Go Around

Kennedy rolled over the next morning and she briefly remembered Alex being there with her the previous night, but he wasn’t in her room and she wondered if he had picked up and left in the middle of the night because that’s just what he did with girls, but she wasn’t just any other girl which is why it confused her so much.
She flopped back down on her bed, her hair spreading out all over her face and above her on her pillow so that it looked like Medusa’s snakes on her head.
Eventually she tossed her legs over the side of the bed and willed herself to get up. She put on a large shirt that went down a few inches above her knees and put on some slippers and found a note sitting on her nightstand. She picked it up and it read I love you. –A. and that was it. At first she was confused because she thought that he had just left, but when she read it, it felt like he was getting back at her for leaving a note that said the exact same thing when she moved to New York. She tried to shake it off and walked downstairs but she couldn’t entirely get rid of the feeling that something was wrong.
She half expected her mother to be sitting at the table, working on her crossword puzzle, but alas her mother wasn’t home which did nothing but confirm Kennedy’s suspicions that her mother had found another man to subsidize her accounts.
All Kennedy had been was apprehensive that her mother was seeing somebody new, but no matter what her mom had always had Saturday afternoon off work because it used to be Kennedy’s and Lorelei’s bonding day, but now it was more of a day so Lorelei could have sex with random men. So when Lorelei wasn’t home on Saturday morning, sitting at the table working on her Saturday crossword puzzle, Kennedy knew that her mother was seeing somebody, whether it be an old or new flame.
Rather than finding her mother, she found Alex sitting in his boxers at her table, eating cereal and doing the Saturday morning crossword puzzle that he must have got from the newspaper that her family subscribed to. “Morning,” he greeted her, briefly looking up at her then looking back at his crossword.
She gave him a wary smile then held up the note he left on her nightstand, “Was this supposed to be a joke?” she asked with a smile in her voice while waving the note in the air.
He looked up at her and gave her a crooked smile. “Did it scare you?” he asked, not making eye contact with her.
“A little,” she admitted with a nod.
“That’s how I felt when I got the note from you,” he told her, no longer smiling.
“What are you trying to tell me, Alex?” she asked, the smile gone from her voice. She was scared now. It felt like he was going to tell her that he thought that he loved her, but he hadn’t really and he wanted to end everything that they had been working so hard to keep a secret from everything and everyone.
“Just like the note says: I love you,” he told her, still looking down at t he crossword that, from what Kennedy could see, nothing had been filled in.
“Are you sure?” she asked, trying to swallow the lump in her throat.
He looked up at her and gave his wide, goofy smile, “I’m 100% positive,” he told her.
“Then why did you leave me this?” she asked, her heart beating a little faster.
“I don’t know, Kenne. I just woke up this morning and felt like writing it and I came down here. I honestly didn’t have the intention of having it scare you, that was just an afterthought,” he told her and he looked sincere enough so Kennedy decided to let it drop.
“Alright, if you say so,” she said a little trepidiciously.
“Well, I do so,” and he stuck his tongue out her to prove his point to which she laughed.
“You’re such an odd ball,” she told him, but she couldn’t stop the sinking feeling that she had fallen even more in love with him than she was when she gotten back there.
“Can I ask you a question?” Alex asked her after a temporary moment of silence.
“Of course,” she answered automatically.
“What exactly did Jack say to you last night?” he asked her and looked her dead in the eye. She looked down at the ground and tried to recall what Jack had rudely told her the night before and, at first, she didn’t remember a single word other than it had hurt her feelings, but in a seconds time, it all came rushing back to her.
“Um, he told me that I was trying to ruin yours and Lisa’s relationship, which I guess I can see why he’s think that, but it’s not like I went out of my way to do that. His exact words were I was really trying not to be mad at you, Kennedy, for what you did to Alex and me, but I don’t think that I can forgive you as easily as Alex did – but then again you aren’t willing to fuck me to get back in my good graces like you were willing to do with him, now are you? and that was everything. I told him he could go fuck himself or something like that and then I walked away,” she told him. She was slightly surprised that she remembered the exact wording he had used, but apparently Kennedy just had a really good memory.
Alex’s face was completely straight, but Kennedy could tell that he was mad – no, he wasn’t mad, he was furious. “I’ll kill him,” Alex said, looking Kennedy dead in the eye.
“Alex, I don’t think you should talk to him about it. Honestly, it’s more between Jack and me then it is between you and him, so just let me deal with it. He was kind of right in a way,” Kennedy mused more to herself.
“Kennedy, I don’t want him to be mean to you,” he told her, and for some reason Kenned found it kind of funny that Alex, scrawny skinny Alex, thought that he could protect her.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll talk to him when he’s by himself and hasn’t been drinking and then we’ll see how it goes. Let’s see if he and I can work through this,” she said, thinking about how she missed hers and Jack’s relationship before she left, but, even though she would never admit it aloud, it liked hers and Alex’s relationship a lot better after she had been to New York.
“Wait a second…” Alex said and he looked like he was keep in thought, with his eyebrows knitted together, “how did he even find out that we were seeing each other?” he asked then eyed Kennedy.
She looked guilty without even trying and she finally said, “Well, he and I talked about it when it first happened and he was concerned, but I told him we had stopped everything but apparently he didn’t believe me,” she told him, looking down at the ground sheepishly.
“Kennedy!” he exclaimed in a scolding voice.
“I’m sorry!” she told him, “I just needed someone to talk to and he was there the last time we were together so I thought he’d be a little more understanding,” she told him, with her pouty face on.
He wanted to be mad at her for exposing their secret, but she looked so cute when she made her pouty face that it made it really, excruciatingly hard for him to be mad at her. “Oh my god, come here,” he said and grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him and she stumbled and fell on top of him and he fixed her so that she was sitting on her lap.
“God, I love you,” he whispered into her chest, which was pointedly in front of his face.
She laughed and stroked his hair, “I love you more,” she told him into his head while she kissed it.
“Whatever, you wish,” he told her and she let out a little giggle.
They sat there for a minute, kissing different body parts on each other, but it was entirely quiet.
“So you want to know what I don’t think we’ve ever done?” Alex asked and Kennedy could tell that he had mischievous intentions.
“What?” she asked, apprehensively.
“Had sex on a table,” he told her and a grin that lit up his entire face spread from side to side.
“That’s true, we haven’t done that,” she conceded, but she didn’t add that she didn’t intend to have sex on the table where she and her mother ate breakfast and (sometimes) dinner.
“Please, Kennedy, please, please, please,” he pleaded with her and took both of her hands in his own and looked like he was praying.
“I don’t want to have sex on a surface where I ate breakfast and dinner,” she told him, stubbornly.
“Come on, you can clean it afterward,” he tried to persuade her, but she had no intention of budging on this.
“No, absolutely not,” she said and shook her head and stuck her nose in the air.
“Pretty please, with sugar on top?” he asked her in a more seductive tone and he nuzzled his head into her neck and started head butting her like he was a cat which was helping a little bit because he was just so cute.
She moved and sat on the table while her feet dangled off the side. A greedy look made its way to Alex’s eyes and eventually he had a greedy grin, too. He stood up and pushed her down on the table and her heart beat quickened. Her entire table was a thick glass with a rot-iron edge, so laying down on the table sent shivers down her spine.
He got on top of her and started kissing her neck and made his way down her skeleton until he reached her breasts. He started to play with them and she let out moans of pleasure to which he gave a satisfied smile. He took off her top so that she was laying in just her underwear and slippers, which he pulled off as soon as he saw them.
“I can’t believe you’re making me have sex with you on my table,” Kennedy commented as he kissed his way up her leg. She felt him laugh, but heard nothing.
He came back up face-to-face with her, “Your butt looks cute through the glass,” he told her and it made her laugh.
“How did you get a view of my ass?” she asked.
“While I was kissing lower on your leg, I saw it from underneath the table,” he told her while she just yanked on his boxers and he laughed because she was smiling.
“You’re so cute,” he told her while he pulled off her lacy undies that she wore specifically for him the night before.
“Whatever, you’re just saying that,” she told him.
He stopped what he was doing and hovered so that he was directly above her, “Never think that I don’t think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he told her, and regularly she would have laughed, but he just looked so serious that she decided that it most likely wasn’t a joke.
He sat there for a minute while she said nothing and then returned to what he was doing. He entered her slowly and she let out little gasps, but then he shoved his entire length in her and she let out a sharp gasp and grabbed the end of the table as much as she could, as hard as she could.
He let out a slow breath and then started moving back and forth slowly, but started moving faster because he knew her well enough to know that she did not have an orgasm if he went slowly, unlike Lisa. You could go as slow as a snail with Lisa and she’d still find a way to have an orgasm, but with Kennedy you had to go fast or not at all.
He was standing up while her butt was on the very edge of the table, making it less likely that they would break the table if they were doing missionary and he was on top of her on top of the table. He thought that would have just been uncomfortable so he pulled her legs down so that it gave him easier access to have sex with her while he was standing up.
Kennedy kept her eyes closed the entire time and bit on her lip hard; while Alex did the things that she loved the most.
Kennedy hit her climax and Alex followed shortly behind and then he collapsed on top of her, resting his head on her stomach. After laying there for a minute, heavy panting and all, Kennedy started to get restless by the fact that she was laying on her table naked. “Ugh, get off me,” she said and pushed his head off her stomach.
“That was rude,” he said and stuck his tongue out at her again.
“No, you’re just hot and sweaty and I’m already hot and sweaty and I don’t need your hotness and sweatiness seeping onto me,” she said and Alex just stared at her in pure astonishment.
“How is it possible that when you’re not making sense you still manage to make sense?” he asked, grabbing his boxers and pulling them up so they sit comfortably on his hips.
“It’s a gift,” she said with smugness hinting in her voice while she grabbed her too-large-for-her sweater and threw it over her body. “So you already had breakfast, right?” she asked, walking into the kitchen, ducking down and opening the cabinet underneath the sink and coming back up and setting the 409 on the counter and he laughed.
“Yeah, I’ve already ate,” he said and nodded.
“Why are you laughing?” she asked, completely confused, but with a confused smile on her face.
“I just think it’s cute that the minute we get done having sex you grab the 409 in preparation to clean the table off,” he said and shook his head, but he was still laughing.
“Well, I don’t want to eat on a sweaty, sex ridden surface,” she said, trying to defend her actions.
“I didn’t say I didn’t understand why you were doing it, I just think it’s cute,” he corrected her and she rolled her eyes at him.
“Make fun of me all you want, you know it’s one of the things you love about me,” she told him, sticking her nose in the air and turning around to sift through the contents of her refrigerator.
“Yes, I continually remind myself how much I love you because of your OCD tendencies,” he joked and she gave him the evil eye.
“Do you mind if I eat?” she asked, bending over, giving him a good view of her butt to which he smiled.
“Yes, I totally care that you want to eat actual food – how dare you!” he said sarcastically, but it earned him another evil eye from Kennedy.
“I had to ask,” she said and pulled something out of the fridge.
“Would someone actually care that you ate?” he asked, perplexed.
“Some of the boys in New York hated watching girls eat because they thought that the girls would get fat if they saw them eat. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but to answer your question, yes, people do care,” she said, popping open the top on a fat free vanilla yogurt.
“That’s really all you’re having for breakfast?” Alex asked, concerned about Kennedy. He knew that she had lost some weight since she had moved to New York, but he didn’t think anything about it that much – he thought it was just New York.
“Trust me, it fills me up,” she told him with a laugh and taking a scoop full into her mouth. “Alex?” she asked, not making eye contact with him, but looking down at the counter top instead.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked, still not looking at him.
“Of course,” he said, preparing for a light hearted question because Kennedy never really asked serious questions, most of the questions she asked were more to get a rise out of people. One of the party’s that he had taken her to, whenever a boy came up to meet her she would turn to him, give him a serious look and ask, ”How big is your penis?” and that would be that. If guys shook it off and laughed about it then she usually talked to them, but if they made a big production about it then she just got bored.
“What did Lisa mean last night when she asked you why you didn’t come after me when you found me?” Kennedy asked him, taking another bite of her vanilla yogurt.
Alex’s face fell and his face went as white as a sheet. “I thought you were asleep,” he said simply.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” she told him, just as fierce as she’d always been.
He looked up at her with sad eyes, begging her not to make him say it, but of course she saw none of it because she was refusing to make eye contact with him while they had this conversation. Alex gave up on trying to make her look up and let out a sigh. He put his arms on the counter in front of him and leaned forward, looking down at the ground.
“When you moved to New York I tried to find out where you were because, of course, I hadn’t known where you’d gone,” he said simply and he prayed that she wouldn’t pry more because he really didn’t want to tell her – he had never intended to tell her what he had attempted to do when she moved away.
“And?” she asked, pushing him.
He should have guessed that she would push him. He usually didn’t have a problem with it because what Kennedy usually wanted to push him about was into talking to her about why he was angry or sad and it was usually better to talk about those things so that you didn’t have pent up aggression, but this, Alex had wanted to keep to himself.
“And my dad so happened to have a friend who could find out where you were,” he told her, not wanting to give up the information.
“Come on, Alex, you have to give me more than that,” she pleaded with him, setting her yogurt aside.
“And he found you in New York, told me where you were, but I decided not to come get you,” he blurted out the rest because there was just no nice way of saying it.
“Why didn’t you come find me?” she asked, but she didn’t ask it in a way that indicated that she was hurt by his choice, just curious.
“Because, like I told Lisa last night, you hadn’t told us you were leaving, you got a different phone, and cut off all ties with us for a reason so I decided to respect your wishes,” he told her, his turn to not make eye contact with her.
They remained silent for a few minutes, both of them just soaking in the information.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked after a second of lamenting on whether or not she was mad.
“No, of course not,” she said, dismissing the thought easily.
“Are you sure? I would understand if you were. I think that I would be mad had the roles been reversed,” he told her, now looking up because he felt better knowing that she wasn’t mad.
“I’m positive, I was just going in and out of consciousness last night that that happened to be one of the things I overheard and it just stuck with me,” she said and shook her head, grabbed her yogurt then walked out of the kitchen and into the dining room, where Alex was already standing.
She sat down at the table with her yogurt in front of her, temporarily forgetting that she’d just had sex on that table and Alex didn’t want to be the one to remind her.
“So do you know why you were so loopy last night?” Alex asked, sitting next to her.
Kennedy laughed, “No, but I know that I wasn’t myself,” she said and let out a sigh.
“Did somebody drug your drink?” he asked.
“I don’t think so, but who knows. I was three sheets to the wind, so I might have let someone have my drink,” she said, trying to think back and remember the previous night.
“I’ve seen you drunk a thousand times and I just think that it’s weird that you were acting so different,” Alex said, more to himself than anything.
“Who was the second voice with you guys last night?” Kennedy asked suddenly and kind of out of the blue.
“Second voice?”
“Yeah, there was you, Lisa, and someone else, who was it?”
“Oh, that was Zack. Lisa had called him over and it just happened to catch my attention,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“I’m sorry about causing you and Lisa to get into a fight, by the way,” she said apologetically and looking down at the table some more.
Alex reached across and placed his hand on top of hers and tried to make eye contact with her. “It’s alright, I just can’t believe that Jack actually told her about our past because it’s just going to make it that much harder to convince her that you and I have a strictly platonic relationship,” Alex said.
“But we don’t have a simply platonic relationship,” Kennedy said, upset because Jack’s words kept sinking further and further into her head.
“Well, would you rather me just go up to Lisa and say ‘hey honey, so I know that you were concerned that Kennedy and I were still in love with each other, but I’m just coming to tell you that you were right’?” Alex asked her, in a voice a few octaves higher than his own. His face went straight after the mockery and he looked her dead in the eye.
“I’ve just been reconsidering what I asked you to do,” Kennedy said, feeling guilty about Lisa all over again. This is why she hated when they brought Lisa up.
“Kennedy, you can’t keep playing these games with me. Just tell me what you want me to do,” Alex pleaded with her, now placing both hands on top of her one on the table.
“I don’t know, that’s the problem. Some part of me wants you to break it off with her because I want you all to myself and I get jealous knowing that you’re free to be cute-sy with her in public and not me, but on the other hand I don’t want you to because everybody would hate me and blame me even if we didn’t come out immediately and say that we were together,” she told him her dilemma.
Alex got off the chair he was sitting on and kneeled in front of her and looked her dead in the eye, “Which is more important to you?” he asked.
She thought about it for a moment then let out a sigh. “Stay with her,” she said and bit her bottom lip, wondering, not for the first time, if she was making the right decision.
“Are you positive?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m positive. I just hate being jealous,” she said and he laughed along with her.
“I hate being jealous, too,” he said and kissed her cheek.
“So what do you want me to do about Jack?” she asked him as he stood up.
He let out a sigh, “I honestly don’t know. Go talk to him today and see if you can clear the air,” Alex suggested.
Kennedy was kind of taken off guard, “Am I not spending the day with you?” she asked, already getting possessive.
He laughed and smiled, “That’s one of the bad things about you not wanting me to break up with Lisa. I still have to actually act like her boyfriend,” Alex said and he left her in the dining room to run upstairs and grab his clothes.
Kennedy let out a sigh while still at her table let her head flop back so that she was staring at the ceiling.
She heard Alex coming down the stairs, but she paid him no attention. “Are you going to tell me how you spotted the big dipper again?” Alex said and Kennedy could hear his condescending tone.
“Shut up,” she said, getting her head up and smacking him with the back of her hand on his chest and he let out a laugh.
“Alright, I’ll see you later. Possibly tonight,” he told her, leaning down and giving her a soft but passionate kiss on the lips. “I love you,” he reminded her, then walked away without waiting for a response from her.
As soon as the door shut she said, “I love you, too,” and she sat there, wondering what she was going to do for the rest of the day.
She spotted the 409 and remembered that she had to clean the table so she shot out of her seat, threw the remaining of her yogurt away and started to scrub the shit out of the table.