Chapter 9: Irreversible
1233 Words
He made it to 6 p.m.
Eight hours of being a professional. Eight hours of Halton Grove load calculations and a site call with a contractor named Phil who had opinions about rebar that Marcus engaged with thoughtfully and at length because engaging with Phil about rebar was the most stable thing in his life right now.
He packed his bag at six. Said goodnight to Drew. Took the lift down.
Sat in his car in the basement.
Zara had texted at four-thirty. *Staying late at the office, don't wait for me for dinner.* He had replied with a thumbs up and a heart because that was the language of two people who trusted each other completely, the small warm shorthand of a relationship that had never needed to explain itself.
He sat with that.
Then he picked up his phone.
He did not text. He called.
It rang twice.
"Marcus." Damon's voice, careful. Background noise behind it, wind or traffic.
"Are you outside?"
"Just left a client meeting. Walking to my car."
"Are you alone."
A pause. "Yes."
"I need to say something."
"Okay."
"And I need you to not respond until I'm finished."
Another pause. "Okay."
Marcus looked at the concrete pillar in front of his car. Grey and load-bearing and exactly where it was supposed to be. He thought about structures. About the things that held.
"I have been lying to Zara every day for two weeks," he said. "Not big lies. Small ones. The face kind, the fine kind. I've never done that before. Two years and I have never once looked at her and been somewhere else."
He stopped.
Started again.
"I don't know what I am. I don't have a word that fits and I'm not going to try to find one tonight. But I know that whatever this is, it is not going away. I have tried ignoring it. I have tried two separate agreements with you to stop. I have tried the work face and the gym and the Sunday grocery shop and none of it moves the needle even slightly." He paused. "You came to my office today and sat in my chair and told me you were losing your mind quietly. I need you to know that I am also losing my mind. Less quietly."
Silence on the line.
"I'm not asking you for anything," Marcus said. "I am not suggesting anything. I know what we have. I know what's at stake. I just needed one person to know the true version of where I am and you are the only person on the planet I can tell. Which is its own specific disaster."
He stopped talking.
The basement was silent around him. One other car ran its engine briefly two rows over and then went quiet.
"Are you finished?" Damon said.
"Yes."
A long pause. Not empty. Full.
"I'm in the car park on Alderton Street," Damon said. "Level two. Blue Audi. Come now or don't come. Either way I'll understand."
He hung up.
Marcus sat for thirty seconds.
He started the engine.
---
Alderton Street was eleven minutes away. He drove it in nine and found level two and the blue Audi in the far corner away from the cameras, which told him Damon had chosen the spot deliberately and had therefore been thinking about this since before the phone call.
He parked.
He got out.
Damon was leaning against the passenger side of his car, jacket on, hands in pockets, watching Marcus cross the car park with an expression that had come a long way from the controlled blankness of the office. This was not the boardroom face. This was not the dinner table face. This was the face underneath all the other faces and Marcus recognized it because he had been wearing the same one for two weeks.
He stopped a foot away.
They looked at each other.
"This is the part," Marcus said, "where one of us says we shouldn't."
"Yes," Damon said.
"Are you going to say it?"
"Are you?"
Silence.
"No," Marcus said.
Damon looked at him for one long, clear, unguarded moment.
Then he closed the distance.
It was not what Marcus expected and it was exactly what Marcus expected. Brief first. Almost a question. Then Damon's hand at the back of his neck and the question became a statement and Marcus stopped thinking about what he expected and stopped thinking about anything at all for the first time in two weeks.
When they pulled back Marcus was looking at the ground.
He stood there breathing.
Damon leaned against the car beside him, shoulder to shoulder, both of them looking at nothing in particular. The car park hummed its fluorescent hum. Somewhere below a door opened and closed and footsteps walked away into silence.
"Okay," Marcus said.
"Yeah," Damon said.
Neither of them moved.
"I need you to understand something," Damon said. His voice was even. Careful. The voice he used for things that mattered. "This does not change the situation."
"I know."
"Jade does not find out about this."
"I know."
"And Zara."
"I know, Damon."
"Because if either of them finds out then everything."
"I know," Marcus said. Firmly. "I am not an i***t. I know exactly what this costs and I'm standing here anyway."
Damon was quiet.
"What does that tell you," Marcus said.
A long pause.
"Nothing good," Damon said.
Marcus almost laughed. He pressed his fist to his mouth and held it there and thought about all the versions of himself that had existed before the rooftop restaurant, the uncomplicated ones, the ones with one face instead of three. He thought about Zara's voice saying *you'd tell me if something was wrong.* He thought about Jade at Henley's, warm and open, saying *I think you're going to be really important to each other.*
He thought about how right she was.
He thought about how completely wrong the reason was.
"I have to go home," he said.
"Yeah."
"Zara's working late but she'll be back by eight."
"Jade has a thing until nine."
They stood there in the gap between those two sentences.
"Marcus." Damon's voice was different. Stripped of the careful evenness. Just a man saying a name.
"Don't," Marcus said quietly. "Not tonight. I can't."
A beat.
"Okay," Damon said.
Marcus pushed off the car. Walked back across the car park. Got in. Sat there for a moment with his hands on the wheel.
He looked in his rearview mirror.
Damon had not moved. Still leaning against the blue Audi in the far corner of level two of the Alderton Street car park, watching Marcus's taillights with his hands in his pockets and his face completely open.
Marcus pulled out.
He drove home.
He set the table for two.
When Zara came through the door at eight-fifteen, tired and lovely and carrying her work bag over one shoulder, she dropped into his arms the way she always did, and he held her the way he always did, and said the right things, and meant them, and also meant the other thing, and could not explain how both of those were true at the same time.
But they were.
That was the part nobody had warned him about.
Both things could be true at the same time.
And that was the most frightening thing he had learned in nine days.
- Writer
