I fell
in love with Marcus first thing in the morning on a muggy Thursday when it was much
too late.
That
morning, I woke up on the cot in Emily’s living room. I was in the process of
moving cross-country and was crashing with her in the three day interim between giving up
my apartment and catching a cheap flight out East. My entire life-it seemed-was packed into two oversized bags on
the floor beside the cot.
I’d been
having a nightmare about missing my plane and sat bolt upright, fumbling in
mindless panic for my phone. It wasn’t even 5am.
With the
adrenaline coursing through me, I decided it would be fruitless to try for a
few more minutes of sleep. I rolled off the cot, tripped on my bag and cursed
quietly for being clumsy and making noise. I slowly made my way to the bathroom
to shower. I had already packed all of my toiletries into my grandad’s old army
duffel, so I used Emily’s shampoo and her roommate Marcus’s shower gel. I was
toweling my hair, wondering whether a blow-dryer would be too noisy, when I
heard the alarm on my phone going off.
My phone
alarm is obnoxiously loud; it’s unnecessarily peppy and generally the most
horrible thing that could happen to you before noon. Emily (never much of a
morning person) would murder me.
“Shit!
Shit! Buggar! Shit! Fuck!” I pulled the towel around me (that had guest written on it in permanent marker
for some unfathomable reason), careened out of the bathroom, down the hall,
nearly colliding with Marcus, who emerged from his pitch-dark bedroom in his
boxer-briefs.
“Sorry!”
I whispered. He probably couldn’t hear me over the hideous sound of my alarm.
I wiped
out halfway across the living room and crashed into the side of the cot. Scrambling
frantically, I came up with the phone in a tangle of sheets. I hit ‘dismiss’ on
the alarm, and all went quiet. Mostly quiet. I could hear Marcus chuckling from
the hallway. A far better reaction than I had anticipated. I briefly wondered
if Marcus was one of those damnably pleasant morning people that are happy to
be alive even at ungodly hours. Then I realized that the more likely reason was
that I probably looked quite deranged, charging down the hallway in Emily’s unreliable
guest towel and engaging in a bizarre wrestling match with a threadbare quilt
on the cot in his living room.
“Oh,
piss off.” I told him. He did.
Marcus
was Emily’s least talkative, and perhaps best friend. They’d lived together for two years and
seemed to get along fairly well. He was nice and easygoing, but I’d honestly
never given him much thought. If I had, I’d have been mortified to think that
he’d just seen me practically naked.
I
tiptoed back to the bathroom, relieved not to hear any sounds of activity from
Emily’s room. I pulled on my travel clothes, brushed my teeth with the guest
toothbrush that had a smiley face and my name written on it in gold Sharpie. I
braided my hair, as I couldn’t run the risk of using a hair dryer. (The alarm
had been a close enough call already.) I couldn’t find any of Emily’s
deodorant, so again I used Marcus’s. Like his shower gel, it smelled like sexy pine trees. I
pictured them strutting their stuff in the alpine forests, impressing all the
lady trees. In my defense, I tend to be a little loopy that early in the
morning.
When I
left the bathroom, a little more collected this time, I ran into Marcus in the
hallway again. This time I actually looked at him. He was still shirtless, so I
started at his hips and worked my way up from there. I couldn’t fathom how he’d
managed to hide such an impressive body from me for the three years I'd known him. He was sturdy
and toned, with broad shoulders and capable-looking arms. He yawned, loudly. I
also noticed that his hair was rumpled and his eyes were still crinkly from
sleep. He had pulled on a pair of jeans, and held a dark coloured t-shirt in
his hand.
“You’re
getting up?” I whispered, stupidly. People don’t usually put jeans on to go
back to bed.
“Sure,” he
rumbled with a crinkly smile. “I’ll give you a ride to the airport.” His voice
didn’t exactly boom, but he wasn’t trying to be quiet. I shuffled a few steps
away from Emily’s door and from him.
I
purposefully whispered, “That’s ok, I’ll take a cab.”
“It’s 5:30am, and I’m reasonably sober.” I
wondered if he’d quoted Casablanca on purpose. There was something vaguely
Humphrey Bogart-ish in the way he’d said it. I suspected he’d been spending too
much time with Emily on her latest classic movie binge, and it was starting to
show.
“It’s ok,
you can go back to sleep.”
“Nope.
The pants are on,” He gestured to something I’d already taken in. I had the
brief, embarrassed thought that he may have noticed me checking him out.
He
followed me into the living room, pulling his shirt on effortlessly while he
told me, “While I’m not too picky about taking them off, when I put pants on,
it’s a big deal.”
Taking
everything in stride, he grabbed one half of my life, lifting it easily as
though I’d packed pillows and cotton candy instead of a shelf-full of textbooks
and laundry.
“Car’s
out back.”
I
stuffed my pajamas into my carryon backpack, did a couple of stretches, and
grappled with the other ridiculously heavy duffel (which was the lighter of the
two).
We drove
with the windows down, not really saying much. I probably thanked him for the
ride a few times, but between the rush of air, the radio and Marcus’s quiet
nature, not much was really said.
But I
couldn’t stop staring at
him-at the lines of his jaw in pre-dawn silhouette as he
drove, his arms, his smile. He was still cryptically, pervasively, maddeningly,
endearingly smiling. He hummed along with the song on the radio. Maybe he
really was a pleasant damn morning person.
“Can I
buy you breakfast?” I asked. I pointed to a drive-thru a couple of blocks
ahead.
“You
read my mind!”
It was
my turn to grin, so I joined him and I thought we must look ridiculous and
happy together. Or maybe we just were ridiculous and happy.
We got
our breakfast sandwiches and he insisted on paying. We ate in the comfort of
one of his silences, and just as I was falling in love, we arrived at the
airport. I expected to hop out of his car at the drop-off spot and wave goodbye
as he pulled away. Instead, he pulled into short-term parking, shouldered one
of my bags, smiled at me as I found a garbage can for our breakfast wrappers and
he walked me in like you would with a family member, a young child, or a lover.
I
checked in at a kiosk while he found a trolley for my luggage.
“All
set?” He asked. I nodded.
His arms
circled around me and he whispered, “Be safe.”
“You
too,” came my automatic reply. I was too busy taking in the smell of him and
the feel of his body against mine to focus much on dialogue. To my delight, his
arms didn’t let go immediately. His scruffy cheek brushed lightly against my temple.
He tensed, “Hang on a sec.”
I waited.
“You smell so good!”
Busted. My
entire face felt crimson.
“Yeah, I
kinda used your sexy pine tree soap.”
Luckily
he was chuckling instead of being angry or creeped out.
“That’s
ok. It smells better on you.” It really didn’t. Now that I’d smelled it on him,
my whole relationship to evergreens would never be the same.
There
was a pause. It was different from his silences, because I could feel we were
both waiting for something. Turns out, we were both waiting for the same thing.
It is
common knowledge among our odd assortment of friends that I’m a notorious romantic.
Emily loves to make fun of me for it. If anyone is going to act like and ass
and profess their newfound unrequited love at the airport, it should be me. He
saw me taking my deep breath and he smiled.
“I’m
really going to miss you, Marcus.” I told him honestly.
He shook
his head and sighed. His brown eyes burrowed into mine and made a home there.
“You’re
such a sap,” He drawled.
“What?”
“You’re
going to tell me you love me.” He said it simply; it was a fact. We both knew
it. But I felt it, I couldn’t help myself.
“Of
course I am!”
“At the
airport,” one of his eyebrows arched up at me. It seemed to echo Emily’s cynical
laughter.
“I
practically have to.”
“…Before
leaving for four years.” Was there a little hurt, a little longing in his eyes?
Or was it just my romanticism taking hold?
“Well…yeah.”
“Of
course you are.”
I
laughed, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
“Uh-huh.,”
He muttered and rolled his eyes, still smiling like the smell of coffee on a
Sunday morning. “I love you too.”
There
was an ache under the words and I felt it stinging at the corners of my eyes. I
hugged him again, fiercer this time. I hadn’t said it; but he had.
“Come
home to us.” His voice was shaky and almost a growl in my ear as he held me just
as tightly as I held him.
Eventually
I broke away to fumble with my bags, which were slouching slowly off the trolley.
“Bye.”
There should have been a better
farewell. But in the end, there never is. And we take what meagre scraps we can
find.
Take what is offered and that must
sometimes be enough. (Richard Morgan)
