Alex (8 page)

“We’re done,” I tell her simply, noticing just for the briefest of moments that her eyes go wide and uncertain. But that’s all I see because I close the door in her face and lock it.

Pressing my forehead against the cool wood, I stand there for a second but then she’s kicking at the door, yelling from the other side. “You son of a bitch! You can’t just cast me aside like that!”

I turn away and head back toward my bedroom. Cassie stays out there, banging on the door and cursing at me. I ignore her, taking my clothes off and crawling into bed. I hear one of my neighbors open his door and yell at her to shut up. It doesn’t even slow her down and she renews her efforts to kick and punch at my door.

Finally, I hear another neighbor yell, “I’m calling the cops!” and that seems to do the trick. She goes absolutely silent and then I don’t hear anything else. I assume she’s left but I in no way believe that’s the last I’ll hear from her. In fact, I’m sure I’ll get an earful from Kyle tomorrow at practice, but I’ll deal with that then.

I roll over on my side, staring out into the dark of my bedroom. I let my mind clear and think of Sutton. I wonder to myself, how can this woman cause my heart to squeeze in pleasure one moment, and become black with anger the next? Is she purposely playing my emotions, or is she truly able to see through to my demons and confront them?

She makes me uncomfortable…the clarity with which she seems to see me.

She makes me curious as to what else she might see.

She makes me want…something, but I’m not sure what.

Oh, Mara…please stay strong, girl.

That’s the mantra I keep repeating in my head as I type notes in her file. I just hung up the phone with her a few minutes ago, and she’s not doing well. Now that she’s past the fear of her overdose, she’s fixating on the rush she got from the crank. She talked to me, almost longingly, of how great the euphoria felt to her. It broke my heart when she told me that she knows it felt so good because her life is so painful. It was an escape from having parents so mired in their own drug addiction that they don’t have anything left to give to their only daughter.

I urged her to come in to talk to me but she refused, and there’s not much I can do at this point. My talks with her are confidential, so I can’t reach out to anyone else for help. I certainly can’t reach out to her parents, who are the root cause of her issues. All I can do, and this is what is frustrating about my job, is talk to her, support her and pray to God she stays strong. I’m always terrified I’ll say the wrong thing. Even with all my training, and having lived through this stuff myself, I’m always painfully weighing my words and trying to gauge if I’m going too far, or maybe not far enough. It’s a constant battle with myself, wondering if I’m doing right by my kids, or could potentially say the wrong thing that will launch them into a spiral. I have many sleepless nights because I can never let it go when I get home.

Tonight will be one of those nights, I can tell.

Pushing back from my computer, I lean back in my squeaky chair and rub the bridge of my nose. I’m almost thankful for the distraction Mara provided me this morning, because I had been obsessing about Alex since that disaster of a meeting last night. Not for the first time in my professional career, I question myself. I’m thinking maybe I went a little too far with him last night, voicing a concern that maybe shouldn’t have been a concern at all.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a hangover. God knows I’ve had my share. And based on Alex’s reaction to me last night, I get the feeling that the subject of alcoholism or addiction in some form may be hitting close to home. It’s just a guess—a gut instinct; maybe I’m even recognizing something in him that I see in myself or in the kids I counsel. There’s definitely something there.

But, if I’m completely honest with myself, I may not have been so much worried about Alex’s use of alcohol as I had been a bit angry that he blew me off because he had a hangover. So that took this whole screwed-up scenario in my head and moved it from a professional consideration to a personal one, and I have no business thinking about Alex in a personal light at all.

Which is easier said than done, because there is something about him that absolutely fascinates and appeals to me as a woman. Which makes me want to lean forward and bang my head on my desk to chase those thoughts away, because it is absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong to look at him like that.

First, Alex and I are working together on a professional matter—a matter that is extremely important to me—and I need to maintain focus. On top of that, I was chosen for this project by my boss and I need to do a good job so that it boosts my career.

Pushing up out of my chair, I walk to the window that overlooks the small parking lot at the rear of our building. Resting my hands on the ledge, I lean my forehead against the cool glass and think about the most important reason I need to put Alex Crossman far from my mind.

It’s because I may have a chance to rekindle something with Brandon. We’re going to meet for dinner tonight, and this came on the heels of a text from Brandon saying he wanted to have “a serious discussion about our future together.” That text should have made me sigh with happiness but, sadly, I just felt a little “meh.”

The fact that I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other concerning Brandon has me perplexed. I keep expecting the four years of happiness we had will come washing back over me. Instead, it feels like such a distant memory that it makes me question if what we had was really all that great. I’m sure it was—I mean great for that time in my life. Young, in college, experiencing first love. But in just the short year we were apart, I’ve become different.

I’ve started my career, working long hours with little monetary reward, having nothing to show for my efforts, other than a few kids I’m able to bring back from the brink of destruction. Yet I live for those moments and they fuel me. I’ve learned to take care of myself. I’ve bought a home and I’ve completed many renovations to it all on my own. And it turns out I’m a pretty decent money manager, because after I pay all of my bills I even manage to put away some money into my savings account.

In other words, I’ve grown up a lot since Brandon and I broke up and I find that the security he once offered me no longer has the same allure.

All of these things rage through my mind, and because I’m so different, I have to wonder what it is exactly that Brandon can offer me. I have to wonder, why am I not feeling a strong pull to him? To the man I once loved?

I don’t think he broke me, because I never felt broken after we were over. I don’t think I’m bitter or angry with him. Again, fond feelings abound.

The feeling I’m getting is that maybe he’s just not enough for me right now, and that saddens me, because Brandon is truly a good man.

The more I think about it, Brandon has spent the past year living large and making the most of his single life. He’s probably been with countless women and enjoyed, to some extent, having no responsibilities to a committed relationship. I don’t begrudge him that. He was honest with me as to what he needed, and I have to give him points for not cheating on me.

But it makes me wonder…have
I
been missing something?

So yeah, I’m really questioning this whole Brandon thing and whether it’s smart to open myself back up to him. Shelley and I talked about it last night, and she’s never been a Brandon fan after he dumped me. She’s obviously pushing me to stay far away from him.

I also made the mistake of telling her about Alex last night after I got home and called her, and she now has it in her head that I need to be concentrating my efforts there. That, of course, was after she Googled him and saw his picture since, like me, she knows nothing about hockey.

Holy shit. Look at this pic I found of Alex,
she had texted me just this morning along with a photo of him taken while he was running outside. It looked like a professional shot because the lighting was perfect and he was staring straight into the camera with his blue eyes shimmering in the sun. He was wearing only a pair of running shorts that came to mid-thigh, and his chest was bare but slicked with sweat. He was carrying his iPod in one hand and had his earbuds in. Slightly damp with sweat, his hair was sticking to his forehead and temples while the longer black locks bounced with his stride.

God, he was stunning.

Where did you find that pic?
I texted back, because I was thinking of getting it and blowing it up to life size to mount above my bed.

Article about him in a fitness mag. You and Alex would make beautiful babies.

I had to laugh at her…blow her off, because it’s silly, really. But it was fun to giggle and whisper last night with my bestie about how hot Alex is while we both drank wine with our phones pressed to our ears, and it was fun to text her back and forth this morning over the picture she sent me.

But that’s all this is…just a little bit of fun.

My phone buzzes on my desk and I lift the receiver to my ear. “The fabulous Sutton Price at your service.”

“Hey, doll face,” Minnie drawls into the phone. “Your lunch appointment is here.”

“Lunch appointment?” I ask, confused, even as I pull up my calendar on my computer and see there’s nothing scheduled.

“Yeah—tall, dark and handsome, pretty blue eyes,” she says, and my stomach flip-flops at the image of Alex standing in the lobby. “He’s right on time.”

“He’s not on my schedule,” I say lamely.

“No, but he called first thing this morning and wanted to know if you were free for lunch and I told him you were.”

“Minnie!” I exclaim, both annoyed and pleased with her at the same time. Annoyed that she would take such a liberty and pleased for some unholy reason I cannot fathom that I will be seeing Alex soon.

“Get your tush up here,” she says, completely unfazed. Then she whispers into the phone, “Oh, and don’t forget to put on lipstick.”

Minnie hangs up on me and I just stare blankly at my computer for a moment. Placing the phone back in the cradle, I stand from my desk and smooth my skirt down. My fingers come up to push behind my ears some wispy strays that have fallen out of my ponytail. I step around my desk and start for the door.

I stop.

I turn back around and grab my purse.

I head for the door again, then I stop.

I reach in my purse and grab some lip gloss, dabbing a little on, because Minnie told me to and I don’t want to disappoint her.

Yeah, right.

When I hit the lobby door, my heart feels like it’s about to explode out of my chest at the prospect of seeing Alex. I’m nervous as all get-out, because last night I clearly stepped over a line with him, and I do believe I may have hurt his feelings. But I’m also excited at the prospect of just being in his presence. I remember the feel of him pressed up against me in the booth at Hoolihan’s, and I’m ashamed at how much I liked that feeling.

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to see him without feeling a small punch to my gut. As I step into the lobby, I realize Minnie was right—tall, dark, handsome. His hair looks stylishly windblown, his blue eyes so bright they hold me captivated from across the room. He’s dressed in a pair of faded jeans, running shoes and a long-sleeved Cold Fury black T-shirt that fits his chest and torso just a little too well.

Walking up to him, I say, “I understand we have a lunch appointment.”

He offers me a smile, the largest and warmest one I’ve seen on his face yet, and I feel my bones liquefy. “Yeah—hope you don’t mind. I enlisted Minnie this morning so I could have some time with you.”

How could I mind? The way he says he wants to spend some time with me causes my brain to go fuzzy, and for a split second I forget completely that we actually have some business to discuss.

Shaking my head to clear it, I look down at my watch. “Well, I have about an hour and a half until my next appointment. Where do you want to go?”

“I’m not a picky eater. You choose.”

“I have just the place,” I tell him with a smile and turn toward the door.

“It’s a damn good hot dog, right?” I ask Alex after I swallow my last bite.

Alex chews with a smile on his face and nods his head. When he swallows, he swipes his lips with a napkin and I can practically hear the paper scrape against the stubble. “I never thought you’d want to eat lunch from a hot dog street vendor.”

“Well, it’s too nice a day to pass up eating outside,” I remark, looking around the shaded park that sits in the middle of downtown Raleigh, just across the street from the capitol building.

“It’s one of the things I love about North Carolina,” Alex muses. “Warm weather in late October.”

“I know. It’s great, right?”

Alex nods and takes a bite of his third hot dog, so I use the opportunity while his mouth is full to alleviate my guilt. “I’m really sorry about last night,” I tell him quietly. “I had no business saying what I did. You’re absolutely right—there’s nothing wrong with having a hangover and I shouldn’t have judged you that way.”

His blue eyes widen slightly and he swallows his food, wiping at his mouth again. “Funny. I came to take you to lunch so I could apologize to you. I shouldn’t have gotten so angry. You had a right to be concerned.”

“No, I didn’t,” I assure him. “I think I was more pissed that you were blowing me off.”

Alex’s eyes go dark, but not in an angry way. No, it’s like pure intensity instead. He leans forward, slinging his arm over the back of the park bench we’re sitting on. He’s so close to me now that I can smell his cologne, which is very light and subtle, but woodsy-smelling. It makes me want to lean my nose into his chest and sniff…hard.

“I wasn’t blowing
you
off, trust me.”

“Okay,” I murmur, while his eyes pin me in place. We stare at each other for what is, in my opinion, an inappropriate amount of time. We’re having a moment—a weird moment, but a moment nonetheless. I now have an insane urge to lean in toward him, to stick my face against his neck and rub up against him.

The thought is so shocking to me, I scoot a few inches away, right out of the zone of his magnetic pull. He blinks his eyes at me, as if clearing the haze away, and then he pushes back a few inches as well.

A tiny giggle escapes my lips and I put my fingertips to my mouth to quash it. My eyes rise to meet his, and they are sparkling at me in amusement. “Um…so, now that apologies are out of the way…” I say, trailing off because I have no clue why else Alex is here.

“I actually wanted to get that binder from you. The one with the California outreach program.”

“Really?” I ask, pleased and skeptical all at once.

“Really,” he says with a grin. “I’m leaving tonight, as our next three games are on the road. I figured I could read it on the plane.”

“Wow, Alex Crossman is actually going to do his homework,” I tease. “And without being a jackass about it?”

Alex takes his index finger and swipes an imaginary
X
over his chest. “Cross my heart.”

“Okay,” I tell him, flashing my best megawatt smile—and is that my imagination, or does his breath hitch just a little while he stares at my lips?

Not going to lie—if that’s the case, it makes me feel good as a woman and I’m starting to understand that I’m just not going to be able to banish these feelings that seem to surface around Alex. As a counselor, I know the best thing to do is explore them, and then address them…at some point.

“When do you want to get together again? I’ll have the binder read by the time I get back on Sunday.”