ALEX #3
He looks like the sexiest man in the world, and I just fall apart because who am I, some creature from his past, a nobody.
But his eyes are still fixed on my face and it’s simply too much. Everything inside me cracks and crumbles like brittle clay.
Darkness drops and I pass out.
◆◆◆
When I open my eyes I hear voices.
To my astonishment, I realize I’m in the provost’s office! What the hell?
Someone laid me on the small couch visitors often sit on when they come to meet him.
To my surprise I see that both Professor Alvarez and Malborn are talking to the dean, apparently neither of them has backed down.
My eyes move across the others in the room, and immediately I find those dark green eyes still fixed on me.
Bay stands about six feet away, facing me, watching me with the same intensity as before.
"Hello, Alex," he says in a voice so low and deep that another shiver runs through me. Holy shit, how is it possible his voice got even lower? It was already low when he was eighteen. And then twenty-two. High testosterone can do a lot.
"Hey…" I manage to utter, but it comes out painfully squeaky, like a little chick peeping, nothing like the sensual tone I was hoping for, and a sharp contrast to his sexy voice.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, probably low blood sugar, I didn’t eat much…"
"I’m going to grab something in town with the guys, maybe you’d like to join us…"
I stare at him. Impossible. Wow. Is he actually inviting me? Is this wise?
"We’re heading out in a moment."
What is he doing? Why is he offering this? We agreed long ago to stay far away from each other, so what is this?
My eyes meet his again as I try to read his energy. On the surface his face doesn’t show much, something like neutrality.
But there’s something in him. The only words I can find for it are: a gentle, warm energy that seems to spill from him toward me.
I love you.
I say it, but only in my head. I’ve lost my mind. I press my lips together. I’m probably imagining that energy.
Maybe he’s just being polite. Maybe he doesn’t want to walk out pretending we never meant anything to each other, maybe I should appreciate the gesture and his words.
"Thank you, maybe… I’ll join you in a moment," I force out in a strained voice.
Professor Alvarez comes up to me then.
"All good, Alex, I spoke with the provost, and he agreed to your substitution for the course."
"Great then," I say, glancing meaningfully toward Bay, "I just don’t want to bother anyone."
"You’re not bothering anyone," he says, and why is his low voice so different from the voices of the other men in the room, even though he isn’t the only alpha here?
It’s so much deeper and has this pleasant vibration that literally turns me into jelly.
What does he want?
Did he lose it?
But I automatically follow him as he shows me the way to the door.
Outside his bandmates are waiting.
No one really notices me, I’m like a tiny shadow, and only when the whole group heads for the stairs does Malik glance at me. A shadow of surprise and recognition crosses his face.
"Alex? Alex Strada?"
"Yeeeah, hey, long time no see," I mumble in embarrassment and offer him my hand.
He shakes it in surprise and breaks into a wide smile.
"Guys, meet Alex! Bay’s first boyfriend from back in high school!"
Everyone turns toward me, which makes me practically sink into the floor at the speed of a diamond drill punching through the earth’s crust.
So many eyes on me, amused, curious, assessing me… Damn it, why did I agree to this? Me, in a crowd? A seclusive loner who obsessively avoids people?
I have to shake their hands, I have to greet them while smiling and responding to whatever small talk they throw my way as we walk together toward the faculty parking lot where the band’s van is waiting.
The whole time Bay stays silent while Malik does most of the talking, even when we get into the van and I end up seated next to Malik and have to keep smiling and nodding and occasionally adding something when he starts going on about our high school days.
From time to time I pull my gaze away from Malik’s face and glance at Bay, and his eyes are invariably fixed on me even though he doesn’t speak, offering only the occasional brief comment about some event that happened back in high school.
Then we arrive at a large restaurant downtown, and it clearly must have had a reservation because our table sits on a spacious terrace set apart enough to feel private, and that’s when the topics start to shift as the other band members, Carl and Dante, begin talking about things that have nothing to do with me.
They rant about upcoming events and their thoughts on some lighting tech, then about another artist who got treated badly by his manager, and somewhere in all that the topics stop involving me at all, so this becomes the first moment when I actually have a chance to talk to Bay alone.
The waiter takes our orders, and afterward Bay settles back comfortably in his seat and pulls out his vape.
Its scent hits me, and I know instantly it’s a calming agent. I had seen him smoke in more than one interview clip, and it always surprised me since not many singers are willing to risk their voice and have throat problems, but now I’m beginning to understand that this isn’t a regular cigarette.
Does he live on that stuff, smoking it for years? I always see him with it.
"How’s everything with you, Alex, how’s work at the college going?"
He asks it in this relaxed tone, stretching the syllables a little while taking a deep drag from the vape, its blue tip glinting between his fingers.
Our eyes meet, his visible through a faint haze of smoke.
His face stays exactly the same as it was in the college provost’s office, neutral, neither smiling nor particularly gloomy, a friendly and polite expression but stripped of anything truly expressive.
"How do you know I work at this college?" I lift my brows slightly, mostly to keep the conversation going.
"Dereck told me," he answers smoothly, no hesitation. "You know we play with him from time to time, especially during studio sessions."
"Oh, right, of course. Well, yes, I work at the college. And in about eight months I’ll have my doctoral defense."
"That’s excellent, Alex, congratulations. A really great achievement, but you were always very talented, so I’m not even surprised."
He says it calmly in that same neutral and polite tone.
"And I congratulate you on the success of your music career, Bay," I say. It comes out stiff and overly formal, but I honestly can’t think of anything better.
"I had substantial help along the way," he answers diplomatically with a slight nod in my direction.
Silence follows. He takes another slow drag from the vape while I watch him discreetly from the corner of my eye, when he looks away toward the skyline beyond the terrace railing.
Bay is definitely not the size I remember from high school.
He’s grown and now stands somewhere between six seven and six eight, and he’s much more muscular, something that isn’t always obvious in photos or videos when he’s sitting during interviews or moving around as a small figure on stage.
But now, sitting right across from him, I see him in full.
When I overlay his stature with the stalker’s, it fits perfectly.
Yeah. For some reason, I had the image of him as an eighteen-year-old boy ingrained in my mind, and somehow the shadowy figure of his stalker alter ego never overwrote it.
So seeing him at his actual size almost shakes me, this intense awareness that I’ve been living with an outdated image in my head, of a boy rather than an adult man.
I watch his movements from beneath half-lowered lids.
So. We fucked. And yet… we didn’t. Not as Alex and Bay.
It’s hard to explain, but somehow it doesn’t feel real; it’s like a dream full of ghosts, secrets, dimmed light, masks, and something forbidden that we could not let take shape.
Over the last four years, I have gone into heat three times. On the worst days, when the pain and desperation twisted through me, I called him, the stalker. He came without protest, without a word, and did everything I asked.
No unnecessary words were spoken. I didn’t ask for more of the ‘pretending to be Bay’ part. I accepted his help during my heat because I needed safety and release, but I couldn’t afford attachment or acknowledging that it was actually him. I took him as Bay’s ghost, not him in the flesh.
Bay smokes slowly, releasing thin streams of vapor, his eyes locked on the cityscape, saying nothing, while the background hum of the band’s conversation surrounds us, and yet between the two of us there is this strange soft quiet.
The energy I can feel in Bay’s presence… so familiar. The way his hands move, the posture of his body and head, even the same scent of laundry detergent.
"So how have the last few years been for you?" I ask, still keeping my tone careful.
Bay turns his gaze toward me, unreadable and calm.
"Very active, a lot of things I was involved in took up my time."
What an evasive answer.
"Anything besides your music career?" I ask, tilting my head a little, tempted to add something like ‘wandering around parks, watching after your ex’. But his eyes stay on my face and he doesn’t seem rattled by the question as he keeps slowly rolling the vape between his fingers while a thread of vapor rises straight upward.
"Plenty of different things, it would take a long time to explain," another evasive answer.
The waiter brings our food and everyone leans over their plates, exchanging comments about the dishes, some pleased with their choices while others complain.
I have no idea what else I could say to Bay, what point of contact I could find, because our last official conversation was wild. I screamed at him like a lunatic over the phone, ‘Bring me back to life!’ and just thinking about it makes me cringe inwardly.
But he pulls me out of my dilemma and suddenly says,