Page 23 of I Almost Do

No wonder he's not interested in sleeping with me. I'm a hot freaking mess. So gross. I'll never be able to look him in the face again.

"Why," I ask as he guides me back to the bed, "does anybody ever drink alcohol? This is horrab… horrabll."

He pulls back the comforter and settles me there, tucking the blanket around me. The ceiling spins in a merry-go-round twirl.

"Some things you only learn by experience. Moderation is the key when it comes to alcohol. And plenty of water."

"Did you learn by experience?" I slur, eyes closed. "Or were you just born knowing everrrrryyything?"

I hear him huff in amusement. "Remind me to tell you about my twenty-first birthday sometime. I'm pretty sure there's a bar in Newark that has my picture posted with 'Do Not Serve This Asshole' written on it."

I think I laugh before I drift into unconsciousness. But I might have just dreamed it.

9

How Do I Say Goodbye

James

I move into the brownstone the next day. I have my own room, on a different floor than Clarissa's.

Apparently I don't need to worry about her demanding any more kisses. She's embarrassed by the memories of our wedding night enough to avoid the subject.

Even if she weren't, our focus is on Marcus, not the two of us. Because Marcus is dying. It's happening now, not in some vague future timeline.

Over the next two weeks, it becomes horrifyingly obvious that Marcus isn't going to make it the full three months the doctors predicted. Three months was such a short time. To have even that stolen from us creates a grasping, desperate sense of impending doom.

Within four days of the wedding, his hospital bed is set up in his study. Understandably, Marcus doesn't want to be shut up in his room for his last days.

Clarissa dropped out of school for the remainder of the semester. She spends every waking moment with her father or arranging for his care.

I thought I'd be the one making those arrangements, caring for the both of them. I am not a man who knows how to sit with his feelings. When life sucks, I get up, and I do something about it. I need to fix this. And since I can't, I need to do the things that need doing.

But Clarissa isn't having that. She won't be usurped. And I am useless and helpless in the face of it.

There is no stopping the clock. I accepted that weeks ago.

And now I'm supposed to be sad. That's allowed, understandable, even encouraged. And if I dig around under all the layers inside me, I know it's pain at the core of me.

But my overriding emotion right now is anger. A therapist from my childhood once called anger a "secondary emotion." He'd encouraged me to look beneath the anger, to find the pain and fear underneath.

Why would I want to do that? Why would anyone?

Losing Marcus so young and in such a horrible, unforgiving way is enraging. I struggle to hide that because it's the last thing Clarissa or Marcus needs from me. But it's there, nonetheless.

For these last seven years, I saw in Marcus the father I wish I'd had.

And I watched him with Clarissa, watched how he loved her and protected her. And in a weird way, seeing him with her was healing.

Marcus is not perfect. I can see now that he stifled Clarissa’s growth and freedom in some ways. But it was never from a lack of control or a lack of love.

She told me yesterday that she has no memory, in her entire life, of Marcus ever raising his voice or his hand to her. I can barely imagine the childhood she described. Peace and safety inside a family? It seems impossible.

And now Marcus is leaving. He's abandoning Clarissa,longbefore she's ready.

It's a stupid thought. It's wrong, so I shove it down as deep as it will go. But it keeps creeping back up to scrape at me.

I don't know who I'm angry at. It's not Marcus, and it's not Clarissa. Maybe it's God. And there's definitely some of it that's self-directed. Because here I am again, watching someone I love die without a single thing I can do about it.

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