The Girl Who Fell(89)
His explanation.
His apology.
His regret.
It’s a lot to process.
“You did this because you were hurt?”
“Yes.” Shame licks the word. “And because I love you. Too much. I’ve never loved anyone before, Zephyr. You make me beyond jealous and I know how much Slice digs you. I’d do anything not to lose you. It sounds totally effed up when I say it out loud, but that’s pretty much all I ever think about.”
“Really?”
“Really.” I feel myself tipping forward. “I love you, Zephyr actually. I just never knew love would make me do such insane shit. But it will never happen again. Tonight when you wouldn’t answer my calls I thought I’d lost you. It was the scariest feeling. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. Anything.”
My resolve softens and he senses it. Alec reaches up, brushes his lips against mine. The tender kiss calms me and excites me all at once. My insides are a jumble, but the kiss, the kiss feels right.
He rises and sits on the bed, pulls me onto his lap. He burrows his face into my neck and I feel the warm wet of his tears. “I swear I will never hurt you again. You’ll see. Next year everything will be different. We’ll be together always.”
I hear the purity of that promise, that gift. “Alec?” He draws his eyes up to meet mine. “What if I don’t get into the University of Michigan?”
“Of course you’ll get in. You’re brilliant and athletic. If Boston College wanted you, Michigan will too.”
“But—”
He silences me with a finger to my lips.
“No matter what happens, we’ll figure it out, just like we’re doing now. That’s what love is.”
I see my parents then, fumbling through love even after twenty years. My dad, acting in the extreme. My mom finding space to forgive him.
“We’ll get through it together. Just promise you’ll forgive me for being a complete ass.”
And when he kisses me I let my mind wash of everything but his lips. His tongue so familiar.
It’s not until I get in the car that anger rises. It is the same kind of anger I felt after learning of Dad’s note. Why couldn’t my father or Alec talk to me about the way they were feeling? Why was their instinct to hurt me?
“You okay?” Lizzie says when I pull on my seat belt. “Did you forgive him?”
“Not totally.”
“So you forgave him a little?”
“It’ll never happen again.”
Lizzie hangs her gaze on me too long.
“What?” I snap.
She lifts her fingers from the steering wheel in surrender. “Nothing. You’re a smart girl. I’m sure you did what you thought was best.”
“What would you have done?” I explain how Alec was hurt and wanted me to know what that felt like. How he was acting out of love. How he didn’t actually do anything with that girl.
Lizzie is quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know what I would have done, Zee. I’ve never had to deal with this with Jason.”
They are the last words Lizzie and I exchange as she drives me home, and the stillness leaves enough room for uncertainty to creep in. Because I don’t see the dark shadows of Ashland Drive as we drive down my road, I see Alec hovered over Katie, too intimate, too easy.
An endless haunting.
When I’m inside, I go to my bedroom and watch the clock tick numbers until long after midnight because it’s easier to watch time pass than to replay that twisted scene on a constant loop. The image is tortuous and cruel and I wish my memory could forgive Alec the way my heart has. The way my body has.
I look to my collage, to Alec’s cards. Proof of his love. He is the Alec who leaves me flowers, trusts me to know his quiet dream of becoming a chef. He is the person I can talk to about Dad and my future. That person would never hurt me. Not intentionally. It is this thought that carries me into a welcoming darkness and the reprieve of sleep.
And when I hear a knock, my brain mistakes it for the sound of a field hockey stick connecting with a hard white ball. My arm reverberates at contact but then the sound echoes and the lush green field fades from view. I am pulled to my bed, to reality. I look around my room, my closed door. Daylight sneaks in through the sliver between window and shade. The knock sounds again.
“Come in.” I burrow under my down comforter. A warm chocolate fog enters the room and someone’s weight depresses the end corner of my bed. Too tentative to be Mom. Lizzie? Gregg?
“Hungry?”
I pop from my covers and see Alec. “Alec? How?”
“Your mom let me in.”
My hands fly to my hair in a taming attempt.
“I needed to see you, Zephyr.” He places a mug on the table. “Last night sucked so bad.”