It's three hours later when I hear my doorbell ring. I open the door and see him in the clothes he was wearing earlier, although his shirt is considerably more rumpled, and his jeans have splatters of dirt and stains on them. I smell the food on him too. It's not unpleasant, but it's not the fresh air Marty smell I have come to crave.
“Hey,” he says. His face looks weighed down by exhaustion, his skin sallow and grey in the moonlight. Dark circles puddle beneath his eyes and his mouth can only hold his dimple-free smile in one corner.
“Hey, Marty Masterchef,” I say. “Thank you again for saving my brother's arse tonight.”
“Man, I know I'm tired because that's the perfect set-up for a joke about your brother's arse and yet I can't get the words in the right order.”
“Come in, you need a shower.” I put my hand on his shirt ready to drag him inside. “And bed.”
“Wait.” he doesn't step forward. “I need to say something. I'm sorry for my behaviour at dinner.”
“Thank you for apologising, Marty,” I say, and I mean it. I didn’t know how much I needed that apology.
“You were right. I am being a dick to my mother.”
I nod and pull him towards me, closing the door behind us.
“I don't even know why I do it,” Marty says as he kicks off his shoes. I take his hand and lead him to my room.
“I can't stop it sometimes, no matter how hard I try,” he says as we walk into my bathroom and I sit him down on the shower bench.
“And other times, I don't want to stop myself. I just let rip at her,” he adds as I lift his T-shirt off his body.
“It used to make me feel better, even if just for a few seconds, you know, but recently, it all makes me feel like shit,” he says as I undo his jeans and nudge for him to sit up so I can slide them and his boxers off his body. I step away and turn the shower on, keeping my hand under it until the temperature is right.
“I know she loves me. I know she wants the best for me. I just can't help feeling angry sometimes,” he says as I go back to him, hold out my hand and pull him up.
I shuck off my robe and throw it outside the shower just before we stand under the spray. It feels right we're together under the water again in the place where we first saw each other naked, when he first filled me up, when I first felt what I now know was more than just lust for him.
But now is not a time for love-making, at least not in the sexual sense. Now is a time for me to wash him clean, which I do with copious amounts of shower gel, my hands going anywhere and everywhere. When I get to between his legs, he swells in no time, but I don't do anything to tease that into something more. His touches on my body are the same, tender, giving, not at all taking. It still readies my body for him, but it doesn't send me spinning with desire. I am tired too.
I switch off the spray and lead him back to sit on the bench. I get us some towels, feeling his eyes on my skin as I move. There's a stab of pain in my gut when I realise how much I will miss that feeling every time I'm naked in the future.
Wrapping my towel around me, I secure it under my arms before I take the other one and start to dry him off, limb by limb, before standing between his legs and rubbing the towel over his hair, making it stand up on end.
“Jenna, you look after me so well,” he says as I help him to stand and wrap the towel around his waist.
“Shh,” I say and then lead him out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. I throw back the covers and pat the bed, telling him to lie down, which he does as Igo to the kitchen to get a glass of water and some paracetamol which I bring to the bedside table next to him.
When Marty's eyes land on the glass and two tablets, he bursts into tears, his face crumpling in directions I've never seen it fold in before.
“Marty?” I climb on top of him, pulling his body into my arms.
He heaves with sobs, and I want to know what it was that set him off, but I realise it doesn't matter; he’s allowed to be upset. Either way, he doesn't need questions. He needs answers, one particular answer.
“Marty, it's okay. Everything's okay.” I repeat this until the crying slows and he moves back creating some space between us.
“Jesus, I'm sorry.” He rests back in bed, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips.
“It's okay,” I say again, staying where I am, my legs straddling him.
He nods to the side table. “It was the water and painkillers. It's what my mum always does for me. Whenever I'm having a bad day or if I'm a little under the weather,” he says. “Fuck, I've been such a shit to her.”
I nod. “But she's not been easy for you either.”
“No, that's true,” he says with a light laugh, and it's good to see his dimples again.
I slowly lift myself up and get under the covers with him, throwing the towel onto the floor once my body is covered by the duvet. “You know, I don't know what it's like to be a mother, or even have a mother into adulthood. But as you know I've thought a bit about becoming a mother over the years and do you want to know what I think being a mother really means?”
