Chapter 36
ALEX
Hits Different | Taylor Swift
‘Holy shit, did you forget to shave?’
Occasionally, Alex was grateful for his sister-in-law. Erik’s stony face and awkward posture were expected, softening only for the moment he pulled his seat forwards so Abby could clamber into the back. Her spritely, chipper mood was not. But it helped break the silence that had held since Erik walked outside, carrying their bags.
Even if Alex wanted to cringe at the fact that, no, he hadn’t shaved that morning, or the morning before, disrupting his decade-and-a-half long routine of shaving on alternate days to ensure he never had perceptible regrowth.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll shave before the wedding,’ he grunted.
‘You don’t have to,’ Abby said. ‘He won’t.’ She gestured at Erik, finally folding himself into the front seat and looking like he wanted to be absolutely anywhere else. Erik, who had been entirely clean-shaven only a handful of days since he’d left school, preferring to keep a casual layer of scruff that Alex felt sure took far more effort to maintain than his usually smooth skin. ‘I’m just in shock, because I don’t think I’ve seen your facial hair since you were fifteen,’ Abby said.
‘I’m trying something new,’ Alex muttered, slumping into his own seat and turning the key in the ignition. A week before, he’d had daydreams that Sarah might be driving to the wedding venue with them, and now he was trying not to think about the fact that she was very likely still in the block of flats he was parked outside. He was also trying not to think about the texts burning a hole in his notifications bar.
Sarah: Can we talk?
And an hour after that:
Sarah: Please?
She probably just wanted to make sure he still planned to keep their secret. As if he had any interest in discussing his burning wreck of a romantic life with the most disgustingly in love people in existence.
Erik glanced at him, the hard slant of his eyebrows softening slightly. ‘It looks good,’ he said quietly.
Damn him for seeing through Alex’s shit when he wanted to.
‘Thanks.’ And it was in the spirit of that olive branch that Alex said, ‘I forgot to take my meds this morning. Can you grab them out the glove compartment?’
Erik retrieved the small white box and was halfway through opening the side tab when he froze. ‘Alex.’ His voice was so quiet, Alex had to strain to hear it. ‘This is for ADHD.’
‘Yep.’ Alex watched as the knuckles around his steering wheel turned a shade whiter.
‘When?’
‘My whole life, if you believe—’
‘Dammit, Alex, when did you get diagnosed?’ Erik didn’t sound angry, just tired. Slightly hurt.
Abby was uncharacteristically quiet as she sat in the back seat. When Alex checked the rearview mirror, he could see her eyes flitting between them, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
‘Last year.’
Erik’s fuck was barely audible. Groaned into the hand he scrubbed over his face. ‘The masking,’ he muttered, when his hand was back in his lap. Finally, one of the small white pills Alex had trained himself to dry-swallow—forgetting to carry water around wasn’t an excuse if you didn’t need water to take your meds—appeared in front of him. ‘I should have realised. I should have realised what it meant that you put so much energy into masking. Do Mum and Dad—’
‘No,’ Alex said quickly. ‘I didn’t want them to think—I don’t want you to think—this is anyone’s fault for not noticing or—’ He paused. Took a breath. Counted to five. ‘Forty percent of men are only diagnosed in adulthood.’ A stat from his doctor, when he’d asked if he, Alex, should have seen the signs earlier—because he sure as hell hadn’t expected anyone else to—especially given what he knew about neurodiversity thanks to Erik. ‘Only my doctor knows. And—’
And her . Who he had absolutely forbidden himself from mentioning.
Erik nodded in his periphery. ‘Okay. I— Fuck. Look, I realise you’ve been looking after yourself just fine without me knowing, but if you ever want to talk, remember I know what it’s like to feel your brain actively working against you. And…and I know what it’s like to think you have to hide parts of yourself to make the world accept you.’
There was no earthly way he could stay angry at his little brother—face scrunched like a sad puppy with big eyes—when he said shit like that, and Alex was thankful for the distraction of the road ahead so he could look way as he responded. ‘Thanks.’
After another few minutes in silence, Erik said, barely audible, ‘I’m sorry. For the other night, and for then.’
‘Yeah,’ Alex said. ‘Me too.’
Abby appeared between their seats, beaming. ‘So glad you two have made up. Now can we change the music to something happier? It’s my wedding weekend, and I don’t need to be exclusively listening to Taylor Swift’s most depressing bops.’ A hand dove for the centre console and grabbed his phone. ‘Oh shit, that’s actually what this playlist is called.’
Keeping one hand on the wheel, Alex reached backwards, plucking the phone from her hand. ‘Can you not? How do you even know my passcode?’
She rolled her eyes in the rearview mirror, and the visceral reaction it would normally have prompted was dampened by sheer fucking affection brought on by the moment he’d just shared with Erik. Because even if he’d felt left out as kids, even if he sometimes felt left out now, he loved them both a frankly stupid amount, and this—Abby needling him, Erik passively enjoying her ribbing and Alex’s responses to it—was the best version of them, and if they wanted to show up for him, he could try to let them in a bit more.
Affection aside, a flare of annoyance still shot through his chest at Abby’s next words. ‘It’s the same passcode you’ve had since your first phone, and it’s your birthday. You did not make it difficult for us to snoop on you when we were kids.’
‘You figured that out, but not that his passcode was the alpha-numeric value of your name? Which is nerdy as fuck in addition to being pathetic, by the way,’ he added, in Erik’s direction.
In response, Erik tipped his head back and closed his eyes, smiling softly. ‘Well aware.’ Then he straightened as suddenly as his seatbelt would allow, eyes wide. ‘Wait, you were going through my phone too?’
‘After I walked in on you two cuddling for the seventeenth or eighteenth time?’ Alex snorted, derision evident in every decibel of the inelegant sound. And look at that—he was getting better at letting them in already. ‘You bet. I was convinced you were dating and keeping it secret so you wouldn’t have to deal with all our parents, which honestly would have been less frustrating than the two of you dancing around each other. So I swiped your phone one night to check your text thread. To this day it remains the driest thing I’ve ever read.’
‘Less dry now,’ Abby offered, from the backseat.
‘Gross,’ Alex muttered. Her hand appeared next to him again, the middle finger extended this time. He swatted it away; Erik grabbed her fingers, pulling them to his lips instead. It made Alex want to gag.
Love.
Just thinking the word sent pain shooting through his heart. And upset as he was, he couldn’t help thinking of her. The high-strength medication engineered to help him concentrate had really been no match for those eyes, that skin, that laugh. Or maybe it had somehow sensed that was where his attention should be at all times, sharpening its focus in on her until it consumed him. Now he was wondering what she was doing. If she was enjoying her ride from London to the country house hosting the wedding. The one she was taking without him. If she was safe. If she was happy .
If she’d been offered the job in Barcelona.
But of course she had. Because she was brilliant, and only an idiot wouldn’t have hired her.
One more question bounced through his brain, ricocheting like a quick-release pinball.
How the fuck was he going to face her for the next thirty-six hours?
To her credit, and at great personal cost, Abby came through for him at dinner time.
While most guests would only travel through the following day, the wedding party was staying the night to ensure everything went smoothly with final setup in the hours before the wedding.
After settling in—which for Abby meant dumping her suitcase in the room she’d be sharing with her friends that night before following the boys and spreading out on Erik’s bed, yapping as they hung their suits—they ventured downstairs to find they were the last to arrive. In the small sitting room where they’d be eating dinner, they found the parents of both the bride and the groomalready a bottle of wine deep. Seemingly they, unlike Alex and Erik, had not needed to work most of the day before driving out.
And there she was. Sitting with Zoe, looking stunning in a black dress that looked so soft he wanted to rub his face over it like a cat. She’d left her hair to dry naturally—mostly straight, save for the single wave two-thirds of the way down that he knew bothered her, having seen her tug on it day after day. Her skin was free of makeup, making her pink cheeks when she looked at him all the more pronounced.
Alex thought about what Erik had said at the gym a few nights before. Thought about his reflection that morning, as he’d consciously decided to allow the slight messiness of his stubble to puncture his otherwise pristine appearance. How when he’d sat in his large, empty house before bed last night, with only a dog who didn’t give a fuck what he looked like for company, he’d decided that maybe his brother was right. Maybe he could let people in a little more.
But not her.
She’d lost her right to him—the access so beyond what he’d offered anyone else—when she’d started planning a life a thousand miles away.
So he smiled, the perfectly balanced, decidedly vapid smile he gave most of the population. The smile that set people at ease, that made them feel liked and interesting. But even that gave too much of him, now that she knew it was bullshit. So he looked away before registering her response, eyes bouncing off the black sketchbook next to her before landing on Erik, who raised his eyebrows in the universal symbol for You good? Alex nodded, hesitating as Abby bounded ahead of them to greet her friends. It made more sense for their group to join them. There was more space at their table. But there was truly nothing Alex wanted less than to sit next to her for an hour, pretending every word spoken in her gloriously husky voice wasn’t like a sledgehammer to his heart. He also didn’t care to be the one shuffling away to eat dinner with his slightly inebriated parents and their friends, but it would hurt his ego and his ears more than his heart, and since that had taken enough beatings…
And then, despite how much she could annoy him, Abby reminded him that it was possible he slightly adored her. He’d taken another half step towards the table of iniquity when she slid away from Sarah, whispered something in her ear, then fell into step beside them, grabbing Erik’s hand and leading him towards their parents, taking the decision out of Alex’s control. Out of gratitude, he situated himself as a buffer between her and her mother. While it didn’t stop Susan eventually noting the messy bun Abby had thrown her hair into and the worn sneakers she’d travelled in, she was afforded five minutes of peace while Susan fussed over how handsome he was and how lovely his hair looked.
‘I appreciate the attempt, but even the night before my wedding was never going to be magical enough that she couldn’t find fault,’ Abby said quietly, standing after their parents made their exit. But the second her fiancé was on his feet, Erik pulled her closer and kissed her cheek, and Alex saw the stress from her mother seeping out of her body as she got her fill of him.
He was about to reply when he saw Sarah and Zoe walking towards their table, instead shutting his mouth sharply.
‘Come on, lovebirds,’ Zoe said. Sarah hovered a foot behind her, and Alex was at once pleased to have another excuse to look at her—damn her for looking soft and sweet and wonderful, and damn him for falling for it—and desperate to be out of her immediate vicinity. ‘Break it up. You both need a decent night’s sleep.’
’We’ll get a better night’s sleep together,’ Abby countered, a last-ditch attempt he knew she would lose. Erik had already been sulking for a week about their friends’ insistence that they spend their final unmarried night apart. ‘We can be chaperoned to make sure there’s no funny business!’ Zoe merely stared at her. ‘Fine. Can we at least have half an hour to take a walk and just soak up the fact that we’re getting married tomorrow?’
Her final words were paired with a painfully soft look back at Erik, who had his arms wrapped around her waist now, as if daring anyone to take her away from him. Erik nuzzled into her neck and grumbled, ‘An hour.’
Zoe rolled her eyes—Alex considered that in a different timeline, he would like this woman—and cocked her head to the door, giving them a minute’s head start before she moved to leave the sitting room too.
Then, for the first time in almost a week, Alex found himself alone with her. Even with six feet between them, he could smell the sandalwood that for a brief time he’d imagined would make a permanent home in his senses. He nodded at her, that smile full of nothingness returning, and began to stroll towards the exit, desperate for a hot shower and a fluffy pillow after what suddenly felt like the longest day of his life.
‘Alex.’
Her voice was quieter than he’d expected, maybe because one of the venue staff had come in to clear their tables. Alex raised an eyebrow, giving her room to continue. She shifted her weight between her legs, that small sketchbook now held loosely in her hands. Her perfect, petal-pink lips parted. Shut again. And he wished he didn’t know what other parts of her were exactly the same colour. Every second in her presence had his body warring with itself. The compulsion to grab her, touch her, kiss her, fighting his need to get the hell away so he could stop controlling his face in front of the one person he’d learned to relax around.
When she finally opened her mouth again, she said, ‘I know he wants to see her before the ceremony. Make sure he doesn’t ruin her makeup, okay?’
A humourless laugh broke from Alex’s chest. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that.’ As if he could have hoped for better. As if he should be hoping for better.
So shaking his head at his own idiocy, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and kept walking, leaving her alone behind him.