Moonlit Waters

Alex is sitting at the kitchen table when I come home. Pearl is sitting across from him and they’re playing some board game.

He looks up when I come into view, cautious. Afraid? Maybe.

Pearl’s her usual beaming self. She jumps up and hugs me hello and asks, “How was it? Did you have fun? Your outfit’s so cooooool!”

I wince at the impact and stroke her still so tiny head. “Yeah, it was great.”

There’s no world I’ll tell her what happened to me. She can’t know, this isn’t her problem to fix.

Alex has gotten up and hesitantly walked closer.

“Hey.”

I look up. “Hey,” I say, too tired to put on a cold facade.

He motions in direction of the stairs. “Can we talk? Upstairs, maybe? Or outside?”

For a moment, I close my eyes, and raise my hand to massage the bridge of my nose.

I totally forgot, over everything that’s happened. Right, he wanted to tell me why I should keep far away from Claire.

I’m too tired for this. My head hurts too much to do this. All I want is to go back to bed and put on some series I don’t really have to follow mentally, or better yet, sleep.

But I nod anyway. I was the one who asked for this.

“Yeah, sure.”

I lead the way, up the stairs, along the corridor, and into my room.

It’s just the way I remember leaving it behind, strangely. The bed made, a hoody and a pair of joggers draped over the back of my desk chair. Tidy but not overly so.

I don’t know why, but it feels wrong, somehow, that it looks like nobody’s been in here. Like nothing has happened.

I shake my head. Focus.

“Mind if I change?” I ask, stopping by the chair. I don’t expect him to say no and he doesn’t.

“No, ‘course not.”

He still turns away. Not fully, not with his back towards me. Just sideways, looking at the far corner by the closet.

I quickly change into the joggers and pull a white t-shirt from inside the hoody. It was cold the night before last.

“How was last night?” he asks, his voice plain. Like it’s something he forces himself to ask.

I shrug. My head hurts so much. I should drink something.

I lean over and snatch the water bottle from my nightstand, slump onto my bed as I unscrew the lid, take several large gulps even though I’m not thirsty.

“Somebody put knockout drops in my drink,” I say then. It’s making a point of telling him what’s going on, showing him that I have nothing to hide. I still love him, don’t I?

Maybe, hopefully, this is just a small bump along the way and we’ll overcome it together.
There’s a jerk in his face and shoulders.

“What?”

I don’t repeat myself. He understood me well enough. Instead take another few gulps. Cool liquid running down my throat, a cool feeling settling in my stomach.

“I’m so sorry.” He means it, I can tell. But what good does that do me now?

I shrug. “Not your fault. You tried getting me out of there, remember?”

“I should have been more insistent.”

“I’d have hated you for it.”

Would I? I don’t know. It’s to make him feel better, not me.

“Yeah, sorry.”

And suddenly it doesn’t matter that we had a fight, that my head is killing me and I would like to go to sleep.

“Could you sit with me, please?” I ask from below. “Hold me?”

He nods and hurries closer. He sits down on the bed besides me, props himself up on what few pillows I have. I lean into him, let him put his arm around me and rest my head against his chest.
He’s warm and just right and for a moment it’s perfect again and we’re okay again.

So I say, “Alex, can we just forget all that? Just be happy again, just be us again?”
His head comes up and strokes the back of my head.

When he speaks, I feel the vibration of his voice against my cheek.

“I’m scared, Selena. I’m scared that this is going to be like yesterday all over, just worse and I can’t let that happen, do you understand?”

His hand stops and there’s a tension in his fingers. Fear in his voice. Fear not just for me but of me. Like I might really hate him.

And that makes me scared too.

So I nod. “Okay.”

He clears his throat.

“I know Claire because we used to date,” he says then and my stomach twists.

I can’t breathe for a moment. Why didn’t I know this? Why didn’t either of them tell me about it?

Claire said she didn’t want to interfere in affairs that weren’t hers to meddle with, but why Alex?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper.

His muscles tense for a moment, then relax with a sigh.

“I don’t know. I think it’s- I think I was scared it would trigger something in you? Make you think I was about to abandon you or something. And then I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to weigh you down with more negativity on top of everything you had going on.”

“What negativity?” I can’t help the questions from leaving my mouth. I just can’t. I know he’ll tell me, but there’s this fear in the back of my mind. This gnawing fear of something I’m not quite able to put into words and I’m not sure I even want to put into words.

“The relationship didn’t go well. Otherwise I’m sure I’d have told you at some point but-” He halts.

“Claire is a difficult person. Or at least she was to me. One moment she’d be this sweet and nice girl that I could talk to about anything and who’d give me great advice.”

I swallow. He never asked me for advice, did he? Not once. He never told me about problems he had, either. Not in recent years, at least.

Was that because he didn’t want to bother me, because he thought I couldn’t take it on top of all else, or because he didn’t trust me to be of help?

He still hasn’t come to me looking for help. Even though I’m better.

“But the next moment she’d be demanding and cruel. She’d come up with all these reasons why I should spend time with her instead of you and she said all these things that I’ve honestly been trying my best to just forget. Not just about you, but about us as well.”

Disbelief. Claire would never. She’s always so kind…

Say it. You are gorgeous.

Nonsense! You’re coming with us. You wanna be a girl? Then bloody act like one, too.

You should come along sometime.

Did you have fun?

“What did she say? About us.” My voice comes out in a whisper, asking because it has to ask.

“I can’t tell you. This is what I’ve been trying to protect you from all along because I know how she can get under your skin.”

I shiver runs down my back. I think I’m relieved that he won’t tell me, whether it’s true or not.

“It got worse over time. That’s how toxic people are, I think. They demand and when you don’t deliver, they try to bully you into submission.” Pause. “I tried leaving her, about a month after we started dating. But she wouldn’t let me. She’d keep showing up at my doorstep, being all nice and shiny as long as my parents were there, only to show her true face as soon as we were alone. She tried to force me into sleeping with her, threatened to scream. She’d perforated the condom with a needle.” His voice is calm, void any emotion.

How can he talk about this so easily?

“So I threw her out and I threatened going to the police, because she had no proof for something that had never happened anyway. But nothing happened after that. And then you happened and I forgot almost until you came back from school and told me you’d found a new friend.”

Doubt. Doubt and guilt because I’m doubting him. Shouldn’t I trust him? Him more than anybody?

Because I love him, because I’ve known him for so long. Because he loves me.

“Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

“It was dumb, I know. I- You seemed so happy and excited and I didn’t want to take that away from you. And anyway, it wasn’t just Claire, but Emma and Mika, too, right? So I thought maybe it was fine and I could just pay attention and get you out if it ever got bad.”

“And why are you telling me now? And anyway, what has all this got to do with her befriending me?”

He opens his mouth and I hear his breathing halt when he’s about to speak, but then it starts again.

Only several seconds later, he says, “I think she’s trying to get at me through you. Because She couldn’t get me directly. I don’t know whether she just wants to scare me, drive us apart or hurt you to hurt me but honestly I don’t want to find out.”

Ridiculous. The thought that this isn’t even about me. She’s so genuine, so nice, so funny.

But he is Alex.

What does it mean if he’s right? And worse, what does it mean if he’s not?

My stomach turns.

Viewed from the right perspective, his claims are paranoid and so self-centered.

Not everything’s about you, I want to say, but I don’t. Because it might as well be and I don’t want let my pride ruin the relationship.

My head hurts and I feel sick. Thinking hurts.

Suddenly, his body is too warm against my cheek and he’s too close and even his breathing is too much noise.

I sit up.

“Alex…” A wave of pain hits my head and I clamp my eyes shut. Fuck. “I think you’d better go now.”

He gets up without a word, climbs out of the bed, and opens the door. But then he stops.

“Selena-” His voice breaks. “I love you. More than anything in the world, okay. I need you to understand that. I love you.”

I nod and say “Yeah.” but I don’t meet his eyes and I’m not sure I believe him.