Mazury
I was on my knees begging.
He told me he had cheated and there I was, on the ground, snot and tears streaming, begging him to stay. I have never been more pitiful. I told him I would do better, work harder, whatever he asked – just please don’t leave me. He left anyway.
Ten years before the lying and cheating, Mark was just a guy in a bar. We met on Halloween, back when I worked at McGee’s and could still be considered young and hot. In a sea of evidently last-minute costumes, he stood dressed like the lecturer at an uptight university, looking vaguely lost and alarmed at the students grinding around him. I moved behind the bar towards him, asking what he wanted to drink. He ordered a vodka soda; I chuckled to myself. He couldn’t make it any clearer that he didn’t belong in a grubby bar like that. Whilst I poured his drink, I berated him for his lack of holiday spirit. His laugh was handsome and he apologised, stating he had been dragged out last minute by a colleague. I told him to do better next year, and he told me I should give him my number so he could make sure he doesn’t disappoint in the future. I considered it but realistically, I would never see him again. He was a random customer on one of the busiest nights of the year, so I gave him a fake number and thought nothing else of it.
It was almost a year until I saw him again. I’d forgotten about him within a few weeks and I’d never expected anything to come of our interaction. The following Halloween, a girl I worked with behind the bar invited me to a house party. She was worried about going alone and knew I had no other friends to make plans with. I had a feeling the invitation came from a place of pity but I accepted it anyway, After all, she was right, I had no other friends.
The party wasn’t particularly memorable, just the usual spectacle. Most people were beyond their limit by the time we arrived and I had barely reached a buzz by the point it was dying off. On my way out a hand reached out to grab me; it was the boring guy from the bar.
“It’s you,” he said.
He was dressed as a zombie cowboy, his hat at a tilt on his head showing the makeup that made it look as though a patch of his cheek was torn away.
“It’s me,” I said.
“You gave me a fake phone number, after calling me dull for my lack of a costume and now you’re here, in my house on Halloween, not even wearing a costume.”
“I came straight from work.”
“Are you leaving already?”
“Yeah. I have another shift tomorrow. I want to get some sleep. Great party though,” I said, turning to walk down the drive.
“Can I get your number?” He asked. “Your actual number this time.”
“You still want my number?”
“Just to make sure you don’t disappoint me with your Halloween costume next year.”
Boring-guy-at-the-bar turned zombie-cowboy, turned out to be Mark Dimsdale, an associate of Parrish Solicitors. On our first date, he was as stuffy and awkward as I expected of a solicitor. He ordered a flat white and stumbled with his words as he spoke, whilst I ordered a monster of an iced coffee, stacked high with whipped cream and caramel syrup, as I chatted his ear off. The spark wasn’t immediate, I wasn’t blown off my seat by his awkward charm and feared I’d only be able to hold a conversation with him if he was drunk. Honestly, how was he the same guy who asked for my phone number? Twice!
As we left the café, later that afternoon, he turned to me and said, genuinely, “This was nice.”
“It was.” I did my best to smile convincingly.
But then he flashed me his signature warm smile.
“I’ll take you to dinner next time if that's okay?”
And despite everything logical, the fact I’d blown him off already, the lack of spark and the fact he’d barely spoken ten words, I agreed.
“I’d love to.”
As it turned out, once Mark Dimsdale got comfortable, he was a completely different person. He’d shown up to our coffee date in a shirt that was buttoned until the top button and posh slacks. Yet, he showed up to take me to dinner in a soft jumper with worn edges, like it was something someone loved, and pressed jeans. He seemed the most at ease I had seen him since we met and the evening went past in a blur. We were the last to leave the restaurant before closing and we took a stroll around town, stopping at a quaint bar, nothing like the one we’d met in, for a few drinks. When we finally decided to call it a night, around the early hours of the morning, he called me a taxi sending me home with a polite kiss to my cheek.
Every date with Mark was like that. Every time we went out, no matter what happened previously or how many years we had been together, he still managed to make me feel like I was the luckiest girl alive. He made me laugh like nobody else ever had and called my name softly upon arriving home. I held his hand through all his scariest cases and he stuck by me when I refused to just stay home, even if that meant only holding down part-time jobs that barely contributed to our living. We threw Halloween parties every year once we moved in together to a big house on the edge of town. The house was like nothing I could have ever imagined myself living in – huge, modern and cosy but I always managed to turn it into a draughty, haunted, Victorian house each Halloween. Our parties had huge guest lists, Mark inviting everyone he’d come across even momentarily over the year and I invited the spatter of friends that I had made at work. I felt like a common man’s Heidi Klum, throwing those parties. It was the one time of year I let myself feel smug, like I belonged in the pocket of his life that Mark had carved out for me. I fell into the role of hostess each time, floating around the house in my half of whatever our joint costume was that year, serving guests and making polite chatter. Eventually, the evening would fall into beautiful chaos, fuelled by too-strong drinks and the spirit of the holiday and I woke up every November 1 st with a hangover that could wake the dead. Other occasions were less thrilling; we spent Christmas Day together watching films and Boxing Day with his parents, politely sipping Prosecco. When our dog died, we spent a week mourning on the sofa and cried there together once again when he didn’t make partner at his firm in his seventh year. We celebrated when his sister got pregnant and when he finally made partner in his eighth year, we spent a week in Spain, where he proposed to me at dinner, surrounded by flowers and candles.
Mark was my whole world. I loved him more than anything I ever had in my life. He was my best friend, my soulmate. At times I felt out of place or maybe like I was embarrassing him but, more than anything, I loved our little life. And I kept loving it, all the way up until March 18th.
That evening I came in from a ten-hour shift at the bar and found Mark sat in the lounge, a serious look on his face. I was set aback from the moment I saw him. It was late, he was usually in bed at this time to get up for work; he never greeted me when I got home.
“Hi, honey. You’re up late,” I said, hanging my coat on the rack in the hall.
“Andi,” he called, his voice as soft as always.
“Hang on, I’m just tryna take my boots off. My feet are killing me. It’s alright for you, you know, sat in a desk chair all day. I have to stand for nine hours; my feet are like watermelons.”
“Andrea!”
Mark never used my full name, not since he’d met me. It was always Andi, maybe Ms. Dee if he was teasing me, but never Andrea. I appeared in the doorway to the lounge, looking again at his face.
“What is it? Is it your mum?”
“Could you sit a moment?”
There was a tension in the air that bordered on implacable. I could feel my heart pounding and a twist in my stomach; the kind you only get when you know you’re balancing on the edge of your whole world changing.
I sat on the arm of the sofa.
“You remember Amber,” he said, and I could already feel the moment coming towards me.
“The bouncy little associate at your work? The blonde with the curls and the boobs that sit in the right place? The girl? The girl who is at most twenty?”
“She’s twenty-four.”
“She’s a child.”
Mark looked at me pained.
“Say it.”
“She came to the open day, the one to introduce promising law students to the firm.”
“The open day that happened five months ago.”
“Andi, please let me finish.”
I could feel the ache in my chest growing, if I didn’t keep spitting out hateful words it was going to take over. Still, it was Mark. I loved Mark. Mark loved me. We would fix it, whatever he did.
“She came with her sister, Jen… We hit it off and I’ve been seeing her these past four months.”
It hit. The moment hit me and the world would never go back to how it was before.
“I’m sorry Andi, I am—she just makes me…happy.”
He looked at me, searching. As if he could find something in my face that would tell him it was okay, that any of this was okay.
“Happy?” My voice cracked as I spoke, I was already crying. “Happier than I make you?”
Mark remained silent.
I wanted to scream. I could feel the swell in my chest rising up my throat like I was waiting to explode. Ten years. Ten years of fighting, crying, loving, living together, celebrating and creating our small corner of the world and he was throwing it away. I felt disassociated from my own body, without the tether that was me and Mark to keep me grounded. I wanted to scream but my whole body was numb.
I opened my mouth to lay into him, to curse him out, anything, but the words caught in my throat. I didn’t want to be that person. I looked at his face and the guilt that was so clearly evident across it. Without saying a single word, I knew what Mark was trying to tell me – Jen, whoever she was, made him happy enough that he didn’t need me anymore.
“Please Mark,” I barely registered myself speaking, “we can fix this.”
“Andi,” he said, just as soft as he always had and suddenly it made me feel sick, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say.”
He didn’t say much more, he didn’t need to. Everything he wasn’t saying amounted to the same thing – this is over.
“But we’re getting married. You—you proposed, we have a date and a church! I bought a dress!”
“I know and I’m sorry. I promise you will get all of your money back. You can keep the ring.”
I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I could keep the ring? Like the couple of grand the ring would fetch would make up for the fact that I wouldn’t get to be his wife? Like the last ten years of my life could be paid back by a shiny stone. I felt cheap. I felt pissed.
I searched his face one last time, for the sign in his face that told me that he wanted to fight for us too. There was nothing there. Evidence of his embarrassment, of his shame and I could see that somewhere he felt sorry for me but there was no love there – nothing beyond a vague fondness. Mark was over me, had gotten over me, long before I had ever noticed.
“You’re leaving me?”
Mark looked me in the eyes, tears escaping to roll down his cheeks.
“I’m sorry.”