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“I came here once with Jenna, she introduced it to me.”
Oh great, that’s all I needed, to piss Jenna off. Being out with Mark would give her some real ammo. Mark noticed my discomfort.
“Jenna and I aren’t a couple or anything, just friends.”
“Are you sure Jenna sees it that way?”
Mark laughed, “I can’t pretend to know how Jenna sees it. I can tell you this. I’ve made it clear to her that I want no romantic ties, at least to her.”
I caught the last part of his sentence, glancing up at him but he was gazing around the room. Perhaps he hadn’t meant it to sound the way it did.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, looking over at me now.
“I could eat.”
When the waitress brought our drinks, Mark ordered two barbecue sandwiches with fries.
“C’mon, let’s dance,” he said, pulling me up from the chair. There was a wooden dance floor near the jukebox where several couples were dancing to an old Anne Murray song. Mark pulled me close as we slow danced, the lyrics flooding my mind with thoughts of Trey.
Mark rubbed my back with his hands as we moved to the slow tempo. I wanted to dance to this song. But I wanted to be dancing to it with someone else. It seemed like the song went on forever. Finally, it was over. I thanked Mark and headed back to our table.
We drank our drinks; Mark ordered another round when our food came. The barbecue pulled pork was delicious. I ate every last bite of my sandwich. We were on our third round of drinks, and definitely things were loosening up when Mark broached the subject.
“So, you want to tell me why such a pretty girl has been so blue all week?”
“It’s complicated, Mark.”
“You know, Tylar, I’m not blind. I see the way that Trey is with you. He’s always watching you, treating you like his prized possession.”
There was that word again,possessionas inpossessiveness,possessively, or how about justpossessed. That was exactly how I was starting to feel,possessedby a demon.
“That's not what love is supposed to be,” he continued.
“Wait a minute, Mark,” I interrupted, “Trey has never committed his love to me, nor I to him. We haven’t known each other all that long.”
“You know as well as I do that love is not a product of time, and it doesn’t have to be professed in order to exist between two people. All I’m saying is that loving someone is not a license to own them.”
“With all due respect, Mark, you’ve only been here for a very short time. I doubt that your observations could be so conclusive relative to Trey.”
“It’s not just Trey, it’s you as well. You ask to be treated that way; everything about you begs to be dominated by him.”
“What?” I exclaimed, thankful that the din of the bar masked my voice as it rose.
“I’m not judging you, Tylar. I just know that what I see is someone trying their best to please a man who might just prefer his woman not change into something she's not. Doesn’t mean it won’t be a rocky road, but it'll be one traveled together.”
I knew he had a point, yet I was having trouble seeing exactly how it related to me in this situation. What should I've done differently? I didn’t tolerate Trey’s assertion that I could only have female friends and being out tonight with Mark proved that. I had the “opt out” clause inserted into the agreement, hadn’t I?
Then I realized the bigger picture in all of this. Why would I have tolerated our agreement to begin with? In reality it was a declaration of sexual exclusivity with no attachments, and the rest of the rules seemed to develop along the way with Trey calling the shots.
“Mark, how about we shoot some pool,” I suggested.
Two rounds of beer later, Mark and I'd shot three games of pool. Mark had destroyed me each and every time. I begged for mercy so we sat back down at our table.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun getting my ass kicked at something,” I said, laughing.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” Mark assured me. “You just need a little coaching, that’s all.”
“Yeah, but when I scratched the 8-ball and it landed two tables over, I thought that guy was going to kick your ass.”
