Veni, Vidi, Vici

“Please leave my house Marc. I can take care of Sam. Please?”

“Grace, listen to me. Fuck. This is gonna sound, oh man, I don’t even know how this is gonna sound but I swear, I didn’t mean it to happen like that. Well, I did mean it to happen like that but- “

“Marc Winston get the fuck out of my house right now!” said Grace, her voice wavering.

Marc’s expression was one of complete shock horror; he stood up without hesitation and almost ran out the front door.

The moment she heard the door shut, loud as a gunshot in the empty house, her expression crashed from stern and commanding into one of complete misery, the damn broke. Her chest ached with anguish, and her mind screamed and snarled at her to run after him and apologize. Part of her felt the overwhelming guilt for sending him out so harshly, for treating him like a stray dog that just wouldn’t obey, her muscles were clenched to stop herself from running after him and asking him to come back. Yet a small shard of satisfaction was lodged inside her, a novel realization that she had the power to finally stand up to someone and not be subjected to the authority of others. It was a pungent combination, those feelings, the fresh sense of freedom and self discovery juxtaposing with the ugly curse of guilt and the maddening need to apologize.

“You like him, don’t you?”

Grace jumped, startled by Sam’s voice and then almost jumped again after realizing what Sam had just said. Was it really that obvious? Was here face really a page of words and statements, readily shown for all to see? Or was Sam just really intuitive and aware of her feelings? Yet the more Grace pondered the situation, the more unsure of what her feelings actually were. After what had just happened, Grace not only felt miserable at how Marc had hurt Sam, but was plagued with the regret of trusting him, let along being stupid enough to hope that he might have liked her back. But whatever her ‘feelings’ were for him before, they were certainly different now.

“Yes, I thought that he was pretty nice before, and rather funny.” She said, nervously tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ears and avoiding Sam’s eyes that were pinning her down with sharp precision.

“Sweetheart, you know that wasn’t what I meant.”

Grace deftly ignored her.

“I called your parents and told them that you were staying over at my place because Marc’s car ran out of gas and you were too tired to walk.”

“He likes you too, I think. Don’t you go hating on him for what I said, that little scene back there was like, just for revenge, you know? For being such a dick. Which mind you, he totally was last night.”

“So you just forgive him for lying to you?” Grace asked, with challenge in her tone.

“No way, I still majorly hate him for it, but it happened, and I kinda admit, it was coming for me, just a matter of time.” Sam shrugged.

Grace met Sam’s eyes for just one fraction of a second, questioning, wondering. Doubting.



The doorbell rang.

It was a soulful tune that echoed into irritating after the third second, and to diminish the dreadful warble, Grace had to open the door or else succumb to noise torture. So she reluctantly slid out of the warm haven of her bed and meandered to the front door, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She eased the door open; not bothering to look through the peephole to check who it was and stared quietly down at the floor. There were no hard shoves past her body to enter the house, no loads of luggage heaved into her arms, no commotion from her always-annoyed mother. It wasn’t her parents back from their trip to visit Gabrielle. Grace’s heart accelerated, she slowly looked up and was met with a large bunch of pine cone like plants connected to a body and a pair of legs.

“Just let me explain.”

Marc Winston in less than forty eight hours was back in Grace’s house. Bearing gifts and kind words that he hoped like hell would do him some good. He was back, in the cream soaked lounge room with the blinding quilt sofas, and cluttered trophy shelf, but this time he was actually sitting on one of the sofas, in an even more uncomfortable position than he’d been in previously - if that was even possible.

Grace had her happy face on. he liked calling it that, not because her mouth was upturned in a joyous smile, but because he suspected that the happy face, mouth in a straight line and eyes wide opened, every muscle relaxed, was the face that he’d seen on her the most, and calling it the happy face gave him the naive illusion that she actually looked like that when she was happy. But he knew, deep down and foremost right now, that her real happy face was a lot different to what he was seeing right now.

“Um... Hi.” She mumbled, lips barely moving, this was old Grace, Grace on the phone, nervous Grace, bashful Grace, yet the Grace that was only a fraction different to the Grace he now knew. She was still shy, a plain, indolent wallflower, hanging listlessly watching people walk past and fade by like mist. Despite this, Marc was still drawn to her; he still wanted her to laugh with him again.

“Well, I brought you flowers.” He chirped with innocent excitement.

Grace glanced over at the pine cone things with doubtful eyes.

“Oh, yeah, they kinda look like pine cones but the flower lady said that they were like some new age tradition or some shit. They’re like a cross between daisies and cactueses and like, pine cones I guess. Oh! And I bought Sam some white tulips, I went onto some fucked up website that gave my laptop a virus, but it said that white tulips meant forgiveness, so I thought that was pretty neat, and she called me a douche-bag but took the flowers from me. Which means that she forgives me right? Because I gave her the tulips – the forgiveness- and she accepted it? Oh shit! Does that mean that I was forgiving her for something? Cause if she accepts my forgiveness then... Fuck I should have brought her roses.” Marc’s face was now buried in his palm, hearing no response from Grace, he peered through his fingers at her to find the girl looking at him in curiosity - at least it wasn’t the ‘happy face’.

“Um... thank you for the flowers?” she said in a questioning tone.

“Oh, no problem, they um don’t need water, I think, I mean they’re like part cactus so they have cactus powers right?”

“Oh.” She started to look confused, so he decided to redirect the conversation.

“Hey listen, i just wanted to apologize and Okay i know that i shouldn’t be saying sorry to you and i should be saying it to Sam, and I know that, which is why i went and apologized to her first. And she said that she forgives me and she was actually really cool about it, oh and I’m not saying that you should be okay about it but well, yeah... Well, anyways, I know what I did was wrong, and that it was really selfish of me, and that I was just so blinded by my fucked up obsession with Vera that I didn’t really see that I was hurting someone. So I’m sorry, I’m sorry for being a jerk and I’m sorry that I’ve now lost your trust and I’m just so fucking sorry that you had to hear it through her and not me. I’m really sorry Grace Lennon, but I hope that if we hung out more than I could regain that trust and you can help me become a better person.”

Grace hesitated, but slowly the edge of her lips tugged into a small smile at the image before her. It was just so strange, Marc Winston, the Marc Winston, sitting in her lounge room reading out an apology written out in felt tip marker over his entire arm, glancing up at her every so and then with wide green hopeful eyes.

“Thank you.” She whispered. The soft sound fluttered in the hanging there on a fine line of silk and to Marc’s ears, it was beyond music. ‘Thank you’ wasn’t ‘I forgive you’ or ‘you have now regained my trust from your corny, lame speech’ but it was what Grace was going to give.

And he had to take anything he could get.