Your Mark on Me

Chapter 29: One Hour

I didn't know what else to say, and Mark seemed resolved not to help; on the contrary.

"Did you finish the book and sent it out?"

"I didn't have the time to. I told you, there's a lot of work to do back home."

I left out a triumphant huff. "See? You're useless without me." It was meant to be a joke, but Mark's face clouded.

"I didn't mean to..."

"It's okay."

The crease in his brow said otherwise. I started picking at my nails with a preoccupied expression.

"What else have you been up to?" he asked softly after a while, realising I was feeling bad.

"Not much. Did some thinking about life. Realised some things."

His mouth stretched in a slightly condescending smile, as if he was wondering what possible pearls of wisdom I could have come up with. "Like what?"

"Like the fact that most people are not happy. They just settle for something or for someone, and then they try to convince themselves that they are. Because striving for the best can leave you sad and worn out, and feeling like you're never enough. And when that happens, the warm, sunny valley called mediocrity becomes the easy option. And I realised I didn't want to be like that."

"Hmm."

"What? Are you surprised that I'm actually making sense? I told you before, just because I'm young it doesn't mean I don't know anything."

"I know."

"You do?"

I couldn't actually detect any trace of sarcasm or condescension in his voice, so I thought it was a good time to bring out some of the issues that had been on my mind but had been too wary to touch until then.

"You know, in your letter, you said that..."

Mark cut me off with an unexpectedly cold voice, heavy with warning. "You promised no drama."

I frowned. He didn't even know what I was going to say. What was he expecting, anyway? That I'd just wave goodbye with a fake smile, pretending I wasn't hurt and confused? Pretending, again, that nothing happened?

"Well, you promised you'd be at home on that Monday, and you weren't. So we'd be even."

"What's this idiot doing?" Mark muttered, ignoring me. We were now at a four-way stop and, just as we were about to go straight through the intersection, the car across turned left without warning. I felt a jerk and was pulled backward and forwards when the sudden brake canceled the acceleration. "Twat".

I made myself small and stopped talking for a while. He was a bit scary, now that he was annoyed, and I sensed that it wasn't just the other driver that had irritated him.

I resumed after a few minutes, when I thought it safe, in a quieter voice.

"You know, you didn't have to leave like that. You could have just talked to me, and I would have understood. I'm not crazy."

"No. You're just an obsessed little stalker."

He had tried to say it in that half-serious, half-joking way, but I couldn't help feeling hurt by his choice of words.

"I wouldn't have come if I thought you hated me, or that you didn't care about me at all. But, in the letter, you said the exact opposite. You do like me, you do care about me, so you decided it was best to leave. Call me stupid, but I can't understand your reasoning. I came hoping you'd make me understand. Is that so crazy?"

"I've explained all I had to explain. You're just too young - too immature - to understand".

His again-condescending tone suddenly made my blood boil with frustration. In the background, the concerto had reached the allegro, and the now cheery motif in the violin didn't fit at all with how I felt, or what I wanted to say.

"Too immature? Me? I already know what I want in life. And when I want something, I try my best to get it. Simple as that. What do you want? What do you do to get it? You're thirty-five and you still have no clue. You had three months to finish that book, and you haven't. Who's the immature one?"

"Well, maybe we can't always get what we want. Sometimes we just have to do the right thing, you know?" His tone was calm and controlled, but as he ended the sentence, the whole car jerked to the left, then was back on the straight trajectory in a split second.

I didn't remember rides with Mark to be this bumpy.

"Why? Because of what other people would think? Your friends? My mom? Jen? It can't be just because I can't drink a stupid glass of wine with you in a restaurant. Which, by the way, I'll be able to do next year. I'm almost seventeen now."

He pretended to be too busy overtaking a big van and didn't reply.

"Why can't you just give me one proper reason? Something better than that bullshit that it's what's best for me, like you'd know better than I do!"

The van was far behind us now, yet Mark was not talking to me anymore. He was staring forward, blocking me out. The music had become distracting, so I turned off the radio.

"Why can't you just look me in the eye and tell me you don't give a shit about me. Tell me you haven't missed me at all during these three months. Tell me that kiss was nothing, and that time, at the hotel was also nothing, and that you haven't thought about any of it at all." I started reciting from memory, putting on a silly deep voice, with a grotesquely exaggerated accent: "No, I don't care for you in a platonic way - although you have inspired me - but in the simplest, most vulgar variation: in the way a man loves a...

"Stop it."

I swallowed. If his voice would have been a bucket of water, I'd have been dead frozen in a second. I glanced again at his profile, at those long eyelashes, at his freshly-shaven cheek, and at that forehead underneath which there must have been so many racing thoughts, of which I had absolutely no idea.

"Let me see, what else have I been up to? Oh yes. I'm going out with Roy again, in case you've been wondering. Do you remember him? We got back together that evening after the concert at the Strathmore. You probably saw him give me flowers at the end. I guess your flowers came a bit late."

That must have stirred him up, because his eyes darted towards me and he finally spoke, in a most caustic manner. "Lucky guy. Does he know you came running to my hotel last night?"

I felt my blood rush and ended up completely ceasing to filter what I was spurting out. "You know, Mark, you're not exactly the center of the universe. I did lots of things while you were gone. And Roy is a really good guy, and he's not that bad in bed either, even though he might not look like it. Yes, we had sex. Does it bother you to hear me say it? Or to picture it? Or maybe you'd like that. I bet you jerked off at least once thinking of me!"

The car pulled to the right side of the road, with a hard brake.

"Get out."