55. Alexandra
fifty-five
The next day, we say goodbye to the Appalachian Trail in Bear Mountain, New York. We check ourselves into an inn that offers hearty dinner options. It’s a little on the pricey side, but after more than two weeks on the trail, we need the indulgence. We’ll spend the night, then make our way back into the city by bus tomorrow morning. Then onto the subway to haul ourselves all the way back to Brooklyn.
After dinner, I plop on the bed while Sarah is in the shower. Such luxury. When it’s my turn to clean up, I take extra time shaving, wash my hair three times, and finish their outrageously good-smelling conditioner. I loved my time away from civilization, but I’m ready to go back, now. And even if I have a pinch of apprehension at the idea of running Red Barn Baking, I’m looking forward to having so many things on my plate there’s nothing—no one—else I can think about.
The next morning, I dig out a summer dress and sandals Sarah somehow threw in the backpack. I give the dress a quick iron and slip it on, relishing feeling feminine again. I’ve lost weight over the last couple of weeks, and my legs and tummy are toned from the hiking, but my breasts still fill the low-cut dress in a sexy way. I tie my hair in a French braid and finish my look with a clean cotton hat and sunglasses.
As we check out, the front desk clerk narrows her eyes on us. “What’s wrong with her?” Sarah whispers as we leave.
I shrug.
The bus stop is a short walk away, and we’re early for the ride to New York City. There’s a diner nearby with outdoor seating and a sign that says Ice Cream All Day.
“That qualifies as breakfast, right?” Sarah asks.
“It’s dairy,” I confirm.
We sit under an umbrella, bask in the sun, and relish the cool taste of ice cream cones on our tongues.
Once I’m done eating the last crunchy part of the cone, I pull my hat down and close my eyes behind my sunglasses, enjoying the quiet. From here, we’ll hear the bus pull up. Sarah goes to the bathroom, and for a moment, it feels like it’s only me out here.
“Holy effing shit,” Sarah whisper-screams as she comes back.
I open one eye at her. She’s holding a bag of candy and a gossip magazine. The kind with paparazzi photos of celebrity close-ups.
I close my eyes, again. It can’t be the candy, so I wonder what the Kardashians might have done again to rile Sarah up.
“’Sup?” I mumble, wanting to know what the rest of the world has been up to while we totally checked out.
“Hello?” she says.
I open my eyes, again. She shoves the magazine in my face, so close I have to push it away to actually look at it.
When I do, I’m staring at myself.
There’s a full front-page photograph of me with the words, Where is she?
I sit up and gasp. “What the actual f—?”
The diesel engine of the bus rumbles as it comes to a stop. There’s no time to figure this out now. I roll the magazine up, with my photo on the inside, tuck my hat lower over my sunglasses, and tiptoe behind Sarah as if that will make me less visible.
Sarah leads us to the very back of the bus. It’s empty now, but it’ll fill up as we make our way into the city.
I take the window seat, where no one can see me. Pull the magazine out and start reading the text on the cover. ‘New England’s best baker loses his one true love, and now, he won’t bake.’
And, then, below, a subtitle: ‘Help us find her.’
Sarah starts laughing uncontrollably. She’s on her phone, earbuds on. “Oh my god, Lexie, this is priceless.”
“What? What’s so funny? It’s not funny!” I hiss as she hands me one of her earbuds.
We huddle over Sarah’s phone, watching a news segment from last week.
“The country is on a frantic search for Alexandra Pierce, Christopher Wright’s former apprentice and now lover. Alexandra disappeared abruptly two weeks ago, and Wright is desperate to find her. Police refuse to list her as a missing person, as there have been sightings of her on the Appalachian Trail.”
The segment cuts to Officer Declan Campbell. “People are entitled to their privacy,” Declan says. “We have reports that she is alive and well, and just… doing her thing.”
“And what would that be?”
“I’m not at liberty to disclose.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a matter of protecting her privacy.”
“So… you can’t tell us anything?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Anything you’d like to say to Alexandra?”
He nods. “If you’re watching, please come back. We miss you, and don’t take this the wrong way, but we miss our fresh bread too.”
The camera pans out and focuses on the bakery, then zooms in on the sign hanging at the front door. Closed until further notice.
The screen switches to the anchor. “News outlets got wind of Christopher Wright’s plight when the recent winner of the popular TV show, New England’s Best Baker, started posting videos addressed to Alexandra on his bakery’s social media feeds.”
“Dammit,” I growl, digging deeper in my seat.
Sarah’s thumbs fly over her phone’s screen as she opens the bakery’s social media. There are a number of notifications of the bakery having been live in the past couple of weeks. All the videos are posted.
Sarah scrolls to the oldest. “Let’s do this in order,” she says, plunging her hand in the bag of candy.
I almost snap at her that this is not some prime-time show. This is my life we’re talking about. But I bite my tongue. She’s been putting up with me for over two weeks. Her plan was not to be my emotional crutch.
She wanted some quiet connection with nature before she goes back to her crazy New York life, and instead, she had to put up with my sobbing for a few days, then my brooding. We never really talked about her, and I realize I’ve been a shitty friend. She’s been here for me the whole time, and I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without her.
Except judging by my heartbeat, I don’t think I’m actually through anything yet. I have a physical need to see Christopher on the screen. To hear his voice.
And to hear what he has to say.
In the first video, the camera pans haphazardly, like someone hit the Start Live Video button and then decided to set the phone somewhere. Finally, the image settles on the inside of the bakehouse. The room is slanted, and I figure the phone must be slightly crooked in the tripod.
I’d told Sarah to leave the tripod, the ring light, and the lens Christopher gave me on my bed. It does something funny in my stomach when I understand he’s using the tripod. The first time I showed him how to make a live video was in the bakehouse, pretty much right where he is now.
A chair comes into focus.
The chair where I was sitting when Christopher organized a blind tasting—and ended up tasting me.
Sweet bitterness grips me at the memory. But, before I can dwell on that feeling, Christopher comes into the frame and sits on the chair. He’s off center, and slanted like the rest of the room, and the light isn’t good. But all that matters to me are the dark circles beneath his eyes and his disheveled hair.
“Alexandra,” he says. He’s looking straight into the camera, and he’s a little stiff. “You left your phone at Grace’s, and I don’t know how to get in touch with you. I thought maybe I could do a video like you showed me, and you’d see this somehow.” He shuts his eyes for a beat and takes a deep breath. When he reopens his eyes, he’s looking at his hands, and his voice is a little muffled. “I don’t know where to find you. I need to talk to you.” He looks into the camera then down at his hands, again. “Shit.” He stands, kicking the chair away. His footsteps sound while he’s off frame, then the video ends. I look at the date. It was the day after I left Emerald Creek.
Sarah clicks on the next video. It’s dated from the next day.
He’s sitting in the same chair, and the room is still crooked, but he used the ring light, and he seems to have tamed his hair somewhat. “I need you, Alexandra. I need us again. I never should have reacted the way I did. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for hurting you.”
He stands, the pattern of his plaid shirt blurry, then the frame moves until his face fills the whole screen. “I was stupid to be upset at you for what you didn’t tell me… Fuck, I hate this video thing. Can you please make it so we can have a private conversation?” The image swerves, showing the ceiling. It looks like he’s back on the chair now, as if he’s waiting for an answer. “All right,” he says, and the video stops.
The next video is several days later, and this time, he’s in the kitchen, and he’s holding the phone in his hand. “I don’t know if you don’t want to talk or if you’re not getting these messages. I know you left your phone here, but I can’t imagine you’re not online from another device. So maybe I did something wrong in the settings. I hope that’s what it is, because fuck it, I miss you. I miss you so much. I want you here. I never should have pushed you away.”
He scrunches his face and gets closer. “What the hell,” he says. “Who the fuck are these people,” he mumbles. “Why are you writing messages if you’re not Alexandra.” His face appears distorted, and something—probably his finger—obscures part of the screen for a bit. “Why did I push her away? I was an idiot… What the fuck are these people writing? Get the fuck out of my video! How do I stop this? Don’t you guys have a life? Yeah, I do have a life, and I’m trying to fix it, you moron.”
The screen shifts, and there’s background noise, then Justin’s voice comes across, echoing in the background. Then it’s Christopher again, the image swerving so much it makes me seasick. “I’m not on the phone. I’m sending fucking video messages to Alexandra, and all I get are a bunch of losers giving me dating advice.”
He squares the phone and frames it on his face, again. “Send her flowers,” he mumbles, clearly reading the messages floating on his screen. “I DON’T KNOW WHERE SHE IS! She checked out. Left her phone and just vanished… I don’t know how she’s going to see the videos! On her computer. Or on her friend’s phone. Her name? Sarah… No, I don’t know Sarah’s last name.” The video shifts off screen, his voice muffles. “I’m banking on a bunch of losers to help me find Alexandra, that’s what I’m doing.” He must be talking to Justin.
“What losers?” Justin’s voice comes through clearer, now.
“Those people on the video.”
“You mean the die-hard followers of your social media accounts that get instant notifications when you go live?”
“What do you mean?” Christopher is so clearly confused my heart pinches for him.
“The people messaging you while you’re live are people who love your bakery. And morons like me, who follow you because they’re your close friends.”
“Shit,” Christopher says. He focuses back on the video, and Justin’s head appears behind him, grinning. “Sorry, guys,” Christopher says, running his free hand through his hair. “I… I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Clearly,” Justin says. “Someone says ‘clearly’ in the chat.” Christopher clenches his jaw, then Justin adds, “I’m Justin.”
“Nobody cares who you are,” Christopher grunts.
“T-tt-tt,” Justin says. “Someone’s asking who the cutie is.”
The video stops.
Sarah giggles then stops herself. “Are you okay?” she says as she gives me a side hug. “Do you want to just jump to the last video?”
I don’t know if I’m okay. My legs are antsy, and my stomach is tied in knots. “Just keep going,” I tell her.
The next video is several days later. Christopher’s stubble has grown. He’s in the dark, holding the phone in his hand, and as it moves around, I recognize the contours of the armchair in his bedroom.
“Alexandra. I know I should have told you how I felt earlier. I’m not good at talking, and that’s something I need to work on. Also, I don’t like being in the spotlight, but here I am. So, I guess that’s a start. I hate that I have to say this in public, but I don’t have a choice. If only I knew where to find you, I’d speak to you in person. I just want to hold you and never let you go, and I shouldn’t have said I didn’t want you here. The truth is, I did want you here. I’ve wanted you right fucking here since the moment you walked in.”
I know that, by here, he means in his bedroom, except he’s not saying it because this is a public video. He knows that I’d understand. And, somehow, the fact that we’re sharing this little bit of inside knowledge makes me feel closer to him.
“You kept saying you were going to leave. What was I supposed to do? I needed to protect myself, Alexandra. I might be a grump, but I’ve discovered something since you came into my life.”
He pauses.
“I’m breakable.”
And his voice actually breaks a little. “And I didn’t know that. I wasn’t breakable when I left my family at the age of fifteen. I wasn’t breakable when I built my business from the ground up. I wasn’t even breakable when I fought for Skye. With Skye, the kind of love I had for her before she was even born is the kind that made me a thousand times stronger than I really am. But the love I have for you, Alexandra, is the kind that breaks me. I knew it all along, and I tried to fight it, and here I am. Shattered into pieces.”
Tears are streaming down my cheeks, and Sarah nudges herself against me. Christopher stops talking for a moment, and the image moves away from him. It’s blurry until it adjusts on his bed. He slowly moves it to the nightstand, where a picture of me and Skye replaces the old picture of Skye as a toddler. I recognize the selfie we took in the kitchen, the one I’d emailed to Christopher so Skye could keep it. The image pans to the other nightstand, where my phone is charging. My heart skips a beat.
He has my phone?
Next, he directs the camera toward the closets. The doors are open, and my clothes are hanging there. He must have picked up my suitcases from Grace’s and unpacked my stuff.
In his bedroom.
He says nothing. This is for me only. He doesn’t want other people to know. Only I can understand. “If this isn’t what you want,” he whispers, “I’ll bring it all back. I just… I just wanted to feel you around me.”
My heart explodes.
I shut down Sarah’s phone, ignoring her protests that there are more videos. For now, I need a moment. I’ll get back to the videos when my heartbeat is close to normal.
I take a long gulp from my water bottle and stare outside the window to the landscape blurred by my tears. I try to tame the emotions that come rushing, if only because I’m sitting in a bus that gets more crowded every stop we make. But I can’t ignore that he loves me the way I love him, and that we both want the same thing. I might be strong enough to be without Christopher, but I know I still want him and won’t feel whole without him.
“Are you okay” Sarah asks, leaning her head on my shoulder.
“I’m good,” I say, faking a brave smile.
The next video, Christopher is at Justin’s, sitting at the bar, his face filling the whole frame. “Before I get started today, I just want to post an update that I haven’t heard anything from Alexandra. So, as far as I know, she probably hasn’t seen my videos. Or, if she has, she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. Anyway, here we are.” He looks around and then back at the camera.
“I’ve been getting a lot of questions about why she left me. What happened between us. I’m not sure where to start. It’s kind of this gradual accumulation, and then this small thing that sent everything overboard.”
He narrows his eyes again, reading the comments. “Say it as it is.”
He takes a shaky breath. “What happened is, I pushed her away. And so, she left. Simple as that.”
His gaze leaves the frame. “I made her pay for other people’s mistakes. I have this tender spot, you see, and without knowing it, she struck me right there. And it was more than I could take, at the time.” His eyes are misty, and he squeezes his eyelids tight. “It was nothing she did.”
He focuses on the bottom of the screen, again. “Lots of fish—Are you crazy? Have you been listening to anything I said here? Alexandra is the one for me. Fuck this.”
The video stops.
The last time the bakery was live is three days ago. The image opens on the ceiling of Justin’s pub, then swerves to a pint of beer.
Christopher clears his throat, and Justin’s voice comes through. “Dude, stop the videos already. That’s not what your social media is for.”
“The fuck do you know about my social media?” The image swerves all over the pub again. “Alexandra said that before I start any campaign, I need to set goals. Well, my goal is to get Alexandra back. There. Ya happy, now?”
“You had too much to drink, buddy.”
“That I have. That I have. But I still know what I want. I want my Alexandra back.”
“You should get back to work. Bake us some bread.”
“Not until I find Alexandra.”
“Will you get back to work when you find her?”
“That I will.”
“Even if she doesn’t want to be with you?”
The image is fixed, now, showing us the pub’s ceiling again. “She’ll be with me.”
There’s shuffling noise in the background. The image swerves around again and then becomes dark. “Come on,” Justin says, “let me help you.”
Sarah’s phone rings, interrupting the video. It’s a New York number that looks familiar. Sarah picks up, and Barbara’s anguished voice fills our earbuds. “Sarah, are you with Lexie?”
Sarah hands me the other earbud. “Hey, Barb, it’s me. I’m with Sarah. We’re on our way to the city.”
“Thank god you’re back! What were you thinking, disappearing like that for almost three weeks?”
“What are you talking about? We’ve been gone two weeks, tops. Meeting is—when is the meeting again? June 30?”
“Exactly. Tonight. At five.” Toni—? What’s today?
Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.
I check the time on Sarah’s phone. That’s in three hours.
“Where are you right now?” Barbara asks.
I look out the window. “We’re… crossing the Hudson.”
“To Grand Central?”
“Yes.” We were going to take the subway to Brooklyn from there, but looks like we might need a change of plans. If the meeting is tonight. Which it always was. I just lost track of time. I guess the Appalachian Trail has a way of making you lose track of time.
“Okay. I’ll send a car for you at the station,” Barbara says. “You need to go to Red Barn Baking directly.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? You sure?”
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t have a choice, right. The rest of my life starts today. Might as well get on with it.”
“Do you need me to bring you some clothes?”
I look down at my bare legs, my sandals, my dress. At least I shaved. I washed, conditioned, and braided my hair. I’m not wearing any makeup, but I have a nice tan. I shrug. “Sure, why not. Maybe some eyeliner and mascara, too. If you can. More importantly, can you give me an update on the law firm you found?”
“They’ll be meeting with you first thing tomorrow morning. That’s all I could do. I don’t have a timeline or pricing yet for everything you want to do.”
“Great. No problem. How about the consultant?”
There’s a silence on the line. “That was tougher to figure out, but I think you’ll love who I found.”
“Wanna tell me about them?”
Her voice is a little distant, as if she’s talking away from the phone. “I don’t have time right now, sweetie. I still have a lot of paperwork to prepare for the meeting, and Robert isn’t exactly helping. But don’t worry, everything will be all set. See you later!” The line goes silent. Barbara signed off. She’s busy.
The phone reverts to Christopher’s video.
There’s two minutes left on it, but it’s all background noise of walking and going up stairs. Some grunting. Christopher’s navy-blue comforter.
Then it goes dark, and there are no more videos.
“Do you want to call him?” Sarah asks.
Yes, yes I do want to call him. I want to hijack the bus and tell the driver to take me straight back to Emerald Creek. I want to be in his arms, his mouth claiming mine. I want to revert time.
But I’m a strong woman. I’m expected at Red Barn Baking in a couple of hours. Barbara is working hard for me. And a lot of people’s lives are going to be better thanks to me. So I’m going to focus on this, for now.
“No, I’m not going to call him.”