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She meets him at Callie’s engagement party. He’s got a glass of champagne in his hand, a few buttons undone and the scruff on his face doesn’t pair well with the elegance of the night. He's dark, handsome, and intriguing.
The first thing he says to her is, “I know where the stronger stuff is,” and she sets her glass down and curiously follows him.
She’s known him all of fifteen seconds, but she has no hesitation following a stranger up a dark staircase. He doesn’t feel like a stranger.
“Abby,” she says, an hour and a half and a lot of whiskey and secrets later.
“Hmm?” he asks, turning to her.
“My name,” she says, grabbing the bottle back from him and pressing it to her lips. It burns. She swallows. “I know how why you ran away from home at fifteen and I know how your mother died, but I don’t know your name.”
He pauses, struck by that. He nods. “Marcus.”
She smiles.
There’s something about him that sets her on fire. She wants to follow him home, pick his brain for hours, and just sit and coexist in his space. She wants his attention, his body, wants to be his.
But she is already someone else’s.
He doesn’t ask if she’s married.
(She is.)
She doesn’t ask if he’s been in a relationship for the past eight years.
(He has.)
At some point, the whiskey is nearly gone and they’ve forgotten about the party they’re supposed to be at.
“We should probably get back down before someone realizes we’re missing,” he says.
“You don’t want to,” she says.
He shakes his head, cracking a smile. “Not really."
“Good.”
They don’t go back.
When she met Jake, there was a spark. He was charming, and she could easily spend the rest of her life with him.
With Marcus, it’s a wildfire. An all-consuming, completely uncontained wildfire. She doesn’t know how to spend the rest of her life without him.
“I want to kiss you,” she says bluntly through a whiskey-induced haze. “But I shouldn’t.”
“I won’t stop you.”
She goes in to kiss him, her lips touch hers, but she jerks away after contact.
“’s not right,” she says.
“Everything about it is right,” he counters.
“I have a family. I can’t have a family and have you.”
He cups her cheek with his hand, stroking her cheek. “I can’t give you me, either,” he says sadly. “I have an engagement ring in my sock drawer at home and dinner reservations for next weekend.”
She nods, agreeing with him.
They pass the whiskey bottle between them, sipping until the bottle is completely empty, until she breaks the silence. “It’s right and it’s wrong,” she says, “but maybe it’s more right… than wrong,” she starts. “Is there a way to…like, measure the rightness and wrongness of this? Maybe… maybe one outweighs the other, and maybe—"
He kisses her, silencing her drunken ramble. She kisses him back.
“I could marry you,” he says, fingers entwined with hers.
“Someone already did,” she whispers.
At this point, she doesn’t know if it’s his or her heart breaking that she feels, but all she knows is that someone is breaking.
Or maybe they’re both breaking.
There’s a garden outside, and they sneak past everyone downstairs. She links his arm with his as he helps her into a sitting position on the grass.
“You’re going to fuck up your dress,” he frowns down at her.
“You’ve already kinda fucked up my life, a dress doesn’t really matter,” she says darkly.
He can’t even force a chuckle out at that, because it’s too real. He sinks down next to her, and she leans her head on his shoulder. “I feel it too.”
The sun starts to rise a few hours later, they sober up, everyone has gone home, but they’re still in the garden.
“How can you live for so long, build a life and a home and then in a few hours someone can come and completely screw up your life and everything you thought you knew?” she asks.
“Fate,” he says.
“I don’t believe in that,” she states.
“I used to not believe in it either.”
"When did you start?"
"An hour ago," is his response and it hits her like twelve bricks to the chest all at once.
His girlfriend—soon-to-be fiancée—calls a little after dawn, and he makes up some excuse about how he was too drunk to drive home so he crashed in Callie’s guest room.
“You should go,” she tells him.
“I’m going to,” he says, but he pulls her into him. She holds on to him, memorizing every inch before he isn’t in front of her again. “We’ll be alright."
She nods through her tears, trying to wipe them away before they fall. “Maybe we’ll get it right in the next life.”
He places a kiss to her cheek, and walks away.
“Until the next life, Abby."