Marcus hadn’t slept in a bed in weeks. The moment his head hit the pillow and his back adjusted to the soft mattress, he was out. No dreams, no tossing, just darkness. Until the creak of the door pulled tension through his core and his muscles tightened. Victoria’s silhouette in the doorway told him he could relax, but he didn’t make a sound.
She was just getting back from his parents’, so she’d likely just gone through the same ritual he had. She came back home, so she was already doing better than him, or maybe he was being Mundane made it more rough on him. Or maybe it just tore open the spots that were already broken. It was hard to tell which was true at this point.
She didn’t speak. Just stood in the doorway, staring into the darkness of the room. Marcus swallowed hard, deciding whether to make her aware he was awake. “It’s your house. You can come in.” He whispered but didn’t move. Neither did she, not at first, at least.
When she finally did, her steps were quiet and slow. Like she was going to scare him off if she moved too fast. She sat down at the foot of the bed, pushing her hands through her hair. It took her a long time to speak. Her “I’m sorry,” came out weary and frayed.
She was apologizing to him? His brow furrowed, and he shook his head. Before he could speak, she continued.
“Your mom told me the ritual she did to break your contract…hadn’t been refined.” She whispered. “She said it probably broke you. Even the one she did on me…was rough.” She gnawed at her fingernails, then spoke again. “I know you did it. I don’t know how…” She paused as her voice broke and cleared her throat. “And I’m so fucking pissed you didn’t come to me for help…but I don’t know how to thank you. It hung over my head for more than a decade. Now it’s gone…” She stood up, visibly shaking, and walked to the door again. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
The rest of the night, sleep evaded him. His mind was a storm of indecision. He wanted to go to her, but he understood better than anyone what she must have been going through. He’d craved isolation so much he literally threw himself out a window to get it. So, he took her offer to talk in the morning and waited.
When the sun came out, he got up and made coffee. He cursed, realizing that she’d been calculating the ounces she used from the tin on the dry erase board. It took him a minute, but he found a scale and measured out how much three scoops of coffee would have been, adjusted the amount on the board, and got everything put back away.
She emerged not long after he did in spandex shorts and a sports bra, with bleary eyes and bedhead. She got herself a cup of coffee before sitting down across the table from him, rubbing her eyes. They both drank their coffee in silence for a few minutes before she spoke. “I’m going to have a cigarette, then go for a run. You wanna come?”
The corners of Marcus’ lips turned up slightly at how something so normal could seem so incredibly absurd. At the same time, it felt so real. He used to do the same thing. “I don’t have anything to run in.”
“I’m sure I’ve got some shorts somewhere around here that will fit you.” She said, leaving her coffee behind, and padded off down the hall.
Somehow, even after a cigarette and everything she’d been through the previous night, he was still struggling to keep up with her. He couldn’t even blame the black and pink shorts. Her hips might have been a little wider than his, but the drawstring tightened enough that they kept up without a problem. He’d really let himself go, scrounging around in the forest. Really should have done more cardio.
They ran through the quiet suburb. A few early risers waved to them, but Victoria didn’t wave back. They didn’t speak. Just ran. He focused on his breathing, on the ticking of sprinklers making lazy arcs across manicured lawns, on the rhythm of his feet hitting the asphalt, and the sharp calls of dewdrop chickadees gathering in trees. Anything to not think about the pulsing pain in his thigh from the still healing wound.
They rounded the corner of her street again after about a half hour, and Marcus’ lungs were on fire. She finally slowed to a walk as she stepped up the drive and looked back at him, hunched over and trying to control his breathing.
“Running through the woods not good conditioning?”
“Not good enough, I guess.” He wheezed.
“You’ll get it back. Come on, I’m starving.” She beckoned him with her hand as she hopped up her steps and walked into her house.
He got out of his shoes again at her front door, his lungs finally getting it together. She was already in the kitchen, fire warming a cast-iron skillet.
“Could have taken it a little easy on me. I did just have surgery yesterday.” He said as he collapsed onto a chair at the kitchen table.
“Did you die?”
“Almost,” he said in feigned exasperation. She peeked over her shoulder at him, the smile on her face forcing one on his own.
Fourteen eggs dropped to ten, and twelve strips of bacon down to eight. They sat and ate quietly, but every time he looked up from his plate, he could see the questions on her lips. Once he’d finished, he looked up at her again, giving her a nod of permission. “Just ask.”
She paused her chewing for a moment, studying him closely. She swallowed and set her hands on her lap. “What happened? I know you didn’t set the place on fire.”
“I don’t know. It was still standing when I left.” He answered honestly.
“How did you get the NDAs? There were hundreds of them.”
“They were in a safe.” He shrugged. “Shoved them in the bag and fucked off.”
“How’d you get the safe open? You a locksmith now?”
He swallowed hard and looked down at his empty plate.
“Don’t lie to me.” She warned him.
Marcus looked up at her, chewing on his lip nervously. “It was a retinal scanner.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “And you…?”
“Used the eye that opened it…” he mumbled.
“Whose eye?”
He paused, studying her face for any trace of emotion, but the questioning had turned into an interrogation that she wasn’t willing to lose.
“Yuri Volkobor’s.” He answered finally.
Silence separated them for a long, desperate moment before she spoke again. “Is he dead?”
Marcus’ jaw shifted back and forth before he finally nodded.
Her tongue pressed against her lips through her teeth, taking a long moment to think before she nodded. “Good. He was a fucking prick.” She popped her last piece of bacon into her mouth.
“Good?” Marcus’ face scrunched up. “How is that good?”
She got up, taking both their plates to the sink and turning it on. She spoke over the water, “People die, Marcus. It’s one of the few things you can count on in life. Sometimes it’s people that don’t deserve it.” Her eyes remained locked on the running water. He couldn’t see her face, but he imagined the pain she hid in it. “Other times, it’s people that do. Yuri hurt a lot of people.”
He wanted to argue with her. At least logically, he wanted to. He knew what he did was wrong, but the relief that washed over him when she said that was visceral.
She finished the dishes, put them away, and then sat in the chair beside him rather than across the table. She reached out, carefully taking the wounded hand and peeling back the bandage. Nodding and replacing it, she held onto his hand as she looked up at him. “I don’t know what you saw during the ritual.” Her voice came out softer than he was used to. “But I need you to know it was bullshit.”
Marcus gave a silent chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. “If you don’t know what it was, how can you say it’s bullshit?”
“Because I saw my parents.” She paused, looking around the house. “They told me they died because of me, how much of a disappointment I was. I saw a lot that could have been true. A lot that peeled back layers I forgot I even had. Once I saw that, though.” She shook her head and chuckled. “I knew it was all bullshit.”
He envied the certainty in her eyes. Wished he could reach out and hold it like she did his hand. He looked down at their hands, her fingers softly massaging his palm. “I really want to believe that.” He said quietly. “Maybe I will one day.”
Her eyes flicked back and forth between his before looking back down at his hand. “You will.” The edge was back in her voice just as fast as it had faded, and she gave his hand a hard enough squeeze that a spark of pain shot through his wrist from the wound. “I’ll beat it into you if I have to.”
She let go of his hand. It closed on impulse, like it was trying to stop her. She returned a second later with a notepad and a pen and started writing on it. Big bold letters at the top of the page.
GOALS
“This always helps me. Set goals and write them down. When you can clearly see what you need to do, it’s easier to form steps to complete them.”
She wrote the first goal on the pad and spun it to him.
1. Remove head from ass
He pulled the pad toward him and chuckled as he read it. “This one of those fancy twelve-step programs?”
She shrugged. “Could be, how stuck is your head?” She tapped the paper with the pen. “You keep that. I gotta go get ready for work.”
Watching her walk away was one of the little joys he could still experience. Once she disappeared down the hall, he glanced back down at the words. Remove head from ass. Seemed easier said than done. Still, as he stared down at the page, it started to break down.
What did he need to do to pull himself together?
Figure out who I am
He wrote it down as the thought crossed his mind. He’d always thought he knew. Maybe he still did somewhere deep down. Though sitting in this house, eating eggs while Victoria barked at him was the closest to himself he’d felt since all this started.
The biggest step he needed to take, he knew, was to talk to his family. As much as the thought tormented him, he knew they were integral to who he was as a person.
Apologize
The word created a knot in his throat just writing it. There were so many apologies he needed to make it overwhelmed him. His parents, Calliope and James, Nicky…Ophelia. He swallowed hard. The way he treated her was…horrifying. After she’d sat in his apartment waiting for him to come home for who knows how long. He shook his head and sighed softly.
He needed something smaller. Something that meant just as much to him, but he didn’t think might absolutely destroy him. Every step felt more like a leap of faith as it crossed his mind. Each one more terrifying than the next. He racked his mind, searching for something that he could accomplish just to get the ball rolling in the right direction. He gnawed on the end of the pen, just staring blankly at the page. Nothing. It really couldn’t be this hard. Something that was uniquely him. Something he loved. Something that was abandoned when the virulent shitstorm started in his life.
Then it hit him.
Go Back To Work
He leapt to his feet, moving down the hall with excitement and bursting through the door to Victoria’s room. “Can I have my job back?!”
Victoria was fresh out of the shower, enviably defined back facing him. She looked over her shoulder and grimaced at him through a chuckle. “Can we have this conversation when I’m not naked?”