Chapter Two
Alexa
I drove home from Ian’s with my head spinning. I was growing so tired of being pulled in so many different directions. My best friend is dead. I met a guy who I really, really like…and I just can’t seem to make it work with him. Ian’s not a bad guy. He’s just the opposite as a matter of fact. He’s kind of an enigma. He spends a lot of time alone, yet he’s perfectly comfortable around people. He rebelled a lot when he was a kid…yet he has a great relationship with his parents. He’s an animal in the octagon. Yet he’s sweet and gentle in bed. He says he wants nothing to do with his ex-girlfriend and yet she keeps popping up in our lives. Since I’d started seeing him he’s provoked so many different emotions inside of me, more than anyone else ever had. I’m sure it has a lot to do with the way we came together, already in emotional turmoil. We were both dealing with our grief and it just seemed so much easier to deal with it together instead…maybe that’s where we went wrong. Maybe we should have done that separately before we got together and then dating would be going more smoothly. Maybe there are too many emotions tangled up and maybe it was going to be impossible to untangle them and decide where grief began and our feelings for each other started. Or maybe there are no real feelings for each other. Maybe it’s our minds’ ways of trying to compensate for the alternative…the emotional hell of remembering that Emma was dead every minute of the day.
By the time I got out of the car and headed into the house I was beginning to wonder if maybe it would be easier to straighten my head out if I just concentrated on me for a while. Maybe I should go out and do something fun that had nothing to do with Ian or anyone else. Maybe I should have stayed at school.
I walked in the front door and Dad said, “Is that you, Alexa?” I almost laughed. I’m not sure who else he thought it might be, and it reinforced that maybe I should have gone back to school. Since I’d been home it was almost like mine and Dad’s relationship had reverted back to what it was when I was a teenager.
“Yeah Dad, it’s me.”
“Come on in the kitchen, I was just making a sandwich. Do you want one?”
I went into the kitchen. He had out almost every condiment we owned as well as all of the lunchmeat, a head of lettuce, tomato, onion and avocado. I smiled, “What kind of sandwich are you making?”
“It’s my version of the club…minus the bacon, unfortunately. I forgot to buy some when I went grocery shopping. But that’s okay. I have several different kinds of meat here.”
I wish I could care about the meat on a club sandwich. If I did, that would mean that things were back to normal. I’m not even sure what that was anymore. I sat down at the table and he asked me where I’d been.
“Hanging out with Ian,” I said. He made a face, but he didn’t say anything. I guess it was different from when I was in high school. Back then, he never would have missed an opportunity to tell me what was wrong with the guy I was dating. I think it was what made me be more judgmental than I should be. I was always looking for something to be wrong. In spite of that, I wondered if I should talk to him and see what his take was on everything that had been going on. I thought maybe I already knew what he was going to say. He was going to tell me that I should stay away from Ian. He would give me a list of reasons why and tell me all of the things that were wrong with him and then he would say, “It’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just that he’s not what I want for you.”
“Dad, I really like Ian.” I told him. I was goading him, sort of. I wanted his advice and yet I didn’t. What I really wanted was for him to say, “Oh, Ian! He’s a great guy!” I knew that was never going to happen, but it sure would make it easier for me to keep seeing him, which was what I think I really wanted.
I watched his face and I could see the subtle change in it again. To his credit, he still didn’t say anything negative. He just didn’t say anything at all. I sat there for a while and watched him slathering things on the bread for his sandwich and I considered telling him how much I liked Ian.
God, I missed Emma. I never had other friends I could really talk to. My other friends were about going out and having fun. I was also a little bit worried that they would judge me over dating Emma’s brother. Emma wouldn’t have ever judged me. She might verbally kick my ass if she thought I was involved in something that would hurt me, but she would never judge. I looked back up at my Dad and realized he was the only person left in my life that I could really say that about now. He might judge my boyfriends like crazy, but not me.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, honey?”
“Have you ever had really strong feelings for someone and it seemed like no matter how hard you tried to make it work with them, things just seemed to keep getting in the way?”
He looked at me and I could see in his eyes that he was thinking about my mom. I felt bad for bringing it up. He really loved her. So much that he was still single after all this time. She had really done a number on him…on both of us. I was about to tell him I was sorry for bringing it up when he wiped his hands and came over and sat with me at the table.
“Are we talking about Ian?” he asked. He knew we were, but he looked like he wanted me to tell him we weren’t.
“Yeah. You know that we’ve spent time together. The truth is that we’ve spent a lot of time together. It started out with us helping each other to get past Emma’s death…but it turned into more. I have so much fun when I’m with him. I feel comfortable and safe…I really care about him but my feelings for him are so jumbled together with my feelings over Emma’s death that I’m just not sure how to handle it all.”
“Maybe what you need is some time to sort it all out without anyone putting any kind of pressure on you.” I could see on his face that by “anyone” he meant “Ian”.
“Ian’s not putting pressure on me. He’s been completely willing to let me take this as fast or as slow as I want to. It’s just that every little thing that happens between us seems so much more intense than it probably should in such a new relationship. I find myself questioning everything and him worrying about how I’ll react to things to the point of not telling me about them. Do you think that’s because of Emma? Are we both just hyper-sensitive because of what we went through?”
“Yeah, I think that’s probably got a lot to do with it. I also think it could be a good excuse for hiding things, so I’m glad to hear you’re not standing for that.”
“He’s not really hiding things.” I was compelled to defend him and the look on my dad’s face told me that worried him more than anything.
“I’m just saying that I think it’s all a good argument for why you should take some time for yourself. Since Emma died, you’ve spent a lot of time worrying about Ian’s feelings and maybe not enough worrying about your own.”
“So what should I do? I mean, I’ve tried the lying in bed and moping…that didn’t work.”
He smiled sadly and said, “No, I don’t want you to go back there. I’m not sure I could take that…I was so worried about you. I was thinking about you going out and doing something fun…but something that’s just for you. Forget about all of this just for a day. Go to a spa or go shopping or for a walk in the park. Whatever sounds fun to you. Then, while you’re doing it, don’t think about anything else. Just concentrate on you. After your head is cleared, give this some more thought.”
“I don’t think I could do that, just turn it all off,” I said.
“You’ll never know if you don’t try. Look at it this way, the way you’re doing it is not working so why not try something different. What could it hurt?”
He had a point. If I took a day for myself and tried not to think about everything and it didn’t work then I haven’t lost anything…I’ve just gained a day for myself.
“Maybe you’re right, Dad,” I told him.
“I’m always right,” he said with a smile, “That’s why I get to call myself “Dad.”
“So true, sometimes I forget,” I told him with a grin. He could be exasperating sometimes, but there were reasons behind why he was so overprotective when it came to relationships and me. I always knew he loved me.
“Maybe I’ll go to the mall tomorrow. I could use some new summer clothes anyway.” He got up and kissed the top of my head. When he got back over to the counter he said,
“So do you want a sandwich or not?” He was spreading pickle relish on it now.
“Um…not,” I said with a smile.