All We've Ever Known

“Alex, you didn’t have to pay for me…” I muttered as we walked out of the restaurant. My stomach was churning uneasily from the single taco that I seemed to have inhaled, and I could feel my anxiety starting to creep up.

What did you do?! Why would you eat that?! my mind shouted angrily. The other more rational half was calmly mumbling, It’s okay… It was good food and you enjoyed yourself. That’s all that matters.

However, the taco happened to be the first bit of solid food I had consumed in the last three days, which was a big deal in my mind. I had fallen back into my nutrition drinks after a couple of violent episodes of not being about to keep my food down. Fuck you, bulimia, I mentally muttered. You do not win this time.

“Macy, it was my treat, remember? It wasn’t your idea to come here, so why make you pay?” Alex replied happily as we got into his car.

“I just… I don’t know, I feel bad,” I said, buckling my seat belt.

Alex did the same and started the car, all the while saying, “Mace, please. It’s no big deal! Where’s this dessert place you want to go?”

I smiled slightly and replied, “It’s on the corner of Cooper.”

“Wait, that awesome ice cream place that I passed on the way in here?! I wanted to go in there so bad!” he said with a laugh as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed in the direction of the ice cream parlor.

“Well, there you go!” I laughed. “That’s the exact reason I thought it would be perfect. It looks like something you would wholeheartedly enjoy.”

“You know me all too well,” Alex replied with a wink, which only made my heart sink.

I didn’t. I didn’t know Alex as much as I used to. Granted, I still fully remembered how he used to be, but it had been four years since I had last seen him, and a person could change a hell of a lot after four years. My stomach lurched at the thought of how much I had changed, and how much Alex didn’t know about me. It made me feel slightly guilty…

“What flavor are you getting?” he asked as we waited in line to order. It was a beautiful night, so naturally everyone and their mother was getting ice cream.

I gulped and looked down at the tubs of ice cream in the freezers. The brightly colored light bulbs that hung from the ceiling on wires reflected off of the glass, burning their image into my mind. I couldn’t possibly eat ice cream. I hadn’t had ice cream in years, and quite frankly I wasn’t ready to get over that fear food. I hadn’t thought that far into the trip – the part where I’d actually have to eat what I suggested.

“Mace?” Alex asked, peering down into my eyes. He seemed to sense my frustration, since he tilted my chin up so I could look up at him. “You okay?”

I nodded and looked back down, clearing my throat and muttering, “Yeah… I’m just thinking.”

I settled on just one small scoop of vanilla ice cream, and after much bickering, Alex won the battle over who would pay. He did however, let the one-scoop of ice cream dilemma slide after realizing that I was extremely bothered by it.

“Alex, thank you…” I mumbled as we left the ice cream shop, bowls of ice cream in hand. “We could’ve stayed in there you know!”

“No problem!” he said, wrapping his arm around my shoulder. “But you can’t eat it yet. I told you I had somewhere else to take you! Hopefully you haven’t been there already…”

I laughed and replied, “I’m sure I haven’t. I don’t do much exploring around here…”

He drove out of the town, which wasn’t very far at all, to where the farmlands stretched out their tired lines of mulch and crops. If there was one thing I loved about Seaford, it was the never-ending ability to surprise you. One second you could be in suburbia, and the next you could be in nowhere land. You could get lost for hours just enjoying the scenery.

“This is a really nice place to live,” Alex said as he glanced out the window at the looming figures of farmhouses and silos.

I nodded and replied, “Definitely. Makes me happy over here.”

There was a pause before Alex turned and said, “You’re happy here? Like, really happy?”

I thought for a moment, deciding if I should answer as honestly as possible. I was sick of lying and saying that I was happy, but at the same time – I truly was happy here, happier than I ever was in Maryland.

“Yeah…” I said quietly. “I really do love it here.”

Alex nodded and stayed silent the rest of the way until we reached his chosen destination. As I had predicted, I had never seen the expansive, absolutely gorgeous lake that was nestled quietly in the trees. It quietly lapped at the rocks surrounding it, and Alex led me by the hand to a particularly large boulder where we sat and began eating our ice cream. It was silent for most of the time, and it seemed both of us were in deep thought.

“So tell me about yourself,” Alex finally said.

I looked over nervously and replied, “What… Do you want to know?”

He shrugged and answered, “Anything! You’re so mysterious now.”

I looked at him incredulously and sighed. Mysterious? No. Try “pathetic”. I was anything but mysterious. Some days I felt like a book opened wide for all to see. As if the scars everywhere didn’t reveal enough…

“You seem so much more reserved…” he mumbled, his tone becoming much more serious.

I just shrugged, unable to think of a response. I was reserved because I didn’t trust people. That, and I didn’t feel it was a necessity to speak at every given moment – that did tend to annoy people. At least… It annoyed me.

“Things are different, I guess,” I replied slowly. “My life is… Different.”

“And why’s that?” he asked sincerely, looking me straight in the eyes. I looked away quickly and let the eerie sound of two loons calling to one another take me elsewhere for a moment.

“I don’t know… I just… Felt that change was necessary. I was sick of living my life the way I had been…”

Alex nodded and drew his knees up to his chest, hugging them tightly. He didn’t press anymore on the subject and allowed both of our minds to wander once more.

“You seem more mature,” I said quietly, looking over at him.

“Me?” he laughed. “Me?!”

I laughed as well, and replied, “Yes, you. You seem more… Experienced in life.”

“As do you.”

I shook my head and said, “No… I wouldn’t call it experience.”

“I wouldn’t call my understanding of life ‘experience’ either. I owe it all to you, you know.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, looking up at him.

“I wouldn’t have known half of the stuff I know now if I didn’t go through high school with you… Plus, you’re the one who made me agree to be in the band…”

I sat there in silence for a moment, true guilt washing over me. It was all my fault. I ruined everything for him, and he could never get that high school experience back.

“I’m sorry…” I muttered. “I ruined it all.”

“Stop saying that… You didn’t ruin it at all, Mace,” Alex said quietly.

“Yeah, I brought you down tremendously. I was stupid and inconsiderate.”

“You were in a bad place…” he replied, touching my shoulder affectionately. I just shook my head and looked down.

“Macy Lynn, I really admire you, you know… You’ve been through so much – things I probably couldn’t even dream of experiencing – and are still here and… Actually semi-happy for once. You seem so… I don’t know, just… ‘Knowing’, if that makes sense. You understand things I’ll never be able to understand.”

I looked up at him, a feeling that could only be described as a balloon filling with air expanding in my chest. His eyes were bright and smiling without his mouth actually doing the action. He leaned down and pressed his lips gently to mine, this time differently. This time it was spontaneous, whereas the incidence in Maryland felt more calculated. His lips formed familiarly to mine, and the feeling of safety settled into my chest.

But it was a short-lived joy before I realized that this was all a huge mistake. I pulled back instantly and looked down at the hard lines that crisscrossed the rock.

“Why do you keep doing that…” I whispered, unable to look at him.

He sighed heavily looked out across the murky surface of the lake. “Because I can’t leave…”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to ever leave you. I’ve been away from you too long to be stupid enough to do that. Kissing you is the only thing that makes me think that this could last a little longer…”

I shook my head and replied sadly, “Alex, there’s still so much you don’t know about me. How could you say that when I have a history that would turn you off in a second? And Lisa – she’s perfect for you! Totally normal! I just don’t get why…”

“Because… I never stopped caring so much about you. I don’t know how I feel… But certainly isn’t a feeling one friend has for another,” he said, forcefully shoving himself off of the rock. “All this time I tried to form Lisa in a way so that she could fit that hole that was left when we broke up. But it never fucking worked, because you know why? I don’t think we were ever meant to be together. I think… I don’t know... We just weren’t right. Seeing you made me realize that and I don’t care what you’ve done or where you’ve been – I just care that you’re still alive and that you’re getting better and happier. That’s all I ever wanted for you Macy, and it’s weird seeing that become a reality.”

By now small tears had formed in my eyes, and I did my best to keep them at bay. The fact that Alex had been thinking this all this time made my heart soar.

“Macy, don’t tell me you don’t want this either.”

I couldn’t even begin to think of risking what I had established so far in life. Even considering something as stupid as this would surely destroy everything that I had.

“But you’ve been with Lisa for so long…” I muttered, looking down at my palms. I could hear Alex laugh dryly, and I warily looked up.

“You’re kidding, right? Was what I just said not clear enough? Lisa and I aren’t meant for each other. We’ve been fighting all the fucking time and I just don’t feel… Like it can go on anymore… Not since you came back.”

I sighed and replied hastily, “See, that’s what makes me nervous. You would never have felt this way if I never visited. If you never saw me again you would’ve just forgotten about me and nothing have mattered. That doesn’t make me trust that this will work out. It’s not even like… You looked for me or anything when we broke up! I ran away and… You never followed…”

Alex spun in a slow circle, a blank look on his face. He was clearly annoyed to the point of delusion, and I couldn’t blame him - this whole situation was crazy and unexpected.

“Macy, I did fucking look for you,” he finally said, his tone low and slightly menacing. “I came back to your fucking house and your mom told me you moved away. She told me she didn’t know where you went. Do you know how that fucking felt? I was sure you died. Honestly, I thought you went off and killed yourself. It didn’t help when I heard that you had actually tried to!”

My breath caught in my throat. How did he know that? That was such an incredibly shameful part of my life - I never talked about it, so how did he know?

“Who told you?” I whispered, shutting my eyes.

He sighed and replied, “I… Don’t remember. I was worried out of my fucking mind thinking you had died, and I tried to convince myself all this time that you actually had, just so the pain of losing you would go away. It had been replaced by some other, more permanent pain. Do you have any idea how it felt to see you sitting in my house, completely alive?”

I shook my head and said, “Alex, I’m sorry… I never meant to run away, but I had to. My life was… An absolute disaster and I didn’t know how to fix it. You broke up with me, and… I had reasons to be upset other than the fact that you broke up with me. I never tried to kill myself over that.”

“Then please, Macy. Enlighten me,” he said, a slightly bitter edge to his voice. This angered me, and I got off of the rock and stood up, tears pricking my eyes. It hurt that he had such an attitude about all of this, when he didn’t even know the half of it.

“Please don’t talk to me like that, Alex - my life was complete and utter shit. I was dealing with so much emotional trauma and juggling all of these different things and then… And then I got pregnant…” I finally whispered, looking at my feet. The silence that ensued was deafening, and I wished I could take back what I had said.

“…what?” Alex whispered incredulously, his eyes widening. “When?”

“Right before you broke up with me…” I replied quietly, sitting down on the damp grass. “I had known for about three months prior.”

He sat down beside me, still incredibly shocked. “But… Why didn’t you say anything?!”

I shook my head, the tears now falling freely. “How could I? I knew it wasn’t going to turn out right. After everything I was doing to myself, there was no chance for that poor thing…”

“So… What happened?” he asked, fear clearly present in his voice.

I just cried. I couldn’t possibly say that I had lost it… The guilt that settled in every time I even thought about it was too much – I didn’t even want to try talking about it.

“And… that’s… Why you tried to kill yourself,” Alex concluded. “Mace, I’m so sorry.”

“There’s nothing you could’ve done…” I replied, looking up and gently wiping at my eyes.

“I could’ve been there for you. I could’ve been there for you during everything… And I wasn’t… Macy, I’m so sorry all of that fucking happened to you… You are the last person who would ever deserve such terrible things…”

I just continued to stare down at the ground. I could hear Alex get up and sit down directly beside me, his arms wrapping firmly around my body. I could feel the warmth of his being enveloping me, and in that moment it didn’t matter that I was a terribly broken soul who was faultily bandaged. It didn’t matter that I had done things I wasn’t proud of. His simple hug was enough to tell me I was okay. That everything was going to be fine.

He pulled away from me and stared into my eyes, his twinkling dark brown eyes forcing a smile out of me. He leaned down, and for the second time that night, kissed me. He kissed me for a long time, enough to make my head spin and my vision blur.

“Macy Lynn…” he whispered, pressing his forehead to mine. “I’m not leaving. I’m not ever leaving. Please tell me that you want me to stay.”