Chapter 34
“He’s getting dressed,” Oona said, as I opened my mouth to ask—
What? What had I meant to ask?
Was Alex home? Was I misunderstanding something?
But I was not. I understood perfectly, and Oona was answering the big-money question as directly as she could, before I made a fool of myself trying to justify why she and the dogs had slept at the house. In Alex’s bedroom.
“Oh my God,” I said.
“This isn’t how we wanted to tell you,” Oona said.
“Tell me,” I repeated, uneasily. The totality of what might need to be explained opened up considerably. We? “Tell me what, exactly?”
“Well,” she said. Like an apology.
“It’s not a one-night thing,” I said.
“Let’s wait for Alex,” she said.
“Oh my—” I caught sight of the teakettle again, and the tea. There was a calendar on the wall I didn’t recognize, and—total red flag—it was on the correct month.
Then I remembered how awkward Alex had been lately.
More awkward than normal. And distracted.
The unopened mail at the bar. Closing McPhee’s unexpectedly and showing up anyway.
That chance meeting with Oona on the street caught by the security cameras, that meet-cute I’d read as a sort of parent-teacher conference, not by chance at all.
And I’d assumed they’d be talking about me.
The many walks I’d taken the dogs for since I moved in, when Oona was out late.
Staying with friends. Dinner with a visiting cousin.
“Do you even have a cousin?”
“What are you talking about?” Oona said. “Listen, this doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
Alex stood in the doorway, then, blinking into the light. His Sunday morning flannel shirt, buttoned up tight. “Not a big deal?” he said.
“I just meant…” Oona said patiently. “Alex, I just meant that nothing has to change.”
“I think some things have changed already,” I said.
“For you, Doll,” Oona said. “Nothing has to change for you. I have my place, and Alex has the house, and we’re just taking things as they come.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “That sounds like a real relationship.”
“Is that what you’re most upset about?” Oona said in a soft voice.
I was upset generally as well as specifically, but I hadn’t had the time to process what bothered me and why. “I thought you were trying to tell me you wanted me to get my act together,” I said to Alex. Then I turned back to Oona. “I thought you were trying to tell me to get the hell out.”
“You can stay as long as you like,” Oona said.
“I’m the one who owns the building,” Alex said. He turned to me. “You can stay as long as you like.”
Oona blew her bangs with a puff of breath. “Glad that’s sorted.”
“I obviously cannot stay there anymore. How long?” I said. “How long have you been, uh…”
There was a silence that stretched out too long.
“Together,” Alex said.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Oona said, grasping Alex’s arm gratefully. “I almost jumped in with something much more graphic.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Um…” Oona said. She dropped her hand from Alex and turned to the calendar.
Which, I repeat, was on the correct month. How had I not seen the signs? December, the calendar said, so maybe not that long, then—
“Three months, twenty-seven days,” Alex said. He checked the top button on his flannel shirt. Already buttoned.
“Three months, twenty-seven days, I guess,” Oona said. Her eyes were begging me for something, but I wasn’t exactly sure what it was.
“Sounds like a pretty big deal,” I said. “Like something you might have mentioned to, you know, me.”
I was looking to Alex, but it was Oona who answered. “We weren’t sure how you’d take it,” she said.
And this is when I realized why I was upset.
Not because I’d had to acknowledge that Oona and Alex were together—gag—sexually, but because it was clear they had had their heads together over me, discussing me behind my back like I was someone who had to be worked around.
A child listening to the adults murmuring over her head about how things would go.
I’d had enough of that to last me five lifetimes.
“Does everyone at the pub know?” I asked.
“Everyone, who?” Oona said. “I hope not. Alex?”
His brow furrowed as he thought about it. Of course he would have to think about it and answer honestly and not just reassure me, when really all I wanted was reassurance that the Jims hadn’t been winking behind my back for three months and twenty-six days.
“Ned might know,” Alex said. “He saw me leaving the apartment one morning.”
“Oh for—Faith Hill. You’ve been hooking up in the—”
“Before you lived there, Doll,” Oona said quickly. “Since you moved in, Alex has not stayed over at the apartment.”
“We stay here,” Alex said. “Sometimes—”
“I don’t need the details,” I said. Alex opened his mouth and I cut him off. “I don’t want them.”
“What did you want, Doll?” Oona said. She glanced at the clock over the oven.
“What? Oh, you mean— Oh, right. Alex, someone’s in the pub. In the office. It wasn’t Ned, or he would have answered me. I should have just called the cops and saved myself this Freudian nightmare.”
Oona turned to Alex. “Someone is in the pub. Should you go check that out?”
“I should go check that out,” Alex said.
Oona nodded, and Alex went to get his coat. She rubbed at the spot between her eyes tiredly.
“It’s a lot of work, huh?” I said.
She didn’t pretend not to know what I meant. “It’s a lot of other stuff, too,” she said.
THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO but walk back to the pub with Alex. I scuffed along the heavily salted sidewalks, sulking, but he didn’t say anything. He would never say anything, unprompted.
Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“You could have told me,” I said to the back of his coat. “I’m not a bomb about to go off. Am I not the kind of person you can tell the truth to?”
“You weren’t the most important person to consider this time,” he said over his shoulder. “Oona wanted to wait awhile. We waited awhile.”
“So I guess you can keep a secret now?” I said.
That knowledge gave me a chill, and I remembered that animal scent I’d caught on Alex the night Joey had died.
Sweat? Or blood? What was he capable of?
So much more than I’d given him credit for.
I would have to think about this. “Why, though? Why the secrecy?”
He stopped for the light to change at the crosswalk, pressing the button three times as he always did. The streets were still empty at ridiculous o’clock, but Alex didn’t like to cross against the lights. “I assume Oona wanted to make sure,” he said.
“Make sure of what?”
“Make sure, before telling anyone, that I was worth the trouble.”
“Oh,” I said, scraping at ice on the sidewalk with my boot heel.
“Can you be okay with it? I think we’re happy. I’m happy.”
What could I say to that? “I was caught off guard, that’s all.”
“I know how that feels,” Alex said.
“You know I don’t like people making decisions behind my back. But then this—this decision is none of my business.”
“My business is your business,” he said. “I was going to tell you soon.”
I looked over at him. “Soon, as in you had set a deadline?”
The light changed, and he set off across Milwaukee Avenue. “Soon. I’m sure about her. Even if she needed some time to be sure about me.”
I stopped in the middle of the street and watched him walk away from me, then hurried to catch up.
“That sounds like … a big deal,” I said.
I had another block to think about why any of Alex’s good news should bother me. All the theories I could think of cast an unflattering light on me or choices I’d made that were too late to fix.
I couldn’t think of what to say. The lyrics, they had always been my problem.
I’d never seen Alex in love. I’d never even considered what that would look like.
But it wasn’t just Alex. Had I ever seen it up close?
Love. I remembered Sachin’s thumb, gentle on Heather’s skin.
How? How did anyone place their hearts, total trust, in someone else?
It could all end, any moment. You could claim forever, call someone mine, get comfortable—and it could, just, end.
I shoved my freezing hands into the short pockets of my jacket and trailed along a step behind him.
At the pub, Alex opened the vestibule, unlocked the dead bolt, and held out a hand to keep me back.
I watched through the circular window as he moved slowly through the pub and down the hallway.
I lost sight of him past the johns. There was a pause, and then the hallway lit from the back. He’d reached the alley.
I nudged the door open and went in. Alex was coming back along the hallway.
“What is it?” I said.
“Someone’s been here,” he said.
“I told you—”
“The office is tossed,” he said.
Tossed? Well, someone had been picking up lingo from watching the CSIs.
“And the storeroom,” he said.
“The…”
The band equipment. I ran.