the girl’s voice was silvery and saccharine sweet, red painted fingernail trailing up and down marcus’ forearm as if she were carving her secrets into him. he floated through the conversation as he was supposed to. he plied himself with alcohol because it made the dialogue easier. if he found the will to focus hard enough, she really wasn’t the worst that he could do. part of him felt guilty, and even a little cheap, but he knew that this was a part of the process of moving on. when the bar announced last call and she pulled him out and into an empty alleyway, he realized how long they had been talking. it made him feel worse, to be in uninterrupted conversation with someone for hours and be so unaffected. when she kissed him, he felt nothing. not even a twitch of emotion. but he kissed her back, because he was supposed to. he held out, sure that some sort of passion or enthusiasm would come along if he tried harder or if he got greedy enough. he waited, and unsurprisingly, nothing in him stirred. it had been five weeks now, and marcus began to wonder if his heart had been locked in a tourniquet for too long – if the organ had went ahead and died all together. this wasn’t moving on.
when they say goodbye, much to her disappointment, marcus knows he should stumble home. he smelled of whiskey and faint perfume, his head pounded in his skull, and the copious amount of alcohol in his bloodstream did little to diminish the chill in the air. when the mist of rain starts, the decision is even simpler. but marcus knew where he wanted to be, and the last place was his apartment, haunted with the relics of the only person he wanted. so, ending up at elena’s front door wasn’t much of a conscious decision, his logical mind was left back at that grimy bar two miles back. no, this was more of a 'all roads lead here' decision. he felt relief that all his walking wasn’t entirely in vain at the sight of her car in the driveway and the light on in her bedroom. the mist of rain had morphed into a soft drizzle, and the chill in the air had become oppressive. hand reaches to knock on the door until it dawns on him that she didn’t live alone, and god only knew that he didn’t have the wits about him to feign conversation with anyone else tonight. pulls out his phone, nearly drained of battery, the time reading 2:32 AM. if he were in better spirits, he probably would’ve laughed at the irony.
finger groggily presses her contact photo and the phone stutters, as if the device knew it was a bad idea, then proceeds to die in his hand. an agitated groan rises from his throat as marcus shoves the phone back inside his pocket, the pounding in his head only growing more severe from the setback. steps back, working hard to think through the thick fog that clouded his mind. helplessly, he stares up at her illuminated window. the night owl, he thinks to himself. the loose gravel of her driveway is loud beneath his shoes, and the fog is temporarily lifted as he grabs a few handfuls and pitches it up toward the glass. most of it misses it's intended target, his aim obviously skewed, but it doesn’t take long for her familiar silhouette to appear above him. marcus can feel the kickstart of his heart and a genuine relief floods his system, suddenly reassured that his heart was actually still there after all. he meets her confusion with a finger pointed toward the front door, doing his best to communicate between a pane of glass and the rain coming down. he’s posing a question, and when elena’s silhouette disappears from view, marcus can only pray that she’ll answer how he hopes.
it’s this period of waiting that anxiety rears its ugly head. he honestly had not thought his far. for the past five weeks, marcus had moved through all of the appropriates motions of his life; he had gone to work, answered his emails, ate enough. frankly, he survived. but his mind had operated like a broken loop pedal. reiterative and unwavering of her, her, her. only her. they had never been together, but both of them knew that they were very much together. and even if it had only been a few months, but he still was nursing deep wounds that refused to even scab over. maybe he should’ve felt ridiculous for being so inconsolable, but she had left some sort of indentation on him, and interpreting thoughts or words regarding it proved impossible.
the door swings eventually open to her, staring at him, dumbfounded and confused. marcus can feel his ribcage working overtime to keep his once idle heart at bay. “i know,” he says, voice cutting through the white noise of the rain. he tried to cut her off at the pass, before she could turn him away, before she could even say utter a word. “i swear to god, i’ll be quick.” normally so pragmatic and rational, marcus now fought hard to hide the slur in his speech. he had to use his time wisely. “i kissed someone else,” he announces suddenly, watching her face twist at the revelation. “i thought it was what i needed to do. i thought that it would help me move on, help me get over you and everything you ever made me feel, but i was wrong. it only made it worse.” his gaze was anchored on her tiny frame, finding looking at her to be a painful challenge. “look,” takes a step closer to minimize their distance, voice brimming with conviction, “i understand that whatever borrowed time i had is already up, and i know that you have your reasons — but i’m in love with you, ” understands the heavy vow that falls from his lips, the atmosphere immediately shifting into one that felt much, much more desperate. “i needed you to know that, even if it doesn’t change anything. i couldn’t walk away from this—walk away from you, without you hearing me say it.” rain water seeped through his clothes and he was shaking, but not from the cold. “and i know that i’m drunk right now, but i won’t be tomorrow morning ⸻ i’ll wake up and still be so in love with you that i can’t fucking think straight.”
