Given and Denied

Chapter 10.

We both fell into silence, as I continued to stare at Marcus in sheer and utter disbelief at his revelations.
He had given me no clue whatsoever of the turmoil he must have been going through when he had first arrived.  He hadn't broke down in tears or appeared sad or depressed in any shape or form.
That was until this very moment.
Now he had said it all out loud, it looked as though all those feelings and emotions were coming to the fore as he suddenly got up from the bar stool, held his face in his hands and stumbled away from me towards the old worn out sofa, wailing like a little  baby.

Immediately I came from behind the breakfast bar and rushed over, seating myself down beside him and cradled him into my arms as he just  blubbed and blubbed uncontrollably.

We must have been sat together like this for well over quarter of an hour as I continued to rock him gently to and fro, allowing him to try and get it all out of his system. The only reason I stopped holding onto him was when the buzzer sounded to let us know that the pizza delivery had arrived.

"I'll get that".   I whispered quietly,  "You go and get yourself cleaned up and then we'll both enjoy this lovely pizza  together".  

He now looked up at me, as I got to my feet, with reddened, tear stained eyes and an expression of sheer gratitude was now laced upon his handsome face, that I had actually decided to stay with him tonight after all.
He must have been keeping this all to himself for ages and I felt, in some, strange sort of way, quite privileged that it was me whom he had chosen to let out all of his emotions to. 
I figured now that the very least I could do was to stay here with him this evening. Get him to tell me everything that had happened, every tiny little bit of detail.
I looked at him sadly.
Well, not every tiny detail perhaps. That would be taking it too far, but I wanted him to get Hugo Martinez out of his system as quickly as possible.  Marcus was a nice person. A lovely kind and gentle human being. He deserved a lot more than to be messed around by the likes of some pompous, chain smoking, self centered person who wouldn't know a good thing when he actually had it.
The buzzer sounded again and I lent down to touch Marcus's shoulder.

"I'll just get.......".   I began.

But Marcus grabbed hold of my hand and squeezed it tightly.

"Thank you".   He said quietly, a little smile now crept across his tear stained face, "You're a real friend, you do know that".

I nodded my head at him.

"Well, I wasn't going to leave you like this now, was I".  I smiled at him.

The buzzer sounded for a third time, a bit more frantically now.

"I'd better go and get it".  I grinned at him and made my hurried exit.

The first thing I noticed, when I returned, were two generously filled glasses of red wine waiting on the little coffee table.  Marcus was sat there with them and thankfully seemed a little more composed now.

"Oh, those looks nice".  I commented, as I put down the armful of goodies that I'd just carried up the stairs.

"A gift from sunny Ibiza".   Announced Marcus. "Well, duty free actually, but pretty much the same". 

I smiled at him as I took out the Ben and Jerry's ice cream and placed it in the freezer.

"Is that Cookie Dough?".  Marcus asked, now getting up from the sofa and coming over.

"Indeed it is".  I grinned, knowing that it was both of ours favourite flavour.

I then proceeded to serve out the coleslaw, fries and the pizza into different plates and dishes so that we could both just delve in as we wanted, all the time aware of Marcus just watching me silently.