I might feel out of place. Nervous about having to chat them up, impress them. But knowing this is about my home, this neighborhood, what I mostly feel is invigorated. I can do this. I am doing this.
And Marcus is right here with me.
He’s in a suit, moving about, charming people. I forgot he could do that when he really wanted to. It’s not normal for him and I know it tires him, but he can do it. And damn, does he clean up good.
It’s almost enough to make me forget how uneasy I feel.
Ever since coming back from upstate, when we saw Dill, I’ve been trying to work on understanding. On moving through all the anger and abandonment I felt when he left, and trying to imagine why he must have done that. That sounds simple, or like something I should have done years ago, but I don’t think I realized before how much Marcus just up and leaving like that triggered every single fault line in my still fragile psyche. I mean, losing people? Biggest fear, right there, for obvious reasons. And then I lost him.
It’s not an excuse. I’ve been grappling with the idea, after watching him with Dill, and remembering all the ways he was there for me, that maybe I owe him a little bit of faith. Maybe I owed it to him, this whole time. I mean, granted, a five-year absence requires a whole lot of faith, but this is the man who went and checked on Dill and then crawled back up into my bedroom just to hold me until I fell asleep every night for three months. This is the man who refused to leave my side until I could eat on my own. This is the man who watched me crumple in grief and just said, nope, that’s not happening, let me help you with that.
Talk about faith.
I just don’t know. I love him, and I am terrified to lose him again. And part of me is sure I will, and so I’m holding back. I’m terrified to forgive him and be his again, his to hold, his to break. I can’t help how I feel either way.
I’m a mess.
And none of these people can know it.
It looks like this might actually be working. There are so many more people here than I would have thought, and at least three members of the zoning board. Maria is here, too, even though she accepted the offer, just to be supportive. It makes me feel like we tapped into something, some resentment that was already there, like people had already had enough. It makes me feel like there’s hope.
I stand up straight and smile and make myself walk over to Gus Finney, a portly little man with a big temper, a white beard, and a smiling red face who I think I remember from when I was a kid. He used to play the piano for the elementary school musicals. And now he has a reputation as being the firebrand on the zoning board, like this irritable little Santa Claus.
And he’s thinking about running for City Council, which means he needs an issue, something to take a stand on. He’s my best shot.
“Mr. Finney,” I say. “I’m so glad you could make it.”
“Have you seen the lady with the bacon wrapped shrimp?” he says. He seems really concerned about the shrimp. I don’t entirely blame him; Shantha got a caterer friend to make some amazing appetizers.
Still, it’s not exactly what I want to be talking about.
“I’ll get you your own platter of shrimp if you stop this development,” I say.
That gets his attention.
Finney looks at me, his red face round with surprise—round eyes, round cheeks, round mouth—and then he bursts out laughing.
“You favor subtlety, I see,” he says. “I think if you want to start bribing people, young lady, you have a lot to learn.”
My turn to grin. Until I realize he might not be joking—how can I ever compete with actual bribes?
And that’s when I realize Gus Finny is looking pointedly at the front door. Across all those people, mingling, sipping their prosecco and red wines, eating their shrimp and crab rangoons, I suddenly see what Gus Finney sees.
Alex Wolfe. Alex and Brison Wolfe are crashing this event.
I immediately look for Marcus, and find him standing next to a wall, staring at his father and brother. And a coldness takes root in my heart.
***
Watching Marcus brood while he stares down his father makes me anxious in an immediate, reflexive way. There’s a reason for that.
Looking back, I guess nothing is perfect forever, right? And Marcus was perfect. Once we admitted how we felt, once we started to get physical, it was just like this massive force with its own inexorable momentum, like we were both swept up in it. There wasn’t much middle ground for either of us. We’d both been holding back for so long, for different reasons, that we had all this love, all this passion stored up.
It was…intense.
I wanted to have
sex with him so badly I could feel it. I mean I could literally feel the desire radiating off of my skin, like heat. It made me insane. It felt like I was redlining my internal engine, like I needed some relief or I was going to spin apart at the seams, which is why it was good that Marcus was still the epitome of self-control.
I’m glad he made me wait. I’m glad he let me know how seriously he took it, how important it was to him, especially given what happened later. It would have crushed me to have to wonder, after he left, whether it meant as much to him as it did to me.
At least I had that.
That’s not to say that everything outside of us was perfect. I learned to miss my parents in a whole new way as I was falling in love with Marcus. The first time I kissed him, the first time I stayed over, the first time I had sex—I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to have my mom to talk to. I had no one to talk to, though Mrs. Mankowski tried, because she was just that sweet. Standing there with her hair in curlers around her head, pretending it didn’t make her uncomfortable. I just hugged her and thanked her, and said there was no need to worry.
She looked relieved.
But the truth was, I did need someone to talk to. Maybe if I’d had anyone in my life who could have done that, who could have been older, wiser, I wouldn’t have let myself fall so far, so fast. I mean, I was imagining an entire life with Marcus already. It felt like the real thing, and we were different, and nothing could go wrong. We were invulnerable.
We were perfect.
The way I finally convinced Marcus I was ready to have sex with him was by asking him if he was ready—in all that time, it hadn’t occurred to me that maybe it would be just as big a deal to him as it was to me, that maybe he wanted to make sure I was doing it for deeper reasons than just wanting him. I guess I’d gotten so used to Marcus thinking about me so much that I took it for granted. I owed him more than that, though.
Maybe I still do.
But nothing I do, nothing Marcus does or has done, nothing anyone does, can take the memory of our first time away from me. I don’t know what anyone else’s first time was like. I mean, I know, in the sense that people talk about it; I have an idea. There’s awkward fumbling, and some people just want to get it over with, and some people actually get to be in love, though usually there’s still some awkward fumbling going on.
Part of me wishes everyone could have a first time like the one Marcus gave me, but I don’t think it would be possible without everything that came before it, and I don’t wish that on anyone. Even we had a little bit of awkward fumbling in the beginning, Marcus being so careful with me, having to ease into me. I still remember his strong arms shaking on either side of me from the excitement, the set of his jaw as he controlled every movement, how is eyes never left mine. But it didn’t take long for something to happen.
It crept up on me, slowly, filling me as Marcus filled me, until I was overcome. I remember the exact sensation. This storm ripped through me, this well of grief and gratitude and love, everything mixed together at once, all the weight and power of the last two and half years coming together in this moment when I could finally feel them all, when I could finally look at Marcus and let myself show him all the ways I felt about him. It was all there, the good and the bad, all the things that allowed me to know and love Marcus deeper, to know what it meant to appreciate him, to cherish him. To know that who I had become was inextricably tied to him, that we’d molded each other, shaped each other. I wouldn’t have known something like that was actually possible. It felt like something that was happening to me, something that was changing me from the inside out, something I had no power to resist.
And I didn’t want to resist it. I was happy. God, I was truly happy. I was so in love with Marcus Roma that he made me believe in happiness again. He made me believe in him, and that was all that mattered to me.
I’m also pretty sure most people don’t get to have an orgasm the first time they have sex, either. But Marcus…well, he’s Marcus. He made sure.
Anyway, I’ve heard it both ways, some people claiming that having sex changes you, others saying that there’s no difference at all. Personally I think it’s not sex that matters, it’s whether or not the sex was emotionally significant. I know I was different afterwards. And Marcus was, too. I know this because he told me.
And I thank God that he told me, because if I had to piece together how he felt after what happened, I think it would have broken me beyond all repair.
So after sex, yes, we were more in love. This thing that we had shared together felt like ours alone, this thing that only we had experienced—I mean, we were young, of course we thought we were special. But it cemented us together even more, and convinced me that Marcus truly was mine.
But it was also around that time that Marcus started to seem distant sometimes, that he started to brood the way he’s brooding now, standing in the shadows of the bar while he watches Alex Wolfe.
At the time, I told myself that I shouldn’t take it personally. That whatever it was, I could trust Marcus. After all, he had just buried the man he’d grown up thinking was his father, and his mother had left town without even saying goodbye; I didn’t think the fallout from that was going to disappear just because we were in love. I was determined to take care of him just like he’d taken care of me. So I told myself over and over again, Don’t take it personally. Don’t freak out.
Except, of course, obviously I was freaking out a little bit, because this was the first time Marcus had ever kept anything from me. Ever. I mean, Marcus not telling me about something important that was going on in his life? It didn’t even occur to me as a possibility until it happened.
I don’t know. Maybe we were too young to handle that kind of love. Maybe I just didn’t handle it right. Maybe, in the same way that I’m starting to think I just wasn’t enough for Marcus, I wasn’t receptive enough, maybe I didn’t listen enough.
But he started to brood, started to think heavily about things he wasn’t telling me about, and he started to spend all that time with Alex Wolfe. And it wasn’t too long after that that Marcus left me to go work for his father’s company on the other side of the country. No, he didn’t just leave. He disappeared. He didn’t give me an explanation or a goodbye; all I got were some text messages, some vague promises, and, when I demanded more, even those stopped.
It was completely baffling. It still is baffling.
And here Marcus is again, brooding, as Alex Wolfe shows back up in my life. I can’t help but wonder about what Marcus will do next.
I turn back to Gus Finney, who’s telling me some story I’m sure I’m supposed to be laughing at, but I can barely see him. Instead I look again for Marcus, and this time I see him talking to Alex Wolfe, the two of them huddled away in a corner, and my stomach cramps. I feel cold. I feel lightheaded. I feel like I can’t breathe at all, like my lungs are frozen in my chest, like my body doesn’t want time to move forward, because it knows what happens next.
This is when Marcus leaves.
But no, dammit, this is exactly what I’ve been fighting against. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to figure out. Trying to find a way that Marcus leaving the way he did makes sense, a way to understand both how he loved me and how he left me. And all I’ve been able to come up with is that there’s something I fundamentally don’t understand. Watching Marcus talk to his father and his brother, the three of them standing there all looking alike, all with that same fierce expression, those same penetrating eyes, it occurs to me that maybe that sense of family belonging was just too important to him. That maybe I didn’t have a right to deny him that. Because that was something I had that Marcus never got, and maybe he needed it.
I might never understand why he left me like that. But maybe I owe it to him—to the man who took care of me—to just believe him. To believe him that it mattered. That he did the best he could.
I want to trust him so badly.
And that’s when Gus Finne
y leans in and says, “Pay attention, Ms. Chase. I think you’ll like this.”
Gus Finney grabs his shrimp fork and starts tapping away at his glass of prosecco, saying, “Excuse me, everyone! Excuse me!”
Slowly, the room falls silent. I feel myself start to blush under all that attention, because it feels like everyone can see what I’m really thinking about, which is, of course, Marcus. I know that’s ridiculous, and I admonish myself to pay attention. Apparently something important is happening.
“I hope Ms. Chase here won’t mind,” Finney is saying, smiling at me with this patronizing Santa Claus thing he has going on, “but I want to take this opportunity to make what I think is a prescient announcement. Friends and neighbors, I’m going to run for City Council. I’m going to win. And we are going to stop these irresponsible developments right in their tracks!”
Finney raises his glass triumphantly amid some cheers and modest applause. I smile as hard as I can, clapping away, because I know I should be elated. This is the best-case scenario—someone else has taken up the fight, someone with the power to actually annoy the developers. Maybe they’ll move on, even if it’s only a couple of blocks over. Maybe I won’t have to lose Dill’s home.
So why don’t I actually feel happy?
I let myself melt away into the crowd of movers and shakers coming forward to shake Finney’s hand and do whatever it is these people do at moments like this—I don’t know, make appointments for backroom deals? Trade secret handshakes?—because I’m just feeling disoriented. The truth is I can’t get Marcus out of my mind. I turn and look for him again, and when I don’t see him, my stomach drops even further.
He was just there. He was just talking to Alex Wolfe. And then Finney made his announcement, and now he’s gone.
I spin around, totally oblivious to everything else now, desperately searching for any sign of Marcus. I’m so worked up that I miss him approach, and when I turn around again, he’s right behind me.
