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Chapter 15
This means next to nothing, got it?
– Marcella
Mr. Marsh’s words haunt me. Every answer to every question. And perhaps, especially, his answer to the last one.
Question 200: Why do you want to marry me?
I want to marry you because I believe it would be an honor to love you.
An honor.
To love me.
He’s getting into my blood, and I don’t know how I feel about it. Not one lousy bit.
Feelings are vulnerable, which is why I’ve not opted to employ any since deciding two friends was a perfectly reasonable number to have for the rest of my life. But feelings aren’t just vulnerable. They’re also complicated, and messy, and confusing.
They aren’t safe.
They aren’t secure.
And I desperately need security.
Not just financial security, either. If I only needed that, I’d be set.
So set.
I might be higher maintenance than I thought.
Even though I’m not as bad as Mr. Marsh’s response to Question 93: Do you consider yourself to be high maintenance? which was: Incredibly. I can’t even eat peas and carrots in the same mouthful.
As it turns out, neglecting to use your emotions leaves them somewhat frail and wimpy. Even without any scientific proof, I am convinced that emotions are a muscle, and mine have skipped every leg day since the beginning of time.
Taking a deep breath, I touch the pumpkin charm on the necklace I decided to wear today, grip my LeoPad a little tighter, and knock on Mr. Marsh’s office door.
“Come in,” he calls, his smooth, warm voice too much for me to handle right now.
My head does terrible things with the tenor, morphing it into new words then playing those words on repeat in my skull: I believe it would be an honor to love you, an honor to love you, an honor to love you.
The thunder in my chest makes it marvelously hard to breathe as I enter and find him looking intently at his computer screen while twisting in his chair.
I think I’ve been too resentful to realize… He’s always at work before I am.
He puts in more hours than he asks me to.
“What do we have today, Marcella?” he murmurs, flicking his attention toward me and smiling. His smile fades when he catches sight of my necklace. Even though I dug around in the fish tank muck for the missing charm for over an hour, I have not worn this silly thing since that first day.
As a protest.
Obviously.
I say, “You have a Zoom meeting this afternoon, at two.”
“My asset management team?”
“Yes.”
