Head Over Flats - Marcus

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)