I shouldn't offer to help people, especially family. They just take advantage. When I say I'll help you out it doesn't mean 'please use me as a pack mule to haul your mattress, cabinet, TV, and mounds of make up and clothes up three flights of stairs to your hell hole'. But I can see how it would get jumbled in the translation. All goddamn day to help poor, poor Brandi after I forced her out of my home, as Jinx would put it. God forbid a twenty-eight-year-old have to finally get a job and live on her own.
It's midnight and I'm just getting home. At least the house is clean now, which was more than I could say when it held three people instead of two. Now when I get up in the morning I smell coffee made just right and bacon or waffles, actual homemade waffles. And one side of the bed is actually made. I didn't know what to make of it at first...I'd expected it but he actually did it. I never felt as if I was carrying so little weight in a relationship in my life
My coat and shoes fall where they may as I make my way to the bedroom. Sleep is the only escape from the burden that is family now. He's there in bed, out like a light, turned towards my side as always, the covers pulled to his chin. I strip to my skivvies, discarding my bra--which I'm sure will be neatly folded somewhere when I wake in the morning--and fight with his dead weight to free the covers. After a minute he grumbles and shifts and I slide in beside him.
His usual night shirt is absent, the waist band of his boxers barely grasping his narrow hips. And I smile. His slender body is something I've grown to love. He was no Raph, not built or bulky. The first time we had sex I expected him to be all knees and elbows, but wouldn't you know there's muscle on that bone, the kind you can't feel the true power of until you're under it, entwined with it. I can assure you, though...god is it there.
The way he takes me is different, too. First of all, he takes me, and it's never just sex. Through the sweat and battling tongues and panting breaths he finds a way, to move or to look at me, like if I should ever be mistaken, he would pull me back. For once I don't mind being the submissive in this arena. He holds me, and I've never had that. His hands send a firestorm over and under my skin deep into my veins and his lips on that spot he's discovered just below my ear drive my body to a place I can't begin to explain in a normal state.
And I can still remember the first time when it was all gnashing teeth and tearing clothes. He worked me into a euphoric, screaming, nails-buried-so-deep-in-the-sheets-I-think-I-ripped-the-mattress frenzy and stopped. Stopped. I begged and he lowered his lips, barely touching my ear, teasing, and breath smelling of me, and whispered,
calm.
When he does give up the reigns, I pull hard and fast. Though, I'm sure it is these moments that turn him into some unknown primal animal at the sight of me. I'm never as gentle as he is with me, never as compassionate. But, like it or not, he is technically always the one in charge. He can tell what I want and he gives it to me without question, without restraint.
He'll catch me after I've come, when any Mary guard there ever was is down and he has me in every way possible, and run his finger tips down the length of my torso and over the curve of my hip. He tells me how beautiful I am in barely a whisper and I wanna laugh and I wanna swoon and I do neither. I just stare. Because it's what we do. And, somehow, he knows. Marshall always knows.
I realize now that he's shirtless because our AC is on the fritz. He was working on it this morning when I left; sleeves rolled up, hair a mess and cupcake frosting on his cheek that I forgot to tell him about from the cupcakes his sister sends every month. The cupcake he must've found because his now sleeping face is flawless.
I run my fingers over his pronounced brow, softly, marveling at the beauty I remember of his crystal blue eyes while they're covered by his heavy lids, then down, tracing his high cheek bones to the sharp square jaw as he clenches it in sleep. This face I wanted to laugh in when I first met him now brings a smile to my face. Dreamy and dopey, but a smile. His lips are plump, soft, and slightly pursed, but I fight the urge to kiss them, knowing if anything would wake him up that would be it.
Two years later and he still kisses me spontaneously. Forcing me against a wall and ever so lightly, almost tickling, until I allow him into my mouth. In these instances our tongues don't fight for power, just simply glide and pulse, tasting, loving, needing, until there's nothing left.
My digits play a circle around his Adams apple and continue from his slightly hairy chest to his upturned shoulder, both toned and kissed by the New Mexico sun. He used to run, shirtless, in jogging pants and sneakers, until he moved here and found that the older women down the street would give their husbands' one good nut to have eye candy like that daily. Their blunt whistles and whooping calls actually made this Marshal Marshall, this intimidation machine, blush. Since then, he does laps in the pool before breakfast. And, depending on the day, I play abusive coach, screaming profanity to keep him going and occasionally throwing small fruit, or the cutesy girlfriend, bringing him a towel when he's finished and kissing his waterlogged lips. Usually I watch from the kitchen window, drinking the perfect coffee he makes and wondering how in the hell one person can be so impeccable.
Is there anything fault in Marshall? So he's smart, and it gets annoying, and I may bust his chops, but in the long run he could be a blubbering idiot with a good body, and frankly, I've been with more than my share of those. He can be sappy, which he knows I hate...most of the time, and god knows I love how his face lights up when I pretend to like something. So what if he secretly hopes that one day our mailbox with just say Mann instead of Shannon/Mann, even if I'm unsure. I don't even make fun of his clothes anymore.
I'm a bitch and he loves me. He's a nerd and a secret bad ass and I love him.
I love him. I've said it, in two years you say it. And I mean it. The one thing I love about him, if I had to pick one single solitary thing? He knows I love him. Without me ever having to be someone I wasn't and break down crying in front of him and professing my love or holding his hand every second we're in public together, just Mary and Marshall. It's the little things that he appreciates, and he gets me like no one else ever has or had the chance to. And I don't care really, he's the only one who would've mattered, anyway.
Every day, without fail, he snakes a hand across my back to lay on my hip as we walk into the office. He tries to fix things even when he can't. He made me dance at his cousin's wedding, and I enjoyed it, sober as a judge. He buys me things, tiny and innocuous, maybe something I actually need, and hides it in obvious places, then grins his ass off when he sees me using or wearing or talking about them. He painted his face last Halloween and gave out candy. The last time I got drunk he carried me, from what I can remember, with unremarkable ease, all the way from the car to the bedroom, then kissed me the next morning when I had puke breath.
I find myself making small circles on his side and staring at his sleeping face, something I don't do often, considering he goes to sleep and wakes up on a schedule and I am a whenever type of person. He eventually twitches under my wandering touch, taking his hand and running it over his face and through his hair. My hand doesn't move, it's not like he'll remember anyways.
His eyes flutter open, he squints then widens them, then there's a softness that only comes when he's just woken up. Something I know for a fact goes somewhere between the swim and his coffee. He gazes at me with sleepy admiration and smiles.
"Heeey, you're home."
He leans up to me, bed being the only place he's ever looking up at me, and plants a soft, warm, loving kiss on my forehead. He falls back and sighs. Marshall.
"Go back to sleep, asshole."