by MV Ellis
As the taxi pulled up outside her apartment block, I gently nudged her awake.
“Hey, Marns, we’re home. Wake up.” I had to try a couple of times before her eyes finally fluttered open.
“Lukey.” She gifted me with a messy smile, but then as though suddenly remembering why we were in the taxi together in the first place, she turned it off like a light.
“You’re an asshole. Leave me alone.” That wasn’t going to happen. If nothing else, in the state she was in, I was certain she couldn’t make it up to her apartment unaided. I paid the driver, then jumped out of the cab and ran to the sidewalk to help Marnie. As I opened the door, she pretty much fell into my arms, all long limbs and sleek black hair.
“Come on, Marnie, work with me, or I’ll have to carry you.” Not that I minded carrying her, but as drunk as she was, I had visions of it turning into a Marx Brother’s style slapstick fiasco. At my words, she righted herself a little and stood up straight. She had this.
“Um… Luke, I don’t feel so—”
Okay, so she didn’t have this. She turned away from me and hurled her guts into the gutter. This night was getting better by the moment. I took her purse and helped tuck her rod-straight hair behind her ears. I stood rubbing her back and offering her a comforting word here and there. It seemed that she really had been busy hitting up the waitstaff for drinks while I was otherwise engaged, if the gallons of liquid now exiting her body were anything to go by. I hoped there was water in the mix somewhere, but I remained unconvinced. One thing was for sure, there was no food. Shit. When was the last time she ate?
When she seemed to be empty, with nothing more than dry retching left to give, I helped her upright, but she shrugged me away, scowling angrily.
“Thank you for helping just now, but I really need you to go. I’ll be fine.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Listen, I can stand here doing this all night. I’m not the one who just spewed my guts into the gutter. I’m telling you I’m not walking away right now, so let’s cut the crap and get to the part where I see you upstairs.”
“No. I’m done with you and your brother tonight. I. Got. This.”
She swiped for her purse, but I very easily moved out of her way. I kept it from her grasp, but in doing so caused her to unbalance so that she stumbled into my chest. Instinctively, I reached both arms around her waist and drew her to me.
It was as though time stood still on that busy Manhattan street. I was dimly aware that life was still going on—people were walking and talking around us, cars were driving past. It was New York—that would never stop, but everything was out of focus and the sounds were muffled—everything except her. She was as sharp and clear to me as though there was a spotlight trained on her from the sky. She was everything.
I looked down at her as she looked up at me. I didn’t know if it was the alcohol or something else, but for whatever reason, she had completely dropped her guard, again. I could see in her eyes that she was letting me in, letting me really see her, and it was fucking heartbreaking. She looked so hurt and desolate, so horribly lost, and it killed me to know that I was partially responsible for that.
Something shifted between us. The intensity level kicked up a gear, sending shockwaves through my body. I looked from her eyes to her lips. She licked them slowly, and I held my breath, pulling my focus back to her eyes.
“Marnie….” I wasn’t sure what I was going to say or do, but I felt I had to do something. I saw the exact moment the mask she had momentarily let slip fell back into place. Her beautiful, shapely eyes went back to being unreadable onyx pools.
“Luke, I’m fine. I’m going upstairs now. Come with me, don’t come with me, I couldn’t care less.” She took her purse. I let her, turning to watch as she wobbled toward the door of her building. I hesitated a few moments more before striding to her and supporting her by the elbow. She let me.
Upstairs in her apartment, Marnie headed straight for the bedroom, ignoring me completely. I left it a little while before heading in to see if she was okay. She looked to have started undressing but not even gotten beyond removing her skirt, which lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. She was still wearing her sheer shirt and the sexy-as-hell bra underneath, and between that and the sight of her skimpy panties—if you could even call them panties, they really appeared to be a complex network of hot pink elastic—my dick was stiff in no time. What type of depraved fool was I, getting hard for a woman who was pretty much unconscious? This wasn’t just any woman though, it was Marnie, and where she was concerned, a boner was pretty much a given. I swung her feet up onto the mattress and pulled the blanket over her.
I headed into the bathroom, and after opening pretty much every cupboard and door in the place, I found what I was looking for. I went back into the bedroom and placed two Tylenol and a glass of water on her nightstand, as well as putting a basin I’d found under the sink on the floor next to her bed. I was pretty certain it wouldn’t be necessary, given that she’d puked up a vineyard’s worth of champagne earlier, but you could never be too careful.
As I left her apartment, I SOS’d Ryan again.
“Are you still at the gallery?”
“Yeah, man, leaving now. It’s winding down. Where you at?”
“Just leaving Marnie’s.”
“And?”
“And I need a stiff fucking drink and someone to explain to me what the fuck is going on. You heading home?”
“Yeah. Meet you there?”
“For sure.”
“Okay. Let yourself in if you get there before me.”
“Thanks, guy. See you soon.”
I beat Ryan home by a few minutes and helped myself to a beer. This seemed to be a regular thing now—beer-fueled counseling sessions at Ryan’s apartment—but hopefully not for long. I wanted to sort my crap out with Marnie and not need these come-to-Jesus talks—though right then, it didn’t seem likely I’d ever make it to that stage. I tried not to wallow, but it was hard when everything seemed to be falling to shit around my ears. I heard the keyless entry beep, and moments later I was joined in the kitchen by Ryan. He shucked off his jacket and nodded to the beer in my hand.
“I’m just gonna change real quick. Grab me one of those?” He pointed at my beer. I nodded, watching his retreating form as he headed to the bedroom.
When he came back, I was sitting on the same sofa as last time. This really was turning into Groundhog Day. I handed him his beer, and he sat next to me, taking a few deep pulls. He said nothing for the longest time. Eventually he spoke.
“So, you gonna tell me what the fuck that shitshow was earlier? I honestly thought Arlo was going to off you with his bare hands.”
“I know, man. I fucked up. Hard. Again. Well, really, it’s part of the same fuckup.”
“How do you mean?” He looked sideways at me quizzically.
“I mean I basically haven’t seen or spoken to Marnie since the last time I was sitting here like a loser, trying to work out what to do about the situation with her.”
“What? Dude, that was months ago. We’ve been on tour and back since then. How can you not have sorted this bullshit out?”
I scuffed at the dark wood polished floor with the toe of my shoe, knowing it was probably pissing Ryan off. He had a few quirks, one of them being a tendency toward being a neat freak. Even on the road when everything was carefully orchestrated chaos, he liked things just so.
“Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve basically been attempting to explain myself to her ever since it happened. I mean, I’ve done pretty much everything I could to reach her, short of sending a smoke signal or carrier pigeon. She’s stonewalled me every time. Emails, texts, man, it sounds lame as shit, and I guess it is, but I even sent her fucking postcards like some sad-ass penal from the 90s or some shit. One from every city we visited.” I laughed, but there was no joy in the sound. It was a brittle snicker that stopped almost as abruptly as it started.
“
Dude.”
“I know, right?” I rolled my eyes. There was no getting around how dumb that sounded.
“Don’t get me wrong, brother, it’s cute as all fuck, but I didn’t realize you had it that bad.”
“It’s pretty epically bad. Anyway, she’s been blanking me except for a response here and there to let me know she’s okay—like not dead, I mean. So then when we got back from tour, and I obviously couldn’t send her postcards from Arlo’s place or the studio, so I went back to the regular stalking via text message. She pretty much ignored that too, except for earlier today, when out of the blue, she said she’d meet me.” I took another pull on my beer, more for something to do than anything.
“I’m not gonna lie—I kind of panicked. I mean, I knew we had the show tonight, meaning it was more or less the worst possible time to see her, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity in case she changed her mind and started ghosting me again for another four months. I figured that if she came and met me at the end of the launch, we could take off somewhere together and talk.”
“So you actually told her to meet you there?” He clearly found my stupidity mind-boggling.
“Yeah. I know. You don’t have to tell me what a series of dumb decisions that was. I’m well aware.”
“But it wasn’t just you. You must both need to see a head shrinker. I mean, she actually showed up. If I were her, Arlo and London’s launch would be the very definition of somewhere you couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to be. What the hell was either of you thinking?”
“To be fair to her, I’m fairly certain she had no idea what she was crashing until she was already in the room.”
“And you didn’t think to tell her?”
I bit my bottom lip. I was pretty sure I looked like a kicked puppy.
“I did, but…”
“But you knew that if you told her the truth, she wouldn’t have been seen within a ten-mile radius, so you skipped it and hoped for the best?” The look on his face said it all. I was beyond moronic.
“Essentially.”
“Listen, Luke, I’m gonna level with you here.” When did he ever not?
“This is the kind of thoughtless, selfish stunt I’d expect from Arlo, not from you. I thought you were better than that.” So had I until tonight, but I was now learning that maybe I wasn’t so different from my brother after all. Worse, it looked like our situation was doing a 180 flip. Arlo was heading for a lifetime of domestic bliss with London, while I was the one doing wrong by Marnie.
“Yeah. I’m far from proud of myself.” I looked down at my shoes as though they were the most interesting things I’d ever seen.
“To cut you a little slack, we all know you wouldn’t have intentionally done anything to ruin their night, or her reputation, but you almost did, regardless.”
“I know.”
“So what happened after you guys left? Please tell me things didn’t get even worse?”
“Well, I don’t know. It depends if you call Marnie hurling of the edge of the sidewalk outside her apartment, then looking at me like I was Satan himself better or worse. The jury’s out on that one, I believe.”
Ryan chuckled. “All these years under the radar, keeping your nose clean while Arlo ran around shitting all over everything and everyone, now suddenly you’re the one in the doghouse.”
“I know. The thing is, I don’t know if Marnie’s ever going to speak to me again. I mean, she had literally only just responded to me again today, and now she may never again. She was hella pissed once the vomiting stopped. She wanted nothing to do with me.”
“Can you blame her? I’m sure she already felt foolish over the whole Arlo and London thing. Then you lead her into what can only have felt like a fucking ambush. I can’t say I’d be ready and waiting to jump on your dick under those circumstances either.”
He was a funny fucker. “Right now, I would settle for her not hating me, although my dick absolutely has other ideas. She passed out on her bed half-dressed, and he definitely liked what he saw.”
“Ha! Well, the way things are going, you’d better tell him not to bank on getting any action for a looooooong time, if ever again.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. It was sad but fucking true.
Still, I was grateful to Ryan for his particular brand of dry humor. He had delivered just the right combination of a butt kicking and understanding, and managed to make me laugh a little as well. It was a specialized skill of his.
“I guess if I’d ever had a chance with Marnie, I’ve pissed that into the wind.”
“Nah, man. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say something I should have said when you first came to me with this. I think she’s as into you as you are her. If not more so.”
What? I looked at Ryan in surprise.
“What? Why would you say that? She was with Arlo for forever, and he was the one who ended it, not her. If it wasn’t for his thing with London, they’d still be together now.”
“Except for the fact that they were never together, and you know it. They screwed for years, sure, but we all know that Arlo had no feelings for her. I honestly think the feeling was mutual. Or wasn’t mutual, however you want to look at it.”
Deep in my subconscious, something about what he was saying hit a nerve. There had always been something weird about their “thing,” something had seemed off with both of them, but I could never clearly pinpoint or define exactly what.
“I don’t know why you would think that though. She’s never said or done anything to suggest that. Not until recently, anyway.”
“That’s what you think, but let’s not forget that you also thought you’d managed to keep your feelings for her a secret. You know me. My deal is to observe and listen more than I speak. It’s amazing what you see and hear when you’re not the one doing the talking. I’ve had my suspicions about both of you for years on this.”
“Really? Why the fuck didn’t you say something?” I shot him a look of disdain, but he didn’t seem fazed. He stared right back at me. Water off a duck’s back. Almost twenty years of friendship will do that.
“What the fuck could I have said? That I’d noticed that the two of you were pretty miserable a lot of the time, but that a light seemed to shine brightly in you both whenever you were together? Or that I’d seen each of you gazing at the other one when you thought nobody was watching, and the look of longing in your eyes was heartbreaking to witness? Funnily enough, I just never seemed to be able to find the right time, or the right words.”
Shit.
“Besides, I know you know that I’m always here if you want to talk. I figured if you’d wanted to tell me how you felt, you would have.”
“Man, this is a mess.” I rubbed at my temples, suddenly exhausted.
“I’ll say. And it seems to be more so every time we speak about it. Not that I want to be a doom merchant, but something tells me things are going to get worse before they get better.”
Twenty-One
Luke
Hours later I sat at the dining table at Arlo’s place—I used to call it home, but it was increasingly not feeling that way—staring at my phone in disbelief. My brain struggled to make any kind of sense of what was unfolding in front of my eyes, apart from the fact that it was pretty much my worst nightmare. Footage of Marnie and Arlo fucking. Every which way but loose. It was all I could do not to lose the contents of my stomach, mostly beer and coffee.
I’d hung with Ryan for a couple of hours, talking things over and over and sinking a few more beers. He’d offered for me to crash in his spare room, but I’d turned him down. I knew there wasn’t much sleep in my future anyway, so I’d decided to get out of his hair and retreat back to Arlo’s place. I’d made myself a coffee, intending to cruise social media for a while, then maybe play a little guitar. I’d been working on some lyrics and had a few ideas I wanted to capture before heading to the studio to work on the Heartless Few album with the rest of the band.
I’d sa
t at the table, flicking through nonsense on Insta, when a message from Paul pinged into my phone. He briefly outlined the fact that an “explicit” video of Arlo and Marnie had been leaked and warned us all that the press would be sniffing around. He told us to close ranks and not speak to anyone but our inner circle about it. Not that we needed to be told. We knew the drill. There was no detail about where the video had come from, but since it featured only the two of them, and we knew it didn’t come from Arlo, there was only one natural assumption. Shit.
I didn’t know what the fuck made me do it, but the first thing I did was hit up Google, and within seconds, there it was in all its sickening glory. I didn’t think I’d ever felt more nauseous than I had when watching that video. It felt like the longest two minutes of my life, yet I seemed to be compelled to watch it over and over, until the messages from the rest of the band broke the loop and snapped me out of my daze. Motherfucker. Even by Arlo’s standards, this was a fuckup of epic magnitude.
When Arlo came into the kitchen white as a sheet and looking like he’d seen a ghost, I was torn between feeling bad for him and hating the sight of his face. Rationally, part of me kind of realized he was possibly the victim in this scenario, but another part of me, probably the part that was fiercely in love with Marnie, couldn’t help thinking that the whole situation was a direct result of Arlo’s lifelong commitment to shitty behavior. He’d treated Marnie like an expendable commodity all these years; it was hardly surprising she’d finally snapped.
Yet another part of me, the part that still irrationally clung to some residual sibling rivalry from our childhood, was secretly happy that Arlo was finally getting his just desserts. It was a fleeting thought, gone before it had time to properly take root in my brain, but still, I wasn’t proud of myself for thinking that way. If nothing else, I realized that the fallout from all of this was going to affect more than just Arlo. It was going to hurt all of us.