I stared across the fountain in awe of the slim, fair-skinned beauty with luscious, deep brown hair, standing next to Elliot and Samantha, and felt embarrassed that I even slightly entertained the thought of becoming someone of significance to Elliot after we shared a night of meaningful conversation until the sun showed itself the morning after Valentine’s Day. I felt my cheeks flaming, watching Elliot interact with the best friend Samantha’s loyalty warned me to keep my distance from. A sickening dread welled itself up inside of me, but I couldn’t look away.
I spent the entire morning trailing the three of them around campus. The beauty was clearly familiar with it, gliding across campus like it was home to her graceful feet. The interactions between her and Elliot were ones of warmth and comfort that I couldn’t dream to compete with. She seemed a stark contrast to her best friend, and I think, if presented the opportunity, she and I could be friends ourselves.
Before I knew it, the day was over and I was forced to acknowledge a day wasted, spent spying on Elliot, the beauty, and her best friend. When Alex showed up at the side of his girlfriend to greet the beauty standing to the side of Elliot, the four of them paired and looking picture perfect together, I shook myself free of the daze that had me consumed all day, and rushed off to find the two people who could flush the misery out of me.
“Where we going tonight?” I asked, plopping myself onto my bed across from Margo’s.
Margo and Silas stared at me before turning to exchange curious looks.
“Come again?” said Silas, shifting his look of confusion to me.
“Where,” I said again, “are we going tonight?”
It was Margo’s turn to inquire.
“I’m sorry,” she started. “What?”
“Look,” I answered, a surprising edge on my tone, “I’m really stressed out and just want to wind down. If you two can’t help me with that, then I’ll figure it out myself.”
Margo and Silas flinched before Silas began to blow imaginary air towards me, his hands fanning in the same direction.
“Calm down, psycho,” he said. “You’re obviously having some sort of meltdown.”
“I am,” I admitted. “Now can you two help me out or not?”
Margo and Silas exchanged uncertain looks again before shooting me devious smiles.
Turns out, their devilish grins had more to do with the tight black dress they forced me into, paired with a dark denim jacket and fitting boots and accessories. Though I tugged at the sides of the dress in an effort to shimmy it down, the entire outfit wasn’t so far removed from what I’d normally wear, so I exited the dorm comfortably enough with the two of them by my side to meet the darkness of the evening.
“It looks like you tried,” Margo squealed with glee as we made our way through the lit up campus and towards one of the sorority houses a few blocks down.
“I strangely cannot stop looking at you tonight,” Silas encouraged.
I pulled my long, dark hair, formed into waves, to sit on my right shoulder, as the compliments came streaming in, and it was at that moment that I caught a glimpse of Elliot’s shadow beside his ex-girlfriend, her arm wrapped around her best friend by the lit up fountain in the center of campus. I hid myself to the sides of Margo and Silas and kept us walking. When we reached the booming sorority house, Margo made an immediate move for drinks, passing clear shots and something called a chaser to me and Silas.
“What do I do?” I asked them.
“Drink the little one,” answered Silas loudly over the blaring music. “Then drink the big one.”
“What is it?” I asked, sniffing the sweet scent inside the cup. “Oh, last time I drank water after the shot.”
Margo’s face scrunched at the thought of the burn.
“Here’s to Goodie Two Shoes!” Margo toasted me.
Silas cheered and then our cups touched before I brought the clear liquid to my lips and chased it with a cup of juice. I grimaced at the sharp taste of alcohol and piercing sweetness of the juice and only barely kept myself from gagging. Before I knew it, though, I was on to my second shot within the hour, a disgusting beer on top of it, and in my hands at the end of the hour was the third dark shot with its chaser. Though pieces of my vision were starting to blur, I swallowed my fears away as I stood among the growing crowd of shot takers around me.
“To Goodie Three Shoes!” Silas screeched wildly next to me, holding his cup up high.
The rest of the room cheered with him as we all toasted, but as I moved the shot towards my mouth, it was snatched from my grasp. I whirled around to make out the face of a displeased Alex in the dim of the room. His eyes lingered on me for a second before he swallowed the shot he had taken from me, grabbing the chaser from my hand to follow it.
“Rae Rae,” Silas grabbed me by the shoulders suddenly, completely unaware of Alex’s presence.
Silas blinked at me several times before lowering his face towards mine, his pink lips moving dangerously close to mine. The alcohol clearly had us both slowed, my reflexes failing to kick in, so it was Alex’s yank of my arm that separated us. Shaken out of his trance, Silas blinked in furious succession.
“You—” I started.
“Are clearly intoxicated,” Silas interjected sharply, shaking his head and turning to Alex to pat him lightly on the cheek. “Thank yer,” slurred Silas to Alex, wrapping an arm around his neck. “I want to thank my parents,” he continued as the music played on, “and you.”
Silas swayed next to Alex for a second longer before he was dragged away by the arm, disappearing into the crowd with Margo.
Because the darkened room continued to move in and out of focus for me, an overabundance of alcohol in my system, I refused to look up at Alex and turned away to plot my escape from him instead. Unfortunately for me, he was perfectly sound and able to grab a hold of my arm. I turned to send him daggers from my eyes, but he only looked back at me resolutely, both of us aware that I would’ve run into the coffee table, holding the shot and chaser he had taken for me, had he not had a hold of my arm.
“Let go of me,” I demanded loudly through the music. I purposely avoided him all week after our last uncomfortable exchange. If we were going to leave things unsaid, we were going to leave each other unbothered. He only stared at me after my retort though. Annoyed, I pulled my arm from his grasp and took a step away from him. “Leave me alone,” I ordered him.
Though aware of how childish I sounded, I didn’t care. I weaved my way through the shapes in the sorority house and out the front door, my brain pounding loudly against my skull as I floated across the yard of the house and onto the sidewalk, the music fading behind me. My mind could barely think, but when it could summon a thought, all it kept saying to itself was, If this is the effects of alcohol, I’m ready to swear it off for life.
“Reagan,” I heard my name from behind me, but I didn’t stop moving, even at my turtled pace. “Reagan.” Again, I ignored the call. “If you stumble off the sidewalk and into a car, I’m washing my hands clean.”
I didn’t have the energy to tell Alex to stop being annoying through my throbbing head.
“I told you this wasn’t for you,” he continued. “If you could see how faded you look—”
“Shut up,” I whirled around to address him, one hand moving swiftly to catch a part of my pulsating head.
Alex didn’t flinch, and I didn’t know what else to say. My vision was becoming more steady as I breathed in the fresh of the air, but far from having full control of myself, I just stood there. I didn’t realize how much a person could lose themself once the alcohol settled itself into the bloodstream. When the world around me finally stopped spinning, I locked eyes with Alex, but in my struggle to find words, I rubbed at my temple instead and turned around to continue walking.
“This isn’t like you,” he called after me.
“Like you know me.”
“I know you.”
“I’ve changed.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
At Alex’s agreement, I stopped in a fluster and turned around to glare at him, but what my eyes rested on next, I didn’t expect. He looked sad–nostalgic for a time when life and our choices in it hadn’t yet made us the people we were. Though I could feel the tension between us, I was in no state to face our reality, so I turned away and started walking again, lightly groaning to myself as I took each step forward.
“Will you stop and talk to me,” said Alex, on my heels. “Rae,” he called after me when I ignored him. “Rae,” he tried again, but when I ignored him once more, I felt a hand on my arm. My body lurched forward before it whirled around to meet the face of one angry Alex.
As much as I didn’t want to be in his grasp, his hold kept me upright.
I stared at him and he at me before I tried to regain my arm, but he only held on to it firmly. I tried to free it once more, but he only tightened his hold of my elbow.
“Alex—”
“What?” he cut me off.
“Let go—”
“Why?” he dismissed my request of him completely.
Upset at his refusal to release my arm, I tried to yank it away, but he only pulled me closer to him. When another attempt to regain my arm proved futile, furious, I locked eyes with him once more.
“This isn’t even anything.”
“You’re right.”
My eyes flickered at his words.
“Because it’s everything,” he finished.
I don’t know how long we stood there, my elbow caught in his hand, but if it had been for a lifetime, I wouldn’t have minded.
“You,” I started slowly, “shouldn’t be so careless with your words—”
“I’m not being careless,” he interrupted me shortly.
I matched his tone.
“Nobody talks like that.”
“Nobody isn’t me.”
“Stop trying to be poetic.”
“What do you think all of this has been?” he shot at me, a torch on his tone as his grip on my arm tightened, bringing me to silence. “From our childhood, to teenagers, to the time we spent apart, to today, how is it that we’re still standing in front of each other like this? I should be dead, and you should be on your way to a wonderful life.” I swallowed at his words. “Tell me you don’t think about me at least once a day, and I’ll let you go,” he challenged me. I stood there, frozen, trying to understand the heaviness of my breath trying to catch up to the rate of my rapidly beating heart. “If I could stop thinking about you,” he continued, “I would’ve let you go a long time ago, but every time I think about my past, my present, my future, you’re there. And believe me, I’ve tried to erase you from every stage of life, but every time I try, a piece of me goes with it.” Tears formed unexpectedly at the brim of my eyes, and in a desperate attempt to keep them from falling, I widened them, but I probably just looked stupid. “I know you figured it out before I did.” My brows furrowed in confusion. “It’s me.”
In quiet shock, I steadied my eyes on him, my breath leveling.
As much as I wanted to deny it, he was right. I did. I figured it out long before he did.
It was his senior year of high school, on a Sunday evening, after he had spent the entire weekend partying, that I sat on the ground at the end of his bed with his computer in my lap and his eyes closed and head dangling upside down next to mine as he lay in his bed.
“Hangovers suck,” he grumbled. “Avoid them at all costs.”
“I intend to,” I said to him as I typed the header of his paper. “How did you put this paper off for so long?”
“Obviously I had much more important things to tend to,” he responded. “Like the lips of one Maria Santos, one Jodie Bunch, and one Claire DuMonte.”
I turned to glare at his upside down face next to mine.
“What?” he laughed as his eyes met mine. “It’s been a great year.”
“You’re gross,” I glowered at him.
“Don’t pretend like you don’t want your name added to the list, Reagan Lee.”
My eyes moved to study his lips, inches away from mine. They were a soft pink surrounded by a surprisingly well groomed stubble of dark hair forming lightly above his lips, chin, and across his cheeks. I would be lying if I said I never wondered what it would be like to feel his lips on mine, or any boy’s for that matter.
Were they as soft as they looked?
Did the stubble tickle?
Would a spark catch between his lips and mine?
“See,” he interrupted my thoughts, “you’re thinking about it now.”
I blinked calmly through his comment, looking intently at his smug face, and before he knew it, I was on my hands and knees directly in front of his upside down face. His reaction was priceless. Frozen with his eyes widened to unnatural width, he swallowed hard, which looked painful to do upside down.
“What are you doing?” he sputtered at me.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I answered him in a low voice. “Adding my name to the list.”
I brought myself closer to him and positioned my face only inches in front of his, hovering it and eyeing his upside down lips closely. Stunned by my breath on his face, he couldn’t move. Slowly, I shifted my lips closer to his while he pursed his together in nervous anticipation of the contact.
“I,” I said to him softly, “would rather die,” I finished harshly.
I rolled over swiftly to the side where I had been sitting with his computer earlier and repositioned it onto my lap. In an equally fast motion, he rolled over in bed in the opposite direction and onto the ground beside it before crawling out to glare at me.
“Yes?” I glanced at him as I finished typing the date.
He huffed at my nonchalant response.
“YOU’D DIE FOR SURE!” he yelled at me. I flinched, surprised at the sound of his angry cry. It was rare to see Alexander the Great struggling for words. He was always that irritating person, much better articulated than everyone else, locked and loaded with infuriating words for ammunition, but he just sounded childish in his crazy fluster. “The sensation would be too much for you!”
I scoffed loudly.
“Yes. That’s why I would die. You got me.”
Fuming, he yelled at me, “Shut up!” I only laughed at how riled I had gotten him. “Get out!” he continued screaming.
“Sure,” I responded to his fiery directive calmly, setting his computer on the ground and moving to my knees to stand.
He scrambled suddenly over to where I kneeled.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!” He rested his palms on my shoulders, sitting me down before I could get to my feet. “Don’t go,” he gave me a new command, his voice finally stabilizing.
“Didn’t you just tell me to leav—”
“After you finish helping me, of course,” he said, a smile on his face, feigning cheerfulness, as he caressed my arms. “Please,” he finished.
I returned Alex’s fake smile with my own, and sat myself down, reaching for his laptop for a third time that night. Relieved, he plopped himself next to me, closing his eyes, and directed me through his thorough notes of the complex nature of Prospero’s gift, literal or figurative, and how it contributed to the meaning of The Tempest as a whole. I tried to pass the computer to him several times that night, but every time I tried, he pushed it sluggishly back into my hands. He was fortunate that The Tempest was one of my favorite plays from Shakespeare, and that he was actually brilliant and brilliant at organizing his thoughts so I could listen to him analyze the text verbally and follow along with the careful note taking he had done throughout the term to write his paper for him. He fell asleep next to me three quarters of the way through the paper, so I left him alone, except to look at and laugh at him a few times throughout the night as we sat on the ground at the end of his bed, his head thrown back on his bed and mouth ajar. It was only when I finished his paper for him, deep into the night, that I tried to shake him awake.
“Alex,” I shook his arm lightly. “Alex, move to your bed.” He stirred for a moment, but didn’t wake. “Alex…” I tried again.
This time he moved, but onto my shoulder. I sighed, eyeing his head on my shoulder and hair on my cheek, and tried to move him off of me, but that was when his head fell into my lap. I froze as he stirred to get comfortable on my leg.
I always thought that if Alex and I were ever in such close, intimate proximity, it would feel weird and uncomfortable, but it didn’t. Was it weird and uncomfortable that it felt normal? Even right?
As I stared at his sleeping face in my lap, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the reality that, before receiving his frantic texts just hours before, asking for my help with his paper, Alex and I hadn’t spoken to each other for months after I raged at him for cheating on his girlfriend. We realized then that we were different people who valued different things, and though we’d fought it for years, it was finally time to lay our friendship to rest. What was hardest for me was knowing his worth when he didn’t–he was always trying to be someone he wasn’t.
I fell asleep watching him inhale and exhale in my lap that night.
“Having a body next to you isn’t actually good enough,” Alex’s voice interrupted my memory, his hold on my arm loosening as his words brought me back to reality where Alex and I stood on the sidewalk of a quiet street in the middle of the night, the alcohol in my system finally subsiding. “I could move through a hundred bodies, and still, if my mind and my heart are left wanting,” he paused, “having a body next to me isn’t actually good enough.” He slid his hand gently down from my elbow. “You,” he said, his hand reaching mine, “have always had my mind and my heart.”
My astonished eyes moved from his still ones to my hand in his. When I looked up again, I met a gaze of warmth and longing from Alex he’d never afforded me before, and all I could think about was the day after writing that senior paper for him.
When I awoke at the end of Alex’s bed, I felt the heat of a beautiful day on my face, which meant the sun had been up for a while. It was just like Alex to make for school without me, leaving me sprawled on the floor of his bedroom. Though annoyed, I didn’t have the energy to be upset at him, or to ready myself for school, so I crawled into his bed instead, its warmth enveloping me as I drew in a deep breath to let his scent put me back to sleep, a thought forming as I drifted away:
What would it be like to wake up next to Alex?
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