11. Data/Marshall

ELEVEN

Data/Marshall

Being an accountant by day, everyone assumes I'm a meek mouse. But when the situation calls for it, I can be a burly bear. Something about the mountain, being immersed in nature, brings it out in me. And as a city boy, my hands used tools in a smaller, more restrained manner. Out here, I'm able to wield giant saws and axes with wild abandon. It's glorious.

Our woodchopping station is just outside the back screen door. It's next to a fire pit where, on better nights, we'd sit enjoying the fire under a starry sky with hot chocolates in hand. Marsh would always give me extra marshmallows. "Extra sweetness for my sweet," he'd say.

Currently, he sits in his folding lawn chair, watching me chop but also staring off, a million thoughts crisscrossing his face. His dad. The business. His body may be on the mountain, but his mind is far off.

"You don't have to stay out here with me," I say. "I'm almost done. You can start bringing wood in."

He gives me a nod acknowledging that words came out of my mouth, but that's it.

Trying to get his attention, I add, "This wood is really thick and rough. Duffy delivers it raw, but it's never been this raw."

I wait for him to take the bait and shoot back a zinger. I'm hoping for it. I've wanted Marsh to wipe that cute-but- annoying smile off his face since the moment I arrived, and now that he has … I want it back as soon as possible. The left corner of his mouth lifts into the tiniest morsel of a grin before going flat again.

A few months before we broke up, his dad began to have episodes. Calling Marsh Albie. Forgetting where he was or why he was there. It looked like the initial stages of Alzheimer's to me, but Marsh was in denial. He tried his damnedest to use humor to keep up his family's spirits, like when his mom died, but his dad's health couldn't be fixed with a joke. Some nights, I'd hold him in my arms as he cried himself to sleep. I was the one person he didn't need to perform for. He shouldn't have to go through this alone. Why did he choose to go through this alone?

Heaving the ax over my head, I slam it down on a piece of wood from the pile. As the metal crashes into wood, a flush of heat creeps over my face.

"I'm sorry," I say.

He looks up and crinkles his brow in confusion.

"I should've reached out to see how your dad was doing."

"What? It's okay. Really. You didn't have to."

"I should have. I've known him for eight years." It was longer than I knew my own father.

"You were right. He has Alzheimer's," Marsh says. There was no victory in being right this time.

My heart breaks all over again for him, for Joe, for the inevitability of what's to come.

"You officially got confirmation?"

He nods yes. "The day before Laughingstock."

"Marsh." Shit. Things I wish I knew months ago.

"He had a really bad incident. Wandered into a high school locker room and … yeah, it was bad." He nods again, his jaw painfully tight with the memory. "How's that for timing? "

My heart drops realizing how bad things were and how I wish I'd known. Is this why he withdrew from me? Fuck.

"Marsh … I'm here if you ever need to talk." My body longs to go to him. Hold him. Console him. I know this weekend is about severing our relationship, but I can't leave him like this.

"I appreciate that, but thinking about your ex's parents isn't your responsibility."

"I love him, too, Marsh."

Nobody warns you that when you're in a long-term relationship, your partner's family becomes yours. And when things end, suddenly you're without family members you've grown to care about. I put a fresh piece of wood on the chopping block, but I can't raise the ax. My chest tightens with memories. Post-dinner chats with Joe about ways to reduce his company's tax burden or think through ideas for expansion. Going to Yankee games together when Marsh was out of town. Watching him get so into the game that I found myself cheering with him despite finding baseball boring—sexy tight baseball pants aside. Every time he called me Other Marshall with an impish wink, the crater my dad left in my heart felt a little less hollow.

When you break up with someone, you don't just mourn that relationship, but the relationships you had with everyone else in their family, for better or worse.

"I'm sorry this is happening."

"Thanks. I hate when people say, ‘I hope he gets better.' He's not. This disease only goes in one direction." Marsh heaves out a breath.

"Hey." I hold the ax out to him. "Why don't you chop this last piece?"

He perks up. "You serious?"

"Yeah."

"Because in all our time of coming up here, you hogged the ax and chopping block. "

He's not wrong. "I didn't want your asthma flaring up. And … I'm better at it."

"Or so you think." Marsh gives me a crooked grin, and my chest swells with relief—grateful his signature smile has returned.

"I figure you have some frustration to let out. And I've already let out all my Marsh frustrations on our woodpile." I nod at the stack of wood by my feet.

Watching him cheer up sends a fuzzy spark of warmth fluttering through my chest. He bolts from his chair and takes the ax from my hand, almost dropping it.

"Shit. That's heavy."

"Ya think?"

Marsh gets a grip and steadies the ax. Now that he's holding it, he seems uncertain of what to do next. "So I just lift and drop it down?"

"That's the idea." Realizing that he could very well lose a finger or hand in this endeavor, I figure it's best to help him out.

I stand behind and put my arms around him to reach the ax. Our hands touch as I slide mine down to a free part of the handle. And everything else of ours is touching too. His body heat, his aroma of ocean-scented shampoo mixed with Mallomars and something all his own, threatens to make me deliver wood of my own.

Marsh shimmies his butt, presumably to get into chopping position but maybe also to fuck with me. There's a weapon in his hands, so I have to ignore the one growing heavy in my pants.

"Um, so you lift the ax over your head," I say. A bolt of heat chokes my throat as he shifts his position to raise the ax—another shimmy. Even with a thousand layers of clothing between us, I can make out the faint valley of his ass.

Yeah, though I'm close to the valley of Marsh's crack, I will fear no boner, for thou art a mature adult who can hold in bodily urges.

"How's this?" Marsh asks.

"Good. It's good." I lower my hands to support his arms, which I feel flexing under his jacket. I want nothing more than to bury my nose in his hair and sniff, but with an ax over us, our heads are literally on the chopping block. "And now you throw the ax down as hard as you can."

His body tightens, and he lets out a grunt as he hurls the ax onto the log, two halves spitting off the block into the snow.

That grunt. Oh, how I missed that damn grunt.

Marsh jams the ax into the block. He picks up the log halves and holds them like a fish he just caught. "You're right. That did help me feel a little better. Thanks."

I give a nod, feeling embarrassed even though Marsh is none the wiser about my bodily urges.

"If it makes you feel better, Dad still asks about you."

I smile, grateful to still have a home in Joe's fading memories.

He picks up logs to carry inside. He opens the screen door. "Question."

"Yeah?" I ask, picking up the rest.

"Do you always get a boner when you chop wood?" Marsh flashes me his cute-but-annoying smile and heads inside.