Alex (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 3)

by Hope Hitchens

  “Where were you last night?” he asked.

  “Were your parents looking for me?” I asked, instead of saying ‘at an ex-boyfriend’s house.’

  “Mom was saying she didn’t know where you went,” he said.

  Good. She wasn’t meant to. If she knew what was good for her, she wasn’t going to try and find out either, or make me stay here with her for any amount of time. I had to talk to her, but not yet. I was still heated. There was something extremely ugly that she had had a part of, and I needed to know what it was.

  Hayden was such a sweet kid. I could have sworn that he was mine. Poor thing. He didn’t know that his mother had been spreading lies about his parentage.

  I got to school, and James had beaten me there. I wasn’t late, but I wasn’t as early as I usually was. I told him what I could about the situation without spilling the entire tragic truth. He said he understood, but I didn’t know how he would with the sketchy details I gave. Regardless, he was cool with me basically moving in right away.

  That meant that I had to go back to the house to get my things. A lot of them were already packed, and all I needed was to get them out of there. I had only two hands though, and I really didn’t want to call a mover because who wanted to pay for time and convenience when you could just take on inconvenience and time wasted yourself?

  I wasn’t a hoarder. I also wasn’t trying to move in with much furniture or any large, unwieldy pieces like that. It was mainly clothing and other paraphernalia. Despite this, I was shocked as I tried to get the last of my things together—how much it all was. I had so much stuff. It was ridiculous. It must have accumulated while I was living with Iris and Rick because I didn’t remember owning so much garbage when I moved in with them initially.

  A date during the day meant either the person you were going out with wasn’t interested in you, or they were testing the waters before they really took you out. A dinner date was what you wanted to aim for. When you dated online, it was practically required that you had to go out during the day, if for no other reason than to make sure you didn’t die.

  In the event that Patrick was crazy, and I did turn up on the news at eleven, I didn’t have Iris anymore to use as an ally and backup. What was more lukewarm than a drinks date on a Thursday afternoon before you had to rush off and take your ex-boyfriend to see his mother at her assisted living home?

  A date for drinks was what I had promised him, and that was what he was going to get. I had been on plenty of first dates that had never gotten off the ground. This was going to be another.

  This was why I was single.

  You didn’t go on a date because you felt like you had to. It totally wasn’t his fault. If he had gotten in just before I found Alex again, then he might have actually had a fighting chance. I didn’t know what he thought he would be getting out of the date besides just a date because it sure wasn’t going to be a second date. It just wasn’t happening. Not after the night, I had had with Alex.

  As much as I had no desire to go on this date, I did do the man the courtesy of putting makeup on my face and straightening my hair. At least in the story of his awful date that he would tell his friends, he wouldn’t be able to say the bitch wasn’t cute. I wasn’t trying to be anyone’s date from hell, but I had sandwiched the guy between work and meeting my ex. That was the level he was at.

  I spotted him as soon as I walked into the restaurant. He looked like his photos which was good because you never really knew when it came to online profiles. Sometimes people would use pictures of people who weren’t them, other times; they used pictures that were them, but not the them you would see when you met them in person. There was nothing wrong with working your angles and editing out an unfortunate zit or two, and it wasn’t really lying about who you were, but it was a little misleading.

  I had rules when it came to first dates. I didn’t do a lot of things. I would allow a friendly hug, but that was where the line got drawn. If the guy really wanted to, he could kiss me on the cheek, but that was literally it. We were strangers, and these things needed to be controlled.

  He waved me over. He was already sitting, and there was a splayed open book on the table in front of him.

  If we were using a point system, he got one hundred points for having a book with him, and maybe fifty for not being a catfish.

  “Hi, Patrick?” I said, approaching the table.

  “Hey,” he said. He stood up and hugged me. He invited me to sit. I looked down at the book on the table. Less Than Zero. If he had one hundred points for the book, he had lost forty for the title. Maybe fifty.

  I had to stop. Open mind. I needed an open mind. If I was going to make judgments about him, he needed to give me a reason to first.

  I told him that I had somewhere to be soon after our date, and he was cool about it. Not even curious or anything. This was Alex’s competition, and he was sort of losing.

  “I have to admit, I was pretty scared you wouldn’t be who you said you were,” he said to me when my drink came.

  “Really? Why?” I asked.

  “I felt it was too good to be true. You asked me out within ten minutes of us matching.”

  Iris was fast. That was why she had two kids from two different men, and I had none. I never asked men out. It just wasn’t my style.

  “Nope. Definitely true. I hope you weren’t too disappointed when you found out I wasn’t crazy.”

  “I didn’t think you were crazy. I thought you’d jump me when we met.”

  “Jump you?”

  “I thought you’d be less about the conversation, more about the action,” he said. I gave him a small smile. No, he did not just quote Elvis Presley to call me a hoe. This was hilarious.

  “You thought I wanted to hook up for our first date?” I asked.

  “You wouldn’t be the only one. You wanted to meet so soon, I just figured.”

  Honesty. That gained him some points, but he lost them all thinking I was going to end up giving it up to him on the first date. Dammit, Iris. This was what I got for taking her dating advice. This was going to be a total failure from the jump. She wasn’t even there to make a fake phone call to me, to let me get out of the date. I gave him the rest of the time I had promised before saying I needed to leave.

  “I’d love to see you again,” he said when the check came.

  I smiled because that was what you did when you wanted to come off as a nice person. How could I say no to this? Unfortunately, very easily. Through no fault of his own, it just wasn’t on. I offered to pay because he deserved a free drink for compensation.

  He let me.

  12

  Alexander

  There was only one thing that had stopped me from making a move on Olivia, and that had been me being weirded out by the thought of having sex in my mother’s bed.

  Maybe there were two things. There was that, and the fact that I didn’t know whether Livvy would actually want to have sex with me. I knew she still liked me; that went without saying, but I didn’t know whether she would still take that opportunity to curve me if I made a move.

  We could have just used my room, but I didn’t want to push too hard and scare her away. I wasn’t going to take advantage of the fact that she was mad at her sister to get her to sleep with me. It wasn’t like it was asking the world of her; she already wanted to do it. She couldn’t deny it and make me believe her. She just needed to get a little warmed up.

  Her hair was down, and she was in a dress and heels when she showed up for us to visit Mom. Not something you wore to teach preschool, but who knew with this new generation of educators. None of my teachers had ever looked like Olivia. I wouldn’t have been able to learn shit.

  “Either this is for me, or you’re trying to become someone’s second wife,” I said when I saw her. She frowned.

  “Second?”

  “After the first wife’s gone and did all the heavy lifting already.”

  “It’s not for you,” she said, smirking a
little. It was another date. It had to be. Why was she doing this? If it wasn’t clear after the first kiss, then it had to be after the second one.

  “Who is he?” I asked on the way to the facility. I was driving.

  “Who is who?”

  “The guy whose second wife you want to become. Who is he?”

  “There is no guy,” she said dismissively.

  There was one. Me. And I needed to be the only one.

  “Was it a bad date? What did he do? Make you pay?” I asked her.

  “Leave it alone, Lex. I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

  “You don’t want to tell me the facts and defend yourself; I’ll just have to fill in the blanks myself.”

  “Defend myself? Please, Lex. I don’t have anything to explain to you. We aren’t together anymore, and you don’t get to act like I’m cheating on you every time I go out on a date. I know you haven’t been holed up in your room just waiting for the day we found each other again.”

  “I haven’t seen another woman since I saw you again, Liv.”

  “I didn’t ask you to do that. I’m not going to congratulate you for that. I don’t ask what you have been doing in your personal life because after all this time; it’s none of my business and mine is none of yours.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t lead another guy on. That’s all I’m saying,” I told her. I was getting a lot more jealous than I wanted her to know I was.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t act like I owe you anything,” she said quietly.

  How often were we going to do this? We fought like we were a couple, but we weren’t. How much longer were we not going to be? Liv had her questions, sure, but that just wasn’t a good enough excuse. She was stalling—waiting and making me wait. I had been ready to get back together. What was she waiting for?

  She was all smiles when we got to the assisted living home. I might as well have stopped coming, seeing how much Mom liked having her around. She wasn’t doing anything that day. She was just in her room, reading. Again, she was working in real time. Days like that, I wondered why she couldn’t just go home. She wasn’t old; she was in her fifties. It sucked. The best part was Colin and I were probably next. Alzheimer’s was hereditary. If it was me… let’s just say I was glad it wasn’t.

  Seeing Mom seemed to calm both of us down. It got us out of our own heads enough to at least act reasonably, even when we’d rather be fighting. We got back to the house. Her moving in would have really cut her travel time and a lot of stress, but she probably knew that. I wondered whether she hated Iris enough to move out. Move out of that house and into this one.

  “Tell me about your date,” I tried again in the car on the way home.

  “Why? No. Why would I tell you about that?”

  “I’m very secure in the fact that nobody could ever come close to being me. Don’t worry.”

  I saw her smile, amused.

  “I had a good time.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “You weren’t there, Lex. How the hell would you know?”

  “Are you going to see him again?”

  “No, but-”

  “That’s because you don’t want to. Whatever happened on this first date wasn’t enough to convince you he was better for you than me.”

  “Who told you that this was a competition between you two? Who said you were even up for consideration?”

  “Because you’re coming home with me.”

  “To talk,” she said, looking over at me.

  “Oh yeah, of course. Just to talk.”

  We got to the house.

  It was past six. I didn’t know what time she usually ate, but since she was there, she might as well have something. I’d been to the store and had picked up a few things that I knew she used to like.

  She used to eat—and apparently still ate—like a six-year-old. The one thing I just didn’t understand was why on earth she would choose to eat noodles that came out of a box when the option was there to eat anything else? She was not a Kraft Mac and Cheese sort of girl. If she was anything that could be purchased at a supermarket, she was something classy, like the fancy vegan stuff that was expensive and good for you, or something ‘cold-pressed’ and imported from Europe. She wasn’t a boxed mac and cheese.

  The best part was she would eat it right out of the saucepan. If you were going to eat garbage, you might as well do it right. She had always claimed it was the only way that it tasted right. There was probably more nutrition in the box that the shit came in than in the actual macaroni and cheese.

  “I can’t believe you still eat that shit,” I said to her. I had chosen something less gross, but not by much. Leftover pizza. Cold. The only way to have it.

  “Because it’s delicious,” she said. She was up on the counter. We had a dining table, she just never used to sit at it.

  “It’s good to see some things haven’t changed.”

  “Yeah, you know me so well,” she said, teasing. “I think maybe we could make it as friends.”

  “Friends?” I scoffed.

  “We’ve known each other for years. We were friends before we ever dated. Friends.”

  “Olivia, you are the nicest girl I know but no offense, I don’t want to be your friend,” I said. “Unless it’s the with benefits type.”

  “We can’t do that again, Lex.”

  “Why not? Give me one good reason why not.”

  “Because it’s been too long.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Because we don’t feel the same way anymore.”

  “When did you become a liar, Livvy? We both know that’s not true.”

  “It’s too complicated,” she said.

  “Just say you’re scared if that’s what you are,” I said to her.

  “Is that a good enough reason?”

  “No.”

  I leaned in and pressed my lips to hers. She kept kissing back every time I did it. That was a good enough reason for me.

  “I thought we were here because we wanted to talk,” she said, looking down into the orange-yellow mac and cheese she was holding.

  “Alright, tell me how happy you are to see me again and how much you missed me,” I said, kissing her neck.

  “Tell me why you left me,” she said, pushing me away from her.

  The doorbell rang.

  I cursed and looked at Olivia apologetically.

  “Don’t move,” I told her.

  I left the kitchen and made for the front door. I unlocked it and pulled it open. Standing there, looking thrilled to see me, was Travis Hartman. Cassie’s boyfriend. I didn’t make a habit of seeing women who had boyfriends, but I wasn’t dumb enough to think that he was just there to say hi.

  “Travis. What’s going on?” I asked carefully. I wasn’t going to tell on myself. There was a chance—small, but it was there—that this was not about Cassie.

  “Why have I been hearing that you’ve been seeing my girl?” he asked.

  “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but they need to get their facts right.”

  “So you haven’t been? She told me the guy’s name was Alex Kilgariff. You’re the only guy I know with a name like that.”

  “Did she tell you about the other guys too? I’m not the one you’re looking for.”

  Travis scowled. How did he know where I lived? We had a lot of things in common but had never gotten close. We were both from California, both went to school on the east coast, both had suffered career-ending football injuries, and both were fucking Cassie. He was still fucking Cassie. I used to fuck Cassie.

  “What other guys?”

  Good question. There was at least one besides me. She must have had us on rotation or something. It was all fun and games until someone got pregnant, and she had. About Cassie, I was withdrawing myself from the dick roulette she had working. There was that baby thing, but there was the Olivia thing too.

  “You didn’t know? Your girl has a whole crew of us. Your beef is wi
th her. I’m not your girlfriend; she is.”

  “Who else? How many?” he asked. His tone was angry, but he hadn’t tried anything yet. He probably knew better than to try shit like that when you went to someone’s house. You never knew what they could pull out. I didn’t just keep weapons lying around. I had knives in the garage, but they were there because I made them, not because I had people to attack.

  I told him what I knew, which wasn’t much. There were other guys who could account for Cassie’s activity better than I could, and the person he should have been asking all this shit in the first place, Cassie herself. She probably told him where to find me. She had probably hoped he’d come by and kick my ass. No, that was what I would have done in his position. I locked the door when he left.

  “Who was that?” Olivia asked. She hadn’t stayed in the kitchen.

  “Nobody, just a guy I went to college with.”

  “Oh yeah? Sounds like a guy whose girlfriend you slept with.”

  Hm. She had been listening too. It wasn’t like this was a secret. It was just something that I would probably never have told her because it wasn’t important. It would never come up. It sounded pretty bad, but I had to say something.

  “It isn’t as bad as it sounds,” I said.

  “Please, explain yourself. Make it worse.”

  “If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else. Who his girlfriend sleeps with is none of my business.”

  “It is your business when that person is you.”

  “Look. She made the decision she made, and that decision was to fuck someone who wasn’t her boyfriend.”