6. Alex
CHAPTER 6
Alex
S ophie was gone when I walked back into the bedroom.
The sheets were ruffled, a pillow was pushed down to the end of the bed, and her clothes, which I had left scattered—consciously avoiding coming off as overly tidy—were now gone from the floor.
Had I expected anything different? Had I expected Sophie sitting up in bed, the sheet pulled up just over her breasts, slipping down slightly when I walked into the room wearing nothing but a towel tied around my waist? Had I secretly hoped for another kiss, one more touch, one more breathy whisper praising my skills?
That was the picture in my head. A pretty, now disillusioned picture.
It was just sex.
Yet, there was a pressure between my ribs, a wave of disappointment pushing outwards, searching for space to grow. The ache held fast when I remembered how things had been those first few months after I’d met my ex. How every morning was an opportunity for sex—in the bed, in the shower, in the kitchen before heading off to work—and then, how things had slowly changed, how months had passed and sex had become less frequent, less hot, less interesting. And finally, one day, out of the blue, one of us had woken up early and left before the other even stirred.
I should’ve known that things were done, even then. Even before Vicki changed the way I’d always imagined our future together would look like. Before we realized that our stories were completely different from each other’s. Before we drifted too far apart to find our way back to each other.
I should’ve recognized the signs then like I could recognize the symptoms of an arthritic hip. But I was blind. Refused to see. To acknowledge.
At least Sophie had ripped the band-aid off fast and painlessly—not that it was the same. This was a ripple in the ocean compared to the tidal wave I'd experienced with my ex. Besides, how much worse would it have been if I'd walked into the bedroom while she was gathering her clothes, shame, and guilt written on her face?
Not worse, I decided, because then I could’ve had the chance to ask Sophie what last night had meant. What she meant when she said that she had never been so sober in her life. If it even meant anything at all.
I got dressed and ready for the last round of seminars. All the while, Sophie’s face scraped through my mind like nails, creating a permanent scar that would take a while to fade.
But fade it would.
With enough time and distance, people always faded.
Walking into the breakfast room with its double glass doors looking out onto a view of the Mayacamas mountains, I scanned the round tables for Sophie. I hoped she would be down here, hoped she would wave a hand when she spotted me, and we could talk through what happened, iron out the creases, and leave here without the stain of a bad encounter on our minds.
“You slipped out early last night,” said Erica, sailing over, wearing the same scarf as yesterday around her neck, as if she was trying to cover up a scar, or a hickey perhaps.
“Migraine,” I lied, touching the tips of my fingers to my temple. “I get them all the time. The best remedy is to lie in a dark room for a few minutes.”
The lie came far too easily and was possibly a little overdone, but there wasn’t a hint of suspicion in Erica’s expression. In fact, she looked completely empathetic, as if she wanted nothing more than to place an ice-cold compress over my forehead.
“Oh dear. Migraines are terrible. My sister suffers from them, and she’s always lying in a dark room whenever the family comes together. How are you feeling this morning?”
“Right as rain.”
“Well, thank goodness for that . . .”
Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly caught sight of a figure with wheat-blonde hair crossing the oaken foyer, a rolling bag trailing noisily behind her.
Sophie. She was clearly ducking out of the seminar early.
Erica was just about to speak, her lips parted, when I stepped past her. “I’m sorry, Erica, I just have to do a quick thing,” I said, already hurrying out of the breakfast room to the large doors leading outside.
“Sophie,” I called when my feet hit the gravel and the morning sun touched the top of my head.
She was already shoving her bag into the trunk of her car, her head down, her blonde hair falling into her face. Dressed in jeans, a loose blouse, and sneakers, she looked as perfect as she had last night.
I ran toward her. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she mumbled without glancing in my direction. She shut the trunk and fetched the car key from her back pocket. Something told me that Sophie wouldn’t have minded if I’d disappeared, evaporated in the few short seconds it took her to look at me. A hunch perhaps. Or maybe just the way everything about her said, Leave me alone .
“I’m pretty sure there’s another talk happening in thirty minutes,” I added, hoping it would break whatever iceberg floated between us. “And by the looks of things, you’re bailing out early.”
Sophie turned to face me, a faint smile tipping up the edges of her lips. She looked nervous. Her gaze flittered between me and her car as if she debated making a run for it. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, not even a trace of mascara on her lashes. Her face was as bare as the first light of dawn, and she was beautiful. Hell, she was gorgeous. Something told me that it would take far longer than I wanted for her face to fade from my memory.
“I’m sure they can handle it without me.”
“Who says I can?” I joked. “What if Erica tries to accost me? You know, she seems very concerned about where I disappeared to last night.”
Sophie’s eyes widened briefly, her shoulders visibly tense through the thin fabric of her blouse, as if she was caught in the middle of a lie.
“Don’t worry,” I quickly added. “I told her I had a migraine. I don’t think she even noticed you were gone.”
Sophie’s shoulders dropped only slightly. “I doubt that. She seems like the type of person who knows exactly what’s going on at all times.”
"You're probably right. So, what do you say? Save me from Erica and that scarf around her neck before she ties me up with it? Who knows what kind of fetish she's into? Something tells me she isn't as innocent as she looks."
Sophie chuckled. It was strained, not brightening her face like it usually did, but it was something. A step in the right direction.
Except it wasn’t.
She took a step back, as if she was ready to leave, and shook her head. “Sorry, Alex. Can’t help you there. Just tell her that you don’t like cats. I overheard her telling Dr. Christa that she’s got four of them at home, each one named after a US president.”
Reluctantly, I nodded, knowing exactly where this was going. Sophie was leaving, and I wondered if I’d ever see her again. “Good advice. I’ll take it.”
She held my gaze for one more moment, her gray eyes the color of steel, and then turned toward the car. She had just reached for the handle when I said, “Wait, Sophie. Can we just talk for a minute?”
“About what?” she muttered, her hand hovering in the air, though the recognition in her eyes was clear. She knew exactly what I wanted to bring up, but she also looked extremely unwilling to talk about it.
“You know what. Last night.”
Sophie flinched, and I could see the words stacking up in her mind, the inevitable confession that whatever we’d done last night was a horrible mistake, a momentary lapse of judgment.
And even though there was a smidgen of truth in those words, it would still be hard to hear, a bruise to the ego, a knock to the character. Especially when she was the one to admit to such a thing first.
“I was drunk,” she muttered, stepping back and talking to her feet instead. “ You were drunk”—I would hardly call drinking half a glass of Chardonnay drunk, but I didn’t correct her—“We weren’t thinking clearly. It was a mistake.”
“That wasn’t what it felt like—“
“But it was,” she said tersely, her voice like a knife slicing through the air. “And that’s alright. It happens . . . But it won’t happen again.”
“So, what, you’ll leave here and that’s it?”
“Exactly,” she said, her voice shaky, sounding anything but confident, as if she too didn’t believe that whatever spark we had, whatever had happened last night, should end with complete and utter silence. “I’ll get my insurance to call you. Probably this week . . . ” she glanced over my shoulder at the lodge and then latched her gaze onto mine one last time. “Bye Alex.”
The wind picked up, blowing strands of hair across her face. She wiped some away, but a rogue strand curled over her cheek, and I felt a deep urge to tuck it behind her ear.
“Sophie,” I said, but she was already slamming the car door shut. The engine started and the car reversed, and I had lost my chance for a last word.
“Everything alright?” came Erica, walking out the door, a plate of pastries in each hand.
“Perfectly fine,” I said, forcing a smile, not daring to glimpse back over my shoulder to the car growing smaller with every passing second.