Chapter 77 Chapter Seventy Seven
Marcus lived in a nice neighbourhood, the sort of place that made you feel warm just by looking at it. Definitely not as fancy as mine, but solid upper-middle-class.
Big, fenced-off houses with actual families inside them, where people knew their neighbours and had block parties.
Every window glowed yellow against the dark street, and even from the driveway, I could hear the chaos going on inside: little kids arguing over the remote, someone butchering a violin solo upstairs, and a baby crying.
Marcus had four younger siblings still at home and two older brothers in college. His house was always chaotic, but after a while, you got used to it.
It was definitely a step up from the frequent dead silence of my house.
Dad gets a big promotion and decides being home is less important than being important… it is what it fucking is.
I rang the doorbell and Mrs. Rodriguez answered with a baby strapped to her back and flour dusting her apron.
Her face lit up when she saw me. “Jace! Oh, sweetie, it’s been ages!”
Her smile was warm and welcoming as she pulled me into a suffocating hug, getting a lot of that flour on me. But I didn’t mind it much.
“I was starting to think you boys had a falling out,” she continued, stepping aside to let me in.
“Come in, come in. You look like you’ve had a day.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Rodriguez. I’ve been really busy with…”
“Busy.” She rested both her hands on her hips and tapped her foot, clearly not believing me, then she turned and walked back over to the kitchen. “Friends make time, honey. That’s what makes them friends. You should come around more often.”
I nodded, stepping out of the way of a very angry goth girl, one of Marcus's sisters.
“Clarissa… haven't seen you in a while.” I tried. She just raised a middle finger at me and kept walking.
Mr Rodriguez looked up from where he was kneading dough at the kitchen island, took one look at me, then glanced past me toward the street.
“I heard something crash a little while back, and now you’re here on foot. You crash your car son?”
“Yeah. It’s definitely totalled. I’ll get it towed later...”
He let out a low whistle and headed for the door, wiping flour on his jeans. “Jesus. Your old man’s gonna have your hide for that one.”
“Yeah, it’ll keep me up at night,” I muttered.
"Dios mío. You crashed your car, Jace? Are you okay?" Mrs. Rodriguez asked, her eyes going wide with worry.
"Yes, I'm fine. Just a slight pain in my leg, nothing to worry about."
"Are you sure, son?" Mr. Dawson asked, sharing his wife's worry.
"Of course, I can barely feel it. Nothing a few painkillers won't fix."
I felt a little bad about the crash a minute ago, but now I was just relieved that I had only a slight injury, and I didn’t end up missing a limb.
It was an expensive car, but it wouldn’t be the first car I’d crashed. There were definitely more where that came from.
In true Dad fashion, Mr Rodriguez started walking up the street to inspect the damage and shake his head at it.
Meanwhile Mrs. Rodriguez squeezed my shoulder. “Marcus is upstairs with company.”
She smiled knowingly. “But I’m glad you’re here, that boy needs his friends.”
I felt a twinge of guilt twist deep in my gut. When was the last time I’d actually hung out with Marcus?
Really hung out, not just sat next to him at lunch while I obsessed over Lena or some other bullshit and ignored everything else?
“Jace!” Another of Marcus’s little sisters; Emma, came sliding around the corner in socked feet.
“Marcus is upstairs with a girl.” She scrunched her face up like she’d just tasted a lemon.
“I bet he is,” I muttered.
“She’s really pretty,” Janine added, appearing from the kitchen with a juice box. “I don’t know why she likes him though. He’s so gross.”
“Hey, that’s your brother you’re talking about,” Mrs. Rodriguez chided gently.
“Doesn’t make him less gross. Who would go out with him? Yuck.”
Looks like I was about to find out.
I grabbed two beers from their fridge, one for me and another for him. A peace offering for being a shit friend… and for yelling at him earlier… and for only showing up when I needed something.
Then I headed upstairs.
Marcus and I had a rule that went back to middle school: we didn’t knock on each other’s doors.
His room was my room, mine was his. Mi Casa, Su Casa. That’s how it had always been.
So I didn’t knock.
I just pushed open the door, already saying, “Hey man, I brought beer…”
I trailed off when I saw what was happening.
Marcus was standing by his bed, fumbling with his jeans like he’d just yanked them on. His shirt was inside out, his hair stuck up in about fifteen different directions.
And his window was wide open, the curtains billowing, as if someone had just jumped out of it.
“What the…” I quickly crossed to the window and looked outside it.
I spotted a figure wearing barely anything, sprinting across the backyard toward the side gate, then somersaulting over it.
Whoever it was tall for a girl, and really fast… And was that… blonde hair catching the porch light?
“Who the fuck was that?” I turned back to Marcus.
He was pulling his shirt off to fix it, his face carefully blank as he looked around the room, anywhere but at me. “Nobody. Just some girl.”
“A girl jumped out your window?” I looked back outside, but whoever it was had already disappeared into the shadows. “The fuck, man? Does she think your parents are gonna ground her or something?”
“Sneaky link.” Marcus shrugged, finally getting his shirt on right-side-out. “She didn’t want anyone seeing her, I guess.”
The room smelled like sex and cologne.
Definitely girl perfume too, something floral and expensive. Alison would know what brand that was.
“That’s weird as fuck.” I let the curtain drop. “She ashamed of you or what?”
Marcus laughed, but it sounded forced. “You know how it is, man. Some girls like to keep things on the down-low. Reputation and all that bullshit.”
“I guess.” But something felt off. Marcus had never been the sneaky type.
He was loud and really obvious about that shit, the kind of guy who’d show up to school with hickeys like trophies and then tell the entire locker room about how he fucked the girl who gave them to him.
Marcus grabbed one of the beers I’d brought and cracked it open. “So. It’s been a minute since you came by.”
He took a long drink, watching me over the rim. "What's going on? Something happen?"
Another fresh pang of guilt hit me and I groaned. ”Can’t I just come see my best friend without needing something?”
“You can. But you don’t.” Marcus said it without heat, just stating facts. “So what is it? Your dad being a dick again? Coach on your ass? Or…” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Girl problems?”
I opened my own beer and took a drink to buy time. “Can we just game or something? Like old times?”
“Nope.” Marcus hopped up to grab his pull-up bar mounted in his bathroom doorway and started repping out pull-ups like this was a normal conversation.
“If you’re here, you definitely need help with something. So come on.” He grunted through another rep. “Tell big Daddy Marcus how bad you fucked up.”
“I hate when you call yourself that.”
“And yet here you are, about to unload all your problems on me like I’m your fucking therapist.” Another pull-up. “So spill. What’d you do?”
I sat on the edge of his bed and stared at my beer.
“I think...” The words got stuck in my throat.
If I said them out loud then they would become real, and I would never be able to take them back.
Marcus dropped from the bar and grabbed his own beer, settling into his desk chair backwards.
“You think what?” Marcus asked, one eyebrow raised.
“I think I’m in love with Lena.”