Odd One Out

Chapter Forty - His Surprise

"Keep your blind fold on," Marcus murmured as he clutched my hand tightly in his, intertwining our fingers in the middle of the console of his truck. I don't think I'd ever get used to the butterflies I felt whenever he touched me. It was like being on a high all the time. Everything felt so right.

"But where are we going?" I asked for the hundredth time that night.

Marcus laughed, "For the hundredth time, I'm not telling you."

I pouted but my eyes remained behind the covering, "Not fair." I felt his finger gingerly tug my lip out of my mouth. He used the pad of his thumb to skim lightly across my lip and it took everything it had in me to keep my eyes tightly shut and not to tug my lip right back in between my lips.

"You look gorgeous today," Marcus stated so gently that I wished I could see his expression.

Marcus had instructed me to put a blindfold over my eyes from the moment he picked me up from my apartment. Amanda decided to give me a lecture on dealing with pervs with weird fetishes before Marcus reminded her of a song she had been singing the night before and she promptly left the room due to embarrassment.

"I wish I could say the same about you but I can't see you." My hand moved to his arm and I felt the familiar leather, "You're wearing your leather jacket."

Marcus hummed, "Mmhm."

My hand moved past the lapels on his chest and down what felt like buttons. "A button down shirt?"

Marcus exhaled but didn't reply.

I was feeling bold (note to self: blind folding makes you do things you'd never do when your eyes are open - use with caution) as my hand trailed even lower and onto the top of the belt buckle of his pants.

"Maybie," Marcus's voice trailed uncertainly.

"Hm?" I responded.

"Shit, baby, I'm driving," He breathed out nervously.

"I like jeans," I defended, as I trailed my hand down his thigh.

"I'll wear jeans every damn day from now on if you move your hand right now," Marcus murmured almost painfully.

I sighed, "I will if you tell me where we're going?" (Again, blindfolds do things to people.)

Marcus breathed out a laugh as I removed my hand reluctantly but before I could place it in my lap, Marcus had already scooped it up and tangled our fingers together once again. "Not a chance," he teased.

I groaned as Marcus brought my hand up to his mouth to kiss it tenderly. "Almost there," he reassured me.

A few minutes later, we pulled to a stop. "Okay," Marcus stated nervously, "blindfold off."

I removed the black fabric and opened my eyes to... a run down apartment building. "Aww," I trailed uncertainly taking in the area, "you shouldn't have," I muttered bluntly.

Marcus laughed before opening his door and jumping out. I would have followed suit but honestly, I thought he was joking around and I was still waiting for the punch line. He opened my door and waited for me expectantly. I let out a nervous chuckle. "Oh, you're serious?"

He gripped onto my waist and lifted me from his truck but before he let my feet hit the ground, he wrapped his large arms around my body, keeping me so close to him that I felt like I was next to a radiator. "You mean so much to me, you know that?"

I smiled at him as he gazed down at me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and craned my neck to kiss him. "What are we doing here?"

Marcus let my feet touch the floor as he scratched the back of his head nervously. "I know we haven't actually known each other for long, but I feel like I've known you forever, Maybie. So tonight I thought I'd show you where I come from. I was born in that apartment," he used a finger to gesture to one of the windows in the apartment building we were at, "to Gloria and Stephen Garcia."

He held onto my hand and led me to the small garden outside of the apartment. "Here's where my mom started a community garden. There's still mint that she planted that grows here," he laughed humourlessly. I squeezed his hand tightly in my own, my gaze mesmerized by the the sign that simply said and into the garden I go. There were faded flowers painted on the sign but above all it just exuded warmth.

He tugged my hand and I followed in his stead as he showed me his elementary school and where his dad picked him up after his first fight in the school yard.

Finally, we stopped by a cemetery and he showed me where his parents rested. As he sat in front of his parents, I gathered daisies that grew a few feet away and placed them at their feet.

We walked back to his truck as he took me to a final destination - a drive in movie theatre. He parked his truck and we sat in silence before I looked over at him to see him already looking at me. "Last stop," he said seriously, "this was the last thing my parents and I did together."

I grabbed his hand and brought it to my lips to gently kiss it, wishing I could take away all the pain he'd been through and all the demons he was still fighting. "I'm sorry I can't help you. I wish more than anything that I could do something."

He shook his head and smiled at me, "You've done more for me than you know. You make me feel happy again, baby. I haven't been happy in a long time." Marcus reached out and tugged me over the console as I tucked my knees on either side of his legs, my arms resting on his chest.

The way he looked at me with so much adoration, made my heart jump. "Thank you for showing me this. You have no idea how much it means to me," I replied honestly. And it really did. The fact that he had opened up to me so much meant the world to me, especially because I knew how hard that was for him. Marcus hated opening up and it meant something that he went through this pain for me. So I could know him better.

He looked at me earnestly, so earnestly I almost felt the need to look away, but I didn't and it was intoxicating. "I want you to know all of me, Maybie. Even the parts I wish weren't there."

"Marcus?" I asked peaking up at his serious expression.

"Yeah?"

My fingers played with the hair at the nape of his neck, "Was the blindfold really necessary?" 

He grinned in response, "No. That was solely for my pleasure."

"I should have listened to Amanda," I retorted teasingly.

Marcus leaned down and tenderly pressed his lips to mine. What felt like the most gentle expression morphed into pure unadulterated passion as his hands roamed from my head, down my back, and under my thick and wooly white sweater. His large hands practically engulfed my back as his fingers delved under the straps of my bra and played there for a moment.

His lips moved from mine and down my chin until this met my neck and from there, I lost track of time and space. All that I could see and feel was him. Somehow my hands had begun to unbutton his shirt and somehow his hands had managed to rest on my butt.

He pulled back for just one moment but his eyes scorched with unsaid words. My heart just burst with feelings I had for this man. "Mabel, I-"

A knock on the window made us both jump out of our skin. We whipped our heads to the window to see a woman holding a baby on her hip. "This is a family establishment!"

"Sorry," Marcus muttered sheepishly. I was pretty sure that I would die of embarrassment. (Watergate had nothing on this moment).

I climbed off of Marcus' lap slowly and without my dignity until I sat in the passenger seat with a huff. I straightened out my sweater uncomfortably.

Marcus broke the silence first with a loud and boisterous laugh. "Well, that kind of killed the mood."

I looked at him with my cheeks still ablaze and he reached a hand over to caress my cheek gently.

He shook his head out of the reverie and put the key in the ignition, turning it on, the headlights flashing forwards, revealing a figure standing there, staring at us with horror.

Ethan.