Chapter 13 Then
I make it three days before I cave and text Alex.
I held it together on Friday, after Lauren told me she was moving away and we talked about what the next few weeks would look like over a bottle of Cinsault rosé and a truly obscene amount of fried food; when I hugged her goodbye and watched her drive off, thinking that soon I’d be waving goodbye to her, except that time she wouldn’t be coming back.
I held it together while I buried myself in work through the weekend and today.
Until I came home after work, desperate for a cuddle with Argos, then remembered he’s still at Ethan’s.
That’s when I fell apart.
I’m clutching my phone to my chest like it’s a lifeline when Alex shows up outside my apartment building looking windblown, rain splattered, and slightly winded. I push open the door to let him in. I’m trying very hard not to cry.
The door falls shut behind him, and as he gets a good look at me, Alex says, “Oh, shit.”
Which is when I burst into tears.
“Hey,” he says softly. Alex takes a step closer, his toes bumping into mine. “Can I hug you?”
I answer him by throwing myself into his chest. His arms wrap around me, and like it’s the most natural thing in the world, he rests his cheek against my head. His hand traces circles on my back. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “You’re okay.”
“Thanks for coming,” I choke out. “I’m sorry for the fairly unintelligible SOS text.”
“The text was fairly unintelligible,” he admits. “But I got the gist.”
“I tried to work with autocorrect, but autocorrect did not work with me.”
“Autocorrect can get fucked,” he says. “Or, as autocorrect would suggest, ‘get ducked.’ Which is why autocorrect can get fucked.”
“Thank you. What good is a spell-check function when it can’t fix my inebriated ramblings?” I sigh against him. “I haven’t had any wine today, actually. I’m just so sad, I’m incoherent.”
A sob bubbles out of me.
Alex squeezes me against him. “Shh, it’s okay. Come on, let’s get up to your place.”
I nod against his shoulder. But I don’t move.
Alex peers down at me. “Do you need a piggyback?”
I laugh hoarsely. “You couldn’t carry me.”
“First of all, that’s insulting; I’m a very strong manly man. Second of all”—he shrugs off his backpack and slides it up his arms so it’s on his front, turns, grips me by the thighs, and hoists me onto his back, making a yelp jump out of me—“challenge accepted.”
“Okay,” I concede as he walks us up the stairs. “You are a strong manly man.”
“Thank you,” he says. “You may now praise my superior physical fitness.”
“You’ve gone up one flight of stairs,” I point out.
“After I ran here,” he says.
“You ran?”
“Car’s in the shop. I’d just missed a bus. It was only half a mile. Running was by far the fastest.”
Something warm stirs in my chest. He ran to me.
“Running with a book bag,” I tell him, “sounds unpleasant.”
“Nah,” he says. “You know how many mornings I ran to school with a thirty-pound book bag on my back to make it on time, because my uncle beat my ass whenever I was late?”
“Your uncle?”
“School principal,” he explains, like this is an actual explanation.
I frown. “That seems like a very good reason he shouldn’t have been beating your ass.”
Alex shrugs. “Point is, I’m a running-with-backpack pro.”
“This is me.” I slide off his back and jimmy my key in the lock until it finally gives. “Welcome,” I tell him, as I open the door, “to my shoebox.”
Alex takes in my apartment, shutting the door behind him.
He shrugs off his backpack, steps out of the same beat-up Nikes he was wearing when I met him.
For the first time since he got here, I notice what he’s wearing.
Black sweatpants with what looks like a burn hole in the upper thigh.
A Pitt T-shirt that’s the same blue as his eyes, so threadbare in places, I can see a hint of his skin.
House clothes, my mom would call them—the stuff you change into after a long day, when you’re in for the night.
Maybe Alex goes out dressed like this, but I don’t think that’s the case. Even on the day I met him, when he was clearly having a tough time, his white T-shirt was thick cotton, bright, with no stains. His basketball shorts looked new, no holes in sight.
Which makes me think that these are his house clothes, that he was settled in for the night. Until I texted him. And then he ran here.
The warmth that spilled through me creeps up my cheeks. I turn away and, as I encounter a stark reminder of the state of my apartment, flush for a different reason—profound embarrassment.
“Please ignore the wine bottles,” I tell him. “And the used tissues.” I pluck up the empty bottles littering my kitchen counter, the wadded tufts of Kleenex scattered across the floor like dandelion fluff. “I was going to clean up, but you got here a lot faster than I thought you would.”
I chuck the wine bottles in the recycling bin and do a very unclassy step into my trash can to smoosh down the mountain of tissues I just dumped into it.
Alex still hasn’t said anything.
He stands with his back to me, facing my bookshelves, his head tipped slightly. When I walk up to him, I see he’s smiling.
I glance between my bookshelves and him. “What is it?”
“That’s an impressive wall of bookshelves.”
“You think?” I move so that I’m standing beside him, shoulder to shoulder.
“Very impressive,” he says. “Organized by genre. Alphabetized within genre.” As his gaze travels the bookshelves, his smile deepens. “If I was a betting man, I would have made a lot of money tonight.”
“Meaning?”
He peers over at me. “Meaning, I would have gone all in on this being exactly what your place looked like. A few pieces of unassuming, practical furniture; wall-to-wall shelves with a library’s worth of books.”
“Well,” I say. “Good to know I’m so predictable.”
“Nah.” He nudges my shoulder with his. “Not predictable. Relatable.” He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “When I moved into my new place, the first thing I did was set up my kitchen. I slept on a mattress on the floor the first night I stayed there because I hadn’t put my bedframe together, but my kitchen looked like I’d lived there for years.
“The way you talk about how much you love books, how much they matter to you—you talk about them the way I feel about cooking. It makes sense, that this is what you’d prioritize, what would make you feel most at home.” He shrugs. “Your books.”
My heart’s pounding as I look at him. I am an emotional disaster.
Grieving my friend’s impending move. Recognizing I need to put on my big-girl panties and face my postdivorce life head-on all on my own.
And there’s a very beautiful man standing in my apartment who appreciates my alphabetized, organized by genre, thousand-plus book collection, talking to me like he gets it. Like he gets me.
I’m unfortunately one of those women who gets horny when she’s sad and being comforted.
I want to curl up like a cat in his lap and feel his hands run soothingly over every inch of me; listen to his warm, deep voice tell me everything’s going to be okay; then I want him to throw me onto my bed, sink into me, and make me feel like everything’s going to be okay, too.
Alex senses my internal meltdown. “Ted? What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. My eyes well with tears.
He wraps an arm around me, holding me to his chest. “You want to talk about it?”
“Yes,” I tell him. “But first, I want to wine.”
“Whine?” He asks. “Or wine. As in, drink wine.”
“The one,” I tell him, “that involves alcohol.”
He reaches for his backpack. “Thankfully, I came prepared.”
A fuzzy number of hours have passed since Alex got here.
It’s late, past midnight, I know that much.
Traffic is finally quiet but for the occasional car that rolls by, the city bus that hisses to a stop outside my building every twenty-some minutes.
The sky is pitch-black outside my windows, and my apartment is dim, lit only by a cone of butter-yellow thrown by my nearby reading lamp.
The wine has left me pleasantly mellow-brained and loose-limbed.
Telling—well, sobbing at—Alex about Lauren’s upcoming move, has left me drained yet peaceful, that specific kind of relieved exhaustion that comes after a good, hard cry.
Finally, a breeze billows through the windows, stirring my newly sewn field of dandelion tissue balls. Two bottles of wine sit empty on the coffee table, while Alex and I lie sprawled on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I whisper through the tears I keep wiping away. “I’m sorry for being such a mess.”
“You’re not a mess, Ted. You’re going through messy shit.”
“No difference.”
“Big difference.” He props up on an elbow, staring me down. “I’m right about this.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my therapist said so. And my therapist, annoyingly, is always right.”
I sigh and go back to staring at the ceiling. “Sour Patch?” I reach into the bag and offer him one.
“Nope. Those things fuck with my palate.”
“And cigarettes don’t?”
He scowls at me. “I never said they didn’t. I just said they were a vice. And that I’m quitting them. Which I’ve done a great job of, so far.”
I raise a hand, and he slaps it for a high five.
“And how,” he says, “are you doing on your gas station hot dogs, Ms. Sodium Nitrates?”
“Haven’t even walked into a 7-Eleven for a whiff of one.”
Alex tips his head. “Not there yet. I’ll walk through a cloud of smoke anytime I can.”
I grimace. “Well, I might have actually walked into a 7-Eleven for a whiff of one yesterday. But it was a rough weekend.” I toss the Sour Patch in my mouth and chew. “I probably need a therapist.”
Alex seems unphased by my topic jump. “You ever had one before?”
“No.” I feel around the Sour Patch bag but come up empty. “They scare me.”
“Why?” he asks.