Chapter Sixteen #3
Alex lowered me into a dip as the sound wound down, and I felt light-headed when he set me on my feet again.
We faced each other, grinning and giddy, fighting to catch our breath, but then the sound of the audience broke me from the dream of it all.
The lights onstage dimmed, and I looked out at the restaurant, the faces of Nina and the girls coming into focus.
Alex dropped my hand, and I turned to tell him that I got it now, what the big deal was about karaoke, but he was no longer beside me.
He’d already crossed the stage, leaving me behind.
I watched him fly down the steps and pass his microphone back to the DJ before disappearing into the crowd without so much as a backward glance.
Hurt and confused, I left the stage. When I made it to the table, I realized Alex wasn’t there, and I spotted him making his way through the crowd toward the exit. I moved to follow him, but Nina bear-hugged me, stopping me in my tracks.
“You’re awful, babe, but that was amazing. And Alex!” She laughed. “What a riot!”
“I told you you’d be entertaining,” Mia said.
I tried to make sense of everyone talking to me all at once, but the heat and noise of the crowd grated on my nerves. All I could think about was Alex, and how sudden that change between us had been. Had what I felt between us onstage really been just acting?
“I need to get some air,” I said, and pulled away from Nina, pushing my way through the restaurant before anyone could offer to come with me. It was warm when I stepped out into the night, but it was a relief from the heat of the crowd within the restaurant.
I scanned the parking lot for Alex, and my confusion turned to anger at the sight of him crossing the parking lot in the direction of his van.
I set off after him, no longer caring that what I was about to say would put my feelings for him out in the open.
He would know it wasn’t a mistake when I tried to kiss him.
And maybe it would ruin our friendship, but I wasn’t sure I could be friends with him when he was constantly drawing me close, only to push me away again.
“Hey!” I called when I had nearly caught up to him. Alex turned at the sound of my voice, stopping a few feet from his van.
“Hey, Jo,” he said, not meeting my eye.
This was not the same man who’d just serenaded me in front of a room full of strangers. “Hey, Jo? That’s all you have to say to me right now? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Alex shrugged and looked out at the parking lot. “I needed to get away,” he said.
“From me?”
“I’m not sure what you want me to say.” But the strained look on his face gave me my answer.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe something like Jo, I’m sorry for singing you a love song in front of an entire restaurant, then running away.
I know you aren’t interested in me. I know we’re just friends.
But you can’t do things like that. Not after you pushed me away. Not when I’m trying to get over you.”
Alex’s eyes darted to mine. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Alex. Can we please stop pretending—”
But before I could finish my sentence, Alex’s hands were on my waist. My breath caught in my chest when he pulled me to him, walking me backward until I was pressed up against the side of his van.
“Alex—”
“What do you mean get over me?” he said. He dipped his face close to mine, our noses nearly touching as he looked at me with the same intensity he’d worn that night at Coral Castle.
With his hands on me it was hard to think, and when I found my voice, it was barely above a whisper. “I don’t think the phrase has that many interpretations.”
“I see.” His eyes searched mine, and for a moment we were completely still.
All I could do was stare back at him, dizzy at the closeness.
I couldn’t think straight, confusion and wanting knotted together in my mind.
And then Alex let go of my waist. I stood frozen as he looked down at my mouth, brushing a thumb over my lips before holding my face in his hands.
His fingers were warm against the back of my neck, setting off a wave of goose bumps over my skin.
And even though I knew what would happen, even though we’d kissed before, I was unprepared for the way his mouth on mine would feel like the first time.
But unlike the sweet, slow kiss from the night we met, this kiss was urgent, a release of the pressure I’d felt building between us all summer.
My surprise gave way to hunger, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer, tangling my fingers in his hair.
One kiss became two, then three, and then I lost count.
I breathed him in, the smell and taste of him more intoxicating than I’d remembered.
His hands left my face, finding my hips, and he leaned into me, his body warm along the length of mine.
As he kissed me, everything was only Alex—his hands, his hair in my fingers, his mouth, which left mine to trail down my neck, starting from just beneath my ear all the way to my collarbone.
A car horn sounded nearby, pulling me from the stupor of kissing him, and I remembered my anger, and the woman at his apartment, and how he’d stopped me from doing just this on the beach less than two weeks ago.
“Alex,” I said, hardly able to breathe as he kissed my shoulder. “What are you doing?”
He paused, his breath hot against my skin, and part of me (approximately ninety-nine percent) wished I’d said nothing. He looked dazed when he pulled back. His face was flushed, his hair a mess.
“I’m . . . kissing you? If that wasn’t clear, then I’m doing something wrong.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Without his mouth to distract me, I could think again. My hands fell from around his neck, and I moved out from beneath him. “It’s only . . . one second you’re pushing me away, and the next you’re all over me. It feels like a trick or a game.”
Alex rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. “You think this is a game to me? You really see me as that sort of man?”
I didn’t, but my history in trusting men wasn’t so great. I covered my face in my hands. “No? Maybe? I don’t know.”
“Jo, look at me.” He held my wrists and gently tugged them from my face.
I met his gaze, wanting to believe the way he looked at me, like I was something he wanted, maybe the only thing. “I saw that woman leaving your condo last night,” I said. “New girlfriend?”
“You know I’m not seeing anyone.”
“It sure didn’t look that way.”
“Why would I lie about that?”
“I don’t know, Alex. Nothing you do makes sense. What am I supposed to think when you’ve got some woman leaving your apartment after saying you’re unavailable? All summer you’ve flirted with me one minute, then Nina the next. Who else are you flirting with, Belva?”
Alex laughed. “Not that Belva isn’t a catch, but no, I haven’t been flirting with Belva. And yeah, I flirted with Nina, too, but not because I was attracted to her.”
“So you were flirting with her because . . . ?”
He took a step forward, then hesitated and turned away, running a hand through his hair. “Why are you making me do this?” he said.
“Do what?” I asked, but he continued pacing the parking lot in front of me and didn’t answer.
“Alex—”
He spun around to face me. “Everything with Nina was because I’m obsessed with you, Jo!
Anytime I caught myself paying extra attention to you, I’d shift my attention to her, so it wouldn’t be so obvious.
I told myself I’d get over it, but you were always there—at work, at home.
I tried to avoid you whenever I could, but then I had the brilliant idea to invite you to carpool with me.
” He laughed, rubbing his face. “It seems ridiculous now, but I told myself you’d shoot me down, and then I’d see you weren’t interested, and could move on.
But then you said yes! So that plan backfired. ”
I stared at him, frozen in place. His avoidance of me at the beginning of the summer, the interest in Nina, I’d interpreted it all wrong. “But you said . . . when you caught me skinny-dipping in the pool, you said you didn’t think I was cute.”
He shook his head and took a step closer. “That’s not what I said. I said I didn’t say I thought you were cute. Don’t you remember the night we met? I thought I made it pretty clear I was attracted to you. And for the record, you are more than cute.”
I fumbled for something to say. The distance between us was closing again. I wanted to give in and lose myself in kissing him, but things still didn’t add up. “If you’re so into me, why did you push me away on the beach?”
Alex sighed. “I didn’t push you away. I pressed pause.
You were so upset . . . it didn’t feel like the right moment.
Which is what I would’ve told you if you hadn’t run away.
But the next day you said it was a mistake and to forget it, so I figured you meant it when you said it didn’t mean anything. ”
“You wanted to kiss me then?”
“I’ve been trying not to kiss you all summer long. I almost did, more than once. I thought that was obvious.”
“I thought . . . well, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t read you.”
Alex closed the distance between us, threading his arms around my waist. My hands were on his chest, the steady rhythm of his heart beneath my palms like an anchor tethering me to him.
“I swore I’d never fall in love again, you know,” he said.
“Love?”
Alex pulled back, and there was only his heart beneath my hands and him, so close, that if I tipped forward, we’d be kissing again.
“Yes, Jo. I love you. You are frustratingly beautiful, and kind, and funny, and it’s making things very complicated.”
“How is that complicated?” I said, as that word, love, drumming in my mind, caught through me like wildfire.
Alex turned his face away from me. “Why are you making me do this?” he said again.
“Do what?”
He looked at me, and I recognized the sadness I’d seen in his eyes that night at Mitch’s. “I don’t want to hurt you.”