Haha, sorry. I guess my author's note was a little misleading. No! That was not the end. What a horrible, abrupt ending that would be. No, there are two chapters after this one. By the way, Liss and Christine, you guys are my heroes. :)
Reviews are adored and appreciated!
Still not mine.
VI.
"Hi Melissa," Mark said curtly as the door opened to reveal Maureen's best friend. She looked at him with surprise in her big hazel eyes as he pushed past her into her apartment. "Is Maureen here?"
Whatever destroyed kind of sorrow he had felt when he left Roger had quickly hardened and calcified into anger. He was in no mood for Maureen's games. He walked certainly toward the closed door of Melissa's guest bedroom, muttering his apologies to the girl for his intrusion. He opened the door to find Maureen standing behind it, showing on her face some small surprise at his boldness.
Mark did not move toward her. He kept his hand gripped almost painfully around the doorknob, leaving the considerable distance between them intact. He had no desire to be close to her at that moment. She was also still, staring at him with sad eyes full of inevitably, set in her clean, strangely colorless face. Their charged gaze became an almost physical link, pulsing with emotion, until he looked away. It didn't seem quite fair; somehow she had become even more beautiful now that she had ripped his heart open without compunction.
From somewhere behind them, Melissa quickly made her excuses and moved to leave. She closed the door gingerly behind her, as though she feared that any sound would start them screaming. Neither Mark nor Maureen so much as glanced in her direction, barely hearing her words.
Mark pushed his glasses up so that he could rub his eyes, an unconscious fretful gesture.
"Why did you do it Maureen?" he finally asked, his voice making the shape of pain something tangible.
Maureen moved past him into the living room. She gave no outward indication of it, but she was stung by the lost look in his eyes, the rawness of his voice.
Roger, you idiot, she thought wearily. I warned you, why didn't you believe me?
"I don't know why," she murmured, feeling strangely defensive. She had been wronged as much as he had, after all, if he only realized it. But no, Mark didn't hurt people intentionally like she did, because she was such a cruel, heartless bitch. Maybe it was true, maybe she was heartless. But it was Roger who had hurt Mark and not her. She didn't have that power over Mark's heart.
"What do you mean you don't know why?" he asked, the shards of his bitterness tearing at his throat as he spoke.
She looked up at him tiredly. She had already played this conversation out in her head a million times, and the idea of having to go through it again exhausted her.
"What is it you want me to say Mark?" she asked, spreading her hands.
"I want you to say something for Christ's sake!" he replied, looking angry and bewildered. "I don't know. That you're sorry or that it didn't mean anything or... damnit, I don't know."
"See, it's not easy to know what to say, is it?"
"Oh, fuck you Maureen!" Mark exploded, goaded past his endurance by her biting casualty. "You kissed by roommate, my best friend! Don't act like I don't have the right to be upset about this."
She stood, the resentment and hurt beginning to escape from beneath the frayed edges of her callousness. "But Mark, how upset about this are you, honestly?"
"What the hell do you mean by that?"
His insistence on continuing to deny what they both knew was there was like salt in her fresh wounds. She lashed out at him in retaliation, calmly and viciously.
"Surely you've always realized that something like this would happen! Christ, Roger and I both knew the whole time. We could never look at each other without knowing that some night we'd end up just the way we were, with him pressing me up against the wall..."
Mark flinched violently, and she stopped.
He recoiled emotionally, balling up like a child to protect himself from the noxious barb she had so skillfully shot. "Maureen..." he murmured in pain.
She watched him cringe, seeming to shrink before her eyes, and felt a suddenly sharp pang of remorse. Poor, stupid Mark. He didn't choose to fall in love with his best friend, after all, and if anything, he must suffer far more from it than she ever had. She sighed, vexed that she couldn't commit to an emotion. She looked up at him, into his big, clear eyes. He was so beautiful in his shyness and vulnerability. She had always wanted to be the one who drew him out, the person who brought all of his passion to the surface. She had wanted so badly to be in love with him. She still did, but she knew the reality of the situation too well to think that it could ever happen.
"I didn't mean to hurt you Mark," she said. He looked up at her from where he had sunk into a chair, his scathing skepticism apparent, and she conceded the point.
"Alright, maybe I did," she amended. "But I'm being honest now, really. I don't believe you're actually upset, so it's difficult for me to feel like I should be sorry. I know what's going on Mark, I'm not fucking stupid, and I think you owe me an apology as much as I owe you one."
When she could no longer control the wobble in her voice, she fell silent. She slowly sunk to her knees in front of the chair he was curled into, needing to be close to him and have him understand what he had been doing to her, however unintentionally.
There were tears trembling in her eyes when he looked up from the floor to meet her gaze. Her cold exterior had crumbled, leaving the strangely insecure girl that Maureen thought she had suppressed years ago, reaching out for him in a way she rarely had before.
"Did you think that I wouldn't see it?" she continued softly. "I'm not a consolation prize Mark. I need someone to love me just the same as anyone else, though I know I don't always show it. I wanted that someone to be you, but you've been lying to me Mark, and that makes me feel stupid and used. When were you planning to tell me that you couldn't love me?"
"I love you Maureen," he said as they both began to cry. He reached out and cupped her face in his shaking hands, laying his forehead against hers. "I do love you."
Her lips met his in a desperate, clingy kiss. His hands wandered into her hair and over the contours of her neck and face, trying almost frantically to memorize it all before it was ripped away from him. She was crying, and she finally pulled away enough to wipe the tears from her eyes.
"Maureen," he murmured, his fingers resting unsurely on her shoulders. "I love you..."
More than anything in the world he wanted to hear her say that she loved him too. He wanted to know that he hadn't been completely naive and gullible about this whole thing, that he hadn't completely imagined that she cared something for him. She might have wanted him to fall in love with her, but that didn't mean she had ever had any intention of loving him back. Maureen cheerfully collected men's hearts. He didn't want to find out that he was truly as pathetic and deluded as he felt like he was. He wanted to know that someone like her could love him too, that anyone could, that Roger was wrong.
But in another way, he was deeply afraid that she would say that she loved him too. Was her love so flimsy that it couldn't keep her from cheating on him, hadn't even made her pause before doing it? Maybe beggars couldn't be choosers, but he didn't want it like that. Perhaps he was just proving his naïveté all over again, thinking that the real thing would be different somehow, better. Was it unrealistic to hope that he could be with someone who would want and need him with the same fierce intensity with which Mark wanted them?
Maybe the answer was yes. Maybe that never actually happened outside of films, for anyone.
"Don't say you love me Mark," Maureen said tersely, clamping down on her tears as she stood and backed away from him. "You don't mean it, not really."
The intoxicating, beguiling effect of her nearness and affection fell away with those words, and Mark was suddenly returned to the cold, hard present. He was angrier than he had been before for having forgotten, for letting himself be dazzled by her again.
"You were never a consolation prize to me," he said with an honest but clipped voice, retreating back into himself. "But I don't even need to ask you what I was to you, because there was never really any question of that." He sighed. "There have been others, haven't there Maureen?"
She couldn't look at him. "Yes."
"But why Roger? Why him?"
"What do you want me to say Mark?" she asked, turning to face him. "Reasons aren't going to make it any easier for you. Can you really not imagine why I would choose Roger? Surely you've noticed, the way he moves like pure sex, the way those hands stroke over his guitar strings. You wouldn't imagine how those hands feel against your skin, or I don't know, maybe you would..."
Mark winced and stood. She walked aimlessly from the bookshelf to the window, unable to keep still as always.
"Why are you so determined to hurt me tonight Maureen?" he asked, rubbing his temple.
"Why are you so fucking determined to keep lying to me?"
"What are you talking about!"
She spun back on him, her eyes red from crying, her hurt and frustration screaming for an outlet. "Christ Mark! Just admit that I'm not the one you're mad at. We both know it's true!"
He looked up at her with fear and bewilderment crumpling his wide blue gaze. "Maureen, what..."
She laughed, miserable. "You're not angry that I kissed someone else," she said slowly and deliberately. "You're angry that he kissed someone else."
And it was said. The spinning world suddenly became still for her, and she could breath. But Mark rocked forward as though her words had made a vacuum of the room.
"What?" he whispered into the airless space. The room had closed off, and all he could see were her eyes as she looked at him wearily.
"Mark, I know."