I made my phone calls, then sat next to Mark and let him put his arm around me. We made plans for dinner. We went to Three Bars early in the evening and sat at our table how I always preferred—with both of us on the same side. Mark texted Wang, who could only come out for a minute, but he wished us well and he pumped my hand with genuine warmth. I ate my turkey fucking meatball and it was as good as that first meatball, from all those months ago.
I asked how the rest of the Ugly Rhinos were doing.
“Devon and Shane are making it work, apparently. Still going strong.”
“They were live-in partners for years.”
“Well, now it’s official and they’re loving it.”
“Still open?”
“Not to us,” Mark said smartly.
“I never would have gone for Devon,” I reminded him gently. “I was just being nice.”
“You’re nice to everyone,” he said stubbornly.
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“You need to control yourself. You give people mixed signals... I really don’t want you hanging out so much with Travis.”
“He’s dating a girl. He was shocked when you walked in with me.” Shit. What’s with you needing to be all over me like this? “And we’re in a restaurant, so let’s not fight.”
“I’m not fighting.”
“We’re arguing, or whatever. This has been going on all day. It has to stop. We have to be nicer to each other.” I looked at him sadly. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry we weren’t there for each other. I’m sorry we wasted all that time.”
He swallowed. “I’m sorry I can’t get over it. I wish I could.... I want it to be like it was before. We talked so easily before. Man, I had it good—I didn’t know until it was gone how good I had it. You were always there... my best friend to talk to, to sleep next to. You’re my best bro. I love you so much.”
“I love you, too...” more than you will ever know.
“I love you more, more than you will ever know.”
“How the fuck did you do that?!” I cried, making a scene and drawing the attention of the diners. I lowered my voice. “How did you do that? You read my mind like...”
“You said it to me once. After my family’s Thanksgiving. After we... when you... um... you were pretty out of it.”
“What did I say?”
“I was talking to you. Saying how much I loved you. And then you woke up for half a minute and that’s what you said.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll never forget it. Because it was so true. I had made you into this mostly gay boyfriend... and you went along with it. It was after you fucked me.”
“I wanted to show you how much—”
“I know. I really, really loved it. And I love you. And it all felt so good. Then I thought about how much I was changing you. And how much you resisted me.”
“I didn’t resist that hard.”
“You resisted every step of the way.” Mark’s lip quivered. “But you kept doing what I wanted. You kept following me down every road. Because you loved me so much and you...”
“Babe, it’s okay. If I didn’t want to do that, I wouldn’t have been with you.”
“I know.” He looked down at his hands. “I know I’m being silly. But I didn’t want you to make those sacrifices. I wanted it to come naturally. I didn’t want to have to push you, and manage you and... manipulate you.”
“I like being manipulated,” I said simply. “Don’t give me that look. I do.” Now it was my turn to gulp and look at my empty plate. “I’ve always been scared to get in a relationship because I didn’t want to end up with someone who didn’t really care. Who would just take advantage of me like I was worthless. But you were always so careful and considerate. In return, I would have given you anything you asked.”
“Don’t you see how that’s too much to give someone?”
“I was in good hands. I don’t know...” I coughed nervously. “I don’t know if I can ever get back to that. That might have been a once in a lifetime kind of thing.”
“We’ll get back, we’ll get back to us. But I don’t want to be that guy, that guy with all the power over you. I want us to make decisions together. I never want to hurt you. I hurt you so bad... I want it to be nothing but up and up from here on out.”
“That’s some wishful thinking,” I said around the lump in my throat.
“I’m never leaving you again. I know you don’t believe me and you think that’s too big of a promise, but it’s not. It’s really not. That’s the easiest promise I could ever make. I am never going to leave you.”
“Okay.”
“And since you still don’t believe me, I’m going to make a smaller promise... we might fight and we might have rough times... but I will always come back to you. Okay?”
“Okay.” God, I’ve already agreed to this. You don’t have to keep repeating yourself.
“How’s this for a promise... I want to mix the two together. We might fight... I’ll acknowledge that. We aren’t perfect people. But if we fight, no matter how mean or how dirty, I will always come back to you. You will never go to bed wondering if you’re alone. You will always go to bed knowing you have me.”
“You can stop making promises,” I said.
“That’s the best one! I really like that one. That’s my pledge to you. We might be separated by business trips or whatever, but you will always go to bed knowing that I’m your man. Always.”
“Okay,” I said, for what felt like the hundredth time. My face was burning and I just wanted to pay the bill already.
We left Three Bars. We went home. We sat. We watched the second episode of the second season of Game of Thrones. Mark wanted to watch the third. We watched the third.
We went to bed. Mark changed the sheets on his bed back to the striped ones he had bought for me all those months ago. “No one else slept on these, just me,” he promised.
“Okay.”
He stripped.
I went into the guest room and changed into gym shorts with nothing underneath.
Mark knocked on the doorframe. “Hey,” he said softly. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know.” He was back in his plaid bottoms, but bare-chested.
“Do I get to sleep with you tonight? Or are we going to do it like we did at first? Jumping from room to room. You don’t have to get naked if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t know what I want.” I felt stranded, disconnected.
“Do you want me?”
I sighed. “Yes. I want you. But this is all so much. So much change. So much you. So much... so much explaining to do.”
“We don’t have to explain to anyone.” Mark knelt in front of me, but then he stood and sat on the bed without touching me. “No one. It’s just us here. Nobody else matters.”
“I know,” I said. “I really do love you. You’re the only—” I sighed. “I think you’re probably my one and only.”
“Probably?”
“You know what I mean,” I said quickly, ignoring the fact that he wasn’t wired like me and probably couldn’t relate to that idea in the slightest. “Before you, I didn’t think I’d be able to love someone and be loved in return... like what you gave me. You really did change my way of thinking.”
“You’re a special guy.” He touched my hand. I let him hold it.
“I didn’t think—You know how difficult I am. I have so many things that need to be a certain way.”
“You’re high maintenance, but in a good way.”
“Oh my gosh, we are not going back to When Harry Met Sally.”
“It’s a good movie.”
“You just want to grow up to be Billy Crystal.”
“His voice is God,” Mark professed. I had no idea what he meant and have never understood that phrase.
“If you start quoting movies to me, I’m going to start calling you Julia.”
“For Julia Roberts?”
“Who else?” What a dun
ce!
“Julia Child. Do you want to watch Julie and Julia?”
“No!”
“I was just asking.”
“I don’t want to watch any movies. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to be here right now. I just want to skip to the end where everything is alright and we’re happy and everything has worked out. Can’t we do that?”
Mark gripped my hand. “We are happy right now. Nothing is ever going to be perfect, but I’m going to make you a happy man. Just give me the chance.”
“I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about Stacy, who’s going to go nuts. I’m worried about Lynn, who hates you. I’m worried about your family, seeing as they apparently hate me.”
“I’ll smooth them over this weekend. You can always come with...” He dangled the invitation. “That would certainly put us back to normal.”
“Not normal. I want to be the new normal... where my parents know about you, and my family knows. And if we do something special together, I want to be able to tell them, and show them. I want to be open about us.”
“We’ll get there.”
“I’ll tell my parents tomorrow.”
“It’s your choice.”
I waffled. “I’m not going to do it tomorrow! Shit! We just got back together ten hours ago. When should it happen? Next week? A week from then? A month?”
“How about when I put a ring on that finger.”
“Fat chance.”
Mark scoffed. “Would you really deny me? If I got down on my knee right now, would you really break my heart?”
I stared at him. He had knelt in front of me less than twenty minutes earlier. My jaw was shut but it felt like my mouth was hanging off my face. “Do you have—” I stumbled over the words. “Did you have a ring picked out before we broke up?”
“No.” He blushed. I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not.
“Are you lying?”
“No.”
“You’re definitely lying. I told you no rings.”
“I know! I didn’t have one picked out! Shit! Lay off my case.”
I chuckled.
“What? What’s so funny?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “This all feels so... like it was meant to be. I can’t even explain it.”
He glared at me. “Don’t try to get cute. I didn’t buy a ring. I told you I wouldn’t. I just wondered if you would actually deny me. You always had a problem saying ‘no’.”
“You could get me to do just about anything,” I confirmed. “But I won’t do that.”
“Anything for love, eh?”
“But I won’t do that,” I restated for emphasis.
“Why don’t we go out on the couch? We can fall asleep watching a movie. Your choice.”
I agreed and said we should watch a Julia Roberts movie. He suggested Eat, Pray, Love. I said Pretty Woman. We settled on Notting Hill. I mocked Hugh Grant’s accent and his wimpy, whiny nature just like I had the first time we watched it. Then I bawled my fucking eyes out when we got to the scene where the seasons changed. Things got really quiet after that and I pressed against Mark as we laid on the couch. His hand found mine and maintained a firm grip. I cried as silently as possible.
We watched the rest of the movie in relative silence.
Mark fell asleep before me... so here was something else new in our relationship—in the past, he’d only ever fall asleep before me if he’d had too much to drink. I was always early to bed and early to rise. However, that night I fell asleep after the credits rolled and he had long since given in to exhaustion.
Later, he was breathing heavily behind my ear and woke me up. I kissed him on the forehead as I rolled off the couch, then checked the sheets in the guest room, then I paced across the hall to the master bedroom and sat on his bed.
I smelled the room. I listened as he started to snore again in the living room, sighed.
Then I got up, turned the light on and walked out to the couch. I poked Mark in the shoulder until he got up, which he did with a bear-like yawn. Then I continued to poke him until he made it into his bed. He fell into his sheets.
I put a pillow under his head and lay beside him listening to his breathing even out.
I thought about the passing of the seasons.
I thought about all the time we had wasted by breaking up.
I thought about my grandma, and how she had been married to my grandpa for over sixty years. And how her funeral had been so big, how my friends—Tim, Stacy and their daughter, Ryan, Amber and their twins, Suhail and Mel (who was still technically, somewhat dating Suhail at that time) had all showed up for me. I remembered running my hands through Charlotte’s hair in a detached way as I sat in the back room and tried to control my emotions. I remembered looking at the twins, and how Stacy had to coax me out of that back room.
Sixty years. My grandparents had been married for a long time. They had only dated for a year and a half before getting married. She was four years younger than him. Times were different back then—you got married young.
I would be eighty-nine if Mark and I were together for sixty years. Mark was about four years younger than me.
I was a year older than my dad was when I was born...
Well, I thought as I drifted to sleep, we’re not going to get married, so I guess we’re not going to beat my grandparents. They were well past sixty years, anyway. I’d have to be ninety-seven and Mark would have to be ninety-three if we were going to beat them.
Tuesdays With My Parents
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up sprawled over his chest with my leg covering his lower body and my hard-on pressed against his hairy thigh. Mark was on his back with an arm over my shoulder. He was breathing heavy, not quite a snore, but it was ragged and deep and it sounded just like him.
It was a joy to wake up to this.
I stared at him, then untangled myself and lay in bed next to him. I watched him sleep—he was always a beautiful sleeper—his resting face was so naturally handsome. His muscles were perfectly proportioned so he didn’t need to work on certain groups like I had to if I wanted to look symmetrical.
I hadn’t been going to the gym as religiously as Mark would have wanted. Nor had I been running as frequently. My spare time had all been eaten by this app development and I’d been frantically working with Nick, especially over the last couple of months, to prepare our product for prime time. I had recruited a small database of potential beta volunteers. My goal was to find ten new volunteers a day—people who gave a firm ‘yes’ to using our app. Most days I could cold call and get at least three. I relied heavily on attending 5k walks for breast cancer awareness or organ donation... or basically anything health-related that needed awareness. That was our niche.
My presentation was quick and dirty. I asked for their identifying information; I promised that our app would be simple and intuitive and free; I promised that by using our app, they would help steer future research focusing on treating and living with their health conditions. I could routinely find fifty people willing to give me their email addresses at those charity events.
In return I would give them a sample of the app and encourage them to give us feedback.
These strangers probably took pity on me. I had no idea how many of these names would use our official app when we finally launched... or how many would open the app and then immediately delete it. I just... had no idea. So I kept looking for more volunteers and it stressed me out.
That’s what I needed to do on that particular Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday. And every day.
I was supposed to call a network of cancer researchers that morning. I had my notes on my Google Drive so they could be accessed anywhere, but I still would have preferred to be near my home computer. Eventually I’d have to wake up, get out of bed, and sneak away to work at my apartment.
And then there were all those calls I skipped last night because I was with Mark.
I ran my fingers through my hair just
to pass the time as I watched Mark—breathing—sleeping—making me feel things I hadn’t felt in a long time. I still kind of wanted to kill him... on some level there was an urge to make him feel the pain and abandonment I went through.
The hidden rage welled up within me and forced me to sigh.
“Stoooooop,” Mark groaned.
I kept staring at him.
“Stop looking at me. Go do your typing.”
“Morning.”
“Dude, it’s too fucking early.”
“It’s ten o’clock, dudebro.”
“That’s not even funny,” Mark complained. “It’s eight. Way too fucking early. And you're just staring at me and it’s creeping me out.”
“Sorry. I’ll get up. What do you want for breakfast?”
“More sleep,” he grumbled.
He rolled onto his side away from me. I touched his shoulder in a companionable way, then got up and made breakfast. He crawled out of the bedroom about fifteen minutes later as I was plating my eggs.
“Where’s mine?” he asked.
“You can have mine.” I turned the stovetop back on.
“No. Go eat your eggs. I thought you were making some for me.”
“You said you were sleeping.”
“I thought you were going to make me get up.” Mark made his eggs in silence. I ate my eggs in silence. I stared at the two chairs I had reupholstered and were supposed to have been gifted to Mark’s grandmother.
Mark walked to the table and sat with me. “So what’s on the agenda for the day?”
“I’ve got to make a ton of calls. Then I’ve got all night with you.”
“No family?”
“They can wait. I’ve had enough Tuesday dinners with them. I’ll call and cancel.”
“Don’t.” He was adamant. “You need to keep as much of your routine as possible. You want to feel like nothing has changed. Unless you’re going to come out to them tonight.”
“I’m not.” I should, but I’m not.
“Well then. You’ve done this every Tuesday for the past few months. Keep doing it. Then, one day, you’ll take me with you.”
“I thought we didn’t want to be separated?”
“That was cute at first. But let’s be real, you aren’t coming with me this weekend. Right?”
The Fiancé (It's Just Us Here Book 6) Page 7
