303. Chapter 303
“Look, Alex, I just wanna be alone, okay? It’s not… it’s not you, I just… I just need to be alone.”
Alex swallows rage and Alex swallows the desire to scoop Maggie into her arms and never let her go, ever. To kiss her every scar and to extract her every pain.
But she needs to listen better.
Because Maggie needs to be heard.
So Alex hears, and Alex drops her off, and Alex kisses her good night, and tells her to call if she changes her mind.
She knows she won’t.
She thinks about heading home herself for about .38 seconds. But she’s driving to the Baldwin before she even consciously decides to.
She leans on a pole and she checks her watch and she tries some of those breathing exercises from this morning to keep her somewhat calm, to keep her able to talk instead of punch, to keep her able to speak instead of scream.
Even though her blood boils when she sees her. Even though her body is running through all one hundred six ways she knows how to kill someone with her bare hands.
“Emily.”
God is she suddenly grateful for those damn yoga breathing exercises.
“Alex, right?”
“Yeah. I wanted to come… see you. I wanted to talk to you, just to see if…”
She takes a step closer and she’s almost grateful when Emily starts speaking, because she might have just punched her instead of finishing her sentence.
“Look, if this is about missing dinner – “
“Why didn’t you show up?” Her voice is low and her voice is death, and she can’t sink her fists into Maggie’s father, so Emily will have to do. For now.
“I should’ve, but… the whole situation, it just brought up too many painful memories.”
“What about Maggie? All the things you said to her back then, that wasn’t painful?” She wants to say more. She wants to say so much more. Do so much more.
She doesn’t, because she doesn’t want to make things worse for Maggie. But god, god, god, does she want to.
“Everything that I said to her, she had coming.”
“She dedicated five years of her life to you, and you bailed on her.” Her voice feels like it does before she splits her knuckles on prisoner’s faces, before she drops bombs that blow up buildings she’s still standing in.
“I bailed on her? Seriously, that’s – that’s what she told you? – she cheated on me.”
The bottom drops out of Alex’s stomach and the fight goes out of her gut.
And suddenly she’s picturing Maggie in bed with Emily, in bed with Darla, hell, in bed with her yoga instructor, naked and writhing, screaming someone else’s name.
Someone’s name that isn’t hers.
She gulps and she hates herself because she’s done it again.
Caused someone pain. Again.
Failed. Again.
“I’m sorry, I… I didn’t know.”
She can’t look at her, at this woman with hair that’s only just a little redder than hers, with a voice just a little deeper than hers, with a body just a little more perfect than hers.
This woman who Maggie apparently cheated on.
And Alex knows it’s true.
Knows because she knows Maggie.
Knows because she knows what Maggie is like when she’s scared.
Knows what Maggie is like when she hates herself more than she usually does.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Alex isn’t looking at her, so she doesn’t see the way Emily’s eyes run up and down her body, just once, quickly. Just once, imagining Maggie underneath her, on top of her, whatever she’s feeling these days, and she can see why Maggie chose this woman. This woman who just wanted to defend her.
This woman she’s apparently lying to.
And she knows Alex knows it, because when she looks up, her eyes are wide and terrified and regretful.
“I just… really wanna forget about it.”
Because that shell-shocked look on Alex’s face?
She wore that look for almost two whole years.
She only just recently stopped wearing it all the time.
Alex looks off to the side because she can’t look into the eyes of the woman Maggie slept with, spent five years probably doting on, and then cheated on.
“Sorry, I… I’mma go.”
She doesn’t give Emily a chance to say anything else.
She can’t hear anything else.
She just walks.
She walks and she walks, and she takes out her phone and she calls her sister.