18. Mark
18
MARK
I was sitting in the living room of Gigi’s house, doing nothing. I’d been doing nothing for a while, I was pretty sure. Not entirely sure, though, because that would have required paying attention to my phone, or clocks, or even the movement of the sun across the sky. I thought I had come into this room when the sun was still up, and now it was dark. But my brain had been pretty weird of late, so who the hell really knew?
Since Sunday—the day I’d broken up with Jesse, the day I couldn’t stop thinking about and wished I could forget—I’d done a whole bunch of nothing. I slept, mostly. Ironically, I’d slept better since the breakup than I had since…well, as far back as I could remember. Possibly since before I’d been deployed. It didn’t make any sense, but there it was.
But no matter how much I slept, I was still walking around the house like a zombie. And I’d never felt worse in my life. I’d even stopped working on house repairs, once I nearly sliced my thumb off on a circular saw on…had it been Tuesday? It was so hard to remember. My shop teacher in seventh grade had been missing a few fingertips. I didn’t really want to end up like him, though it was hard to care too deeply about anything right now.
And then, sitting there, in the living room, doing nothing, I saw it: my life from here on out, my own personal darkest timeline. I’d be cursed to work as a middle-school woodshop teacher, dribbling out my days, ignored by kids who couldn’t look up from their phones, and shunned by colleagues who could see how fucked up I was. I’d be alone.
I wouldn’t even be able to get a pet, since I’d inevitably die in my home, and not be found until the neighbors smelled the stench. I didn’t like the idea of being eaten by a house cat, and I wasn’t sure a dog would eat me, but then my hypothetical dog might die of starvation if it didn’t eat me, and that just seemed extra cruel.
Jesse had texted me some time in the past week. I wasn’t sure exactly when. Part of me felt like I’d spent all week waiting, hoping he’d reach out. Desperate for him to say something to make me see that this was a horrible mistake. And another part of me was grateful he hadn’t. I wasn’t sure I could put up with it if he did.
And then his text, when it did come, broke my heart even more, if that was possible. There was no begging for me to change my mind. No pleading for me to take him back. Just an offer to talk, as friends. The balm of sympathy.
I didn’t deserve it.
I forced myself not to respond, and the fact that I could somehow manage to do that only made me more disgusted with myself, more convinced there was something deeply wrong with me. I wasn’t sure that logic made sense, but I would have had to be more awake than I was to figure it out for certain.
So I just sat there, doing nothing and nothing and more nothing, until there was a knock on the door. I jumped. Gigi was upstairs, doing her best to give me space while also giving me near-constant side-eye at the same time. She hadn’t asked, but I knew she knew what was wrong.
I wanted it to be Jesse at the door. Of course I did. But if it was, would I have the strength to stay away? I had to stay away.
But the knock was insistent. A penetrating rat-a-tat-tat that wouldn’t stop, no matter how much I tried to ignore it. Eventually, Gigi called down from upstairs, asking me who it was. Dammit. She knew I was home and she was forcing me to answer the damn door myself.
I stood up from the chair, and half the joints in my body cracked. Jesus, how long had I been sitting there? I felt stiff as I walked slowly to the front hallway. Gigi had a peephole, and I put my eye to it, holding my breath.
It was Gabe. What the hell was Gabe doing here?
A weird wave of simultaneous relief and regret washed through me. It wasn’t Jesse. It had been arrogant of me to ever think it could have been. But Gabe…
I wanted to see him. Or anyone, really. I needed someone outside my own head, someone to pull me back down to reality. But at the same time, I felt exhausted just thinking about having to explain everything.
Maybe if I didn’t answer, he would just—
“Mark, I know you’re home!” Gabe shouted. “I see your car and I talked to Gigi. She told me you’re here. Mark! I know you can—”
Jesus. I opened the door in a rush. He’d have all the neighbors listening if he kept on like that.
Gabe raised an eyebrow. “So. You’re alive after all.”
“What?”
“Dude, I sent you like, twenty texts. I called you. Multiple times. You just disappeared. I was actually worried enough to look up the landline here, and God bless your grandmother for still having one. I called her, and she told me you were—well, she didn’t say what was wrong, exactly, but she made it clear that something was. When I asked her if she thought I was overreacting to be worried, she said no. And when I said I was thinking about coming to check on you, she just asked how soon I could get here.”
“You called Gigi?” I was still trying to make sense of what he was saying. “She told you to come?”
“Yeah, dude. I told you, I was worried. Now let me in before I sweat to death, and you have to clean my goo-ified remains off the porch.”
An hour later, Gabe leaned forward on the couch in the living room and steepled his fingers, giving me a long look over the top of them. I’d retreated to my chair, too embarrassed for him to see the person-shaped dent I’d made in it. It would probably stay that way for weeks. I felt like I was in for a dose of Gabe’s signature bro-wisdom and I didn’t think I was going to like it.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally.
“What?”
“I’m sorry. That sucks. It all really sucks.”
“I—um, thanks?” That wasn’t what I’d expected. Gabe fell silent and just looked at me. Maybe he was trying to be sympathetic, but I suddenly felt like I needed to say something else. Not that I had any clue what that should be. “I mean, it does suck. But I guess—I mean, I think—that is—fuck. It’s the only thing I could have done, right?”
“I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “Only you can know that. It just sucks that you have to make that kind of a choice in the first place. Not fair, really. It can’t have been easy for you. I’m sorry I didn’t know how bad things were getting. I can’t imagine what it’s like.”
I was so confused. Wasn’t I supposed to be getting some kind of lecture that told me that I’d done it all wrong, that I’d fucked things up completely? Or was that just what I was hoping for? For someone else—anyone else—to tell me what to do? Because I, for one, felt fucking lost and had no idea where to go from here.
“Even if I felt like I could have kept dating Jesse, I couldn’t ask him to be with me,” I said defensively. “Not after everything he’s been through with his mom.”
Gabe just stared at me some more, before saying, “I don’t know, man. Couldn’t you? I mean, whether he says yes or not is up to him. You can’t make that decision for him, that’s for sure. But why couldn’t you ask him to date you, PTSD and all?”
“Because that would be so selfish. Asking someone to put up with that. The never knowing. The constant waiting for the other shoe to drop. And not being sure it’s ever going to get better.”
“Dude, asking anyone to date you is selfish,” Gabe said. “Like, inherently. The act of saying to someone, ‘ Hey, I think you should date me and only me for the rest of the foreseeable future ,’ is kinda selfish when you look at it that way. But no one would ever say that you shouldn’t do that, or the human race would die out.”
“Yeah, but we’re not talking about other people. We’re talking about me.”
“Well, it still kinda sounds like you’re trying to make his decision for him.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I protested.
“Nah, bro. Not if it’s because you’re scared he’d say no, and you’re trying to keep yourself from getting hurt. Then it makes perfect sense.”
“But—”
“I mean, it’s dumb, don’t get me wrong, because this way, you’re guaranteeing you don’t get to be with him, and you’re clearly hurting anyway. But in its own weird way, it makes a kind of sense.”
I stared at Gabe for a moment and then started laughing. I’d been so ready for him to argue with me, to tell me I was being stupid. But when he finally did, it was still in the context of being understanding and weirdly supportive.
“What?” he asked, looking at me suspiciously.
“Nothing, I just—” I snorted, “God, sorry, I just—I wasn’t prepared for you to be so freaking agreeable.”
“Hey, I’m not here to judge.”
“You know what the dumbest thing is?” I said. “Since you’re not judging, I mean. Since the breakup, I haven’t had a single nightmare. Not one flashback. I don’t know if this is permanent or what, but for now, anyway, it’s like they’re gone, completely.”
“Whoa. Weird. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t fucking know,” I exploded. “I don’t know anything , and I’m so sick of fucking not knowing. I’m such a goddamn mess. I felt like I was losing myself, trying to keep it under control. Hiding all of this from Jesse and pretending to be someone I’m not, someone with this perfect life, and I just—I couldn’t do it anymore. I was disintegrating. But then why don’t I feel any better, now that I made the right decision? Aren’t you supposed to feel better after you do the right thing? Why don’t I feel less like I’m falling apart?”
“I don’t know, man.” Gabe shrugged. “I really don’t. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why you haven’t had a panic attack or nightmare since you broke up, though.”
“What, I’m too sad to have them anymore?”
“Nah, dude. Because you’re not hiding it anymore. You told him finally, and that took some of the weight off you. The pressure’s gone.”
“But they could come back. At any time. I can’t just call him up and be like, ‘ Hey, I’m cured forever, just forget about everything that happened .’”
“Sure, they could come back,” Gabe nodded. “And no, I’m not saying you should say that, but—”
“I won’t be able to control it. I could call him up and ask him to take me back, and then five minutes later, I could have a panic attack and fucking lose it.”
“Maybe.”
“And then what—just tell him that’s what life with me is gonna be like? Never knowing if I’m going to have a flashback in the middle of a bar, or wake up screaming because I don’t know where I am?”
“Is that really what you’re worried about?” Gabe asked, his brow furrowing. “Because I gotta be honest, as far as worst-case scenarios go…that really doesn’t seem that bad to me? I mean, sure, it’s not fun, but there are lots of parts of life that aren’t fun. Everyone’s dealing with something, and no one’s life is going to be perfect all the time. But that’s no reason to pull away from people, is it?”
“What if I hurt him?” I closed my eyes and made myself say the words that clung to my insides like tar. “Like, for real? What if I lose my mind and think he’s someone else, what if I try to attack him in my sleep, what if he tries to help me, and I get mad at him, and then I do something that I—”
“Mark. Mark!” Gabe’s voice cut through the panic spiraling inside me.
I opened my eyes and looked at him, guilt curling through my gut as though I’d already done all the horrible things that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Have you ever actually hurt anybody, during any of your attacks or nightmares or anything?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean—”
“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t hypothetically, possibly, maybe do something like that once, in one tiny universe out of all the billions of possible universes out there, no, you’re right. But doesn’t it suggest to you that it’s not very likely to happen, if it’s never happened in the past?”
“Then why the hell can’t I stop imagining it, if it’s not something I’m actually going to do? Why the hell can’t I get it out of my head?”
“Because you care about him,” Gabe said. “Because the more you care about someone, the more you want to keep them safe. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to hurt Jesse. It just means you care.”
“But what if I do hurt him?”
“Then you deal with it then.” Gabe shook his head. “If you want to get philosophical about it, you’re almost bound to hurt him at some point or other. Not physically, but emotionally. And he’ll hurt you too. But that’s love, you know? Hell, that’s life. Sometimes you hurt people when you don’t mean to. But what makes love work is that you apologize and you work through it and you grow stronger because of it.”
“Or you destroy yourselves completely.”
“Only if you don’t try to put things back together again. Here, look.”
Gabe stuck his arm out, twisting it so I could see the underside of the cuff of his sweatshirt—a sweatshirt I couldn’t believe he was wearing, seeing as how it was July in southern Georgia, but I supposed that was beside the point. The cuff looked like it had been darned by a seven-year-old on acid.
“I’ve had this sweatshirt since high school and I used to pick at the seam here on my wrist, until one day, it finally wore through. My mom sewed it up and handed the sweatshirt back to me. Two months later, I’d picked through that stitching too, and the hole was back. She sewed it up again and told me to stop doing that, but of course, I didn’t listen, and within a week I’d ripped through that.”
“Your mom must have been pissed.”
“She was. And when I brought it back to her that time, she made me fix it myself, by hand. And I didn't know what the fuck I was doing, but I went back and forth across the seam like a zillion times to make sure I didn't tear it out. And yeah, it doesn’t look as pretty. But it sure as hell isn’t going to rip apart again.” He stared at me expectantly.
“I’m sorry,” I said, making a face. “I think I lost the point of that anecdote.”
“What I’m saying is that, yeah, you’re going to fuck things up sometimes. But you just sew it back together until you mend the tear. Until you’ve made the seam stronger than it was before. It might be messy. But it works. And then you just keep the thread handy for the next rip that comes along.”
“But what if I do something that can’t be fixed? I could—I mean, I might—” I swallowed hard. “I’m just scared of what could happen.”
“Well, duh, dude. Look, I’m not trying to make light of it, but so's everyone. We’re all just out here living, fucking terrified and trying to pretend we’re not. We wake up every day and maybe nothing happens, or maybe we get hit by a bus.”
“This is supposed to be encouraging?”
“I’m just saying, sure, you can decide you’re not ready for this. That’s totally legit. And who knows, maybe someday you’ll become this perfect person with no flaws and you’ll be one hundred percent ready for a relationship. But then again, that might never happen. What you do know is that right now, you have someone who cares about you. The you who you are right now.”
"I hurt him,” I whispered. I dragged a hand across my face. “How could I even ask him to forgive me after everything I said?”
“You just ask him. You say you’re sorry, and you tell him what you told me. And then you just ask him. It’s that simple.”
“But I—”
“He texted you, man. He said he was there if you ever wanted to talk. Text him back. Or better yet, go talk to him in person. I feel like a lot of this could probably be cleared up if you just saw him again, don’t you think?”
I stared at Gabe. Turned over what he’d said in my mind. Stared at him some more. And somehow, half an hour later, we were in the car, headed across town.
We drove to Jesse’s house first, but his roommates said he wasn’t there. I couldn’t imagine that he was at work, the night before the marathon, but I wasn’t sure where else to check, so I directed Gabe to the Flamingo. For all I knew, Jesse wasn’t even running the marathon anymore, but I had to at least try.
Gabe was still driving slowly down the street, looking for a place to park, when I saw him: Jesse, standing on the street talking to someone.
“Stop!” I croaked, my voice tight with emotion. “Stop, stop, I see him.”
“Where?” Gabe’s head whipped around. “Where is he?”
I couldn’t answer. My eyes were glued to Jesse and the person he was talking to. Jesse was lit up by the glow of a street lamp, but the other person was dark and shadowy—until they stepped forward into the light.
It was Tanner.
Everything in me sank like a stone. Jesse was talking to Tanner again. I was too late.
I watched them for a moment, hoping that somehow, my eyes were lying to me. But then Tanner said something, and Jesse threw his head back and laughed, and I had to look away.
“Drive,” I growled.
Gabe looked at me in confusion. “What? I thought you said you saw him. Don’t you want to—”
“I said drive!” I shouted. “Now.”
Gabe stared at me like I had three heads, but slowly eased his foot off the brake and drove down the street.
I noticed my phone was lit up and I swiped it on. I had a text. From Jesse, of all people. Asking if we were still meeting for breakfast before the marathon tomorrow.
Insult to injury. No wonder he’d sent me that ‘ friend ’ text in the middle of the week. He’d already gone back to Tanner. He was probably just trying to reach out and be courteous now. I was beyond too late—I had been too late for days.
Well, maybe he was ready to be the bigger person, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t deserve Jesse. And I did want him to be happy. But if Tanner was the person who made him happy—well, I wouldn’t stand in the way, but I couldn’t bear to see it either.
I stared straight ahead the whole way home.