Chapter 7 #2
“She’s—” I start to make up an excuse, but what I land on is “I’d really rather not.”
He watches as I hit Ignore and type a text telling her I’m out and will call later.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks softly.
“I doubt you want to hear my family drama.”
“I’m starting to think I want to hear everything about you,” he says, and I’m shaken by his overwhelming sincerity. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. I’ll even go first.”
“Family issues are definitely not a pre-lobster topic.”
“They an over-lobster topic?”
The conversation on the way to dinner and after we take our seats flows with an ease that is unnerving, though not surprising. What is surprising is how sweet and earnest Alex is, eager energy radiating off him. So different from the man I once knew.
After we place our orders, I decide, Fuck it.
“I have a hypothetical question for you. A scenario.”
“I love these. Go.” He makes a big show of relaxing his shoulders and closing his eyes like he’s getting in the zone. I roll my eyes, but it’s ineffective since he can’t see me.
“It’s one hundred percent hypothetical. It isn’t real,” I reiterate with a glance at the ceiling, just in case my caseworker is listening.
“I have heard the word hypothetical before, yes,” he says with a smirk.
“Let’s say you lived your life, and you did it wrong.”
Frowning, he opens his eyes. “How can you live your life wrong? Is there a rule book I’m missing? If so, I’d love to take a peek. What school of philosophy are we working out of?”
“No, just—you made some mistakes.”
“Everybody makes mistakes.”
“Sure. But yours were… bigger, I guess.”
“How big we talkin’? Murder? Did I end up in jail?”
“Not that big.” Lord, if he isn’t the most frustrating man I have ever interacted with. “Just—you didn’t like your life, okay? You were… you were unhappy.”
“By unhappy, do you mean depressed?”
I pause and consider. Now that he’s put a name to it, I realize I should probably get a prescription for the antidepressants I’d been on for years when I died.
“Yes. You were depressed—but it was more than brain chemistry. You had antidepressants, but that didn’t solve the sadness. You made a lot of wrong choices.”
“Damn. That’s bleak.”
Bleak. Hearing my life reduced to that single cold, sharp word, I have the brief urge to defend myself.
To argue that actually, maybe, there’s more to life than happiness.
There’s success and satisfaction and ambition.
Sure, I might not have been big-picture happy, but that doesn’t mean there was zero joy.
I turn that sentiment around in my head, but I can’t quite get it to come out of my mouth. My life was sad. Trying to defend it would just make it sadder.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. But you weren’t actively unhappy. You just weren’t actively happy. Most days, you would have said you felt fine, and it wouldn’t have been a lie, but when you tally up years of days that are just fine, it apparently adds up to… not fine. Whatever. Anyway, then you die!”
“You make that sound like a good thing.”
“It is. Because—hypothetically—you’re offered a second chance. You get to live life all over again.”
“Like reincarnation,” he says.
“I thought that—but not quite. It’s a do-over. You get to live life a second time, retaining the memories of your first life. You remember all your mistakes, your regrets. Everything. It’s more akin to time travel—”
“You really felt the need to clarify that this scenario isn’t real?” he cuts in.
“As I was saying, you get a second chance to get it right. What do you do differently?”
For instance, do you go out with the man who completely shattered your perception of yourself just to avoid thinking about another guy?
“You’re assuming I’d take the offer.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“No. No, I don’t think I would.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I guess I’m more interested in what comes next.
If I was miserable the first time, how can I guarantee I won’t be miserable the second?
There’s no way to know. I’m still me—with the same faults and blind spots.
Still prone to the same mistakes. Even if I try to live completely differently, I might still fall into the same traps but with different names.
“But what I now have is concrete, incontrovertible proof that there is something after death. And that’s fascinating. That’s a game-changer. It would be all I’d be able to think about.”
Well.
Okay.
I should have known that Alex would take my hypothetical and turn it on its head.
“Okay, but what if you did accept the offer?”
“I just said I wouldn’t.”
“You’re not given a choice. You’re just thrust back—back to right now.”
“Right now, right here? In this restaurant?”
I nod, my expression serious. “Right here. Right now.”
He stares at me for a long moment. Really seems to think about it. I swear I see a shift in his eyes as he considers his answer. His pupils grow larger, irises darker. A small smile slowly forms. And he just stares. Stares and stares, and then—
He stands, pushes his chair in, and pulls out the one right next to me.
He slides it closer than is strictly appropriate for two people eating at a restaurant and takes my hand in his.
I gasp, unable to focus on anything but that single point of contact.
I resist the urge to pull my hand away out of fear he’ll notice my scabbed cuticles.
He stares into my eyes, wholly sincere, and murmurs, “If I had a chance to do things over, I would want to be as close to you as possible.”
Oh.
And then he leans back casually, shrugs like he didn’t just completely shift the tone of the night, and says, “Beyond that, I’d probably try to remember which stocks were hot and get in on the ground floor.”
He’s still holding my hand.
“You would think of money,” I mutter, low enough that I don’t think he’ll hear. I pull my hand away, annoyed by the reminder of who he really is. Annoyed that I keep letting myself forget.
He does hear.
“Oh? You’ve known me for, what, three hours, and you already have me pegged?”
In his eyes, a challenge. I rise to meet it.
“I so have you pegged.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“And? What do you think of me?”
I scoff, scandalized. “You can’t just ask me that.”
“Why not? If this were my second run at life, I’d want to know the score as soon as possible.”
Look at him, finally getting into my game. Okay, I’ll bite.
“Fine. If you must know…”
I’m torn about what to say. I know what I should say.
How I should feel. I know the man this boy grows into.
I can see glimpses of him in his attitude, his confidence.
His relentless pursuit of me. Only with young Alex, I almost find it charming.
This isn’t the irritating arrogance of the man I stormed away from the night I died. It’s something innocent. Uncorrupted.
Or maybe that’s just what I’d like to think.
As I take him in, considering my words, I can’t get myself to say something mean. Because no matter what he grows into, I know he’s different. There’s a sincerity to him that time erased.
I mourn the loss of this earnest boy. And regardless of what becomes of him, I refuse to have a hand in his growing jaded.
Unable to believe the words coming out of my mouth, I admit, “I think I might actually like you.”
He doesn’t miss a beat.
“I like you too, Joey Vasquez. A lot. No maybe about it.”
The tension is so thick, you could cut it with a knife. He stares into my eyes, a small smile tugging at his lips. It’s strange to hear my nickname coming from him—I’m so used to him calling me Josephina.
A waiter arrives to ruin the moment—playing a starring role as the metaphorical knife, I suppose. He places two surf-and-turf plates in front of us, tells us to enjoy our meal, then walks away. Alex grimaces at his plate, stabs the lobster with his fork, and dutifully cuts off a bite.
“I can’t believe I’m about to eat something’s tail.”
“Moment of truth,” I say as he lifts his fork.
He brings it to his mouth.
“Wait,” I cry. “You have to dip it in butter.”
“But I want to taste the lobster,” he says, staring down at the piece on his fork dubiously.
“It’s only good with butter.”
“If it’s only good with butter, then it’s not really—”
“Just eat it the way it’s meant to be eaten,” I command, exasperated.
Alex shrugs, dips it in the butter, puts it in his mouth, and chews.
“So?”
“Mmm. Butter,” he says around his food.
“It’s good, right?”
He makes a big show of swallowing it and says, “If you like butter.”
“So… I win.”
“You know you can eat melted butter on its own, right? It’s not recommended, but—” He shrugs, but I note that he eats all of his meal, both the surf and the turf.
When we’re done with our food, Alex says, “I promised you my family issues. Earlier.”
“You don’t have to—” I start, but he’s already going.
“One of three kids. My sister’s cool, but my brother takes after my father. Which means nothing to you, but—”
“You really don’t owe me anything,” I insist, knowing somehow that he’s about to drop an emotional bomb on the table, and he’ll expect me to handle it delicately.
I don’t do delicate.
“My father left when I was eight.”
And there’s the bomb.
I stare at him, shocked. None of the biographies or magazine profiles ever mentioned this. Not even Alex’s Wikipedia page. They listed his family members, and his father was always there, but nothing ever so much as hinted at the story behind the pain in Alex’s eyes.
“I didn’t know that,” I murmur.
“How could you? I don’t talk about it. I once told a friend that he was dead.
Felt like a good, clean way to justify his absence.
It was great. Then one day, Dad shows up again and picks me up from school.
Like nothing ever changed. One day he was gone, and then he wasn’t.
All of a sudden, my friend’s telling everyone I’m a pathological liar.
Maybe I am. Anyway, that’s sort of my dad’s schtick…