Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lori
I had wanted Marshall for most of the evening. Maybe it was how he had volunteered to cut up the vegetables even though I hadn’t asked him to, or the way he sat there watching me warm up the skillet with a dreamy expression, like he couldn’t believe his good fortune in having met me. More than once that night, he had insisted it was this, and not the money, that had been his true lucky break.
“If I had to choose between you or the money,” he said as we kissed, “I would choose you in a heartbeat.”
“Do you really mean that?” I asked with a shrewd glare. “Or are you just trying to flatter me?”
Marshall looked stung by the accusation. “When have I ever lied to you?”
“You haven’t lied, per se, but you did trick me that one time.” Seeing the surprise on his face, I added, “Don’t try to deny it. I heard the whole story from Sean: how you were afraid you’d never be able to talk me into going out with you, so you planned one of your famous card tricks. Somehow, you forgot to mention that you’re a sleight-of-hand master.”
Marshall blushed slightly behind the ears but made no effort to deny it. “And aren’t you glad I did that?”
I laughed and stroked his chest just below the collarbone, where hair fell in little curled tangles. “I am, actually. Think of how much sadder my life would be if we’d never gone out.”
“Would you even sense the difference, though?”
I had to think about it for a minute. As always, Marshall’s philosophical puzzles were confounding. “I suppose I would still be lonely. And I’d know there was something missing from my life, even if I didn’t know what it was.”
“Fair enough.” He closed his eyes tight for a moment, inhaling my scent. “Do you ever think about how we could have ended up with different people and been just as happy?”
“No. Do you?”
“I mean, I’m glad things worked out the way they did. I just know that if you had stayed in Pittsburgh, or if I had stayed in Texas, we might have found someone else. And you’d be somewhere up north making love to them right now instead of me.”
I nodded unhappily. The thought of all these alternate lives stressed me out. “My sister wrote a story once in college. The story was about a demonic figure who goes around ruining marriages by showing the couples a movie. The movie contains footage from an alternate world where they met and fell in love with someone else. Seeing the movie, the couples become so miserable that they end up separating. Some of them even go looking for their true soulmates—with bad results.”
“That is quite a story,” said Marshall. “Why didn’t your sister go into writing?”
“I don’t know; you’d have to ask her. She’s brilliant but not very ambitious. It always spooked me, though, because what if that happened?”
“What if it did?”
I was quiet for a moment, thinking. “I think I would still choose you.”
“Why?”
This time there was no hesitation. “Because you’ve been good to me, and I like you.”
“You’ve been good to me, and I like you, too.” He wrapped his arms around my waist. His grip was warm and secure. “Let’s never separate, even if a demon-man tries to break us up.”
“Never, never,” I said quietly and buried my face in his chest.
***
That was the longest we had ever spent making love to each other. Marshall, knowing how much I enjoyed the buildup to the act of sex, devoted extra time to our foreplay that night. Eschewing the bed, we lay sprawled out on the living room floor in front of the TV. Marshall ran his hands along the strap of my bra as though debating whether or not he should take it off.
“Why does it smell like cigarette smoke in here?” he asked, glancing around the room. It was as though he half-expected for someone to come walking around the corner waving a cigarette in one hand.
“Um, that was me.” I lowered my head. “I had a smoke earlier out on the balcony.”
“You smoke?” He goggled at me. “That is the last thing I ever expected from you. I figured maybe it was Sam.”
“Everyone acts so surprised,” I replied in an annoyed tone. “I have maybe one cigarette a month, usually when I’m feeling stressed. And the last couple weeks have been really stressful. It’s honestly a wonder I held out so long.” I shrugged. “And guys always seem turned on by it, for some reason.”
“I think it’s because you’ve so carefully cultivated this image of a buttoned-up librarian,” he explained. “So naturally people begin to wonder if there’s more to you. A wild side that you’ve done your best to hide.”
“Is that why everyone gets so excited when I light up?”
Marshall nodded. “I’d love to take you out drinking sometime. When we first started going out, Sean didn’t think I would ever get you in bed. To be honest, neither did I.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have done it for anyone but you. You won me over, for better or worse.”
“Hopefully not for worse,” said Marshall. He still seemed so shy sometimes, like he had no right to be in my presence but wasn’t going to question his good fortune.
“Anyway,” I said, “we’ll go smoke together sometime, and you’ll see it isn’t nearly as sexy as everyone thinks it is. I’m just breathing smoke into my lungs, is all.”
“I almost want to take pictures.” I couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic or not.
“If it helps, I’ll hold a bottle of Jack Daniels in my other hand.”
“Mmm, very sexy,” said Marshall. He leaned forward and kissed me with his fuzzy face, his mustache tickling my upper lip and making me snicker.
Afterward, we lay in my bed together; he rested his head on my chest while I combed my fingers through his hair. Somehow, he had the softness and vulnerability of a boy of nineteen or twenty, and I was enchanted by his dark eyes and long lashes. He was mine, and he always would be.
“I feel at such a disadvantage all of a sudden,” I told him.
“Why’s that?” He turned his face up to mine.
“Because you just spent like a million dollars on me. A literal million, perhaps more. I don’t even want to know how much, exactly. It would just make me feel indebted to you.”
“I’ll never tell,” said Marshall, placing a hand over his mouth.
“See, but that’s just the thing. I feel like I owe you something for all you’ve done for me. But how could I possibly make up for that? There’s no way to balance the scales.”
“Perhaps not.” Marshall was quiet for a minute. “I suppose you’ll just have to love me for the rest of your life.”
“Oh, there was never any question of that.”
“Good.”
He smiled up at me, looking warm and contented. He was still smiling a few minutes later when he fell asleep in my arms.