Mark always ended up in the friend zone one way or another. But lucky for him, he learned how to live with it every day until his focus went to another girl or just no one at all for a while.
For the time being, he was just on another long visit to the friend zone, where he met with overthinking and jealousy. But in this particular zone, there was also so, so much embarrassment all because of his maniacal sister.
He just hoped Paige didn’t think he was in on whatever the hell his sister was doing. He wished he could tell Paige that Christy didn’t use to be like this. Of course she was always cocky, but she used to keep her cockiness in check and stick up for people no matter what. She just had way more bad luck than she deserved, and now she didn’t even trust Mamá anymore. Christy was talking to him less and less too, especially about her stupid plans.
If only he could just explain to Paige, but seeing that they rarely saw each other on campus, he figured it was a lost cause, just like his dumb crush.
In the back of the restaurant, Mark used a towel to wipe some food crumbs off a counter as he sighed.
“Aw,” Colette said, tying her dark brown hair into a ponytail. “What’s wrong?”
“Just a girl messing with my head all the time.”
“Aw,” she said again as she leaned her hip against the counter. “I love when guys talk about girls they like.”
“Well, I’m not gonna tell you who it is.”
She raised her hands. “Okay, then. But like, is it someone I know?”
“She’s been around here for a while, so...maybe.”
“Is this the kinda thing where you’re flirting with each other until someone actually makes a move? Or she just sees you as a friend and she has no idea?”
“More like, she already knows but rejected me.”
She sucked in a breath through her a teeth. “Damn.”
“Yeah. But it makes sense, which is the really weird part. She said we shouldn’t be together because of this...thing in the way, which isn’t her fault or mine. I don’t know.” He pushed his fingers through his curls. “It’s complicated.”
“Obviously,” Colette commented. “Does she feel the same way?”
He shook his head right away. “I bet it wouldn’t even work out. She’s so funny and honest and smart, and I’m so...not.”
“What are you talking about?” Colette crossed her arms. “Funny? Yes. Your puns are my guilty pleasure. Honest? Well, yeah, sometimes you say the randomest things ever. I didn’t know you had a dirty mind, but then I remembered, oh yeah, you’re a guy.”
He laughed at how right she was about him, especially the sex and taboo jokes he made whenever the opportunity came up, which was pretty rare. “I swear I’m not always that dirty. Or dark.”
“That’s actually a good thing, for a guy, ‘cause I know plenty of guys who are super immature and stupid. Like Andrew.” She shook her head. “We dated just once and he’s so annoying to me!”
“Wait. Do you mean Andrew Chen?”
“Yeah. You know him?”
He had plenty to say about him, but he refrained in time. “Not really. What about him?”
“He still likes me even after we broke up a while ago, but I already moved on. Apparently he thinks he still has another chance even though I keep telling him he doesn’t.”
“You know, I wish I could relate,” Mark said, shrugging.
Smiling, she scoffed and smacked his arm. “But it’s different with me.”
“Sure, sure.”
Colette went into the kitchen as Mark went back to cleaning the counter and still trying--and failing--to think of anything but Paige. Even when he looked for another cleaning agent after throwing away the empty one, he could imagine her taunting him about him cleaning and then making him do other chores like cooking for her. He was definitely not a cook, but he felt he could actually try learning if Paige wanted him to.
Frankly, he would do anything for her if it meant hearing her sarcasm and cute giggles, or seeing her hair change into different shades of red in the sun and indoors, or getting to at least hold her hand to feel whether her light skin was as soft as it looked. Maybe her glossed lips would taste just as good as they looked too...
“Having fun?” Christy said as she leaned over the counter.
Shaking off his daydreaming that was the only fun he had in a while, he stood up and set down his towel and cleaning agent. For an answer, he decided to go with the truth. “I was until you showed up.”
Kylie behind her cracked up, her blonde ponytail swishing side to side as she came to a stop at the counter. “Mark, you’re so savage now. What happened to you?”
“Are you kidding?” Christy said. “He’s always been like this.”
Taking a sip of her smoothie, Kylie shook her head.
“Just me?” Christy made a questioning look at Mark, who shrugged.
“And you didn’t have a job,” Kylie said to him. “Literally all you did was get high and shoot hoops.”
“And now he wants to compete with my adulting.” Christy cocked her head to the side and drummed her fingers on the countertop.
This was probably the thousandth time people mentioned his busy work life, and as much as it grew annoying to hear, he was getting close to confessing the real reason why he was working so hard for more money.
It was true that working was the last thing he would’ve done a few years back, instead getting caught up in Ava’s crowd before he knew it, with getting his first hit and a newfound interest in anything sports-related. That was the younger and naïve Mark. The Mark that was too scared of his own shadow to step in when things were going downhill. The Mark that let down his late father because of allowing his intense emotions to control him and make him weak.
He knew he could be much stronger than that. He could show Mamá and Christy, and maybe even Dad, whom Mark still hoped was in heaven despite the sinful things he did when he was home from the various military bases. But even after his death, Mark still felt he could do greater things in his dad’s honor. He could be responsible and strong.
Mark looked at Christy as she chatted with Kylie. Christy seemed to cope with his death in ways completely different from Mark’s.
“Do you know who else is going to Mila’s pool party?” Kylie asked.
“Hmm,” Christy said. “Ian, for sure. And Becca.”
Kylie looked up and widened her eyes. “Becca? Really?”
“Yeah, you didn’t know?”
“Oh. Um, no.” Kylie swirled her smoothie with the straw as she raised a shoulder in a half-shrug. “Well, she does love raving.” She smiled to herself.
“Isn’t she really good at dancing?”
“She dances better when you’re drunk.”
They both cracked up until Kylie checked the time on her phone, then she stood up as she pulled up her jeans and grabbed her smoothie. “I gotta get the car back home for my dad.”
“Okay. Thanks for the ride.”
After Kylie left the restaurant, Mark followed Christy to the back of the kitchen where she kept her work outfit. He was just about to grill her with questions about the stains on Paige’s dress and purse, when Christy turned and said, “It’s like I have this superpower to detect whenever bullshit comes out of your mouth.”
“How do you even know it’s gonna be bullshit?” He folded his arms.
“Because Sadie told me you met up with Paige.”
“Yeah, and I saw the crap you pulled on her. Are you in kindergarten?”
“I know you are, ‘cause all you do is whine and yell at me about everything I do. Just stay out of this, okay?” She turned away from him to get her belongings.
Mark felt like ripping his hair out. “Revenge isn’t gonna help you get over Dad.”
She stopped what she was doing with her back still turned to him. He waited as she slowly turned to him.
“This is a lot bigger than just Dad, alright?” She took a step toward him. “This is about me dealing with the shit that that pedophile put me through. This is about me getting thrown in juvie when I could’ve easily gotten out of it. This is about me not only getting into juvie and get my life stripped away, this is also about that fucking CO that...that killed Dad!” Her voice broke by the end and so she stopped there.
Mark stared at the ground. “He didn’t kill him. Dad was just drunk that night and went to look for him--”
“But he wouldn’t have been murdered by the cops if that CO didn’t leave me with a fucking baby! But you know what? I didn’t have to get set up by those bitches that only wanted to snort crack and point all the proof to me. I didn’t have to make that CO keep his mouth shut by giving him sexual favors. I didn’t have to have Dad go on a rampage because I was pregnant. I didn’t have to have Dad go out there and get shot down by the police. I didn’t have to have any of that shit happen, if I just didn’t get into that hellhole in the first place! And you know where Paige comes in? She had all the proof that I was innocent that one night I tried to get that pedophile caught. And she left me to the wolves.” At this point she was only about a foot away from Mark, and she leaned closer to him. “Don’t tell me this is all just ‘cause of Dad.”
Mark took a long, deep breath. “So, you blame everything bad that happened to you...on Paige?”
She seemed to think for a moment, and then she said, “Uh, yeah. Pretty much.”
“What about that pedophile that started it all? Did you forget about him?”
Christy let out her fake laugh, which Mark absolutely hated. “I still think about him to this day.”
“Isn’t he in jail?”
“Yeah, but not dead yet.”
“But he got caught,” he pressed on. “And he’s there for the rest of his life ‘cause he fucked up plenty of other little girls too. So…he’s in prison forever and he’ll die there. That’s the end, right?”
“You. Don’t. Get. It,” she said, her finger poking his chest with each word. “You know who else helped him get me to juvie?”
“Okay, I get it.”
And so she turned away to get her work clothes and went to the bathroom to change.
He was done trying to convince her. There was no point.
But to be real, he felt as though he was expecting this from her all along. When she came back from juvie, he couldn’t find any trace of her old self anymore. Instead, her new self had a bomb planted inside waiting to explode.
And Dad’s death was the spark that lit the bomb.
Mark had never run so fast in his life.
Just an image in his head of his dad dying in a hospital bed pumped Mark’s legs harder and brought tears to his eyes. Christy was right behind him, who had already been crying since her fight with Dad. But none of them had expected Dad to drive out there drunk to actually look for the cop that got her pregnant. And according to Mamá on the phone, Dad got pulled over by the cops and shot down like an animal.
They reached the hospital a few minutes later and rushed up to the nurse at the receptionist’s desk as they yelled their dad’s name and begged to see him. The receptionist tried to calm them down, but all Mark wanted was to see whether his dad was still alive. And soon enough, she told them the floor and room numbers, and they bolted to the elevator.
Right when the elevator door opened on the desired floor, Mark and Christy got out and almost ran into a nurse pushing a cart. Down the hall, they found Mamá pacing the hall and sobbing.
“Where is he?” Mark asked.
She pointed at a closed door. “We can’t be in there.”
“This is my fault,” Christy weeped. “This is my fault.”
“No it isn’t,” Mark said.
“If I didn’t tell him this never would’ve happened.”
Mamá said nothing as Mark pulled Christy into a hug. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“This is my fault.”
“Shh.” He kept her there in his arms as their breathings slowed from running earlier.
Mark looked up at Mamá who was leaning against the wall as she stared at the ground. He remembered the last time she was like this was when Dad found out about her relationship with Brandon Moore. As a matter of fact, she didn’t seem happy ever since.
After a few more minutes of just silence, the door finally opened with some nurses leaving. Mark peeked into the room to see two nurses and a doctor next to an operating table.
After the door closed, a couple seconds later the doctor opened it and closed it behind him. “You’re all Sam’s family?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah.”
“How is he?”
The doctor looked at his shoes for a moment, before looking back up to meet the family’s eyes. “We tried to resuscitate him, get his heart beating normally, but… he couldn’t make it.”
Mark sucked in a breath while Christy let out a wail and embraced Mamá, whose tears flowed profusely down her cheeks. Mark held onto the wall so the Earth would stop spinning, but he could still feel a headache coming on. He slid his back down the wall and held his head in his hands.
Dad was gone forever. And Mark didn’t spend those last few moments with him. He didn’t even get to spend enough moments with him, period. He didn’t get to tell him that he still loved him when Dad was angry at him for not being the perfect boy and man Mark could’ve been. He didn’t get to show him that he was going to try to be better, to show his dad that he heard his wishes of honoring him.
Mark could’ve just been there for Dad every time he needed his love and help. But he hadn’t. He never did.
It was like Mark lost a part of himself. And he knew he could never get it back.
