(I've Known You) A Life and A Day

When He Sees Me

  Mark didn’t know what he was doing.

  To be fair, he rarely knew what he was doing in the best of times, but this was an occasion where he had absolutely no plan of what to do.

  As he unwillingly pulled his lips away from the comfort of Michael’s, he awkwardly played with the hem of his shirt and moved his glance from the familiar warm brown eyes to the harsh white tile of the bathroom floor in an attempt to avoid the other’s reaction. They both stood in awkward silence for a painfully long amount of time until Mark became too uncomfortable to continue the quiet and spoke up. “...Does the name Micah Brown sound familiar?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper. He flinched a little when he finally said the name, surprised that he could get it out without crying like all the times he talked about the man to Menachem, and he tried far too hard to hide the twinge of pain in his voice when he did say it.

  Michael stayed in the same stunned position even after hearing Mark’s question, unsure of how to answer and still trying to shake the surprise of how good a kisser he was. “Uh...no? Aside from the fact that it’s close to my name.”

  Mark ignored the way his heart dropped from the sharp disappointment, but paused when he was hit with a sudden realization.

  This was the first time he had ever kissed a boy in that life.

  And he didn’t feel the same dread he did when he kissed a boy (Whizzer) for the first time as Marvin.

  Perhaps it was because it was 2017 and things were considerably more different than before, where you could get the shit kicked out of you simply by looking at another man a certain way. Or it could be due to the fact that he wasn’t married with a child like before. Or maybe...just maybe…

  This was his chance to live a life he always wanted.

  Sure, it hurt like hell without Whizzer, and there wasn’t a single waking moment that he didn’t miss him, but there was no use in dwelling on it and hoping for the rest of his life that he could be reunited with the love of his life...or lives…

  Maybe kissing Michael was the epiphany he needed to pull him out of the misery of the aftermath of his previous life and focus on the time he had now. He made it clear that he wasn’t his Whizzer, despite the similarity in his eyes and his personality and the fact that they had the same exact nickname, but he still made his heart flutter in the same way Whizzer always did.

  “Oh- yeah. Never mind. It was just- never mind,” Mark rambled, unsure of how to explain himself. The sound of the bell signalling the second lunch shift made both boys groan out of pure annoyance, Mark biting his lip when Michael finally took a step towards him, now holding up a Sharpie.

  “Gimme your arm.” The shorter of the two didn’t protest, simply sticking his arm out and letting him glide the worn down marker across his skin. When he was finished, Mark glanced down at his arm to see a phone number written in semi-neat handwriting. “Text me sometime,” he hummed, sneaking one more quick kiss and flashing that signature smirk before finally disappearing from the bathroom.

**

  “He obviously likes you! Why else would he give you his number?”

  After standing in utter shock for a long time, Mark had finally left the bathroom and languidly made his way out to meet with his friends for lunch. Normally, he had the first lunch shift, but he usually ditched the first half of french class to eat with his friends, who all had the second shift. So, here he was five minutes later, sitting on the edge of the water fountain and spilling everything that happened to his three friends. Well, his two friends. Trinity was more of a frenemy. They didn’t hate each other, per se, but they would frequently argue about some unimportant topic that resulted in screaming matches and awful name calling. Nevertheless, they still interacted, as they both did occasionally share interests and had times to mutually bond over a topic they both enjoyed.

  “I just met him today, and I kissed him!” Mark groaned, covering his face with his hands as he cringed at his behavior. He obviously left out the part about Whizzer. The only person he ever felt comfortable enough to talk about anything like that to was Menachem, and he didn’t want to go through the same reaction he received from his cousin. Or worse, one of them could call him crazy and tell his parents. He was not prepared to spend the rest of his life in therapy.

  “Life is far too short to not kiss cute boys, Mark,” Corinna replied, popping a grape into her mouth and brushing a bit of her blonde hair from her face.

  Trinity, scoffed softly, smoothing her dark blue skirt to try and rid it of any stray crumbs of her sandwich. “Says the one who only kisses girls.”

  Corinna shrugged, but didn’t comment, instead staring back at Mark with crossed arms. “You don’t wanna die alone, do you?”

  “That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” Charlene asked her girlfriend with a raised brow, shaking a packet of cherry flavoring into her water bottle.

  The blonde shook her head, not really caring about the intensity of what she had said. “Nope. I am sick of seeing Mark so bitte- I am alone,” she started, correcting herself when she saw the betrayed expression on her friend’s face, “and we need to fix it. He clearly likes you, so just ask him out!”

  Mark hummed a slight reply, trying hard to keep his connection of his friends to the ones of his past life to himself. Charlene and Corinna were the spitting images of Charlotte and Cordelia. Just the thought made him feel sad. He missed his friends. They had been buried near Whizzer, as requested in their wills, and Mark visited them at times as well.

  After Whizzer had died, Charlotte had begun working herself nearly to the grave to figure out what had caused his death, and that only escalated when Marvin followed his lover. One day, in 1988, Cordelia called her lover in a frenzy, screaming about how something had caught fire and it was spreading in the house. Charlotte, of course, called the fire department and broke every traffic law possible to get to their home in a record time. By then, the fire had spread to nearly the entire building and the blonde was nowhere to be seen. Without a second of debate, Charlotte ran in to retrieve her lover.

  The obituary article ended blankly with “there were no survivors”, followed by information of the funeral dates.

  “Mark? Hello? Earth to Mark!” Trinity called out, waving her hand in front of the boy’s face. When he finally came back to focus, the three girls were looking at him with confused expressions. “You zoned out. Are you feeling okay?”

  Mark nodded slowly, looking around for a bit to clear his thoughts until a certain boy caught his eye. “That’s him. That’s Michael.”

  Corinna and Charlene looked while Trinity moved her attention back to her food, uninterested in Mark’s love life to pay any attention to it.

  “He looks nice…” Charlene started, looking over at her girlfriend and sighing when she noticed the gears in her head beginning to turn. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing, don-”

  “HEY MICHAEL!” Corinna called out, grinning when the boy snapped his head over to look for the person who had just yelled out his name. Mark felt the blood drain from his face as he looked away, hoping to hide himself with his hoodie.

  When Michael finally walked over to the group after Corinna excitedly waved him over, he smiled awkwardly and stuffed his hands in his pocket. “Um, hello? And it’s Whizzer, by the way. That’s what everyone calls me.”

  Mark didn’t protest when Corinna persuaded him to join them, and began and awkward conversation with the boy to try and get to know him better with Corinna and Charlene’s sad attempts to ask questions for him.

  It wasn’t love at first sight, but it was something.

  And Mark would definitely take something over nothing.