by Emily Childs
Alexis is red in the face, laughing. She wipes a drool splatter off her cheek, then turns to Poppy straightaway. “Look at you. All squishy and drooly and huge.”
“You always liked dogs too much.”
“I don’t trust people who don’t.”
“Look at that,” I say and dig into the jar of dog treats. “We agree on something.”
For a moment, things fall into a familiar normal. Alexis. Dimple. Dog. Laughter.
A pang of guilt taps my chest. Why feel guilty? I’m not doing anything wrong here, not betraying anyone but myself. I promised to let this go. Clearly, I failed, but no one else needs to know.
I hand a cold can of raspberry lemonade to Alexis and point at the breakfast nook. “Have a seat.”
Alexis obliges and pops the can, sitting in the far corner. I settle on the bench at least three feet away. A safe distance. I’m less safe when I meet her chocolate Eyes. The title to our last top ten hit.
My head tilts. It’s like a punch to the throat. Alexis has the chocolate eyes.
I didn’t write it about her. My face prickles with heat. At least I think I didn’t.
With a quick drink to wet the scratch in the back of my throat, I bury my disquiet and scoot an inch away.
We sit in a long silence, broken only by the occasional slurp of our drinks, or the hot-breath panting of Poppy.
“Bridger,” Alexis says when the tension starts to suffocate. “I can’t do this. I think I’m going to go to a hotel.”
“Can’t do what? Drink lemonade?”
“Sit here like we know how to talk to each other anymore. I’m good at talking, so it’s got to mean something when I can’t even think of anything to say because I might poke the bear.” She starts to move, then glances at me. “Thank you for coming, but I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine.”
Let her go. Stay as you are, hardened, untrusting, unavailable. Life will be so much simpler, but here I go complicating everything. “Alexis . . . wait.”
She pauses.
I close my eyes for a moment and fiddle with the top of the lemonade can. “You’re welcome here, okay? It’s been a long day and it’s been a long time . . . for us, I mean.”
“I know,” she says softly. “Maybe we should—”
“No.”
She tilts her head. “You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“We’re not bringing anything up.” I drag my fingers through my hair, staring at the refrigerator where harder stuff than lemonade sits, and for a second, I want to drink it all.
Alexis nods, mouth tight. “Okay. What do we do, then? Sit here in silence until I leave?”
It would probably be the wisest choice. “We can talk. If you want to tell me what happened today, that is.”
“I don’t want to tell anyone. Least of all you.”
I take another drink and put on my smuggest grin. “Ah, but it’s a requirement to pet my dog.”
I use my chin to point at Poppy’s big head in her lap.
Alexis glares at me. “Fine. But it’s actually been a difficult day, so if you could hold back on the snide comments that’d be great.”
I mime zipping my lips, but she knows better.
“Bottom line—I thought I could get married and live happily ever after. I don’t know what happened. I thought we were happy, maybe a little dull, but isn’t everyone dull after two years?”
“You wanted to be with someone dull?”
“I’m sure the lovers of Bridger Cole never get dull, but—” She stares at me, horrified. “Forget I said the word lover and Bridger in the same sentence.”
I flick my brows, like an arrogant jerk, but inside I’m nothing but splinters and broken pieces from the wall I tried to build to bar me away from this woman. She’s a siege, a stealth attack. One sentence, one word, one look, and I’m back to places I won’t survive if I go again.
“Al, in all seriousness, you shouldn’t be dull after two years. That’s dumb.”
She kicks me underneath the table, a flush in her cheeks. “It isn’t dumb. We were comfortable is all. We got along, had the same values—I thought. Passion doesn’t keep a marriage alive.”
“You’re making it sound like this was a business arrangement. Did you even love the guy?” She better say no.
“I was marrying him, wasn’t I?”
“Not an answer.”
“Well . . . I don’t need to answer to you.” Alexis gnaws on her thumbnail, answering anyway. “I thought I loved him. We got along, didn’t argue. It seemed more stable than, say, my mom.”
I stare at her, frustrated and relieved all at once. She does this stuff all wrong and it’s almost adorably innocent. Alexis will get serious with guys who are the complete opposite of Mama Knight and her type of men. This means Al dates blank-faced, boring Joe Blows. She knows what love and passion feel like. I have to believe she does. But it’s getting her to realize those things aren’t the end all that’s the problem.
“Honestly, maybe this is good,” she says. “I’m not sure I’m the marrying type.”
Why did that twist my gut? I’m not the marrying type. Especially not to anyone like her.
Alexis takes a drink of her lemonade and sighs. “I know this isn’t a convenient time for you, Bridge, but I won’t be in your hair long. First thing in the morning, I’ll start the search for a new place and—”
“Not worried about it, Al.”
She offers a bemused grin. “Still, I’m going to pull my weight around here. How much do you want for the room?”
She starts digging into her purse slung over her shoulder.
“Alexis,” I say, sharper than intended. “We’re not doing that. Not right now.”
“I’m not taking handouts.”
All at once I’m reacquainted with her independent streak. Sexy and maddening in the same breath. “It isn’t a handout, Al. You do realize everyone needs help sometimes, right?”
“Not you and me.” She grins.
I furrow my brow. “I’d say especially you and me. Safety net moment, okay? I get this is something out of your control, so I’m not making you pay for a room. Let’s be honest, I don’t need it.”
“So humble.”
“I like to say unashamed.”
She isn’t convinced and pinches her lips. “Bridger, despite your despicably sized bank account, I am not going to stay here for free.”
“Where are you working?”
She hesitates. “Well, that was step two. It’s even on my calendar. Job hunt.”
“Hard to pay rent without a job.”
“Hey, I’ll get a job,” she says, frowning. “It’s not the end of the story. I’ve hardly hit the first act. And I’ll earn my keep here, even if it’s . . . cleaning, or something. I need to pull my weight. I need to, Bridge.”
My head snaps up and I lock her in my gaze for too long. My fist clenches over my knee beneath the table. I’m not oblivious to her tone. Alexis isn’t one to take handouts to a fault. The woman could be bleeding out on the side of the road and refuse an ambulance simply to prove she can hobble to the hospital on her own.
She craves independence, true. It drives me crazy sometimes, but I also understand. Being a front row seater to the way Parker and Alexis were raised, the codependence they witnessed, I understand.
“I don’t want your money, Alexis.”
“Okay, a more basic question then: do you want me here? Not because you’re loyal to Parker, I need you to be honest. We always said we’d be honest, even if it hurt.”
“Yes. I do.” A quick reply and not a drop of hesitation. I’m on shaky ground and it is wholly unexpected. My eyes flick to her lips, but I hurry to look away. “What are rich connections for?”
I almost said friends, but we aren’t friends. We shouldn’t be or things get complicated.
She rolls her eyes. “I’m not freeloading.”
“You’re not. So, the third bedroom has its own bathroom, if you want that one.”
>
“But I wanted to share a bathroom. I’ll bring all my tampons, and push them in your face, and put up a flowery shower curtain, and hang up cute dog pictures.”
“Yes, to the dog pictures,” I say. “Sorry, my shower doesn’t have a curtain—it’s all man cave. And, uh, the other stuff, I’m entirely too immature for that sort of thing.”
She laughs and it’s real. As if me being here is working, as if it’s helping her forget the pain of the day. It’s intoxicating and I need to get a grip.
“The truth?” she says. “I really do appreciate you coming to rescue me. I won’t be a bother. I know you’re busy, and my classes start Monday, so I’ll be like the ghost that haunts this place. Which is saying something because you probably do have something that haunts this place it’s so big.”
“Looks can be deceiving. The real house is about twenty-four hundred square feet. The rest is made of secret passages with medieval torches and portraits with eyeholes.”
“Secret passages where your ghosts live.”
And all at once I’m falling into a flow with Alexis. My jaw tightens.
“Parker told me about the classes,” I say. “Your dream of becoming the highest class of nerd is coming true.”
She snickers and kicks my shin—again—under the table. “You should talk. How many people know the truth about rockstar Bridger Cole?”
I tick off five fingers one by one, then cup my hand. “A handful. I have non-disclosures, so don’t think of spilling either.”
“Spilling what? Your unhealthy obsession with sci-fi?”
“It is not unhealthy. I call it a vacation from reality.”
“No judgement here.”
I chuckle, drink some lemonade, and once more forget that this isn’t normal. “Listen, I just had a thought. If you really want to earn your keep—”
“I do.”
“Okay. The thing is I’m gone a lot in the day.” My eyes flick to Poppy who thuds her tail against the lower cabinets, staring and drooling. “Would you want to be hired as my official dog walker?”
A touch of something bright flashes in her eyes, but she pinches her lips. “Dog walker? That’s it?”
“I mean, clean your bathroom, but yeah. My girlfriend Gabby comes three times a week to do light cleaning—”
“Whoa. Girlfriend?”
I flick my brows a few times. “Absolutely, she’ll tell you she is, too. Sixty-two, so obviously experienced. She brings macadamia nut cookies on Fridays, brags about her grandson, and pinches my cheek. There is nothing more I need in a woman.”
Alexis pulls her bottom lip over her teeth and I stare at it too long. Think too many thoughts about that lip, about both lips. Ugh, I’m already splicing lyrics about those lips. Lyrics? How long has it been since lyrics simply flowed through my head?
“She sounds incredible,” Alexis says.
I shrug and whip out my phone, keying in the words about soft lips that speak gently, but hurt like . . . a knife. No. Too Bryan Adams. A blade? No. Hurt like the past.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
I tuck my phone away. “Nothing. Anyway, with Gabs, my cleaning is on auto, and I eat out a lot. My needs are basically met.”
“Unhealthy, eating out every night.”
“Fine, be my chef, too.” Truth be told it’s the best idea we’ve had all night. Librarian by day, but if I remember correctly, Miss Alexis M. Knight could take some ramen and pepper and find a way to make steak with it. Who am I to push away the opportunity?
She grins again. “Okay, if you’re serious. I’ll cook and walk this smooshy face.”
She cups Poppy’s floppy, slobbery jaws, nuzzling her nose. I think I fell in love a bit.
I tap the side of my can to hers and lift my lemonade in a silent toast slash non-verbal agreement. Tim’s voice rings in my head, screaming to grab one of those on-hand non-disclosures. Yes, I really have them. Yes, it’s a little depressing. Yes, I learned the hard way what it means when they remain unsigned.
But this is Alexis.
Tim will have to deal with it.
“How about I give you a night off for your chef duties and order some food?”
A bit of relief brightens her eyes. “I’m not even going to argue with you. I’m so hungry I could eat your face.”
Parker would murder me because my first thought is that I wouldn’t mind. “Are you still a maniac about tacos?”
“Once a maniac always a maniac."
“Fair enough.” I push open my kitchen door for her. “Welcome to the bat cave, Al. Looks like we’re officially roomies.”
“Think we’ll make it without killing each other?”
I grin. “Highly doubt it.”
Chapter 7
Alexis
Spring—2007
It’s embarrassing sitting on the stage, all in a row, as we wait. A few cameras flash in the audience and my stomach is tighter than the elastic band in my ponytail. My phone buzzes.
I steal a look at the faded green screen. A text message—those are so fun to send—from Parker: I’m here
The seats in the auditorium are too dark to see faces, but I grin as I close the phone and return it to my pocket. It’s a brand-spankin’ new flip phone with a purple butterfly case. I’m only twelve, but I think the phones were my mom’s new boyfriend’s way of buttering Park and me up so Mom would start letting him spend the night.
I almost laugh. She’d have let him spend the night without the phones, but I’m not complaining.
He’ll be gone by summer, and I plan to use this cell phone as long as possible even if it means grinning and bearing it when he dumps his dirty clothes in my laundry basket and invites his creepy friends over on Fridays.
Mrs. Watkins steps up to the podium. “Welcome parents and students, to the final competition of our creative writing contest. Can we give a round of applause for our middle school finalists?”
She leads the applause, and the auditorium echoes in proud parents clapping for their student. At least I have Parker out there. I bet Tate and Adam are with him. They’ll clap for me even if I bug them.
“Okay, from sixth grade we have Alexis Knight.” Mrs. Watkins signals me to come up and read my flash fiction story.
My hands shake, but I lift my chin. Someone whoops from the audience. I think it might be Adam. Nice of him, but it makes me drop my paper. My face heats like a pot of boiling water. When I bend over to snatch my story, it’s already been picked up by the last person I want to make eye contact with.
Bridger holds out the sheet.
I frown. He glares.
“Don’t stutter,” he whispers.
“Don’t puke.” I snatch my story and whip around.
“The Room,” I begin. “The room at the end of the hall is dark. It’s cold. Once it was warm. Once it was bright. No one goes into the room at the end of the hall. ‘Stay out’, it says. ‘Don’t stay here. Here, you will be trapped, be lost. Move forward, not back.’
“But she goes. One step. Two steps. It’s safer there. Familiar. The room at the end of the hall is loud. It hurts. It laughs. It smiles. It cries. She steps inside. One step. Two steps. She’s lost because the room at the end of the hall holds the good times, the bad, the lonely. The room at the end of the hall will never let her go. Not until . . .”
I lift my eyes. Heart pounding. The audience is silent. “Not until, she sees a window.”
I tip my head to signal my story is over. People clap. No doubt they have no idea what the story means, but from what I’ve learned in all my time escaping in books, it’s okay to interpret writing in a way that moves you.
Each book is like a personal thought, a unique emotion. That’s the beautiful thing about writing—it speaks to each heart differently.
Marcus Heath, from seventh grade, shares his short, humorous story and it deserves the few laughs it gets. It’s juvenile, though.
Like I bet his will be.
“Last,” says Mrs. Watkins
, “from eighth grade, a poem by Bridger Cole.”
He gets the most whoops and hollers of the night.
Bridger doesn’t write poems. It’s a song, I think. With my arms folded over my chest, I wait for him to shoot me some stupid sneer, but Bridger keeps his head down. Holy cow! His hands are shaking.
Stupidly confident and annoying Bridger Cole is . . . he’s nervous.
Bridger clears his throat, his voice cracks because he and Parker insist they’re becoming men. They have like one whisker.
Bridger doesn’t look up; he simply starts to read.
Dreams of letting go
Of being new
I won’t give up, won’t give up
‘Till I see it through.
Barely breathing. Afraid of falling
I need you to catch me
Because you, you promised safety.
Bridger hurries back to his seat, his face redder than a tomato. It deepens when the audience claps, when his dad booms over everyone, “That’s my kid!”
I stare at him. He won’t look at me.
What do the lyrics mean? What safety? Like a safety net? Our safety net, the thing we say any time we really need to admit something and need to call a quick truce—is that what it’s about?
What’s he afraid of?
I stiffen when Mrs. Watkins returns to the podium after the votes are in from the English department panel. She holds up the third place ribbon and envelope, complete with a gift card to the Shake Shack. “Third place, Marcus Heath.”
The audience claps. Marcus looks thrilled when he holds up his fifteen dollar gift card. My hands are clammy and scrape up and down my faded jeans as Mrs. Watkins holds up the second place envelope.
“In second . . .”
Now is not the time to pause, lady!
“Alexis Knight.”
My stomach churns and I let out an ungrateful moan. It’s not that I’m not happy I was a finalist and just won thirty bucks to the Shake Shack plus family movie passes, it’s that I lost to Bridger.
When he accepts his fifty dollars, movie passes, and the opportunity to have his poem published in the yearbook, he flicks his eyes to me and smiles. Not a nice smile. Not a good game smile. No, this is a victorious smile. Like beating me is the best part about his night.
