Platonic (32 page)

He’s been gone almost a decade and now he’s back in a big way and thinks he needs to explain.

He calls late on a Thursday afternoon, late enough that Molly should be home from teaching, if this is one of the days she’s on, and early enough that Greg probably won’t be.

Sure enough, Molly answers the phone.

“Hey, Mrs. O’Shea—” Mark’s teeth click and he snaps his mouth shut; he hadn’t expected to sound so young, to say it like that.

“This is she?”

Mark swallows and hurries to say something. “Mrs. O’Shea—” He wonders if he should call her Molly, but that feels weird since he hasn’t spoken to her since he was eighteen. “Mrs. O’Shea, it’s Mark. Mark Savoy?”

He honestly feels like an awkward teenager again, having to explain to Daniel’s parents that he and their son are more than just friends.

A beat on the line and Mark panics: He isn’t remembered. “Mark? Oh my goodness, I haven’t heard your voice in years! How are you?”

“I’m good, Mrs. O’Shea—”

“Molly, goodness, I insist. You’re in New York? A lawyer? Working for the people? Oh gosh, Dan’s so proud!”

Mark huffs a laugh under his breath. “Yeah. Really? I mean… I just wanted to call and see how you were.”

Molly’s voice is pleased and pleasant, bubbly with sunshine, and reminds Mark of home cooking and warm places and all the things he thinks home should be. “Well I’m just fine, dear, how are you? Daniel told us you were struggling a little with the long distance but he said you were better now. Apparently Rita is being a good friend? And Daniel’s actually putting in the effort required?” She pauses for a beat but Mark hasn’t caught up with the conversation; he is slightly shocked that she knows so much because he’d thought Daniel had been exaggerating when he said he talked to his mom about them a lot. “He says you’ve grown up a lot as well. You’re better at this kind of stuff. Relationship stuff?”

“Yes ma’am, I have. I am.”

He cringes and rolls his eyes at himself but she just clicks her tongue and corrects, “Molly.”

“Molly. We are going to make it through his year in London and I wanted to call and make sure you knew that I… I love your son very, very much.” He rolls his eyes at himself again, smacks a hand to his head and bites his lip. He’ll recount this to both Rita and Daniel and let himself be judged for it later.

“Yes, dear, he’s told me.” She’s flippant about it and it feels fantastic. “So you are coming for Christmas? Staying?”

“I hope to. I mean, I’ll be back in Illinois and imposing on your hospitality as much as you’ll allow. But I need to see what my family is doing. I would like to spend as much time with Daniel and you and Mr. O’Shea—”

“Greg.”

“—Greg as I can, though. So staying would be nice. I haven’t seen Daniel in so long and I feel like I owe you all some sort of explanation for the last ten years—”

“Oh gosh, of course not, you were both young and silly. I’m just so pleased you found each other again and were smart enough not to let go. He’s very excited about coming home to you. I don’t know how much he’s told you.”

For a moment Mark thinks he should stop her; if there’s something Daniel hasn’t told him, it’s on purpose. But he’s still feeling a little lost in the conversation.

“He has it all planned out. New York and raising a family and living happily ever after. It’s lovely to see him so excited about it. I’ve tried to explain that it isn’t always so easy, but he always just tells me you’ve earned it, the two of you, and that you can overcome any problems you encounter after your epic, troublesome courtship. You know I keep telling him to be careful about Rita, that the two of you will end up part of one of her books.”

Mark laughs, loudly and probably shockingly on the line, and then reins himself in quickly. “Well, it all sounds very nice to me, Molly.”

There’s a pause and she says, “To me as well. He always deserved you. And you him.” Mark revels in that for a moment, sitting at his desk and grinning into an empty coffee cup. “Daniel says you’ve only spent a week or so together?”

“Yeah, pretty much exactly seven days. Five here, two or three in London—”

“It’s not a lot, you know that—”

“I’m sure.”

“Oh, I know. What I’m saying is, he’s only ever brought one boy home to meet his father and that was his best friend, when he was fifteen, so isn’t it something that he’s bringing you home again now, after just a handful of days together? All of us know you’re it, he knows it, I just hope you know it as well.” He can positively hear her grinning. “Make the absolute most of Christmas, is all I ask. Make sure you’re here for Christmas Eve and then lunch the day after. Try to entertain Greg for a day. And let Daniel show you off to Karen. And the only other thing I want from you, Mark?”

Mark beams and stares harder into his coffee cup, hoping no one in his office is watching him too closely. “Yes, Molly?”

“Give me a big hug when you see me?”

“I will.” He swallows down a jumble of feelings he didn’t expect to have to deal with. He was expecting Molly to be standoffish, wary, cautious, not this. “Thank you for being so wonderful.”

She huffs another laugh and dismisses that. “Oh, don’t be silly.” He hears her take a breath. “Now tell me everything about this lawyering job of yours. Daniel says you’re changing the world!”

***

The conversation with Molly has Mark on cloud nine for several days. His emails to Daniel are chirpier and more long-winded and he doesn’t mind so much when Daniel’s responses come back short and distracted. Then, a week after Mark’s chat with Molly, Daniel tells him he can’t come home for Christmas.

He explains that his chances to get home for the holiday have been getting slimmer and slimmer and that at this point he really only has a handful of days that he can be absent, that Holly’s people are basically demanding this, and that he doesn’t see any alternative.

Mark chokes on his own breath as he listens and keeps saying, “It’s fine, I get it,” every time Daniel pauses for breath. It’s a lie, though, and every carefully-assembled piece of feeling okay, or feeling better, shatters as his one hope for relief is stolen away.

When Daniel is finished, he says, “I know this is horrible, but it’s where I’m at right now. I need you to tell me what to do because I don’t know.”

“I need you,” Mark eventually admits after several agonizing seconds of refusing to. “I’m not even sure I need you more than you need me. Definitely, we need each other differently. But I need you, here with me. Or to be there with you. I just
need
you.”

Daniel starts crying, then, telling Mark as he comes to realize it that the fifteen-hour days at work are entirely because he has nothing to come home to. He tells Mark that he needs him, too, and that he doesn’t know what they’re doing, not at all.

Daniel says he can’t lose Mark again.

Mark says, “I’ll come to London.”

Mark thinks he can hear Daniel shaking his head, slamming things open and closed in his apartment. “Don’t,” Daniel says, clearly frustrated. “That would be so expensive for you and such a waste. There’s no one here but me, and you’ll miss your family—”

“I don’t need them. I barely even like them. I need you,” Mark presses. “I need to feel you again, just… I need to touch you and know you’re still waiting for me.”

Daniel sniffles and takes a deep breath, the background noise of him banging around in his apartment falling silent. “We’re waiting for each other. I’m still in this—God, I love you so much and I am still in this. I’ll work something out. I promise you I will be back in your arms by New Year’s, okay?”

There’s another sniffle and Mark feels as if his lungs are starting to work again. He spares a moment to judge himself for his histrionics but to also accept that this is harder than it’s ever been. “Yeah.”

Daniel spends the next two hours talking to Mark in a low voice, obviously exhausted but forcing himself to stay awake with Mark, talking touch and scent and taste, all the things they need but can’t have, until Mark is groaning and they both get off together.

***

Daniel wakes Mark the next morning. It’s five a.m. in New York and Daniel’s voice is high and tight, near-hysterical as he speaks without waiting to hear Mark’s hello. “I did it. I have no idea what, exactly, but I’m coming home to you for Christmas and I don’t care what happens with Holly or Brenton. God, he is such a fuckwit and—and I told him so.”

Mark, still pulling himself from sleep, rubs at his eyes and feels the twist in his heart relax for the first time in weeks. “You’re coming home?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am, certainly—”

“How?”

After a few moments’ silence, Daniel tells him what happened in Brenton Wood’s office only half an hour ago. How he called him a fuckwit, right to his face. “And then I just lost it, I am so done with working for that creep, I just stood there and told him how terrible a person he is and how I have no idea what Holly sees in him. I mean, he’s supposed to coordinate everything and all he does is power-monger and make sure he looks important. I told him he could call Holly right then, or the investors, and explain to them that he was about to fire me, because I won’t work through Christmas. Because I’d rather go home and see you for the first time in months.”

Mark can’t believe it. He is torn between worry and happiness. “Daniel, did you really—”

“He told me I was being unprofessional and I told him he could suck my dick!”

“Daniel. Oh my God.”

“I stormed out of there and now I’m sitting here in a coffee shop and I have no idea what’s going to happen but I’m already searching for flights.”

But Mark is terrified for him, and terrified that he’s caused Daniel to do something so rash with his career. “Are you sure you want to risk your job like this?”

He can hear the huff of laughter through the phone. “I don’t think it’s that bad. This guy, everyone knows he should lose his contract once we’re through the Paris shows and he knows it too. The only person who doesn’t is Holly and I’ll be done working with her after this project. Anyway, I was completely within my rights, I asked for three
days
including Christmas and every other person in the office will vouch that I’m the hardest-working person there. I would go straight over his head and talk to Holly about it, but I don’t have time and the way he talks to me… God he’s a dick. He just… he hates me because I design and he’s just money and management. I get along with the models and clients and everyone better than he does. God, if his mother wasn’t who she is and wasn’t such good friends with Holly, he’d never have gotten a job like this in the first place.”

“What’s gonna happen?” Mark asks, exhilarated in spite of himself.

“On the fashion side of things? Nothing. The line looks good, the materials are chosen and the clothes are being sewn. Brenton is just a giant, talentless moron, trying to make my life hell.”

“And for us?” Mark asks, blatantly hopeful, anticipating.

“As I said, I’m gonna book flights tonight.”

Mark is about to celebrate with him when they hear the call waiting beep. Daniel whispers that it’s Brenton’s office and then puts him on hold.

It’s a long sixty seconds of waiting, of doodling misshapen orchids into the margins of case notes on his desk and not making eye contact with any of his colleagues as they pass by.

Then Daniel picks his call back up and Mark asks, “What happened?” before he’s even said a word.

He can hear Daniel’s happiness in the way he lets out a breath. “I’m coming for Christmas, five days, I’ll see you back home.”

“Oh my God,” Mark breathes out.

“Yeah. He didn’t have the balls to calls me. Made his P.A. do it, but he apologized through her and says I need to be back by the twenty-eighth and work straight through New Year’s but I can have the five days before that.”

“I’m gonna see you for Christmas.” It feels like a dream come true. It’s the thing he’s been looking forward to for months, and now it’s real and a few months after that they’ll have each other every single day.

“I need to book flights. And I need to call my parents.”

“Go,” Mark says.

“Love you,” Daniel replies, and then the line goes dead.

CHAPTER 16

Mark picks Daniel up from the airport and hugs him so tightly Daniel almost chokes. Mark mutters, “Thank you,” over and over into Daniel’s neck and his eyes are wet when Daniel steps back. So Daniel pulls him into another hug, stifles his own little sniffles against Mark’s neck and then takes him by the shoulders and kisses him hard.

“This vacation is for me as well, okay?” Daniel tells him.

Mark nods, wiping his cheeks. “We’re gonna be fine,” Mark says, and he believes it.

“It’s Christmas,” Daniel replies. “We are going to be better than fine.”

Daniel calls his dad from the rental car and spends ten minutes assuring him that he is happy to be home and not too exhausted. He promises his dad that he will be home as soon as Mark drops him off, then clicks the phone closed and notices that Mark keeps looking across at him.

“What?” he asks, smiling.

“Nothin’,” Mark mumbles. He fiddles with his iPod at the traffic lights and switches the music over from Christmas carols to classical piano, making Daniel raise an eyebrow.

Mark just laughs quietly to himself, his cheeks hot and his skin hypersensitive when he grabs Daniel’s hand to hold for the rest of the drive.

Daniel says it so suddenly that Mark jumps in his seat. “Take the next exit.”

Mark side-eyes him and begins to say, “We’re still miles from home, why?” but takes the turn anyway.

“Ummm…” Daniel’s eyes search the signage as they approach the lights and then he says, “Take a left.”

“Dan, where are we going?”

“I’m being spontaneous!” is all he says back.

Daniel directs Mark around a couple more turns, pulling his phone from his pocket and looking up a map. He says, “Turn right here,” and Mark has no choice but to pull into the registration area of the swanky new Hilton hotel.

“Daniel?” Mark asks again, staring out his window as a valet rushes forward. “What are we doing?”