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Mark was nervous; at the moment he had a low grade desire for a smoke, but he was pretty sure that was going to become an agonizing need if he didn’t get his nerves under control soon. He wasn’t even sure why he was so nervous - well other than the unusual location selected for the meeting, along with the request for secrecy, followed by the always cryptic “we need to talk” statement. Had any positive discussion ever started out with “we need to talk”? He couldn’t think of one. At least he had managed to stop pacing; he was proud of at least gaining that much control. Now if he could just persuade himself to sit; it would look so much better if he could just be sitting when Gary arrived.
Why had he thought it would be good to get here first? He should have come late. Well, not too late, just a bit late, just late enough to have not been first. What was that saying, “The waiting is the hardest part”? Wait, wasn’t that a song? He was sure that was a song. He could just almost hear it in his head. He dropped his hand away from his mouth, which was a good because if he chewed that nail any further down he was going to draw blood, and started to hum out a melody. The pacing resumed as he sang below his breath “everyday get one more yard”. It was definitely a song; he was sure of it now. Who sang that again? He spent the next 10 minutes pacing, humming and thinking until he remembered he could look it up on his phone. He dug his phone out of his jacket pocket, typed in the lyrics, and seconds later sat down to watch the Tom Petty video. When the door of the suite opened half way through the song all he could think was that he was glad he was sitting when Gary arrived.
Gary hated to be late. He would have preferred taking the train in from the airport instead of the private car but that just wasn’t an option this time. The fewer people who knew he was in town the better. As it was he considered himself lucky to have gotten through customs without any photographers popping up. Not that he had paparazzi following him around these days. That was an advantage of being considered too old and too boring the paps tended to leave you alone. There was always the possibility of someone tagging him with their phone and posting it on twitter of course but the disguise helped with that. He felt like an idiot but it did keep people from recognizing him.
Traffic was a nightmare but then it always was at this time of the morning. He was only going to be about 20 minutes late so he might still arrive before Mark after all punctuality had never been Mark’s strong point. He probably should have given him more information but he hadn’t known what to say. He still didn’t know what he was going to say. Oh sure he knew what he needed to say but how he was going to go about it was a complete mystery to him. He had never been that great at expressing himself in personal situations and it didn’t get more personal than this one.
Rob was right though if he didn’t go through with it he would regret it and wouldn’t be able to get past it and then it would destroy everything they had worked for. That was the thing about self awareness you could happily live in the dark for decades but once the blinders came off and you saw the light, living in the dark became unbearable.
Finally the car pulled up to the hotel and he was informed that his guest was indeed waiting for him. He was surprised to find Mark had not ordered anything so he requested tea and a light breakfast be sent to the parlor and his bags be taken to the adjoining bedroom. He was never going to make it through this without tea. He felt another stab of guilt in the elevator and hoped Mark hadn’t worried himself into a breakdown whilst waiting. His first thought when he opened the door was at least Mark was sitting down.