Chapter 11
Alexis
The hospital walls are mint green. The doctor is talking to Mama.
He looks pale, and I’m holding Mason’s little hand in mine as we both stare at them.
I try to hear, but I can’t make out the words he’s saying to her.
I don’t know what’s happening. One minute we were setting the table for dinner, waiting for Dad to come home.
The next, police officers came to our door.
Mama took both of us and put us in a car as we rushed to the hospital.
Her hands trembled the whole way here. Now the doctor is talking to her… then she yells.
“No!” She shakes her head. The doctor looks grim. His eyes hold my mother’s, and I can finally make out his words.
“I’m sorry.”
“Noooo!” My mama’s cry fills the waiting room.
Then she’s on her knees on the floor, and I still don’t understand.
I look down at Mason, and suddenly I’m in a graveyard.
Everyone is wearing black. A coffin is being lowered into the ground, dirt hitting the lid in dull, final thuds that echo somewhere deep inside me.
No…
I know this.
I know this.
The knowing settles slowly, heavily, like something breaking open inside my chest, like my body understands before my mind can catch up.
Daddy!
I scream and wake up. Marvel, curled up on my side, is staring up at me, eyes questioning.
“It’s okay, buddy. Just a bad dream.” I smile at him. His little head tilts to the side as if to say, I don’t buy it.
“Go back to sleep.” I kiss his little head, and he starts to purr, drifting off.
Every year, every single year on my father’s death anniversary, I have this dream.
Every year, this day is the hardest, most painful day.
I get up and look at the clock. Two thirty in the morning.
I sigh. I already know I won’t be able to sleep now, so I make my way to the kitchen.
The apartment is quiet, and Dex’s bedroom door is closed as I walk by. Good. I don’t want to wake him up.
I put on the kettle and make my way over to the couch.
Two minutes go by, and I hear Dex’s door open.
I look behind me, and he’s standing there, wearing only pajama pants, his hair in disarray.
You’d think that made a person look bad, but not him.
He looks… well, handsome. My eyes follow his tattoos to his abs, and I mentally slap myself out of it.
“Can’t sleep?” He walks over to me, his muscles making the tattoos on his skin shift as he runs a hand through his hair.
“I’m sorry I woke you up,” I say as I get up and walk over to the kettle.
“Are you okay?” he asks as he takes a seat at the kitchen island.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” I shrug.
“Tea?” I ask as I pour myself a mug.
“No, I’m okay.” He watches me, and I remember I’m wearing one of Grace’s pajamas with teddy bears all over them. Of course I am.
“I have some valerian root if you want.” He gets up and walks over to the kitchen cabinet, takes out some herbs, and hands them to me. “These help a lot when I can’t sleep.”
I look down at the herbs.
“So it happens to you too?” I ask.
“ADHD can be a bitch sometimes, especially if I had too much sugar that day, and, well… sometimes my mind just won’t shut up.” He shrugs.
He has ADHD? I didn’t know, but it does explain his bluntness and the way he’s always busy.
“Yeah, I get that,” I murmur as I put the herbs in my tea.
“What’s on your mind, Tinker?” He hooks a finger under my chin and makes me look up at him, his eyes searching for an answer in mine. I don’t want to go there, so I take a step back and look away.
“Just can’t sleep, that’s all.” I walk over to the couch, set my tea on the coffee table, then wrap a blanket around myself.
“Tinker.” He stands up. I look at him.
“I know you have nightmares… you had them while you were sick too.”
I stay quiet. I don’t want to talk about those dreams. I don’t want to think about Russel now, or ever.
“I know,” I say, but the words feel thin even to my own ears, like they don’t begin to cover what sits heavy in my chest, everything I’m not saying pressing up against my ribs with nowhere to go.
He stares at me, then nods as if I somehow answered him.
“I’m sorry you have them.” He walks over to his bedroom door, then turns to me.
“Night, Tinker.”
“Night, Dex.” I smile.
? ? ?
It has been snowing since dawn, and it hasn’t stopped. I’m working the noon shift, and the bar isn’t that busy… still, the loud noises are making me tense up.
Don’t think about it. Do not think about it. It’s just a normal day… I tell myself as I pour another beer for a customer.
The bar is too loud.
I tell myself that’s all it is, just another busy shift, another crowd, another voice raised over music, but my hands won’t stop shaking. I fumble a glass. It rattles against the counter.
The door slams somewhere behind me, the sound sharp and sudden, cracking something open in my chest before I can stop it.
Suddenly I can’t breathe, the air getting stuck halfway in as my lungs refuse to cooperate, my heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s trying to claw its way out of me. The room tilts, noise pressing in from all sides until voices blur together into one sharp, ringing hum that won’t let me think.
“Lexy.”
Dex’s voice cuts through it, steady, grounding, something solid in the middle of all that chaos.
I shake my head, backing up without meaning to. My fingers curl into my apron like it’s the only thing keeping me upright as everything inside me starts slipping.
“Hey,” he says, already moving. “Come with me.”
I don’t argue. I don’t think I could if I tried.
His hand guides me, firm at my elbow as he steers me through the bar and into his office, the door closing behind us and muting the noise instantly.
Too quiet. Too small. My fingers start shaking again as my breath comes out in short, broken gasps I can’t seem to control.
“I can’t…” I choke, my chest tightening painfully. “I can’t breathe.”
“Yes, you can,” Dex says steadily, his voice low and sure, like something solid I can hold on to. “Look at me.”
I don’t want to. I do anyway.
“Feet on the floor,” he continues, softer now as he crouches in front of me, gently slipping off my shoes and placing my feet flat against the ground. “Feel it under you. You’re here, with me. Nothing’s touching you. You’re okay.”
His voice is an anchor.
I clutch the edge of his desk as my chest burns, tears spilling before I can stop them, humiliation and fear tangling together until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
“It’s okay,” he says quietly, his green eyes fixed on mine, worry softening the sharpness in them. “Tell me five things that start with a P.”
So I do.
It takes long minutes before the tightness eases, before my breathing slows enough that I don’t feel like I’m disappearing.
I sink into the chair across from his desk, exhausted.
Dex crouches in front of me, close but not crowding.
“Talk to me,” he says.
I wipe at my face, staring at the floor. “It’s… today.”
He waits.
“The anniversary,” I whisper. “Of my dad.”
Silence settles between us.
Then, softly… “Tell me about it.”
So I do. I tell him about the pharmacy, the robbery, the shooters, and then the hospital.
“I know it’s been twelve years now, but still, every year on this day it’s like grief shows up and won’t leave me alone.” I shake my head, embarrassed.
Dex steps closer to me. “You lost someone who meant the most to you in this world. There is no timestamp on grief.”
He cocks his head, studying me. “The thought of losing my dad like that…” He shakes his head. “A hundred years wouldn’t be able to erase that pain, let alone twelve.” He looks pensive.
“What do you do usually, on this day?” he asks.
I shrug. “I usually took the day off and spent it with my brother…”
“Not your mom too?”
Oh, nope. Not going there . She preferred drinking and numbing her pain with pills, but I don’t say that. Somehow, the way Dex stares at me makes me think he knows anyway.
“What did you and your brother do?”
I think back and remember. “We used to give ourselves permission to be sad that day, and we’d call it the blue day.
” I smile at the memory. “We’d eat junk food, food that didn’t need cooking, go to all his favorite places like the woods and the park, then we’d go by my dad’s favorite pastry shop, get some scones, and take them with us to the cemetery.
We’d bring blankets and have a picnic with him.
” I shrug slightly. “It might sound strange…”
“It’s beautiful.” Dex lifts his hand to my face and tucks a stray hair behind my ear. “Come.” He takes my hand.
“What? Where?” I ask, confused, as he pulls me behind him, walking over to the bar where Stephen is still working.
“Can you handle it on your own for a few hours?”
Stephen looks at the clock, then nods.
“Sure, rush hour’s over.” I smile at him. Dex just nods and turns to me.
“Go get your jacket and scarf. It’s snowing and cold outside.”
I shake my head.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“We’re having a blue day.” He smiles, and my heart does something strange, like light has managed to filter in through a crack and reach something inside me I thought had been shut off for a long time, bringing it back to life in a way I don’t quite understand yet.
“You… I…” I can’t seem to talk, and he takes my hand again.
“We’re having a blue day. Go get ready. I’ll warm my truck.”