Chapter Twelve #3
“There’s no scientific evidence of the paranormal,” Kitty said, taking a step closer to me.
Nina pulled up a map of Coral Castle on her phone.
“Ready to check out your castle, Josephine?” She led us around the courtyard, each limestone structure stranger than the last. They included a Florida-shaped table, a limestone barbecue, a bedroom with two beds and a bathtub, and something called the Polaris Telescope.
Nina began a ghost story about Edward Leedskalnin, the guy who’d built this place, but I was almost certain the story was inspired by one of her bad Tinder dates.
I tried to pay attention as we followed her around the courtyard, but I was worn out from the drive here, my conversation with Nina, and the thoughts about Alex I’d been ignoring for weeks.
He and the girls followed Nina, fully immersed in her story, and I took the opportunity to slip away and walked back the way we’d come.
I walked past the Moon Fountain and the Sun Couch and stopped when I couldn’t see or hear the others, finding myself in the “bedroom” again.
I stretched out on one of the beds and put my arms behind my head to stare up at the sky, but there was too much light pollution to see any stars.
Without Nina, Alex, and the girls around, I was ready to face the task of untangling the knot of thoughts cluttering my head.
I asked myself the question I’d been avoiding: Did I have feelings for Alex?
I knew the answer. I’d known it for a long time but kept pushing it away because it would only make things more complicated.
Yes, I did have feelings for him. Feelings that were not of the “buddy” variety.
I couldn’t deny it anymore, at least not to myself.
What other explanation was there for the sparks that zipped through me whenever we touched?
Or for how I couldn’t stop thinking about our kiss from that night at Mitch’s.
I thought about our easy conversations each morning on the way to work and how he had the perfect playlist for any mood.
I thought of the single-minded intensity of his work, and yet how he never took himself too seriously.
I thought about how he made me laugh whenever he sang, how he made me laugh all the time.
These were not feelings that could be explained away by pheromones.
Follow-up question: Did having feelings for Alex change anything?
Just because I had feelings for him didn’t mean I was willing to do anything about them, because Nina was right, I was terrified.
I didn’t want to be alone, but I also didn’t want to get hurt.
And hurt was the only way this ended—the only way anything ever ended.
I wasn’t convinced a little bit of happiness was worth the pain.
I’d had moments of happiness with Shitty Peter, but being with him had been one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
Even if I did want to pursue these feelings for Alex, it took two to tango.
And so far, Alex didn’t seem interested in dancing.
“There you are,” a voice said, startling me from my thoughts.
I sat up, spotting Alex with his hands in his pockets a few feet away.
He looked unlike himself, with slumped shoulders and a serious demeanor.
Did he know I’d been thinking about him?
Was he a mind reader? He had catered a psychic event here, after all.
“Hi,” I said, trying to get a better look at him, but the shadow of Coral Castle’s walls fell over his face.
“You snuck off.” He sat on the other limestone bed and stretched out with his hands beneath his head.
The bottom of his shirt lifted, exposing a sliver of his lean stomach.
I drew my eyes up to his face and settled on my back again.
There was hardly any space between us. If we reached out, our hands would touch.
“I’m getting some practice in.” I gave the limestone bed a pat.
“Sounds like a good idea,” he said, but his tone was devoid of his usual humor.
Had Nina said something about our conversation in the CVS?
I didn’t think she’d betray me like that, but then again, she wasn’t acting like her normal self.
And here was Alex about to let me down gently.
That would be the end of carpooling, and singing, and our easy friendship, probably.
I looked up at the sky, not wanting to see his face when he told me what great friends we were.
It’s me, not you, I imagined him saying.
Maybe it would even be good for me to hear.
Then I could get over these feelings I’d dreamed up about him before they got too serious.
We lay in silence for a few minutes. I wondered why he’d come looking for me if he didn’t have anything to say. I kept my breathing shallow and tried not to move. Maybe he’d taken my comment about practicing sleeping to heart.
“Thanks for taking care of Greyson,” he said, breaking the silence. “And for not freaking out about the mess in your car and, uh . . . all over you.”
I relaxed, though I didn’t see why he’d gotten all weird only to thank me for helping his daughter puke in the bushes. “It was nothing, really.”
“No.” Alex’s voice was insistent. “It wasn’t.”
I’d never heard Alex so serious before, not even when he’d nearly sliced his finger off.
I rolled onto my side and traced the lines of his profile with my eyes: the slope of his forehead, the strong line of his nose, the angle of his chin.
He turned to face me, his eyes on mine setting off that fluttering in my chest again.
“Greyson being sick makes me anxious. I freak out. Even when I know it’s not a big deal.”
This surprised me. I’d always thought of Alex as immune to anxiety. “Why?” I asked.
He went quiet. Maybe I’d stepped into overly personal territory again. I was about to apologize, when he spoke.
“I’m assuming you remember what I told you about Greyson’s mom leaving.”
“Yeah,” I said. How could I forget?
Alex sighed and looked up at the sky again.
“Greyson was sick when Maggie left. Just some childhood virus. High fever, vomiting, the usual. It was Maggie’s week with Greyson, and one night, as I was unlocking my apartment after a long shift at the restaurant, my neighbor came out into the hallway with Greyson in her arms. I was shocked to see her.
I wasn’t supposed to have her back until the weekend.
But Maggie just left her with my neighbor, saying there was some emergency she had to take care of.
She didn’t tell her where she was going or that Greyson was sick.
She didn’t even call me.” His brow wrinkled as he spoke.
I fought the urge to reach out and smooth it with my palm.
“I called Maggie over and over, but she didn’t answer.
You know the rest—we tracked her down, she said we’d be better off without her.
Anyway, when I finally got in touch with her, I asked her what had happened.
She said she’d been thinking about leaving for a long time, but when Greyson threw up on her carpet, she realized she was more worried about the carpet than Greyson.
It terrified her. That was when she knew she didn’t have it in her to be Greyson’s mother.
” He turned his face toward mine, looking at me with an intensity I’d never seen before.
“So what you did, it’s not nothing to me. ”
I sat up, needing to move. “That sounds . . . hard.” What more could you say to a story like that? “I’m just glad Greyson’s okay.”
We looked at each other for a long moment, and then Alex stood suddenly, closing the space between us.
He sat beside me on the limestone bed, and the air between us reminded me of the heat lightning that moved over the ocean on warm summer nights.
I tensed, unable to look away from him, wondering what he was about to say or do.
But I didn’t get the chance to find out, because Greyson darted out from behind the Florida-shaped table and raced over, zapping all the electricity from the air as she wedged herself between us.
“Hi, Greyson,” Alex said, his tone measured.
“I said we were going to the tower!” Nina called. She emerged from the darkness with Mia at her side and looked from me to Alex, no doubt calculating the distance between us. “I have no idea how you’ve survived the last month, Josephine. These girls are wild.”
“But we totally forgot to give Dad his shirt!” Greyson said. “You’re going to die laughing, Dad. I’m not sure it’ll fit you, though. It might end up like a crop top, which is kind of gross.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what you’re talking about,” Alex said.
I laughed. “Trust me, you don’t.”
When we returned to the grotto, Nina tossed Alex the shirt she’d brought him.
He rolled his eyes when he read it but put it on anyway.
He looked ridiculous, but weirdly good too.
The shirt stretched over his arms, hugging tight to his torso.
Greyson was right, though, it was basically a crop top, not that I minded.
“Only for you would I wear this,” Alex said, nudging me with his shoulder.
He posed with Mia, Kitty, and Nina for a photo without too much pestering.
Only for you, I thought, searching his face for a clue as to what he was thinking.
But goofy Alex was back, and his face was impenetrable.
He reached into the cooler and passed out gourmet s’mores he’d made earlier that day.
Apple and chocolate s’mores. S’mores dipped in caramel or rainbow sprinkles.
Some even had bacon layered beneath the marshmallow.
“Who knew s’mores could be so fancy?” I said after I’d devoured one of the bacon s’mores.
Mia stretched out on her back beside Greyson and Kitty. “It’s kind of romantic, isn’t it?”
“Fancy s’mores?” I said, though I knew exactly what she was doing.
Mia rolled her eyes. “This place, duh.”