Page 67 of Assassin Anonymous

“First off, I love the baking shows. Second off, I’m just excited to share this with you. It’s my favorite movie of all time. And the only Christmas tradition I ever really had.”

“One of your foster moms showed it to you, right?”

“When I was a kid.”

It’s a lie. But at this point I’ve told Sara so many lies, it may as well count as the truth, because anything from before I met her doesn’t matter.

I hit the play button, and the church bell rings as the Liberty Films logo appears, and then the title card: Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, flooding me with a feeling of contentment, that I made it another year.

And we sit there in our flannel pajamas, the dim room lit by the television screen, the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree behind us—I can barely believe I’m here, or that I deserve this. The moisturized, manicured palm of domesticity.

The real truth, the first time I really saw this, was one Christmas Eve in the barracks, stationed in Kurdistan with a bunch of loudmouth meatheads. Something about the movie transported us away from that razor’s edge between duty and terror. By the end of it, my face and my throat ached, because that wasn’t a place you could safely cry. Ever since, I’ve watched this movie every Christmas Eve, by myself with a bottle of bourbon, and I would let the alcohol drown the complicated emotions it stirred.

But watching it with Sara, something about it plays different. As Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey stands on a snowy bridge, ready to throw himself off, I don’t have that same feeling in my bones—of understanding where George was coming from.

Because when you spend as much time around guns as I do, sometimes you wonder what it would be like, to wrap your lips around the barrel. You appreciate the precision of death.

Right now I just want to reach out and offer him my hand, and I’m that much more thankful when the angel Clarence shows up to stop him.

The way someone can just reach out their hand to you like that.

It’s been ten months now, of dinners and hiking and movie nights curled under a blanket with popcorn. The truth about who I am getting stuck in my throat. I’ve tried. One night I showed her The Professional, thinking I would tell her: that’s kind of like me. That’s what I do. But the way she cringed at the violence of it kept me quiet.

As the movie unspools and we finish off the popcorn, Sara pulls herself closer to me, and occasionally I glance down at her to make sure she’s still awake, to see the smile on her face, and I can’t tell which I enjoy watching more.

And when it ends, she looks up at me and smiles and says, “That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with me.” She kisses me, long and soft, then pulls back and says, “There’s still time to run, you know. You’re sure about this?”

“Meeting your mom and your bro?” I ask. “Sure.”

“It’s a big step. I told you my brother can be tough on my boyfriends.”

“Yeah, but I’m charming.”

She smiles. “Mark…”

Her eyes go soft and she’s treading water in a pool of something she wants to tell me. I recognize that look because I spend a lot of time there myself. The water tickling her nose, the threat of that true thing she wants to say, wondering whether it’ll turn into a life preserver or the stone that drags her down.

And then she proves how much braver she is than I am.

“I love you,” she says.

Every single other thing in the world drops away and nothing exists but the two of us on that couch. My breathing technique is useless, the air gone from my chest.

She kisses me again, then nuzzles my neck, and I can’t tell if she’s being intimate or trying to hide from the glare of the aftermath. “It’s okay if you’re not ready,” she says. “Or if you’re not there. Truly, I mean that. But I am, and it’s how I feel, and I wanted you to know.”

We kiss, again, and linger in that space. Her finding that relief, of having said the hard thing, and me wrestling down my shame, at not being able to return the favor.

Not now. Not in this moment.

Because I love her. I do.

And if I tell her that, then I owe her the truth about me.

She pulls away and smiles. “You’re going to stay up for a bit?”

“You know me,” I tell her.

Sara stands and pecks me on the forehead. “Oh, and hey, on your way up…don’t slip, okay?”

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