by Emma Vikes
“Ma?”
My mother’s auburn hair looked duller than the last time I remembered and it was still tied in the same bun hairstyle that she always wore her hair in. She turned around and looked at me and her eyes lit up at the sight of me. She opened her frail arms, motioning for me to give her a hug. My heart soared, all the worries and anxiety that had been caged in my heart suddenly evaporating at the mere sight of my mother. I rushed to her and wrapped my arms around her, closing my eyes as I inhaled the familiar and comforting scent.
I could feel her patting my back and chuckling. “You act like you haven’t seen me in forever.”
I let out a small chuckle as I hugged her even tighter. “I just missed you, Ma. It’s different when I don’t see you every day. But how are you here? Who’s taking care of Aaron?”
Ma pulled away and placed a gentle hand on my cheek and then nodded at the door of my apartment. I rushed to open the door and helped her in with her bags. “Dad took a break from work for three days. Do you remember Betty? That woman who owned the bakeshop that I worked at years ago? I bumped into her at the supermarket and she mentioned she needed an extra hand again so I helped her out while your Dad watched Aaron at the house.”
“Ma…” My forehead creased in concern. Ma wasn’t in the best of health anymore for any strenuous activities. But Ma looked at me and shook her head, sensing my worry.
“Betty didn’t let me do the heavy chores, Lexi. She just needed help in mixing the batter and timing the cupcakes. She had a handful of orders. And she paid me really well, enough for me to fly here. The first thing I thought of when she paid me was you. So your Dad convinced me to surprise you by visiting.”
I pulled her in for a hug and let out a contented sigh. “Thank you for visiting me, Ma. It really does mean a lot.”
She placed her hands on my face when we pulled away and kissed the tip of my nose. “Let me cook you something.”
I pulled her again and shook my head. “No! You must be tired from the flight and then waiting for me. There’s a really good diner near here and it’s one of my favorite places here in Irving. C’mon, let’s eat something good.”
Ma laughed and then allowed me to drag her out of my apartment. It felt like I had been flooded with a rush of relief when I saw her. All the worries that I had about what was going on in my life suddenly disappeared. There was nothing like a mother’s hug to replenish your entire being. We arrived at the diner that I was talking about and I let her order as much as she wanted.
We talked about everything that had happened after the holidays. We had seen each other about two weeks ago but it felt like we hadn’t seen each other in a very long time. Like I said, it was different than living under the same roof as your mother and having the comfort of knowing that you had someone that you could lean on. Living far from home made me realize that despite the maturity that came with being on my own, being with my family was still different.
It felt like we could go on forever but Ma told me she was getting tired and that she needed to take her medicine; so we began our walk back home. “Alexa? Alexa, is that you?”
It was a little dark and Ma and I were just passing by the café. Despite the dim light emitting from the street lights, I knew the stance of the man in front of us and the woman that clung on his arm. Suddenly, my heart raced in panic and my palms felt sweaty. “Carole! Julian!”
“Oh, Alexa! It’s so good to see you out here,” Carole moved forward to give me a hug and I returned it, trying to make sure that my nerves didn’t show in my smile. I even gave Julian a hug who seemed to be trying to make sure that he was hidden from any sudden paparazzi that could crowd over us.
Ma tugged at my arm and I closed my eyes, offering a prayer to any god that was listening to get me out of this situation. “Carole, Jules, this is my mother, Anna Stone.”
Carole shook Ma’s hand politely and Julian did the same. Ma looked at me, smiling at them. “Does he work with you?”
I bit my lower lip when Julian chuckled. “Oh no. I’d rather be dead than do that kind of labour.”
Carole jabbed Julian for the remark and I couldn’t help but chuckle with him, almost forgetting that I needed to be on alert in case anything about the fake relationship slipped out. “I’m Everett’s mother. I’m sure you haven’t met him personally and it’s too bad that he has to be in Chicago now when you’re here.”
Ma looked at Carole oddly and then back at me and I let out a nervous laugh. “We’d really love to stay and chat but Ma’s actually really tired and we’re on our way back to my apartment.”
Carole looked mildly disappointed and gave me a tight hug. Julian patted my back and gave me a mock salute. “Oh, Alexa, are you and Everett okay? I don’t want to intrude in your relationship but he seemed really upset before he left. I drove him to the airport.”
I could feel my mother’s gaze on me and I tried to play it cool and I thanked the heavens that Ma didn’t try to butt in. “We just had an argument but we’re fine, Carole.”
Maybe I wasn’t supposed to say that, because Everett and I had agreed that the next time his mother asked about me and our relationship he would tell her that it hadn’t worked out. But here I was, doing exactly the opposite. This could’ve been a chance to simply say that things hadn’t worked out. But I hadn’t and Ma and I left them with a wave of goodbye.
The moment we reached the apartment and I locked the door, I waited for Ma to start. But when I turned to face her, she was sitting down, her hands folded; and she looked at me with a gentle curiosity. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Alexa?”
My eyes closed and whatever composure I’d had abandoned me, along with the relief that I had been feeling all this while because my mother was here. I stood there, with my back against the door, and I tried my best to remain calm despite the overwhelming waves of emotion inside me. “Ma…”
I heard the screech of the chair and I could feel Ma’s arms around me as I sank to the ground. “Tell me everything, sweetheart.”
It felt like I was back in third grade again when I had gotten into trouble and they had to call Ma. I had punched a classmate out of anger, because they kept saying bad things about Aaron, and I hated having to listen to them. I was crying in my mother’s arms as she stroked my back gently, and I could feel her kissing my head from time to time.
“There’s this guy…” I sighed.
“Ok, let me start again. Everett’s a colleague of mine at the department. He’s the other scientist and we work together in the same office in the forensics department,” I began to explain, “but I met him before I officially moved here to Irving. Olivia had taken me to a bar and had left me there because she had a date and Everett spilled a drink on me and then offered to get me a cup of coffee.”
Ma’s eyebrows raised. “That’s…unconventional.”
I bit back a smile and nodded, wiping away my tears. “It’s just Everett. He’s responsible, hard-working, thoughtful and such a gentleman.”
“Seems like he’s everything you want.”
I looked at Ma and shrugged. “But can’t have.”
She looked at me and then tucked a stray hair behind my ear. “Tell me what happened, sweetheart.”
Releasing a shaky breath, I continued. “Everett bumped into me at the supermarket on Thanksgiving and invited me to his house when he realized that I was all alone. At some point while everyone was preparing dinner, his brothers irritated him to quite an extent, and he just blurted out that we were dating.”
I looked at my mother, wanting to see her reaction, but there wasn’t any. “I’m guessing you agreed to make it real?”
“It was a fake relationship, Ma. His family had always wanted him to be with someone and when he said that he was dating me, it was too hard to put out the fire.”
“So you decided to fan it?”
“To be honest, it actually just got out of hand,” I said quietly and then pulled my legs closer to my body and rested my
chin on my knees, “and I shouldn’t have agreed when I knew I was actually attracted to him. Pretending to be a couple just intensified my attraction.”
“And made you fall in love with him,” Ma said, nudging me slightly and smiling, “I don’t get why it seems to be a problem, Lexi. You say he’s a good guy and I want to scold you for fooling his family, but I also understand. Your father and I have asked you the same about a thousand times by now. Everett must’ve been fed up.”
She was right. Dad and mum did ask me about it quite a bit. Whenever I went on dates, they were always very excited and sometimes it felt like they were already planning my wedding. I wasn’t sure why they were excited to see me with someone but then again, maybe it was because I never really showed interest in being in an actual relationship.
“The problem, Ma, is that Everett doesn’t have time for love and I…” I let the words hang for a moment but I knew that I had to say them, “I have other things to think about. Having a relationship would just be a problem.”
Ma’s gaze softened and she cupped my face with both her hands. “Your Dad and I always wondered why you were never in a real relationship. You showed interest in dating but it never went further than that. There were moments when I wondered why you turned down a commitment and sometimes, I didn’t really like the conclusion that I came to.” She sighed, “If this is because of us, Alexa, then we’d be the last people who would be against you being with someone you love. Don’t let us hold you back.”
I placed my hands over hers, the bubble of fear that I had over relationships overwhelming me. “It’s not just that, Ma. One day, Aaron’s going to be fully my responsibility and I do not want any guy to say anything against my brother or suggest that we let other people take care of him.”
Turning away from her, I said the next words that embarrassed me. “And the last thing I need is for someone to turn south when they realize that I will always put my family over everything else. Dad never ran out on us. You never did too. People like you aren’t easy to find.”
“But you will never find people like us if you won’t give them chances, Alexa,” Ma said gently, “I didn’t find your Dad based on pure luck. I took a chance on him. When things with Aaron made our lives a little difficult than most, he gave that life a chance and then continued living it. I did the same. Maybe that’s what life is about. Taking chances, taking risks.”
“What if at some point he realizes that this isn’t what he wanted and I’m left heartbroken?”
“We all get our hearts broken at some point darling,” Ma told me with a soft smile, “that’s just how life is. Your Dad breaks my heart sometimes still, but I take a chance on what we have every day because that’s what love is.”
“Ma…” I looked at my mother, my eyes shining with tears as she pressed a hand over my chest and then moved her hand to stroke my shoulders. “I told him to say ‘I love you’ but he couldn’t.”
She laughed lightly and then shook her head. “Love is felt, Alexa, and there aren’t enough words in the dictionary that can be used to describe it accurately. Sometimes we don’t need to hear the three words, we just have to feel it.”
There was a note taped on the door of my apartment and without even reading who it was from, I knew. I had a feeling that I would see him the moment that I arrived back in Irving, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. I didn’t expect him to be in my apartment building the moment I arrived but it seemed like he had been here a while, waiting for me to come home.
I pushed the door open and left my things inside before locking it up again and heading to the rooftop in a hurry. Despite all the conflicting feelings that I had for Everett, there was no denying that I had missed him like crazy over the holidays. It seemed like whatever rationality that I had grasped when I was in North Carolina had left me the moment I boarded the airplane.
When I pushed opened the door of the rooftop, I stood rooted in my spot in surprise. There was a fort right there, on the rooftop of the building I lived in. It looked beautiful. There was a light rustle from inside and then Everett slipped out of the fort and stood up gradually, the wind blowing his dark hair.
And when he stood there right in front of me, the truth became harder to deny.
I couldn’t come up with any words in that moment, but the truth had scared me since. The sheer magnitude of what I felt for Everett was overwhelming and it had instilled fear in me rather than bring me the courage to admit them to him. So, I turned the other way and ran because I couldn’t admit it to myself. I couldn’t admit that I was helplessly and desperately in love with him. I tried to combat my feelings by bringing distance between the two of us.
But my soul had fallen in love with him, and there was nothing that I wanted more in the world than to be right next to him. I’d been spinning in circles all along, not realizing that the more I stopped myself, the more my heart yearned to be with him. Ma was right. Love was something that you felt and there were no words that could really summarize the intensity of our feelings for someone.
Staying away from him had only made me fall in love with him even deeper, because no matter how much I tried to deny it, my soul had found the one that it loves.
21
Alexa
The next day, I woke up feeling a little better. My heart was still in a little bit of pain but there was a part of me that believed that Everett would come back and maybe we could fix this. I hope that the next time that we met I would stop putting up barriers between the two of us and finally just let love happen. I wanted to stop running away from my feelings and just face it head on.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to him. I had demanded him to say that he loved me, but even I was struggling to find the right words to convey to him how much he meant to me.
I realized that I should’ve seen the sheer sincerity of everything that Everett had done for me, had seen the way he looked at me, appreciated me. God, if only I had the courage to stop running away from it all, maybe the fake relationship would have turned into a real one earlier on itself.
“Lexi!”
I realized that Ma hadn’t been around the apartment when I woke up. I had just been lounging on my bed and staring at the ceiling for a little while. “Ma? Where have you been?”
I sat up on the bed and watched as she locked the door- a habit that she had over the years of making sure that our door was locked so Aaron didn’t have a repeat of his escapade. She was carrying a bunch of groceries in her arms. “Ma, you know that you didn’t have to buy anything!”
Ma looked at me pointedly and shrugged. “You barely have food here and eating preserved foods isn’t healthy, Alexa. I’ve told you that a thousand times.”
I pouted. “But you know I can barely cook without setting the whole building on fire.”
Ma chuckled and nodded her head, moved closer to where I was and wrapped her arms around me and kissed my forehead. “That’s why I’m going to make sure that I leave you with enough food that you can just pre-heat. It’ll be enough for a week. But you have to learn how to cook, Lexi.”
I wrapped my arms around her tight. “If only I could move you all here and we could live in Irving together. That’d be nice. Or maybe if I moved back to North Carolina…”
“There’s a letter for you,” Ma suddenly said, cutting me off. She reached into her back pocket and her eyes crinkled at the sides as she smiled at me, “I’ll go start making lunch.”
I blinked. “Lunch?”
Ma shrugged. “Seems like work took a lot out of you this week, huh?”
I smiled at Ma sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Ma. I know you’re only here for a couple of days and we should’ve spent it doing something.”
She shook her head and then kissed the side of my face tenderly. “Just read your letter. I’m going to start on our food.”
I watched as she left me in my bedroom, and began to sift through the cabinet under the sink for the pans that she needed. Then I looked down to the lette
r that she had given me. There wasn’t anything written on the outside other than my name in an unfamiliar handwriting. Cautiously, I opened it and then pulled out the letter. It was written on a crisp white paper and my heart dropped when I opened it up and saw the familiar handwriting.
Dear Alexa,
I’m not entirely sure how I’m supposed to start this. I’m not entirely sure if you would like the idea of me writing to you. The last time we were in the same room together, you told me to leave when I told you I wanted to be with you. Maybe a letter from me is the last thing you want to receive at the moment. But I’m hoping that maybe it is something you’re waiting for.
Before I say anything else, I’d like to make something clear. I’ve never been in love. It wasn’t because I didn’t believe in love. I’d seen how my parents loved each other and witnessed my two brothers’ fall in love with their wives so I knew that love was real. But it wasn’t something I’d felt, at least, not until I met you. But because I’d always put off the idea and notion of love and taken care of other things like my future and career, love became an aspect of my life that I’d never given myself the chance to try. And that’s probably why I’m bad at it. Wang had told me a thousand times that I’m dense when it came to romance and as much as I hate to admit it, he’s probably right.
For that reason, I hope you understand if I mess this up even more- I really hope I don’t- or if I do it incorrectly. If there was a book called how to handle falling in love, dating, and romance for dummies 101, I would probably be the first in line to buy it. But I’ll try to do this in the best way that I can.
Three words. Eight letters. You wanted me to say it and I didn’t know how. I froze up and wasn’t able to tell you. It was as if in that moment, I just became tongue-tied and couldn’t. So I thought I’d try writing it down.
I’m a man who knows a lot of things and I take pride in the knowledge that I’ve earned through the years, but I didn’t know it was love when it first hit me. I had no idea that it was love, Alexa, but now I do.
