Veni, Vidi, Vici

“What’s another word for develop, nine letters, first letter ‘u’ third letter ‘f’?”

“Form, enlarge, increase, build?”

“Thank you Marc Winston for your insightful suggestions that obviously all start with ‘u’” chided Grace playfully as she tapped the tap of her pencil against her chin.

“C’mon, I told you I was bad at crosswords. And I’m kinda busy here, doing Sudoku’s actually require real brainpower.”

“Hey!” exclaimed Grace lightly whacking his arm which sadly didn’t move a single inch from her abuse and only caused him to laugh and flex his already prominent muscles.

“Nothing can get past these babies, not even you Grace.” He said with a boyish sense of pride in his voice.

“I don’t doubt that, but a girl can try.”

Marc laughed at her wistful response and shook his head in mock shame

“C’mon get back to your crossword, and try ‘unfold’ for that one, it’s the closest thing I can think of right now.”

Grace’s eyebrows shot up in surprise at his suggestion.

“You underestimate me Grace.” He chuckled while quickly scribbling in the last few numbers inside the minuscule boxes of ‘his side of the newspaper’.

During the last two weeks, they created a ritual to come to the local McDonalds every Saturday and buy frozen cokes despite the decelerating temperature outside. This week, they’d discovered a discarded newspaper lying limply across their usual table, so they’d taken the offering and decided to have a crossword/Sudoku faceoff. And he had just won.

“You need any help over there, sweetheart?” He asked in a breezy tone while casually taking a sip of his drink and looking at his nails in exaggerated boredom.

Grace through the midst of furiously wearing away the feeble eraser on the tip of her pencil
looked up looking rather irritated with a loose strand of silk blond hair falling over her eyes that made his fingers itch to tuck behind her ear.

He smiled and nodded at the completed Sudoku box next to her “You can even check it if you want.”

“You said that you’ve never done of these before!” she cried after scanning suspiciously at the puzzle.

“I said- now I quote here, ‘I’ve never seen that before’ meaning I’ve never seen that particular one before.”

“But I even taught you how to do it!”

“Yeah, it was pretty funny seeing you explain it to me.” He replied with a smirk. She’d begun to look increasingly flustered, her hair coming even looser from its tight ponytail and her cheeks flushing pink as she spluttered at him with wide eyes.

“But, but...”

Marc ignored his previous control and reached out to tuck a part of her wayward hair behind her reddening ears, lingering as his fingers travelled slowly down her jaw, ever so lightly caressing the warm skin there. She’d gone silent, staring at him like a startled fawn.

“How ‘bout I help you with the crossword and we’ll call it a tie.” He murmured, distracted by the feel of her still lingering on his hand.

Grace looked away, breaking the trance of their connected gaze. The trail that his fingers had followed tingled with awareness.

She cleared her throat as if to bring the situation to order “Okay then, anything you notice on it?”

“Hmm...” Marc bent down lower to observe the clues listed in the tiny print “Well... male clothing accessories two down, try cufflinks, is that nine letters?”

“Wow, you’re good at this as well.” She mused out loud while filling in the empty spaces “I thought you said you hated English.”

“Crosswords are usually general knowledge.”

“What’s another word for scrutinize, I tried observe but that mucked everything up.”

“How many letters, any that you know?”

“Seven, and none that I know of.”

“Stare, examine, inspect, look at, analyse, I dunno...move on I think”

Grace pointed to another space “Scottish City?”

“Aberdeen, definitely, my mother’s half Scottish.”

“You don’t look very Scottish.” She teased.

“Ach, I take after me father.” He replied in a heavy Scottish accent.

Grace laughed and decided to press the subject “What’s your dad like?”

Marc stiffened at her question - the topic was one that he’d hardly ever thought about, let along converse. “He’s not exactly parent of the year, but he gets the job done.”

Grace noted the hesitation in his tone and sensed that there was nothing more to be said. Accepting the fact, she steered the conversation away from its fall.

“I never really got much attention from my parents, it was always Gabrielle this, Gabrielle that, sometimes, I know it’s naive of me, but somehow, I think that they’re ashamed that I can never be like her. I’ll always be the lesser daughter, the failure, you’ve seen all the photos of her at my house, they doted on her, but with me, it’s like they can hardly show their emotions. So hopefully when I graduate I can leave this place and start anew, away from their expectations and all that.”

Marc reached over to squeeze her hand. That was probably the most he’d ever heard from her in one go. He knew that it would have been difficult to do for her, so for some reason he felt obliged to give her something in return.

“I never really saw much of my father either, but when I did, I didn’t want to see him at all. He was sort of like the Joseph Stalin of our household. He wanted perfection from every child in the Winston bloodline, he thought that I was going to follow in his footsteps, and every time I did something wrong, I’d get into a whole shitload of trouble for it. I would’ve gone to some private boarding school if it weren’t for my mum. She’s the one I should be taking after.”

Grace was shocked, speechless by his sudden raw confession. Marc was easy to give up information about himself, just in the last week she’d been given a full detailed account of his favourite food, sport, bands, colour, movie, celebrity and everything Marc Winston 101, but she’d noticed that when it came to more deeper matters like family, he kept his mouth tightly sealed. She returned the squeeze of his hand and ran her thumb lightly over his knuckles in comfort.

“I’m sorry Marc,” she whispered “for what you have to go through, but at least you have your mother then, she sounds wonderful.”

“She is. She’d love you, I think, and you know what?” He said with determination, standing
up and taking her hand with him.

“I think you should meet her.”