He hasn't been thinking about Marlowe at all this weekend. At least, he wouldn't call it thinking. She's been with him all the time: in the shirt that he wore when he went to see her that he still hasn't washed; in the faint pink bite mark that she left on his chest. He has rubbed his finger over it every morning, recalling how it felt when she sank her sharp feline teeth into his hide. Lucas bites his bottom lip hard; he shakes the memory of the thrill out of his shoulders as he zips up his bag and shoves his boots into a plain green duffle. It's fading, he thinks, passing his fingers over the spot under his gray t-shirt. It needs to be renewed.
Sobering, he glances at the clock and recalibrates his schedule. It's one thirty; he will get to D.C. early and have some time with her before dinner at six. He allots two or three hours to eat and visit, and then more time with Marlowe. Time alone, Lucas corrects silently, yanking the strings on his duffle. If he gets up at two a.m. Monday morning, showers and changes, he'll be on base by a quarter to five. "No problem," Lucas murmurs. He strips off his t-shirt as he strides back to the closet and pulls a freshly ironed dress shirt from a wooden hanger. Aunt Margaret doesn't allow t-shirts at her Sunday dinner table. He walks to the mirror and buttons the shirt over his treasured mark, leaving two buttons undone at his throat and rolling up the sleeves. "Besides," Lucas mumbles, smirking at his reflection, "I have to look my best when I shock the pants off of Uncle Ian."
Lucas slings one bag on each shoulder and sweeps out of his room. His eyes sharpen on the details of the house as he crosses the hall and bounds down the stairs. He likes this old house, its used walls and creaky floors. It had a life before him, and it will go on living after he's gone.
"Jay." Lucas circles around the small table at the bottom of the stairs and stands facing the living room. His roommate, Jay, is stretched out on the sofa munching and watching T.V.
Jay pauses in the middle of tossing a kernel of popcorn into the air and turns to Lucas. The kernel lands in his hair. Grinning and shaking his head vigorously, Jay says, "What's up, Arctic?" His eyes travel over Lucas' button down shirt and luggage. "Didn't know you were going on a trip. How long are you going to be gone?"
"Just today. I'll be back tomorrow night."
Jay quirks a brow, surveying the size of Lucas' two bags. "That's a lot of junk for one night."
Impatient to leave, Lucas skips over the comment and presses on to what he wants to say. "I'll be moving out pretty soon, a few weeks maybe. You need a new roommate."
"What?" Jay sits up, settling his bowl of popcorn into his lap.
"I'm transferring to Fort Myer." He filed the paperwork first thing Friday morning - another reflex. "Could be more than a few weeks, but I'll pay the rent through the end of July so you're covered."
"Myer?" Jay repeats dumbly. He snorts incredulously. "You're uncle finally got to you, huh?"
"No." A slow smile spreads over Lucas' face as he explains. "My woman's in D.C.," he says gingerly, letting the words dangle on his tongue, testing their weight. He smiles more deeply, savoring the taste.
Dumbfounded, Jay simply stares. He opens his mouth to speak, stops, and then tries again. "Wow. Congratulations?" he asks hesitantly. There is something irrevocably permanent about the sound of the phrase "my woman." It makes Lucas seem like a married man.
"Thanks," Lucas says warmly, shifting the straps on his shoulders. "See you Monday night. Don't forget about the new roommate." And he turns and leaves. He's never had much to say to Jay, and today is no exception. As he strides down the walk to his car, Lucas' thoughts die down to silence. Jay doesn't matter; he's just a name in a file in Lucas' brain, a file that will soon be closed. Once he moves out, he'll forget about Jay entirely; out of sight is out of mind.
The people in his life who are at a distance are distant thoughts, people whose names he writes on the calendar so that he remembers to call them or visit them on designated days. He can't touch from a distance; he can't do more than talk and laugh over the phone. Distance means jeopardy, and he does everything that he can to keep his inner circle close. He wants Marlowe closer than close; he wants to be inside of her.
Sex isn't everything, but it's a lot. In a love affair, it's vital. Lucas always bets his life on anything that matters, and his life is not an abstract concept. He's a soldier, a warrior; the hourglass of his life and death drips blood. Life means time, effort, victory and defeat; life is something you do and experience. And love . . . Lucas scrubs his hand over his jaw as he pulls onto the expressway. He knows more about the absence of love than he does anything else. When love is missing, fierce tired men roll over and over on cots the size of beach towels and hug their arms around themselves, dreaming fretfully. No number of letters and pictures and short static riddled phone calls diminishes a soldier's desire to roll into the arms of the woman that God made just for him. Lucas has witnessed it countless times, but he never experienced it before Marlowe. He can't do long distance; it's not a matter of wanting, it's a matter of need.
He passes the time driving to Washington in a meditative stupor. He hasn't eaten since four thirty this morning. His various hungers burrow deep down into his gut like seeds taking root. Beneath the rays of the dying sun, Lucas' desire flowers furiously; he races along the expressway towards sustenance.
But his meal isn't hot; she isn't even ready. Still dressed in a pair of cut off shorts and a threadbare GAP logo t shirt, Marlowe is trolling her apartment with a rag in one hand and a spray bottle in the other, her cell phone and her house phone clipped on each hip. She circles around her spotless living room a second time, hunting down imagined blemishes. Periodically she stops and hovers over one of the same places she cleaned the first time, squinting and aiming her cleanser bottle like a six shooter.
Marlowe squeezes the trigger and swipes a streak from her television screen. She is obsessed with cleaning at this moment because dirt is something she can control, something she can wipe away. She cannot wipe away the thick anxious silence in her apartment. She can't make Lucas call sooner even though her ear drums feel painfully swollen as they strain for the sound of a ringer. She spent most of the morning pacing her apartment, wandering from clock to clock. The hours ticked by like a countdown; two o'clock was the deadline. If she was going to cancel, she had to call by two. He would arrive at five thirty from a three hour drive; after two o'clock, there would be no turning back. Marlowe picked up the phone at a quarter to two and dialed Lucas' number with hesitant fingers. She hadn't decided to cancel; she'd decided to talk. There is a long list of things that she wants to tell him, and a shorter but more vital list of things that she wants to hear. She called back to back until two o'clock. She called every fifteen minutes until three and then every half hour until four. That was when she started waiting, and cleaning so that she had an excuse for not changing her clothes.
When the buzzer shatters the silence, Marlowe freezes, going cold. She glances at the clock on her DVD player; it's four thirty. "No, no, no," she chants grimly as she marches to the front door. "Hello?" she snaps after she punches the intercom button.
"Marlowe, it's Lucas."
Marlowe releases the intercom button and pinches her lips together. Irritation sweeps into her brain like a squall, taking over the landscape that anxiety occupied. She presses the door release and then punches the intercom viciously. "It's open." She unlocks the front door and then rattles off a variety of colorful curses as she marches to the kitchen to lay down her weapons.
By the time Lucas knocks on the door, Marlowe has resigned herself to her fate. She can't offend him by canceling now after he has driven so far. She crams the hem of her t shirt into her shorts as she walks to the door as tightly wound as a woman walking to the gallows. "Hey," she says shortly, throwing open the door. "It was open."
"Hey." Lucas has his hands on her before the door swings to a stop. He grabs her by the belt loops again, his hands colliding with her holstered phones. "Expecting a call?" he asks between kisses. He reaches back with his foot, swings the door around, and then falls back heavily, pulling Marlowe against him.
"You . . ." Marlowe breaks off when his mouth captures her breath. She covers his hands with her hands and pushes away, disengaging his hold. She opens her mouth to speak, but she stops and presses her hand to her forehead, laughing awkwardly, trying to locate her composure. "You said you were going to call," she says finally. She wipes her hand over her mouth and clears her throat.
"I was going to call if I was going to be late," Lucas replies. "But I'm early."
"Right. And I'm not dressed, so I'm going to change." Nodding slowly, she shucks her thumb toward her bedroom and forces a smile that materializes as a toothless grimace. "Sit down. There's some stuff in the refrigerator if you want something. Be right back," she mumbles, shuffling off.
Her reluctance couldn't be more obvious, and because he is Lucas Klein, he follows her to the bedroom. He crosses the threshold silently and walks right up behind her, faintly amused by the way she jerks and snatches hangers across the closet rod. "What's wrong, Marlowe?"
Startled, Marlowe pauses and tenses her shoulders. But she doesn't turn around. "Nothing," she replies lightly, drawing a steadying breath. "I just thought you were going to call, and . . . I was waiting for you to call. That's it." She clamps her lips together. Her tongue is swollen with all of the things that she wants to say, difficult things, divisive things that are likely to upset him. Things that shouldn't be said before a dinner party, things that are impossible to introduce at any time to someone that she doesn't expect to understand.
Lucas grips one of her tense shoulders and squeezes it, turning her around. "What's wrong?" he repeats softly.
"I wanted to talk to you, but don't worry about it. It doesn't matter." Marlowe stares at him for a long moment; her chin tightens as she clenches and unclenches her jaw. She doesn't want to wade into the dicey and convoluted territory of race, that terribly too small word for the sternum snapping pressure in her chest. "It doesn't matter," she repeats, trying to convince herself. "I'm going to get dressed and we'll go and meet your uncle, okay?" She's going to dinner because it's the right thing to do, because no matter what happens between them, Lucas will be in her life as long as he's in Roderick's life; there are conventions to observe. Marlowe takes a breath and flashes her practiced smile.
Lucas's eyes go flat and cool. He knows this smile, the one that she draws down like a window shade to block his view. Lucas scrubs his hand over the beginnings of a beard, thinking, rewinding through all of the disapproving things that Marlowe has said to him, the criticisms that he filed away for future use. His mind stops on two words: you're bossy. That's what she'd said to him in Roderick's kitchen. That's the problem. He almost smiles as he looks at her, focusing on her grim expression. "If you don't want to go to dinner, just say it. 'Lucas, I don't want to go.'" He shrugs casually. "No big deal."
Marlowe's eyes bulge out with surprise. If he'd swept her feet from beneath her, he couldn't have tripped her up worse. "What?" Marlowe stammers. "Are you joking me?"
Lucas smiles, pleased. "No. Don't make an issue out of something that's not an issue. It's no problem."
"But . . ." Marlowe fans her hand in the air, trying to wrap her mind around this upset. "But you drove all the way up here. I mean, I'm sorry. I tried to call you."
Lucas flicks his glance to her holstered phones. He snickers suddenly, nods once. "I stuck the phone in my bag. It's in the trunk."
Marlowe covers her face with her hands. "That's why you didn't call," she mumbles through her fingers.
"No, I didn't call because I wasn't running late. Hey," he says, pulling her hands away from her face. "You were going to cancel?"
"I was thinking about it," Marlowe admits, her tone laced with guilt as she recalls her discussion list.
"Why?"
"Because I didn't want you to drive all the way up here for nothing." In a way, that is the truth. Nothing would have come of the things that she wanted to say, nothing but hopelessness and grief, things that would be wedged between them at Roderick's Fourth of July party. There's a reason why people talk around race or even skip over it as though it doesn't exist - talking doesn't accomplish anything; talking doesn't change the way things are. That's what most upsets Marlowe - she can't change the one thing that at best, they will always trip over like a missing plank in a bridge.
"Not for nothing," Lucas replies, his eyes skimming hungrily over her face. "For you. That's why I'm here." He wants her to meet his uncle because it fits with the image in his head where all of his loved ones are in the same circle. Because he is the center of the circle, the one who holds them all close, it doesn't matter if Marlowe meets his uncle today or tomorrow or a year from now. She's in the circle simply because she's with him, in front of him right now.
Marlowe stares at him dumbly, blindly, her train of thoughts derailed by the force of his bald liberty. Lucas isn't held hostage by convention. She admires his freedom, but it is that very freedom that draws her attention back to her own captivity. How can she act like it doesn't matter? Is she supposed to depend on him, appropriate his liberty by osmosis? Can she depend on him? Marlowe frowns, thinking back to her conversation with Caris. "What is this that we're doing?" she asks, her eyes blank and searching.
Lucas grins, taking her question for an invitation to repeat the moments before they first made love. "We're not doing anything," he replies, filling in his part of the script. He steps forward and closes the gap between them.
"No, I'm serious." Marlowe backs up into the closet and stumbles over a pair of shoes. She moves to the right and presses her back against the bare strip of wall between the bedroom and closet doors. "Are you . . . is this a love situation?" she stammers.
Situation? Lucas' grin flattens into a straight line. It's an odd choice of words, a politically correct choice, the kind of thing you say when you're afraid to make assumptions. His flat lips curve into a frown. He's already made his assumptions. The situation is that they are together right now; the forecast is that they are going to stay together as much as possible. Marlowe is raining on his parade. "I'm here because I want to be with you, Marlowe. Call it whatever you want. If you want me to say that I love you, fine. I love you. If you want to call me your boyfriend, fine. Doesn't make any difference to me."
"What?" she cries. "You just don't care? That's it?"
"I don't care about the words." He breaks into a faint grin, chuckling softly to himself. "You'd fit right into the Army. Everyone I know is worried about their rank."
"No," Marlowe snaps, shaking her head. "Look - is this a fling or what? That's what I'm trying to find out."
"A fling," Lucas repeats, spitting out the words with the disrespect they deserve. He stares at her for a moment before raising his hands to his shirt, unbuttoning it halfway and then drawing it over his head; Marlowe bites back a gasp. "Look at this," he says, pointing at his chest. "You put this mark on me when I was here last."
Marlowe frowns, staring. "I don't see anything," she says dismissively, irritated by the odd shift in conversation.
"Me either. That's the problem. I still feel it, but I can't see it, and that makes me miss you. I know people say that all the time, 'I miss you'. But you don't know what it really means until you're stuck in the middle of the desert with no idea how you're going to get back to camp, no idea when you're going to see a friendly face, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it." He pauses as the lived experience of the feeling expands in his chest. "I don't want to miss you when I can actually be with you, put my hands on you. I've been missing you my whole life, Marlowe Ross, but now I'm with you. This is not a fling." Lucas draws a heavy breath and closes in on her, hovering over her. When she starts to speak, he presses his fingertips to her mouth. "Nope. It's my turn to ask questions. Do you want to be with me?"
Marlowe's eyelashes flutter wildly over the depth and finality of his tone. His voice is very sober, very serious.
"Don't mistake me; it's not a big idea. Do you want to be with me right now? I fight for a living; right now is maybe all I've got." He pauses for a moment, letting that sink in.
If she accepts him, she has to accept that too because he isn't going to change. "Yes or no, Marlowe." He leans in and kisses her throbbing jugular vein, ever so slightly squeezing the fragile flesh between his teeth. "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" he teases, scraping his gritty voice over the nerve endings in her ear.
Marlowe can't open her mouth; she can't find her voice. He's casting his thrall over her again, and just like before, her thoughts scatter to the four corners. There's nothing left but what she feels for him; the feeling pools in her core, hot and pure.
Lucas opens her mouth for her. He cups her chin in one hand and licks her bottom lip, sucks, seeking admission. When she lets him in, his hand slides to the back of her neck and tilts her head back to a more yielding incline. His other hand snakes down her belly and yanks up the hem of her shirt. The button of her shorts is yanked loose, then the zipper, and then Marlowe herself comes undone when his fingers find the answer that her mouth wouldn't provide.
"Hmm." Lucas' lips vibrate against hers. He trails his lips across her cheek, pausing to bite the tense tendon behind her jaw as he moves to her ear. "Is that a yes?"
"Sss," Marlowe's breath hisses through her teeth. She grabs his arm to steady herself. Beneath her fingertips, his muscles flex as he tunnels into her.
"Yes or no," he repeats, studying her face as he works her over. "If it's yes, I don't want to hear 'no' or 'I don't know' again. Ever."
"Yes." Marlowe reaches down and closes her hand over his. Her eyes close; she drops her forehead to his chest. "Yes," she says, echoing the word that she will repeat over and over for the next few hours.
