I’d choked on my burger, and he’d had to slap me on the back.
He’s the only person that can make me laugh like that. Not even Lin had that power. He’s also the only person who can scare me speechless. Like the night in Vegas when he borrowed our role-playing neighbor’s Batman costume and hid behind our bedroom door in the dark. When I came inside from getting the mail, he jumped out, hands on his hips, and I dropped to the floor, screaming and curling into a ball. He’d laughed so hard,he could barely lift me off the floor, and I’d hit him—hard—and then he’d kissed me. Hard.
When Marcus wasn’t making me laugh or cry from fear, he’d been gentle and caring. Like the night I’d pouted before his first day of work in Indiana because I hated being away from him. That night as I’d slept, he’d taped notes all over our apartment, and the next day, I’d woken up and rolled onto a small pile of notes in his empty space beside me. I’d found them everywhere that day—in the cupboard, the shower, under the toilet lid.
I place the stick next to the sink and stare at my reflection in the mirror. I count under my breath, and when three minutes are up, I wait longer, still staring at myself because this might be the last time I see this version of me. The me who lived in another lifetime where Marcus woke me almost every morning with a kiss on the back of the neck and told me he loved me more that day than he had the day before. A lifetime where he came home from work, kicked off his shoes, and stripped off layers of clothing, walking around the apartment with his pants hanging low on his hips, my eyes obsessed.
The night I’d sat blindfolded on the kitchen counter while Marcus hand-fed me Jelly Belly’s one at a time, making me guess the flavors.
“You should be here right now,” I whisper to him like the words will drift all the way back to him. “I should never have left. I can’t do this. We’ve never been this far apart before, and I shouldn’t be doing this without you.” Tears drip onto the counter and I swipe my face. I imagine him in the bathroom with me, and I give into the tears, my pain echoing off the walls as it rushes out of my broken insides. When the torrent is over, I’m shaky and empty, holding onto the counter until silence settles too heavily on me.
I pick up the stick, swallow, open my eyes…blink. Look again. My heart swells, and fear dissolves as I spread my hands over mystomach. Tears puddle in my eyes and happiness pushes away the pain, leaving love and determination to get back to Marcus and turn the two of us into three.