Chapter Forty- Two #2
problem. You got me the lawyer, and I appreciate that—I think he’s
really good. I think he’s going to do a good job, and he’ll take
care of things and everything will be fine. And if they aren’t, and
I have to go back, then I have to go back. I can handle it.”
“Wait a second. Just…wait.” Mark tried to
marshal his thoughts. “How does my mother even know about the
hearing? What does she know about—”
“Us? I mean…this?” Lucas waved a hand in a
gesture that encompassed himself, Mark, and the apartment.
“Nothing, I don’t think. She knows I was out past curfew and got in
a fight. I don’t think she knows the rest of it.”
“So I can at least clarify that much for
her!” Mark stood and shifted his weight. Apparently he was the one
who was going to be pacing. “I can tell her you rescued me!”
“I don’t want you to.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because it gets messy. If you tell her that,
she’s going to ask questions, right? She’ll want to know how I know
you. How’d I know where you live, how’d I know what was happening
that night? All of that is going to make her ask more
questions.”
Mark listened as Lucas traced his way through
it all.
“I think she might realize that we both know
Alex. Scott Wilson has been spreading his shit all over town so
she’s probably smelled some of it by now. But, Mark, this isn’t a
good time to tell her the whole story. Not while she’s worried
about your dad, and while you and me are still trying to figure out
what exactly the story even is. And if you tell her some of it and
lie about the rest? You don’t want to lie to your mom. And I bet
you’re not a very good liar, so she’d probably catch you…”
“No.” Mark wasn’t quite sure what he was
objecting to, but he was going to do it vehemently anyway. “No.
This whole self-sacrificing martyr thing you’re doing? No. I don’t
like it and I won’t be a part of it.”
“What?” Lucas frowned. “I don’t know what a
martyr even is.”
“Someone who takes a punishment for someone
else. Someone who suffers for others.”
“I’m not taking a punishment for someone
else. Look, Mark, it’s great that you forgave me.” Lucas stopped,
obviously aware that the heat in his voice made his appreciation
sound less than sincere. He smiled ruefully. “I mean it. It’s
great. Like, literally. I can’t believe you could do it, and I’m
really, really glad that you could. But he wasn’t just your
brother. He was also her son. She has a good reason to hate me. I’m
not being a martyr, I’m taking responsibility for my actions.”
“No. You said it earlier…there’s a reason my
mom shouldn’t be a part of this hearing. This time around it’s not
about what you did years ago, it’s about what you did a couple
weeks ago. And what you did a couple weeks ago was risk yourself to
save me from a beating. They could have killed me, Lucas. And then
my mom would have lost both of her sons. You kept that from
happening and it makes no sense for you to go back to jail because
of it.”
“So the judge will see that,” Lucas said
stubbornly. “I’ll be fine.”
Mark shook his head. This was ridiculous. He
walked to the living room window, just a few steps from the kitchen
in his small apartment, and stared out at the street. He thought
about it, then nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I don’t need to talk to her in
order to help you out. I need to talk to her because I’m a grown
man and I can’t be this worried about what my mommy thinks. I can’t
keep hiding this from her.” He stepped closer to Lucas. “Because if
I don’t have to hide it from her, I don’t have to hide it from
anyone. We could walk down the street together, go out for dinner,
see a movie, go to the park. We could be a regular couple.”
Lucas frowned at him. “You think your mom is
the only one who’s going to have a problem with this? With us?”
“I think my mom is the only one that I care
if she has a problem. The rest of the world can go fuck itself,
Lucas. I want to be with you, and I don’t want to hide it. I don’t
want to act like I’m ashamed when I’m really, really not.”
Lucas kept his face still, then grinned.
“Have I ever told you how hot it is when you swear?”
“I used a strong word to express my strong
emotions.”
“Your strong emotions are hot.”
Mark had to laugh a little, but he wasn’t
going to let Lucas totally derail the conversation. “I want to talk
to her. I want to tell her everything. She’ll be upset, for sure.”
He was going to say that she’d get over it, but he honestly wasn’t
sure she ever would. Not really. Still… “She deserves to know. She
deserves the chance to make her own decision about how she’s going
to feel about me, once she knows how I feel about you.”
Lucas stared at him almost as if he was
afraid. “It’s too soon,” he said. “It’s happening too fast.”
He was talking about more than just telling
Mark’s mother. “It’s soon,” Mark agreed. “And it’s fast. But that
doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
“Can we go to bed?” The question came from
out of the blue and Mark raised his eyebrows in surprise. Lucas
grinned sheepishly. “We don’t have to decide anything tonight,
right? And we don’t have that much time.” They had an alarm clock
set in the bedroom that would warn them fifteen minutes before
Lucas’s curfew, and they were both always aware of the minutes
ticking away on it. “I’d like to…I mean, we can fool around if you
want. But if you wanted to just sleep? Or, you know, just lie
there? That’d be okay with me.”
Lucas wanted to cuddle. Mark didn’t dare use
the word because he wanted the exact same thing and if he made fun
of Lucas, it probably wouldn’t happen. “What about dinner?”
“Oh. Okay, yeah. You’re probably hungry.”
“You aren’t?”
“Sure, I guess I am.”
“Maybe we could lie down for a while,” Mark
suggested. “And then if there’s time before you leave, we could eat
then.”
“Yeah,” Lucas said. “That sounds good.”
So they made their way into the bedroom and
shed some of their clothes and climbed under the covers. They
kissed a little and then Lucas rested his head on Mark’s shoulder
and they just lay there. Lucas seemed to doze off a few times but
Mark was wide awake, his mind racing. He knew what he had to do,
and was a little ashamed that he’d waited so long to do it. By the
time the alarm went off, he was calming down. It was easier to
relax now that he’d made his decision.
“I don’t want to go,” Lucas said, but he
pushed himself upright and started groping for his shoes.
“I don’t want you to go, either.” Mark
wondered whether it would be possible to get the parole order
changed, maybe giving Lucas an option about where he had to be when
he was under curfew. But Lucas was already thinking they were
moving too fast, so Mark would leave that suggestion for another
time. But he wouldn’t wait too long, because if there was even a
possibility of Lucas being able to spend the night, Mark wanted to
do whatever he could to make it happen.
Mark staggered out to kiss Lucas goodbye at
the door, then went to the kitchen and found the salad. Maybe Lucas
could skip meals without really noticing, but Mark’s stomach
expected regular attention, and he was hungry.
The phone rang as he was finishing his first
bowl and considering a second. Call display showed his mother’s
number and he had to remind himself that he’d told Lucas he’d wait
before revealing his secret. Now that he’d decided to do it, he was
impatient to get it over with. But he wouldn’t, not until he’d
warned Lucas what was coming.
So he answered the phone with a casual, “Hi,
Mom,” and waited for her chipper response. It didn’t come. Instead,
there was a long silence, and then something that sounded like a
long, quavering breath. “Mom?”
“Mark,” she finally said. “It’s…your father.”
Another long pause as the salad in Mark’s stomach churned and sank.
“He…he had another stroke. A series of them, they say. He’s… Mark,
he’s gone.”
Mark sank down onto the stool and waited for
the words to make sense. It wasn’t until he felt the tears running
down his cheeks that the loss truly registered. His father was
dead.