A/N: 4-26-02—Well, I'm continuing because I've been asked to, so thank you.
Thank you, Dulcey, for your wonderful plot organizing skills. I'd be lost
without your brilliance.
A box of Captain Crunch for whoever can identify the line I shamelessly stole from Aida. ;)
Fifty percent of authors prefer chocolate to feedback. I, however, can't eat sugar. :)
Disclaimer: Since this is chapter 2, all these characters now belong to me. Just kidding. (I always wanted to do that. :P)
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2.
He barely had time for the customary eye widening and jaw dropping, before a blur of white cloth—later identified as a t-shirt—soared through the air from the direction of the bedroom, and landed on his head.
"Have some decency when you answer the door, Mark Cohen," a voice teased, out of nowhere, unaccompanied by the usual head and body. I assumed it came from the same place as the t-shirt.
I had to force away a grin at how he looked so entirely shocked and ridiculous, concurrently. It would have been inappropriate for me to laugh at this point, but it was difficult to resist. His hands fumbled with the t- shirt until it slid over his head, and our gazes were once again locked.
"Just a sec," his voice squeaked, obviously directed towards her, although his eyes never left mine. He followed me out the front door and closed it behind us.
"What are you doing here?" I found myself asking, and the words weren't even out of my mouth before I realized how ludicrous that sounded.
Mark obviously noticed too, and broke into a half-smile, half-laugh of someone obviously still in shock, but doing their best to get over it, and looking rather dorky in the process. "What am *I* doing here?"
I smiled back. "I mean... hi."
The shock was gone. That half-smile I remembered so well was back. It lacked the sparkle and vivacity I remembered, but that didn't matter at this point. It would come back. It always did. "Hi," he echoed quietly, adjusting his glasses, which had been rearranged by the aforementioned flying t-shirt.
Well then, I mused aimlessly, stuffing my hands into my pockets and nodding slowly to myself as I focused my gaze on the welcome mat I'd been standing on only seconds ago. I vainly wished I were back behind that door, before the flying t-shirt, before that voice from the bedroom, before the awkwardness...
It seemed I didn't even have time to react as he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me. I wasn't sure why I hadn't expected this. Probably because I didn't get hugged very much. Certainly not in the last six months, in a city full of people I didn't know. And certainly not by him. He always let Maureen hug him—hell, he'd let her dress him up in teddy if it suited her fancy. That girl played him like a puppet, and I knew he would always love her more than anyone else realized.
But whenever he could manage, he shied away from physical contact... which is easy to excuse when you've got a camera in your hand all the time; the perfectly ideal barrier between you and the rest of the world. Speaking of which, I began to wonder where that camera was.
Then again, I was certainly one to talk. When I came out of withdrawal, I didn't so much as let him in the same room with me for days.
I tugged my hands out of my pockets and hugged him back. He didn't hate me. I was home, and he was glad. That was all I needed to know.
He pulled away, eyes darting around. Probably looking for his camera. I'm sure he would have wanted to document my return on video. Although maybe that was me being a little too egocentric.
"So," he said simply, making the word into a statement of its own and tossing the ball back to my court.
"Um, how... I mean, are you—is she—how is—"
This was going well.
He nodded. I'm not sure what that was supposed to answer. "We're fine," he finally announced. "Um, everyone's good. Mimi's just been a little..."
"What?" I demanded, suddenly engrossed as the conversation turned away from small talk with that one simple, unfinished sentence.
He looked at me strangely, appraisingly, almost as if he were trying to decide if he should tell me the truth. "Um, she was working too many hours. I made her cut back. That's why I'm here, I'm..." He fumbled for words again. "I've kind of been taking care of her."
I knew there was something he wasn't telling me—like maybe, how she could survive without the money from the club?—but I wasn't about to ruin this moment. I would find out when I saw her. She'd probably done something crazy like caught a cold, and it had mutated into something worse, and Mark didn't want me worrying.
That was Mark—always making sure everyone else was okay, while in truth he suffered more than any of us.
"Thank you," I told him. I'd never meant it more.
He looked up again. "Have you been taking your AZT?"
This time I laughed, and it couldn't have felt more appropriate. "God, I've missed you." He smiled and stared at the floor. "Can I see her?" I asked softly.
A nod... almost. More of an uncertain head gesture, really. "Um—of course. Yeah. Hang on, okay?"
I nodded, but he didn't notice. He had already disappeared down the hall. I thought maybe I should go get my guitar out of the back seat while I was waiting. I couldn't wait for her to hear my song. Countless times, I had imagined playing it for her. We would sit all alone in her room, and she'd plop down on the bed, flip her hair over her shoulder like she always did, and smile at me. I'd smile back from my spot on the floor, and pluck out the first few notes.
In every fantasy, by the end of the song, she had tears in her eyes.
Or maybe I did. I can't remember now.
I missed her so much.
My thoughts returned to the present, which now included a small figure standing in the doorway. As small as I remembered, and as precious. She hadn't changed as I thought she would. She didn't look deathly sick or weak or pale or even tired. She looked positively beautiful. How anyone could look so beautiful in cut-off jean shorts and my old blue sweater was beyond me.
By the look on her face, I knew Mark had already told her I was here. I would have rather we simultaneously experienced the butterflies in our stomachs, but it was obvious she'd already been through her own shock back in her room. It didn't matter now. Maybe it was better this way. At least I knew she'd wanted to see me.
After several seconds of uncompromising stares, we realized this was getting us nowhere. That realization, however, *was* simultaneous—and without one more moment to waste, we were in each other's arms, and she was crying against my chest. Silent tears, the ones that sneak up on you, unbidden, only detectable when you see the proof—a big wet splotch on your pillowcase or shirtsleeve, or in this case, sweater.
And she felt very real. More real than I remembered. Before, she'd always felt like a dream. Too good to be true. But now she was real, and I had never loved her more than I did now.
We pulled away from our embrace at the mutual suspicion that we were being watched. Mark stood some feet away, staring nervously, a sweatshirt draped over one arm.
He flashed a brief, forced smile. "I'm going to go work upstairs for a bit," he informed us, starting towards the door.
Mimi caught his arm. "Mark, it's all right, you can stay," she assured him.
"Yeah, stay!" I encouraged, another sudden wave of joy flooding over me, in the realization that we were all finally under one roof again. "We might need someone to toss t-shirts at," I joked.
He smiled and lifted Mimi's hand off his arm, holding it momentarily before placing it down at her side. "I'll be upstairs," he stated simply. Their eyes locked for a split second, and then he was gone.
Mimi's gaze rested on the closed door, and I became very aware of how silent everything was. I took a step towards her... and another... reached out, and enclosed her hand in mine. She turned around, almost as though she'd forgotten I was there, and smiled.
"Can we talk?" I asked softly.
She nodded, leading me by the hand back to her room... a very familiar gesture, but one with such different connotations now. Although the entire trek took about four steps, in that time, my eyes fell upon various clues in the room that blatantly implied another person's regular presence. Articles of clothing I knew weren't hers were bunched into piles on the floor; a few reels of film were scattered here and there.
"Is he, uh, living here?" I asked.
We reached her room, and she began stuffing into the closet the items that contributed most noticeably to the mess. "We've kind of been... sharing the apartments. It was pretty lonely around here for awhile."
I didn't know how to respond to that, so I said nothing. She shoved a couple of sweatshirts to the side and sat down—one leg tucked underneath her like a cat; the other one dangling off the side of the bed—and folded her hands in her lap. She seemed quieter than I remembered... that much was obvious. Then again, I couldn't expect much from her at this point, verbally. She hadn't seen me in six months. For all I knew, she'd thought I was dead.
I settled down across from her and picked at a loose string on the worn bedspread. "I'm sorry," I blurted.
"For what?"
That girl and her antics. She knew damn well what for. She just wanted me to say it. She knew I was rotten at apologizing. "For—for leaving," I stammered. "For everything I've said... and for anything I forgot to say, too."
She looked at me, puzzled, her voice gentle and unusually subdued. "What did you forget to say?"
My breath caught in my throat. "I love you," I squeaked.
I was surprised at how natural it felt to say that, and relieved at how much I truly meant it. Her eyes filled with tears the second the words left my lips, and she turned away.
I scrambled over to her side of the bed and took her hands in mine. "I know I don't deserve you," I whispered. "And if you never want to see me again, I understand. If you don't even know what you want—that's fine. But I love you."
Tears fell down her face now, unabashed and heartbreaking. "You can't just come back here and—"
"I know," I assured her, having expected those very words for as long as I could remember. "I know, baby. I don't expect anything."
She pulled her hands away from mine, reaching for one of the previously abandoned sweatshirts, and swiped it across her face, smearing the tears and her makeup in the process. For several minutes nothing was said, until she turned to face me again. "I have to get ready for work."
I put on my best sad puppy dog look, and stared down at the floor.
She lifted her hand and placed it against my cheek. It was warm and soft and smelled like that rose garden soap I loved so much. "Go see Mark," she told me. "He's missed you so much."
I knew I was taking a liberty, but I leaned forward and lightly brushed my lips against hers. It was certainly one worth taking, I found out—for the first time in six months, I saw that smile again. I could have died of a heart attack right then and I wouldn't have minded. That smile was enough to sustain me for the rest of my life.
"Go," she repeated, slightly more good-naturedly, before catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. "Look what you made me do, now I have to redo my makeup."
When she looked over at me, pouting childishly, I was smiling. It was obvious she was trying to convince me she was more okay than she really was, but that was enough for now. I stepped over a shoe on the floor and started down the hallway.
"Hey," she called after me, taking a few quick steps in my direction, as though I would disappear forever once I stepped onto the other side of that door—for that reaction, I certainly couldn't blame her. "I love you too," she whispered.
I winked at her before shutting the door behind me.
Without hesitation, I ran down to the car and dragged my guitar up the three flights of stairs. For the entire drive home, all I could think of was seeing her again and getting to play my song for her. But I should have realized I was being completely unrealistic. I couldn't just pick up where we had left off. Not even close, as it turned out.
But at this moment, I couldn't be happier. Those words were going to echo in my head forever—in the best possible way. 'I love you too.'
As I stepped inside the loft, old memories flooding my senses, I was reminded of how destitute we really were—the apartment was next to empty, and I realized it was because all his stuff was down at Mimi's. 'All' was a bit of a joke, though—some clothes and films and shampoo.
The first hugely noticeable difference was sitting against a wall in what I guess would be classified as our living room. (To me it doesn't seem impressive enough to live up to that title—it's really just a room that happens to be bigger than the others.) It was a TV set, complete with a VCR and about a dozen blank videotapes lying around it—well, they had been blank at one time, I assumed; knowing Mark, they were all filled up by now with pointless footage of their daily lives. How I'd missed that.
Mark was sitting on the floor in front of the TV, pretending to be writing something. I knew he wasn't really doing anything at all because the only thing within five feet of him and the paper was an eraser.
I set my guitar case down on the floor. "We have a TV?!" Yes, that was me—Captain Obvious.
Mark looked up from his notes. "Maureen and Joanne gave it to Mimi for her birthday. She doesn't have a cable hookup downstairs, so that's why it's—" He stopped, his eyes having drifted to my guitar case. "How did you..."
"Long story," I grinned. "But..." I looked around the room, studied the floor for a bit... before turning back to him. "I found my song."
He nodded slowly, as though he had expected as much. "Good," he said quietly. "Can I hear it?"
"Um, I guess," I shrugged modestly, not having accounted for the possibility that Mimi wasn't the only one who'd want to hear something I'd spent a year searching for. "Later. Where's your camera?"
"I left it at work last night, a friend of mine was going to replace one of the parts in it."
I started to nod—after all, he'd said this as if it were the most normal thing in the world—but quickly did a double take. "Work??" I laughed, plopping down on the floor beside him. "That's a good one."
He laughed too, though far less enthusiastically. "Collins had an old colleague at NYU who was looking for someone to edit some films that her students were working on. So..." He shrugged. "Now I'm working."
"Mark, that's awesome!" I slapped him on the back. "But hey—'she'?? Your boss is a woman?" I grinned mischievously.
He chuckled. "Yeah, Roge, lots of people are."
"Smartass." I tossed a throw pillow at him—one of the more peculiar items in our humble abode. Our couch wasn't exactly "throw pillow" material. It seemed more beanbag-appropriate. I pulled myself to my feet and wandered over towards the kitchen. "So... is she hot?"
"She's all right."
"Uh-huh," I replied, smiling to myself. "Are you two...?"
He looked up at me innocently, completely clueless. It was a full five seconds before he caught on. "What? Oh—no! No."
"It's okay, Marky," I cooed sweetly. "We're allowed to see other people."
He did his best to keep from laughing. "Shut up."
It was just like old times.
Except I knew that it wasn't.
I opened the refrigerator door, then closed it. "Um..." I waited until I got his attention. "Is it okay if I...?"
Pause. Wait to see if I'll have to finish that sentence.
...I guess I will.
"I mean, do you mind if I, y'know, eat something?"
Another pause. "Roger, this is your home."
"Um. Yeah." I turned back to the fridge and grabbed a block of cheese, breaking off a giant piece. "Thanks."
"Where's Mimi?" he asked, having abandoned his paper and eraser to join me for a snack.
This proved very helpful, actually, considering I'd forgotten where we kept silverware. Mark's hand dashed into a drawer, pulled out a plastic butter knife (that's right, I remembered—we didn't actually have "silver"ware), and attempted to neatly slice of a piece of cheese for himself. I had to force myself not to snicker at his futile efforts, as the knife continued to bend rather than cut, and finally broke off in the cheese.
I let out a snort of laughter.
Turning back to my own cheese, I took another bite. "Uh... she said she had to get ready for work."
Mark released the knife half that boasted a block of cheese on the end, and dropped it on the counter as he turned to face me, suddenly interested. "I thought she didn't have to work until tomorrow."
I shrugged, unable to speak with all that cheese in my mouth. I did have an excuse, you know—I hadn't eaten anything since the day before.
Mark was now plowing through the cheese with a plastic spoon, trying to dig out the other half of the knife. "So," he began—trying, but pitifully so, to sound as casual as possible. "Did you guys... talk about anything?"
"I guess."
"You guess?"
I turned away and smiled. He was just as nosy as ever. "Yeah, we did," I finally said. "I'm not sure what's going to happen right now."
This seemed almost disturbing to him, or perhaps he had just become too intently involved with his cheese. "Hey," he looked up at me suddenly. "I'm going to call everyone and tell them you're home, okay?"
Imagining the vast possibilities of Maureen's reaction, I smiled. "Okay."
[A/N: I *am* going somewhere with this—somewhere rather significant—hopefully in the next chapter, so bear with me. :)]
A box of Captain Crunch for whoever can identify the line I shamelessly stole from Aida. ;)
Fifty percent of authors prefer chocolate to feedback. I, however, can't eat sugar. :)
Disclaimer: Since this is chapter 2, all these characters now belong to me. Just kidding. (I always wanted to do that. :P)
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2.
He barely had time for the customary eye widening and jaw dropping, before a blur of white cloth—later identified as a t-shirt—soared through the air from the direction of the bedroom, and landed on his head.
"Have some decency when you answer the door, Mark Cohen," a voice teased, out of nowhere, unaccompanied by the usual head and body. I assumed it came from the same place as the t-shirt.
I had to force away a grin at how he looked so entirely shocked and ridiculous, concurrently. It would have been inappropriate for me to laugh at this point, but it was difficult to resist. His hands fumbled with the t- shirt until it slid over his head, and our gazes were once again locked.
"Just a sec," his voice squeaked, obviously directed towards her, although his eyes never left mine. He followed me out the front door and closed it behind us.
"What are you doing here?" I found myself asking, and the words weren't even out of my mouth before I realized how ludicrous that sounded.
Mark obviously noticed too, and broke into a half-smile, half-laugh of someone obviously still in shock, but doing their best to get over it, and looking rather dorky in the process. "What am *I* doing here?"
I smiled back. "I mean... hi."
The shock was gone. That half-smile I remembered so well was back. It lacked the sparkle and vivacity I remembered, but that didn't matter at this point. It would come back. It always did. "Hi," he echoed quietly, adjusting his glasses, which had been rearranged by the aforementioned flying t-shirt.
Well then, I mused aimlessly, stuffing my hands into my pockets and nodding slowly to myself as I focused my gaze on the welcome mat I'd been standing on only seconds ago. I vainly wished I were back behind that door, before the flying t-shirt, before that voice from the bedroom, before the awkwardness...
It seemed I didn't even have time to react as he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me. I wasn't sure why I hadn't expected this. Probably because I didn't get hugged very much. Certainly not in the last six months, in a city full of people I didn't know. And certainly not by him. He always let Maureen hug him—hell, he'd let her dress him up in teddy if it suited her fancy. That girl played him like a puppet, and I knew he would always love her more than anyone else realized.
But whenever he could manage, he shied away from physical contact... which is easy to excuse when you've got a camera in your hand all the time; the perfectly ideal barrier between you and the rest of the world. Speaking of which, I began to wonder where that camera was.
Then again, I was certainly one to talk. When I came out of withdrawal, I didn't so much as let him in the same room with me for days.
I tugged my hands out of my pockets and hugged him back. He didn't hate me. I was home, and he was glad. That was all I needed to know.
He pulled away, eyes darting around. Probably looking for his camera. I'm sure he would have wanted to document my return on video. Although maybe that was me being a little too egocentric.
"So," he said simply, making the word into a statement of its own and tossing the ball back to my court.
"Um, how... I mean, are you—is she—how is—"
This was going well.
He nodded. I'm not sure what that was supposed to answer. "We're fine," he finally announced. "Um, everyone's good. Mimi's just been a little..."
"What?" I demanded, suddenly engrossed as the conversation turned away from small talk with that one simple, unfinished sentence.
He looked at me strangely, appraisingly, almost as if he were trying to decide if he should tell me the truth. "Um, she was working too many hours. I made her cut back. That's why I'm here, I'm..." He fumbled for words again. "I've kind of been taking care of her."
I knew there was something he wasn't telling me—like maybe, how she could survive without the money from the club?—but I wasn't about to ruin this moment. I would find out when I saw her. She'd probably done something crazy like caught a cold, and it had mutated into something worse, and Mark didn't want me worrying.
That was Mark—always making sure everyone else was okay, while in truth he suffered more than any of us.
"Thank you," I told him. I'd never meant it more.
He looked up again. "Have you been taking your AZT?"
This time I laughed, and it couldn't have felt more appropriate. "God, I've missed you." He smiled and stared at the floor. "Can I see her?" I asked softly.
A nod... almost. More of an uncertain head gesture, really. "Um—of course. Yeah. Hang on, okay?"
I nodded, but he didn't notice. He had already disappeared down the hall. I thought maybe I should go get my guitar out of the back seat while I was waiting. I couldn't wait for her to hear my song. Countless times, I had imagined playing it for her. We would sit all alone in her room, and she'd plop down on the bed, flip her hair over her shoulder like she always did, and smile at me. I'd smile back from my spot on the floor, and pluck out the first few notes.
In every fantasy, by the end of the song, she had tears in her eyes.
Or maybe I did. I can't remember now.
I missed her so much.
My thoughts returned to the present, which now included a small figure standing in the doorway. As small as I remembered, and as precious. She hadn't changed as I thought she would. She didn't look deathly sick or weak or pale or even tired. She looked positively beautiful. How anyone could look so beautiful in cut-off jean shorts and my old blue sweater was beyond me.
By the look on her face, I knew Mark had already told her I was here. I would have rather we simultaneously experienced the butterflies in our stomachs, but it was obvious she'd already been through her own shock back in her room. It didn't matter now. Maybe it was better this way. At least I knew she'd wanted to see me.
After several seconds of uncompromising stares, we realized this was getting us nowhere. That realization, however, *was* simultaneous—and without one more moment to waste, we were in each other's arms, and she was crying against my chest. Silent tears, the ones that sneak up on you, unbidden, only detectable when you see the proof—a big wet splotch on your pillowcase or shirtsleeve, or in this case, sweater.
And she felt very real. More real than I remembered. Before, she'd always felt like a dream. Too good to be true. But now she was real, and I had never loved her more than I did now.
We pulled away from our embrace at the mutual suspicion that we were being watched. Mark stood some feet away, staring nervously, a sweatshirt draped over one arm.
He flashed a brief, forced smile. "I'm going to go work upstairs for a bit," he informed us, starting towards the door.
Mimi caught his arm. "Mark, it's all right, you can stay," she assured him.
"Yeah, stay!" I encouraged, another sudden wave of joy flooding over me, in the realization that we were all finally under one roof again. "We might need someone to toss t-shirts at," I joked.
He smiled and lifted Mimi's hand off his arm, holding it momentarily before placing it down at her side. "I'll be upstairs," he stated simply. Their eyes locked for a split second, and then he was gone.
Mimi's gaze rested on the closed door, and I became very aware of how silent everything was. I took a step towards her... and another... reached out, and enclosed her hand in mine. She turned around, almost as though she'd forgotten I was there, and smiled.
"Can we talk?" I asked softly.
She nodded, leading me by the hand back to her room... a very familiar gesture, but one with such different connotations now. Although the entire trek took about four steps, in that time, my eyes fell upon various clues in the room that blatantly implied another person's regular presence. Articles of clothing I knew weren't hers were bunched into piles on the floor; a few reels of film were scattered here and there.
"Is he, uh, living here?" I asked.
We reached her room, and she began stuffing into the closet the items that contributed most noticeably to the mess. "We've kind of been... sharing the apartments. It was pretty lonely around here for awhile."
I didn't know how to respond to that, so I said nothing. She shoved a couple of sweatshirts to the side and sat down—one leg tucked underneath her like a cat; the other one dangling off the side of the bed—and folded her hands in her lap. She seemed quieter than I remembered... that much was obvious. Then again, I couldn't expect much from her at this point, verbally. She hadn't seen me in six months. For all I knew, she'd thought I was dead.
I settled down across from her and picked at a loose string on the worn bedspread. "I'm sorry," I blurted.
"For what?"
That girl and her antics. She knew damn well what for. She just wanted me to say it. She knew I was rotten at apologizing. "For—for leaving," I stammered. "For everything I've said... and for anything I forgot to say, too."
She looked at me, puzzled, her voice gentle and unusually subdued. "What did you forget to say?"
My breath caught in my throat. "I love you," I squeaked.
I was surprised at how natural it felt to say that, and relieved at how much I truly meant it. Her eyes filled with tears the second the words left my lips, and she turned away.
I scrambled over to her side of the bed and took her hands in mine. "I know I don't deserve you," I whispered. "And if you never want to see me again, I understand. If you don't even know what you want—that's fine. But I love you."
Tears fell down her face now, unabashed and heartbreaking. "You can't just come back here and—"
"I know," I assured her, having expected those very words for as long as I could remember. "I know, baby. I don't expect anything."
She pulled her hands away from mine, reaching for one of the previously abandoned sweatshirts, and swiped it across her face, smearing the tears and her makeup in the process. For several minutes nothing was said, until she turned to face me again. "I have to get ready for work."
I put on my best sad puppy dog look, and stared down at the floor.
She lifted her hand and placed it against my cheek. It was warm and soft and smelled like that rose garden soap I loved so much. "Go see Mark," she told me. "He's missed you so much."
I knew I was taking a liberty, but I leaned forward and lightly brushed my lips against hers. It was certainly one worth taking, I found out—for the first time in six months, I saw that smile again. I could have died of a heart attack right then and I wouldn't have minded. That smile was enough to sustain me for the rest of my life.
"Go," she repeated, slightly more good-naturedly, before catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. "Look what you made me do, now I have to redo my makeup."
When she looked over at me, pouting childishly, I was smiling. It was obvious she was trying to convince me she was more okay than she really was, but that was enough for now. I stepped over a shoe on the floor and started down the hallway.
"Hey," she called after me, taking a few quick steps in my direction, as though I would disappear forever once I stepped onto the other side of that door—for that reaction, I certainly couldn't blame her. "I love you too," she whispered.
I winked at her before shutting the door behind me.
Without hesitation, I ran down to the car and dragged my guitar up the three flights of stairs. For the entire drive home, all I could think of was seeing her again and getting to play my song for her. But I should have realized I was being completely unrealistic. I couldn't just pick up where we had left off. Not even close, as it turned out.
But at this moment, I couldn't be happier. Those words were going to echo in my head forever—in the best possible way. 'I love you too.'
As I stepped inside the loft, old memories flooding my senses, I was reminded of how destitute we really were—the apartment was next to empty, and I realized it was because all his stuff was down at Mimi's. 'All' was a bit of a joke, though—some clothes and films and shampoo.
The first hugely noticeable difference was sitting against a wall in what I guess would be classified as our living room. (To me it doesn't seem impressive enough to live up to that title—it's really just a room that happens to be bigger than the others.) It was a TV set, complete with a VCR and about a dozen blank videotapes lying around it—well, they had been blank at one time, I assumed; knowing Mark, they were all filled up by now with pointless footage of their daily lives. How I'd missed that.
Mark was sitting on the floor in front of the TV, pretending to be writing something. I knew he wasn't really doing anything at all because the only thing within five feet of him and the paper was an eraser.
I set my guitar case down on the floor. "We have a TV?!" Yes, that was me—Captain Obvious.
Mark looked up from his notes. "Maureen and Joanne gave it to Mimi for her birthday. She doesn't have a cable hookup downstairs, so that's why it's—" He stopped, his eyes having drifted to my guitar case. "How did you..."
"Long story," I grinned. "But..." I looked around the room, studied the floor for a bit... before turning back to him. "I found my song."
He nodded slowly, as though he had expected as much. "Good," he said quietly. "Can I hear it?"
"Um, I guess," I shrugged modestly, not having accounted for the possibility that Mimi wasn't the only one who'd want to hear something I'd spent a year searching for. "Later. Where's your camera?"
"I left it at work last night, a friend of mine was going to replace one of the parts in it."
I started to nod—after all, he'd said this as if it were the most normal thing in the world—but quickly did a double take. "Work??" I laughed, plopping down on the floor beside him. "That's a good one."
He laughed too, though far less enthusiastically. "Collins had an old colleague at NYU who was looking for someone to edit some films that her students were working on. So..." He shrugged. "Now I'm working."
"Mark, that's awesome!" I slapped him on the back. "But hey—'she'?? Your boss is a woman?" I grinned mischievously.
He chuckled. "Yeah, Roge, lots of people are."
"Smartass." I tossed a throw pillow at him—one of the more peculiar items in our humble abode. Our couch wasn't exactly "throw pillow" material. It seemed more beanbag-appropriate. I pulled myself to my feet and wandered over towards the kitchen. "So... is she hot?"
"She's all right."
"Uh-huh," I replied, smiling to myself. "Are you two...?"
He looked up at me innocently, completely clueless. It was a full five seconds before he caught on. "What? Oh—no! No."
"It's okay, Marky," I cooed sweetly. "We're allowed to see other people."
He did his best to keep from laughing. "Shut up."
It was just like old times.
Except I knew that it wasn't.
I opened the refrigerator door, then closed it. "Um..." I waited until I got his attention. "Is it okay if I...?"
Pause. Wait to see if I'll have to finish that sentence.
...I guess I will.
"I mean, do you mind if I, y'know, eat something?"
Another pause. "Roger, this is your home."
"Um. Yeah." I turned back to the fridge and grabbed a block of cheese, breaking off a giant piece. "Thanks."
"Where's Mimi?" he asked, having abandoned his paper and eraser to join me for a snack.
This proved very helpful, actually, considering I'd forgotten where we kept silverware. Mark's hand dashed into a drawer, pulled out a plastic butter knife (that's right, I remembered—we didn't actually have "silver"ware), and attempted to neatly slice of a piece of cheese for himself. I had to force myself not to snicker at his futile efforts, as the knife continued to bend rather than cut, and finally broke off in the cheese.
I let out a snort of laughter.
Turning back to my own cheese, I took another bite. "Uh... she said she had to get ready for work."
Mark released the knife half that boasted a block of cheese on the end, and dropped it on the counter as he turned to face me, suddenly interested. "I thought she didn't have to work until tomorrow."
I shrugged, unable to speak with all that cheese in my mouth. I did have an excuse, you know—I hadn't eaten anything since the day before.
Mark was now plowing through the cheese with a plastic spoon, trying to dig out the other half of the knife. "So," he began—trying, but pitifully so, to sound as casual as possible. "Did you guys... talk about anything?"
"I guess."
"You guess?"
I turned away and smiled. He was just as nosy as ever. "Yeah, we did," I finally said. "I'm not sure what's going to happen right now."
This seemed almost disturbing to him, or perhaps he had just become too intently involved with his cheese. "Hey," he looked up at me suddenly. "I'm going to call everyone and tell them you're home, okay?"
Imagining the vast possibilities of Maureen's reaction, I smiled. "Okay."
[A/N: I *am* going somewhere with this—somewhere rather significant—hopefully in the next chapter, so bear with me. :)]