Chapter 6: Accident
1169 Words
It was not planned.
Marcus needed that on record, even if only in his own head. He was not there because of Damon. He was there because the Greywell Street branch of Fielder's had the specific brand of protein powder his gym sold out of three weeks ago and he had been meaning to stop in since Tuesday.
He was in the supplements aisle. That was all.
He heard the voice before he saw the face.
Low. Unhurried. Telling someone on the phone that the revised figures needed to be on his desk before the Thursday call, not after, and that after was a word that did not exist in this context.
Marcus turned his head.
Damon was standing at the end of the aisle in a charcoal coat, phone to his ear, not looking at anything in particular. Then his eyes moved and found Marcus with the precision of something that had not been trying to find him at all, which somehow made it worse.
They both stopped.
Damon said into the phone, without breaking eye contact: "I'll call you back."
He hung up.
Neither of them moved for a full three seconds. The aisle was empty except for them. Overhead the fluorescent lighting did its honest, unflattering work.
"Hey," Marcus said.
"Hey," Damon said.
They had spoken on the phone twice since Saturday. They had texted every day. None of that had prepared Marcus for the specific problem of Damon standing six feet away in a coat that fit him extremely well, looking exactly like himself.
"Greywell branch," Damon said. It was not a question, just a man filling silence with geography.
"Protein powder," Marcus said, holding it up.
Damon looked at it briefly. "I didn't know you trained."
"Four years."
"Where?"
"Crestfield Athletic on Pemberton Road. You?"
"Same place."
Marcus looked at him. "You train at Crestfield Athletic."
"Tuesday and Thursday mornings."
"I go Monday, Wednesday, Saturday."
Something shifted in Damon's expression. The ghost of something that was not a smile and was not nothing. "Well," he said.
"Well," Marcus said.
The universe, apparently, had a sense of humor that neither of them found funny.
Damon moved first, stepping further into the aisle, stopping at a shelf two down from Marcus. He picked something up and read the back of it without appearing to actually read it.
"You live near here?" he asked.
"Twenty minutes north. You?"
"Twelve minutes east." He put the item back. "Jade has a studio nearby. I drop her sometimes."
"Is she here now?"
"Pilates finished an hour ago. She's at Zara's."
Marcus absorbed this information. Zara had not mentioned Jade coming over, which meant his phone probably had unread messages in it that he had not checked because he had been focused on finding parking on Greywell Street.
He should leave. He had his protein powder. The transaction was complete. There was no logical reason to remain in this aisle.
"There's a place across the street," Damon said. He was not looking at Marcus when he said it. He was reading another label he was not reading. "Good coffee. Better than Corner Tap actually."
"I can't," Marcus said.
"I know."
"Damon."
"I said I know." He put the item back. Finally looked at him. "I wasn't seriously suggesting it."
"It sounded like you were."
"Then I was testing whether you'd say yes."
Marcus looked at him steadily. "That's worse."
"I'm aware." Damon exhaled slowly, the controlled breath of someone managing something with effort. "It's different. Seeing you. I didn't account for it."
"Neither did I."
"On the phone it's manageable."
"And in person?"
Damon said nothing. He did not need to say anything. The answer was in the way he had stopped walking when their eyes met. It was in the three seconds of stillness in an empty aisle. It was in the fact that they were still standing here having this conversation instead of doing the obvious adult thing and walking in opposite directions.
"We should stop texting," Marcus said.
"Yes."
"I mean it this time."
"So do I."
"We said that before."
"I remember."
"And then you texted me at 1 a.m. about a coffee shop."
Damon's jaw moved. "That was a lapse."
"How many lapses are we budgeting for?"
"None. Zero. We're done." He said it with the authority he probably used in boardrooms and it landed the same way it had in the parking garage, clean and final, and Marcus felt it do the same thing it had done then. Not the thing Damon intended. The opposite thing.
He tightened his grip on the protein powder.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay," Damon said.
Two men who had now agreed to stop three separate times, standing in a supplements aisle on Greywell Street, neither moving.
A woman came into the aisle pushing a trolley and the spell broke the way spells do, abruptly and without ceremony. Marcus stepped aside. Damon turned back to the shelf. The woman took what she needed and left.
"I'm going to go," Marcus said.
"Yeah."
He started walking. Got to the end of the aisle.
"Marcus."
He stopped. Did not turn around immediately. Made himself take one full breath first.
Then he turned.
Damon was still standing by the shelf. He looked, for the first time since the restaurant, like something had gotten past the architecture. Not much. A crack. The width of a sentence.
"I'm glad it was an accident," he said. "Seeing you. I'm glad it wasn't planned because if I had planned it I'd have to think about what that means and I'm not ready to think about what that means."
Marcus stood at the end of the aisle and looked at him.
"That's the most honest thing you've said to me," he said quietly.
Damon held his gaze. "Don't make it mean more than it does."
"I'm not."
"You're doing the face."
"I don't have a face."
"You have a face," Damon said. "I've been trying not to think about the face."
Marcus turned and walked to the checkout.
He paid for the protein powder. He walked to his car. He sat in the driver's seat and did not start the engine for four minutes.
His phone buzzed.
He looked at it.
It was Zara. Jade's here, making a mess of my kitchen. Come save me. Bring food.
He read it twice. Thought about Jade, currently at Zara's apartment, twelve minutes from the man she trusted completely, who was standing in a supplements aisle telling that man he had been trying not to think about his face.
He started the engine.
He drove to Zara's.
He brought food.
He sat across the table from Jade and listened to her talk about Damon, about how good things were, about the weekend they were planning in Hartwell next month, and he nodded and smiled and said all the right things and felt every single word land like a small, specific punishment.
He deserved it.
He sat there and took every single one.
- Writer
