Chapter 27 Then
For the first time since I met him, Alex gets bad haircut.
He walks through the back door of his parents’ house into the open-concept kitchen and dining room, where his mom and I sit, blowing up birthday balloons for her party tomorrow.
Lydia doesn’t seem peeved that she’s the one filling her house with hot-pink helium balloons for her own party, and when I asked her why, she told me, “It’s what I want, and I don’t mind making sure I have it. ”
I filed that away. Something to aspire to. Something that, in addition to her long hard hugs, her delicious homemade birthday cakes, her fierce love of Mia, and a hundred other little things she’s done and been since I met her last Thanksgiving, makes me love her even more.
Lydia and I pause, mid–balloon tying, staring at Alex.
“Madonna Mia,” Lydia mutters, crossing herself.
Alex sighs and heads straight to the fridge, pulling out a beer. “Thanks, Mom.”
“What did he do to you?” she says. “And on the day before my birthday!”
“He gave me a bad haircut,” Alex says flatly.
“It’s not that bad,” I tell him.
Alex levels me with a look that says, Liar, then takes a long pull from his beer. “It’s that bad,” he says. “I’m aware of it.”
“Is this your first time?” I ask. “Getting it cut… wherever you went?”
“No,” Alex says calmly. “I go to Ray’s once a year, to get a trim.”
“A trim!” Lydia yells. “You look like a lamb shorn in the spring. By a drunk, senile grandpa who has no business cutting hair anymore!”
I nudge her foot under the table. Lydia throws me a What? It’s the truth! look that’s a dead ringer for Alex, then swivels back to her son.
“Why are you still going to Ray?” she demands.
“He’s still alive,” Alex says.
“A miracle,” Lydia mutters. “No, a curse.”
“Mom!” He throws up his empty hand, taking another hefty swig of his beer from the other. “I’ve been going to him my whole life. I can’t not go to him. It would break his heart.”
“I should have him court-martialed,” Lydia grumbles.
“Though Ray is a veteran,” Alex says, dropping onto the chair beside me, “I don’t think that’s a viable option.”
“It’ll grow back,” I tell Alex. I’m telling myself this, too.
His luscious curl-waves have been clipped so short, there’s barely enough left to even curl, which is a rather tragic shock. Even still, it’s the facial hair that’s the most startling.
Maybe striking?
I tip my head as I stare at him. “Bear with me,” I say to them both, “but I think I like the mustache.”
Lydia throws up her hands and storms off, leaving Alex and me alone in the kitchen, surrounded by fifty hot-pink balloons floating across the ceiling, seventeen left to go. One for every year of Lydia’s vibrant, hot-pink life.
Alex looks over at me wearily. “Hey, Ted.”
I suck in a mouthful of helium from the balloon I haven’t tied off, then say, in a truly perfect munchkin voice, “Hi, Alex.”
A belly laugh jumps out of him. My heart skips as I watch him throw back his head, smiling, all tan skin and bright white teeth, the sharp line of his jaw, his Adam’s apple.
I haven’t seen any of that for almost a year, while the scruffy beard hung around.
Maybe I love the mustache. Maybe I love that I can see his face again.
Maybe I just love him.
I push the thought away, buried where it belongs.
I’m sitting in his parents’ house, my dog running around outside in the backyard with Mia, blowing up his mom’s birthday balloons, savoring the comfort and sweet-warm joy of belonging, and a huge part why I can savor it is because I know it’s secure.
Because we aren’t in a wobbly romantic relationship, some unsure thing; we’re friends, best friends.
And that’s the only way I know I get to keep this—a family I feel a part of, a friend to trust and rely on, who relies on and trusts me, a love that, for the first time in my life, feels safe.
Alex takes the balloon from me, sucks in a mouthful, then says in a similar, though slightly deeper, munchkin voice, “Happy Friendiversary, Ted. Aren’t you happy to be best friends with a guy who looks like Tom Selleck’s much-less-attractive Italian doppelg?nger?”
My laugh wheezes out of me, high and ridiculous. “Tom Selleck!” I munchkin-shriek.
Alex belly laughs, sucking in more helium, then says in his munchkin voice, “Mia told me I looked like a bison.”
I snort, then burst into laughter so all-consuming, there’s nothing left do but slide down my chair onto the floor.
Alex follows me, sliding down his chair and landing beneath the table with a thump. We’re both so tall, we have to hunch not to hit our heads.
“This is the part,” he says in a less-munchkiny voice but still not fully his own, “where you tell me I’m hotter than Tom Selleck and I don’t look like a bison.”
My laughter fades as I look at him, in our shadowy cave beneath the table. I lean in, cupping his cheeks with my hands, tracing the mustache with my thumbs.
My heart is pounding, each thud like a drum beating out the rhythm, the words, the truth.
I love him.
“Alex,” I tell him, in my almost-normal voice. “You are way hotter than Tom Selleck. And you definitely don’t look like a bison. And I’m so, so glad you’re…” My voice catches.
Because it almost feels like I’m about to lie to him. And I told myself I’d never do that.
But as I sit there, staring at him, I realize what I was about to say isn’t a lie. I am so, so glad he’s my best friend. That is true, even when, in weak moments, I wish he was more, that I could be brave enough to take that chance.
Mia shrieks outside, chased by Argos’s happy bark, then Lydia’s warm voice, her words indiscernible, only the joy and love woven through them reaching us. The sounds of a little girl I love, a woman I admire. It would break my heart to lose them.
The love that lets me keep them and never risks my losing them has to be enough.
“I’m so, so glad you’re my friend,” I say quietly, battling to keep the sadness from my voice.
Alex wraps his hands around mine, pinning them to his cheeks. “I love you, Ted.”
I bite my lip, holding back the longing that’s begging to be let out, to be named, to be known. “I love you, too, Alex.”
“How?” he whispers, his eyes searching mine.
My chin wobbles. I swallow thickly. “I love you so much, I could never stand to lose you.”
He takes my hands from his face, cradles them inside his, staring down at them. “Meaning what?” he asks quietly.
“Meaning, there are some loves that end and some that don’t—” My voice catches again. I clear my throat, folding over until my head rests on his hands. “I never want to love you in a way that could end. That could hurt us. That could hurt Mia. If I—”
“Shh,” Alex says, easing down to the floor beside me, turning me until I’m tucked inside his arms, our familiar cuddle position. “I understand,” he says quietly. “You don’t… you don’t have to say any more.”
I sniffle, curling myself against him, clutching at him.
I feel carved down the middle, like my heart’s being shredded.
Because, though I’ve wondered, hoped, in those weak, foolish moments, I’ve never been sure that Alex loves me the way I love him.
Until he asked how I loved him. Until I saw his eyes brighten, then dim, because of me.
Until now.
It’s thrilling. It’s heartbreaking. It makes staying the steady, safe course infinitely more difficult.
But if I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that I can do hard things. And maybe, one day, I’ll be able to do something even harder, face how much I love him, be brave enough to tell him, trust that it would be worth it, even knowing everything I’d risk one day losing.
But not today. Not any time soon, judging by the way I shiver and cling to him, like a small, frightened child.
I have growing up to do, work to put in.
I have a long way to go.
I rub a hand over his heart, circling it gently. “Alex?”
“Hmm?” he says quietly, nuzzling his nose into my hair.
“You seemed sad when you came in. And not just about the haircut. It was almost like the haircut was the least of your worries.”
He sighs. “Jen took Mia to kindergarten orientation this morning, without me.”
I lift my head, anger rolling through me. “What?”
His fingers play through my hair. He’s staring up at the ceiling. “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“Yes, it was. You’re her dad. You belonged there, too—”
“Jen said she thought she’d forwarded me the email,” he says. “From the school. Which she had not.” He shrugs. “An honest mistake.”
I set my head on his chest, my hand still circling his heart.
“You really think it was an honest mistake?” I ask quietly.
Another heavy sigh leaves him. “I want to. I need to. Because otherwise, she’s still angry with me, still punishing me sometimes, and I have to believe she wouldn’t use Mia to do that.”
I think about the number of times the past year I’ve picked up Argos from Ethan’s house, how obvious it’s been that he hasn’t been exercised enough or fed his normal food, hasn’t been given the cuddles and pets he needs, and how little sense it makes to me that Ethan would do that, unless he was trying to hurt me.
It has to be infinitely more painful to consider, for Alex, for his child to be used like that.
But then I think about how I was raised, not terribly, but not well. I think about all the ways I’ve seen people, in their weak moments, be selfish, vindictive, hurting so badly all they could do was lash out at others and hurt them, in a wasted effort to alleviate their own pain.
“Maybe,” he concedes quietly, “she was punishing me. Because I’ve been… happy… ish.”
I smile sadly. “Maybe. I think maybe Ethan has been punishing me, with Argos. Keeping him, and not taking great care of him, when he couldn’t give a crap about him before the divorce.”
Alex hugs me tight. “Sorry, Ted.”
“I’m sorry, too. It’s infinitely more significant, what she’s doing with Mia.”
“Possibly,” he adds.
“Possibly.”
“I guess I find it hard to believe,” he says.
“Why would Jen want to punish me? Why would Ethan want to punish you? Wouldn’t that mean, in some way, they’re still hung up on us?
They’re the ones who divorced us. They shouldn’t give a rat’s ass about our happiness, let alone make an effort to shit on it. ”
I sit with that for a minute, staring up at the bottom of the table, the names carved in it—Alex, Ari, Lina, Sophia. More names I don’t know, some I do. A family heirloom, treasured so much, everyone wants to leave their mark on it.
“I think,” I tell him, “even though they’re the ones who ended it with us, that doesn’t mean they stopped feeling anything about us. It just means divorce is how they handled what they felt.”
“So what do I do with that?” Alex asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know. Talk to Jen? Ask what’s going on?”
“She’ll lie,” he says. “She’ll just apologize, say she messed up, and then for a while, she’ll try to be nice, cooperative, communicative. It’s been the pattern. What about you and Ethan?”
“I’m keeping a journal, taking him to my vet friend—she’s on the first floor in my building.
She’s been giving Argos regular checkups documenting neglect.
It’s not so bad that I’m worried he’s being hurt, but it’s enough that hopefully I’ll have a strong case and a paper trail to eventually shove in Ethan’s face when I say he has to give me the dog, or I’ll report him for animal cruelty. ”
“Damn, Ted, well done.”
I smile, but it’s sad, and it fades fast.
“Yeah,” I tell Alex. “I think maybe it’s time for us to punish them a little, too.”
“Ted,” he says warily. “I don’t want to play Jen’s game, if that’s what she’s at. I don’t want that to happen to Mia any more than it already possibly has or will in the future.”
“I know.” I nestle into him, tracing with my finger a heart over his heart, again and again. Telling him I love him, really love him, in this way that I can.
“I do want to punish them,” I say quietly, angrily.
I know my anger is bigger than our exes; it isn’t all their fault, by a long shot, but it feels so good to have someone to blame, someone to point the finger at.
Divorce has made me doubt myself, doubt love, doubt people’s goodness.
It’s made me feel broken and skittish and bitter.
Not always, not even most of the time anymore, but it’s still there, lying in wait.
When that wound is jabbed just right, it hurts terribly, and I want a guilty party for the sharp, bruising pain.
I want someone to blame for why I’m so scared to grab the love that’s in front of me. And I know, even while I crave a villain, it doesn’t matter who gets or takes the blame for my pain; it matters that I deal with it. It’s up to me, to heal myself.
“I want to punish them,” I say again, softer, calmer, “by being even better best friends than they are romantic partners. I want to outlove the hell out of them.”
Alex is quiet for a minute, then he says, “What if… we’re just the best of friends we can be to each other, because that’s what we want to be. Maybe that’s the best revenge of all—letting go of the need for it.”
My heart clutches. “You are wise, Alex Bruscato. And I don’t like it.”
“Sometimes.” I hear the smile in his voice. He presses a gentle kiss to my hair. “And yes you do. You like my rare bouts of wisdom. And you like me.”
I squeeze him hard. “I do.”
“Even with my Tom Selleck mustache?”
I peer up at him. “Maybe especially with your Tom Selleck mustache?”
A laugh rumbles in his throat, shaking his chest and me, too.
“I know I already said it,” he tells me quietly, “but I sounded like a munchkin when I did, so I’d like to say it again.
” His thumb sweeps tenderly down my cheek.
“Happy Friendiversary, Ted. Divorce is the worst fucking thing that’s happened to me, but it gave me the best thing in life, besides Mia… you.”
I smile as I blink away tears.
“I’m real lucky,” he says.
“I am, too,” I tell him. “Happy Friendiversary, Alex. I honestly can’t imagine life without you, and I never want to. Cheers to a year spent being the best of friends, and to another ahead, being even better ones.”
He smiles, his gaze tender. “Cheers to that.”
So that’s what we do, for a whole year, spend it as the best of friends.
Only friends.
Until the email. Until “vacation.”
That’s when everything changes.