THE END OF SPEEDING TOWARD'S LOVE
There was a knock at the door, and Rick looked up from the homework he was grading. People didn’t come to visit. The knocking was more insistent and Rick looked around the house realizing it wasn’t anywhere near close to clean. He sighed, resigned, and got up to answer the door.
“Rick, I have to talk to you,” Mark barged into the house.
Rick stared at him, a riot of emotions, most of them unhappy, running through him.
Mark stopped, looked around and said, “This place is a mess. It could really use a good cleaning.”
Rick stared at him.
“We’ll cross that bridge later. Listen, Rick,” Mark said.
But then Mark didn’t say anything else and Rick finally folded his arms over his shoulders.
“You said that my only crime was that I was... good and all that. The best thing that had happened to you. That’s not true,” Mark told him. “That’s not true at all.
“My crime is that I’m a liar. I’m not even honest with myself. I’m afraid, Rick. I’m forty-two. I have a son. I’ve been married, and widowed. I’m afraid. I don’t want a change, but I don’t want to be alone. And I don’t want to lose... Who I should have.”
He hadn’t actually been looking at Rick, but now he was. Rick was looking at him, not upset anymore, but curious, maybe afraid even.
“It’s strange,” said Mark. “But last night I couldn’t sleep. I just thought about you. I just thought about you leaving my life, and I even got out old yearbooks and I realized that, on some level, I probably always felt that way. About you. And I feel it now. I, uh, like I said, I’m new to this whole thing, and I don’t want to be rushed into anything. I want to be really slow with this. Like, for starters, I could come over and clean your house. We could start there, and maybe work our way up, because I’d really like to do that.”
Mark’s eyes were directly on Rick now. Rick looked at him. But then Mark’s eyes began roving the house and saying, “I could start with the kitchen. Those pots and pans really should be washed. And Lysol has this brand of toilet wands—”
“Shut up,” Rick said.
Mark looked at him.
“You just babble,” Rick told him gently. “Shut up long enough to let me say yes.”
“You’re saying yes?”
“If you are.”
“Yes,” said Mark.