Authors: Clarissa Carlyle
“Would that be so bad?” Mark asked as he backed out of the park.
“No, I think she’d take it really well. Hey, Mom, meet my new boyfriend. Oh yeah, he used to be my math teacher,” Alex said sarcastically.
“So I’m your boyfriend?” Mark smiled to himself as he drove away from the trailer park.
“Hey, don’t go getting smug about that,” Alex warned, though she herself was smiling also. “Where are we going anyway?”
“La Bistro Loco,” Mark answered. Alex had heard of it before. It was a boutique restaurant that had opened up in Charlottesville the previous year.
“It’s supposed to be nice there.” Alex nodded in approval.
“Yeah, a lot of the teachers talk about it,” Mark said the words, and then something in his face froze, as though it suddenly occurred to him that he might run into a colleague on his date with a former student.
“We could go somewhere else,” Alex suggested, sensing his unease.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Mark answered decisively. “People are going to find out sooner or later. And you deserve to be taken somewhere nice. After all, we are celebrating!”
****
La Bistro Loco offered the best in contemporary fine dining. The moderately large restaurant consisted of wrought
-iron tables and chairs, each chair filled with brightly colored cushions. On the terracotta-colored walls were hung beautifully pieces of modern art.
Mark and Alex were shown to their table, encountering now familiar faces as they walked in hand in hand. Alex felt a surge of adrenalin when Mark took her hand as they walked from the car. It felt exciting and dangerous, but it also felt right, as though within his hand was right where her hand belonged.
To an onlooker they looked just like any other young couple in love, gazing dreamily into each other’s eyes over their dinner as they discussed their dreams and aspirations.
“Are you excited about Princeton?” Mark asked as he ate his pasta dish.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” Alex admitted. “It’s all happened so quickly.”
“Well, you’ve got the summer for it to settle in,” Mark noted.
“Yeah.”
After dinner Mark walked Alex through a nearby park, his strong arm wrapped around her waist. He looked irresistible in a T-shirt and blazer with jeans. With each step Alex desperately wanted to just surrender herself to yet another kiss. To her, being in Mark’s arms and tasting his kiss was like being in heaven.
Alex had worn an old summer dress that was once a vibrant blue but had dulled with time. Her hair hung down her back, golden and luminous, but still she felt inadequate beside her more mature date. She couldn’t help but notice how other women stole glances at him, even though he was with her. It made her uneasy and a little jealous.
“Are you having a good night?” Mark asked as they strolled through the park. Above them, some stars had begun to shine.
“I’m having a perfect night,” Alex admitted while Mark leaned in to kiss her. They remained kissing in the park for several minutes, getting lost in the sensation of one another.
“It’s getting late. I should get you back home.” Mark sighed as he checked his watch. Alex didn’t want to leave him, not yet, maybe not ever. She kissed him again, eager to keep the magic of the moment alive for as long as she could.
“If you keep kissing me, then we’ll never get back,” Mark joked. “I don’t want to enrage your mother.”
“Maybe I don’t have to go back,” Alex suggested seductively. She wrapped her arms around Mark’s neck and then slowly lowered them down his body, feeling the curvature of his spine as she did so.
“What are you suggesting?” Mark asked a little breathlessly. Suddenly, spurred on by her own yearnings, Alex was no longer the timid teenager but a skilled seductress.
“Maybe I could come back to yours,” she whispered into his ear.
“Are you sure?” Mark asked nervously.
Alex kissed him hard and deep to show him just how certain of her proposal she was.
****
“I waited up for you,” Alex’s mom declared as Alex entered the trailer, the bright morning light warming her back.
Jackie sat at the kitchen counter, her eyes bloodshot.
“Well, you shouldn’t have bothered,” Alex retorted childishly.
“I was worried.”
“Well, I’m home now, so panic over.” Alex went to walk into her shared bedroom to change, but her mother stood up and grabbed her arm.
“You should have called me,” Jackie told her sternly.
“Mom, chill out, I’m eighteen, for God’s sake!” Alex shook her mother off.
“What if something had happened to you?” Jackie cried in despair. “What if you’d been shot?”
The talk of shooting made Alex immediately come to her senses, and she turned to her mother, her face apologetic.
“I… I honestly didn’t think,” she admitted shamefully. “I just got caught up in the moment.” Alex slumped down at the counter, and Jackie sat beside her, her face etched with concern.
“I know how exciting it is to meet a guy and start falling for him,” she began knowingly. “But you need to keep a focus on yourself. You’ve got so much going for you now, Alex. The last thing you want is some guy coming along and ruining that for you.”
“It’s not like that, Mom.”
“Just make sure you don’t get too caught up in him,” Jackie advised.
“Mom, I love him,” Alex admitted, startled to hear herself say the words. She’d known she felt that way for a while, but it was the first time she’d said so out loud. It made the feeling seem more real, more tangible.
“Young love can be so powerful.” Jackie sighed. “But don’t let yourself fall too far; it will just make things more difficult in the fall when you have to leave him to start college.”
Alex nodded, but internally she felt panicked. The thought of leaving Mark to go to Princeton suddenly made her feel physically sick. She remembered all the looks he attracted when they were together. If that was how women behaved when he was with his girlfriend, then surely they would just be throwing themselves at him when he was alone.
And what if while Alex was away he fell for another student? She’d come home to be with him only to have her heart crushed.
Her skin still tingled from his touch, how he had explored every inch of her body and she his. She’d experienced levels of euphoria in the bed of his apartment that she’d never known were possible. Suddenly Alex understood why people sang and wrote about love so much. It’s because it was soul shaking, core moving and utterly, utterly wonderful. Being with Mark had irrevocably changed Alex. She’d glimpsed love first hand, and she didn’t want to let it go; no, she refused to let it go.
If going to Princeton meant that she’d have to give up Mark, then she wasn’t sure that she could do it.
****
“I won’t let you do that!” Mark told Alex firmly as she sat looking up at him from the leather couch in his apartment. He paced angrily upon the wooden floor, pausing only to cast exasperated looks in Alex’s direction.
The late summer sun warmed the hard floor. The past few weeks together had been magical, like some delirious dream from which Alex didn’t want to wake up.
“But it’s my choice!” declared Alex.
“And a terrible one! And one I can’t let you make because I care about you too much!” Mark ceased pacing to look deep into Alex’s eyes, his face imploring her to reconsider.
“But I want to stay here and be with you,” Alex told him earnestly. “I love you.”
Mark stiffened slightly at the word and sighed.
It suddenly struck Alex that despite her numerous usages of the four-letter word that changes everything in a relationship, Mark hadn’t once said it back to her. He’d consistently reminded her of how much he cared about her but never once mentioned love. Alex began to feel incredibly foolish and very much the naïve love-struck teenager she had become.
“I can’t let you give up this experience for me,” he told her softly as he sat down beside her, taking her hands in his.
“But I want to.”
“No, you don’t,” Mark immediately corrected her. “Right now, you think you want to, but if you stayed… within a week, a month, maybe even a year you’d begin to regret your decision.”
“You don’t know that,” Alex whispered, a slight tremor rippling through her body.
“I do, though.” Mark spoke with wisdom that can only be gained through experience.
“College will change you,” he told her with certainty. “It will challenge you in ways you never imagined, and as a result you will grow, and inevitably you will change.”
“But I’d still feel the same about you!” Alex cried, feeling like the heroine in some black-and-white movie, begging the man she loved not to go to war but knowing that he’d leave her anyway, no matter what she said or how much she meant it.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Mark told her gently. “But you need to go there and find out. I promise you that going to Princeton will be the greatest thing you’ve ever done. Don’t be one of those women who are defined by a man. Stand on your own two feet; forge your own way in life.”
“Don’t end up like my mom, you mean,” Alex remarked, her voice small.
“When your mom lost your dad, she lost everything: her home, her entire way of life. Don’t make the same mistake she did; don’t rely on a man. Rely only on yourself.”
Alex didn’t like to admit that perhaps she had been leaning too heavily on Mark, using him as the security blanket she’d desperately missed since her father died. Her heart burned with the knowledge that he was speaking the truth. That as much as she loved him and wanted to spend each and every day by his side, she had to go and follow her own dreams and be her own person.
“But I’ll miss you,” Alex spluttered as tears began to fall freely down her cheeks.
“I’ll miss you too.” Mark pulled her into his arms. There was nothing sensual about the embrace; there was only tenderness between them in that moment.
“Did you enjoy college?” Alex asked as they parted.
“Very much.” Mark nodded.
“What did you do there? Go to loads of wild parties?” Alex joked.
“Some, yeah.” Mark smiled fondly at the memory. “I also fell in love for the first time.” The words stung Alex, especially since he was so reluctant to say that he loved her.
“You did?”
“Yeah, I fell in love with a science major called Liz. She meant everything to me, and for a time I never believed I’d be without her,” Mark reminisced.
“But you’re without her now,” Alex pointed out.
“Yes, I am. Because people change.”
“I won’t change.”
“You will, Alex. But for the better. You’ll reconnect with the girl you abandoned at fourteen and make real friends with similar interests. You won’t have to hide who you are, and that will be so liberating for you. If you stay here, with me, you’ll become the source of cruel local gossip. When you go out and about, people will point and whisper about you. You deserve better than that. When people single you out, they should be doing so to praise you for what you’ve done with your life, not because you’re marred in scandal.”
“Don’t you want me to stay?”
“I want what is best for you.” Mark chose his words carefully. “And what’s best for you is going to Princeton.”