Chapter Eight
Ian
After a few more drinks, they all decided they wanted to go get something to eat. I tried to beg off, but I got the feeling Alexa was suddenly avoiding being alone with me. She wasn’t really saying anything, to anyone, but when I said I thought we’d pass she said, “Do I get a vote?”
“Of course,” I told her. “I’m sorry, you didn’t say anything so I thought you didn’t want to go.”
“I’m kind of hungry,” she said.
“Okay, we’ll go.”
Danielle was their designated driver so she drove all of those shitheads and Alexa hadn’t drank anything stronger than Pepsi, so she drove us. We met up at a little café outside of town that we used to go to a lot when we were teenagers and hanging out way too late on the streets. It was a place that stirred up a lot of memories for me because there was a while there that I didn’t really have a permanent place to live. During that time, the owner here would let me come in at night and sweep floors and clean windows, stuff like that in exchange for food. Brock knew a lot of that and Jeff knew some. I was afraid that being there would just give them more fodder to make Alexa think the worst of me. I can already tell that the respect she held for me was waning. She had driven all the way out here without saying a single word to me unless I asked her a question and then all I got was a one word answer.
When we drove up in front of the café and she started to jump out of the car I said, “Hey wait a sec, please. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing,” she said. It was reminiscent of the night Kristie text me.
“Alexa, I can tell that something’s wrong. Tell me what it is, please. Stop saying “nothing” when it is very obviously, “something.”
“It’s nothing. I’m just hungry.” Her voice was terse and impatient with me.
“My friends can be assholes sometimes…” I started. I know that was a good example of me trying to put the responsibility I should be taking off on someone else…but I was desperate.
“They’ve been nice to me. I’m just hungry, Ian, really.”
She started to reach for the door handle again and I reached for her. She flinched. She fucking flinched like my touch was taboo or something. “That’s it, Alexa…what the hell is it?” I sounded pissed, but I was just frustrated. I had a pretty good idea what it was, but I wanted her to tell me. I didn’t want to put ideas in her head.
“Don’t talk to me like that, please.” She said that nicely, but that fire was raging behind those green eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sincerely. “I’m just frustrated. Why won’t you just tell me what’s wrong?”
“Why won’t you just let it go?”
“Because the last time you insisted everything was fine it was three days before I saw you again. I don’t want to have to worry all the whether you’re mad at me or not. Please just talk to me. We talk about everything, don’t we?” In hindsight, that might not have been the right way to put it. She looked at me with that fire spitting out of her eyes and she said, “Apparently not. I heard a lot of things tonight that we’ve never talked about.”
“Being in jail? Is that it? You’re upset about me shoplifting? It was juvenile hall and I was in middle school. I haven’t ever stolen anything since.”
“No Ian. I could care less about that,” she said. “They’re waiting and I’m hungry. Everything is fine. Let’s drop it.” She got out of the car and closed the door.
Shit! I got out and followed her. She was walking with long strides and I almost had to jog to keep up. We got inside and were shown to a big booth. My friends all had pretty good buzzes going by now and they were talking and laughing. Alexa was staring at the menu and I had no fucking idea what to say. After the waitress took our orders Brock said, “You think Dean can get me in for a session this week?”
“Probably,” I said, relieved to have something normal to talk about. “Call him and see. If not, let me know and I’ll work out with you one day.”
“Coach Sievert asked about you the other day,” Mike told me.
“Oh yeah, where’d you see him?”
“I ran into him at the mall,” Mike said with a laugh. “He was following his wife around while she shopped. He looked miserable.”
I laughed; Alexa was now reading the sugar packets. “If you see him again, tell him I said hello. He was the best math teacher I ever had.”
“True that,” Jeff said. That was his favorite saying. “I loved it when the coaches taught a class. They didn’t give a shit if you could add or subtract, as long as you could carry a ball they’d give you an “A.” Everyone at the table agreed with that except Alexa. She was perusing the dessert menu.
“That’s probably how you got that scholarship, huh Ian?” Russ said. “You just took all the classes that coach taught.”
Alexa picked up her head then and said, “What was the scholarship for?”
I didn’t say anything right away so of course my helpful friend Jeff said, “He was given an academic scholarship to MIT…in the tenth grade.”
“Yeah, why the hell he hung out with the likes of us is beyond me,” Russ said. I was just wondering that myself.
“He didn’t hang out with you until high school,” Brock said with a laugh. “Remember, you used to all think he was a little nerd in elementary and most of middle school. I was his only real friend.”
“Are you guys all having fun at my expense tonight for a reason?” I finally asked.
“We’re just messing with you,” Brock said, ever the peacemaker. “We watched you fight the other day and realized how good you’ve gotten. We’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” Jeff said, “Of anything but his girlfriend.”
“Shut the fuck up, Jeff,” I told him. Alexa had gone back to her reading. She’d found a bottle of Tabasco sauce that looked interesting.
Our food came and we ate and talked. Alexa just ate, and not much for a girl who claimed that she was starving. When we finished, she finally said yes when I asked her if she was ready to go. She told everyone how nice it had been to meet them and we left. When we got to the car I said, “I’m sober. I can drive.” Without saying a word, she took the keys out of her purse, handed them to me and got into her side of the car. I was getting really annoyed with the silent treatment. It seemed a little juvenile to me. Why not just confront me and get it over with? I got into my side and said, “You’re still not going to tell me what’s wrong?” She didn’t bother answering that. She just sat silently.
We drove back across with neither of us saying a word. When we got to town and I started to turn towards my apartment she said, “No, I want to go home.” It was a last ditch effort on my part. I was hoping if we were alone, she’d talk to me.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously,” she said. I turned towards her Dad’s, but about halfway there I turned into the parking lot of the park and stopped the car. “What are you doing?” she said.
“I’m going to take you home, but Alexa don’t I at least deserve to know what it is that you’re angry with me about? I’m going to go home and drive myself crazy trying to figure it out. Please, just tell me so that I don’t have to do that.”
She looked at me then and I saw disappointment in her eyes where respect used to be. “You had a scholarship…to MIT?”
“Yeah.”
“MIT offered you a full scholarship when you were in the 10th grade?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t something I told people. Telling someone usually required a “why” explanation and I wasn’t up to that.
“Do you know how rare that is? They are not free with their money at that school. They’re very selective who they let in and who they offer support to. It’s an honor just to be on the list. What are you, some kind of genius?”
That’s what the school used to tell my mother, before they tired of me. “I’m good at math,” I told her.
“If they offered you a scholarship when you were fifteen years old, you were a lot better than good. But you didn’t go to MIT because you got expelled from high school your sophomore year? They never let you come back?”
I hesitated, but knew it was stupid to even consider lying to her. She already knew. She was only clarifying what she’d heard tonight. “Yes, I got expelled and they pulled the scholarship. No, I wasn’t allowed to go back.”
“What in the world was that bad? What did you get expelled for?”
“You heard them all talking about it tonight, Alexa. Why are you trying to make me say it?”
“Because I need to hear it from you. I should have heard it from you already?”
“When? When we were just hanging out? When we were having sex? Or maybe, at my sister’s funeral?” I know I shouldn’t have said that, but the way she was approaching the whole thing was pissing me off a little bit…or maybe it was all a defense mechanism. She started to reach for the door and I said, “What are you doing?” It was full dark and we were at a city park.
“I’ll call my dad to come get me,” she said. “You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to. I can look at the facts given to me and.”
“I was on the wrestling team. I was skinny and it didn’t seem to matter what I did, I couldn’t gain weight. I was a great wrestler but I was in the wrong class because of the weight thing. I met a guy who introduced me to performance enhancing drugs.”
“Performance enhancing? You can’t even say the word?”
“Steroids, Alexa, okay? Is that what you needed to hear? I was fifteen years old. I was a skinny ass nerd that got his ass kicked at every turn. I found this stuff that miraculously made me big enough that people didn’t mess with me any longer. I didn’t know any better. I took it.”
“What was it?” she said, still not willing to let it go. She was now looking at me like I was a drug addict.
“He used to mix us a “cocktail”, he called it. It was testosterone and nandrolone and anastozole.” I told her. “He was the grown-up Adele.
She raised her eyebrow again and said, “How long did you take them before you got caught?”
“I don’t know exactly…maybe six months.”
“Did you go to rehab after that?” Shit! One big miserable life story in one sitting here tonight. I might still punch Jeff in the mouth.
“For a minute,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I left early. But, I am not now nor have I ever been an addict. I took the steroids with one specific goal in mind: to bulk up. I stopped taking them when I got expelled…”
“Did you win?” she said it so low that I barely heard her.
“What? Did I win what?”
“Your wrestling matches. Did you win them…the way you win your fights now?”
“Yes, I won. But if you’re insinuating that I’m using something now…”
“I’m not making any assumptions, Ian. But based on the facts of what you told me…you cheated. You cheated, Ian. You cheated all of those guys who were doing it the right way.”
“Yeah, I did. It was a long time ago though. I was a stupid kid. I paid for it. I lost my scholarship and....”
“And went on to be the most popular MMA fighter in this and the surrounding counties,” she said as if quoting my BIO. “One day to be a UFC champion it is predicted.”
“Do I not deserve good things in my future because I’ve made some poor decisions in the past? I was tired of being a nobody. Anything that I have now Alexa, I worked my ass off for it…”
“Did you?” she asked, doubtfully.
“Yes!” I said, aggravated as hell. “Yes, I did. I learned my lesson back then, Alexa. Now I do things the good old fashioned way. I go to the gym every day. I run every night. I eat healthy…I’ve been doing it that way for four years now and it hasn’t been easy.”
“But you cheated and you were okay with that then. Some things are just a part of your personality, I think. You used drugs and you cheated.”
“What are you saying? You can’t forgive me for making mistakes in my past that have nothing to do with you or now?”
“I’m saying that I never would have suspected you of using drugs…and I can’t have any respect for a cheater.”
“But I’m not a cheater,” I said. “I cheated, yes. Everyone cheats sometimes. It’s like shoplifting, everyone tries it. I found out that wasn’t how I wanted to win.” I was getting angry, but I was really trying to keep it in check. Although she was pissing me off, I knew she had a right to be concerned. I wanted to have a relationship with her. These were things that she had a right to know. I wanted her to accept they were in the past though and let us move forward.
“You decided that after you got caught and arrested.”
“I always knew I was taking a risk, yes. But I looked at it as: I’m not hurting anyone. I never hurt anyone because of it,” I said.
“What about all of the guys you beat in the meantime who were doing things the right way? How is your cheating not hurting them?”
“It’s one of the perils of the business…not knowing who is and who isn’t…”
“Take me home, please Ian. I don’t want to argue with you anymore. You have your ideas and I have mine.”
I didn’t argue with her about that. I didn’t want to argue anymore either. What I really wanted was for her to let it go. It was years ago. I somehow knew that she was going to be this upset, but I can’t honestly figure out why it is such a big deal at this point. I started the car and we drove the six blocks to her dad’s house. When we drove up out front she looked at me for a long time and I let myself imagine that she was going to say she’s decided she doesn’t care about any of that. Instead she said, “Thanks.” Then she reached for the door handle and I said, “Is that it? I have no idea where we’re at here. We were doing so well. Alexa, I have real feelings for you.”
She looked at me again and my chest began to ache. I could see the answer in her pretty green eyes. “I just can’t, Ian. The old saying, “once a cheater, always a cheater,” it means something to me,” she said. She got out of the car and slammed the door.