Heart's in Baltimore

"Alex, why was that girl crying in our front yard?" Lisa's voice rung through the thin walls of the couple's house.

Alex sat in silence, ignoring Lisa's bombarding questions. He didn't have the answers. He didn't have the mental capacity at the moment to even begin to fathom all the things he had said to Riley and the possible affect they had on her.

"Alex!" Lisa called again, making her way closer to the bedroom where Alex was laid out across the bed.

Swinging the smooth, white door open, Lisa stepped inside the quaint bedroom, slipping off her small, black ballet flats. Her blonde hair clung to her petite frame, as the temperature had begun rising in the state of Maryland and sweating was inevitable. "Alex, what the hell?"

No answer.

"Alexander, I'm speaking to you."
'
"Yeah, well, I don't really want to speak or to be spoken to right now, Lisa," Alex rolled his brown eyes up towards the ceiling.

"Oh?" Lisa raised her eyebrows suggestively. "Then I know something that might make you talk..."

Alex did his best to ignore her suggestive tone and her psychotic bedroom eyes. Maybe if I ignore her, she'll go away, he thought to himself.

Much to his despair, the petite woman had climbed onto him and straddled herself across his waist. As her lips attached to the twenty-four year old man's neck, Alex had to fight back the groan of frustration building up in the back of his throat.

"Lisa, stop," Alex said sternly, lightly pushing his girlfriend off of his body. Her eyes filled with hurt and rejection, Alex did his best to find an excuse to rejecting her advances. "Look, I just... there's a lot on mind right now, okay? It's not that I don't want you, Lis." It's because you want Riley, the little voice inside of Alex's head told him. "It's just... I'm not feeling it right now. Sorry."

"That's your excuse? You're not feeling it? What the hell, Alex?" the hurt that was in Lisa's orbs just minutes before had suddenly disappeared, now filling themselves with anger. "So are you going to tell me what the hell happened after you left with that girl? Or am I going to have to figure it out myself?" she threatened.

"Lisa, it's nothing for you to be worried about. It's none of your business," Alex defended, feeling his own anger build up.

Lisa always did this. Every time they fought, she made it look like whatever it was Alex had done was ten times worse than it really was.

"It concerns you - my boyfriend. It is my business. It's making you not want me... It does, in fact, concern me," Lisa challenged the man in front of her, standing up from her spot on the bed and smoothing out her dress.

Alex stood up himself, staring at his girlfriend intently. What had he ever saw in her? "Lisa, shut up, okay? It's none of your business. What happened between Riley and I stays between the two of us. Not you, me, and Riley. Stop fretting."

"The last time you told me to stop fretting, you were cheating on me," Lisa threw back.

Alex stopped dead in his spot. Was she really throwing that back in his face? "That was two years ago, Lisa. Let. It. Go."

"How can I let it go when you're showing the signs of cheating again?" Lisa put on a pseudo-hurt expression.

"Lisa, we already discussed that when it happened and we're not discussing it again. I'm sorry for cheating on you. I really am. I never meant for it to happen. I was drunk off my ass, which is a detail that you always convinently forget when you throw it back in my face," Alex challenged the small girl. Two could play at that game, he thought.

"Alex, come on. Sorry for bringing it up. I just... I'm scared, you know? I really, really love you. More than anything," Lisa smiled weakly at the man in front of her.

Alex felt a sting in his heart as he realized the sincerity of Lisa's words. She had said a lot of bitchy things in the time he had known her, but she never failed to say "I love you" with every ounce of sincerity and emotion in her.

The problem, though, was Alex wasn't quite sure he loved Lisa in just the way she loved him. He loved her to pieces, that was a well known fact. Did he love Lisa in the intimate, 'spend the rest of our lives together' way that she so desperately wanted him to? That subject was iffy.

More importantly, though, did Alex love Lisa nearly as much as he loved Riley?

Those thoughts, however, didn't stop Alex from blurting just what he knew the girl wanted to hear. "I love you so much, Lisa. More than you know."

*****

"Riley, what do you mean you want to go home? You just got here. What about Alex? Jack? Zack? Rian? Your parents? ...Me?" Jared's voice cracked out of the deep sadness that had fallen over him as he stared at his best friend's tear stained face.

"I'm sorry, J-jared... I want to stay for you guys. I can't. Alex hates me. He told me so. Co-coming here was a b-big mistake... He has Lisa now. I can't compete with her, Jared. I can't; she's perfect," the tears were racking out of Riley's frail body heavily, causing her to cough every now and then.

"Your only mistake is thinking that Lisa's better than you," the older man reached his arm out to the girl's arm in a soothing way. "You're twice the person she'll ever be, Riley. I promise. Alex... his head in a million places, okay? You showed up out of nowhere and he doesn't know how to handle it."

"H-he said he hated m-me..." Riley trailed off, her once full of life eyes had suddenly settled to a depressing undertone.

This caught Jared's attention. He raised a brow at his long lost best friend, signalling for her to continue with the story.

As she did just that, Jared could feel the anger building in the pit of his stomach. He knew that Alex would naturally having trouble dealing with Riley turning up out of nowhere like she had, but he had no right to say that he hated her. Jared understood that Alex most likely had said the words out of anger and frustration for buried feelings suddenly returning, but he hadn't even called to apologize.

"Okay, look, Riley... Alex and Lisa's relationship is complicated," Jared treaded carefully upon the subject of the pair's relationship. Although it was no secret that he wasn't Lisa's biggest fan, Alex was, in fact, one of his closest friends and he tried his best to respect the relationship. "To put it simply, the only reason they're dating is because she showed up in the right place at the right time. Alex loves her; he really does. Not in the way he loved, or loves, who knows, you."

Riley shook her head quickly. "He doesn't love me, Jared," the girl protested. "I know he doesn't. Besides, it doesn't matter, does it? I have Noah and he has Lisa. Things worked out like this for a reason."

Jared couldn't help but roll his eyes at his best friend. How could she possibly think fate had anything to do with this outcome? In all actuality, she had been the reason things played out the way they had. "Riley, you know that I love you. I love you a lot, but... the way things have went about the last seven years has nothing to do with fate," the man couldn't help but scoff at just the idea of her thinking that. "It has to do with the fact that you were too scared to tell Alex how you really felt. That you didn't want to get married. That you didn't want to settle down just yet. And you left. I can promise you that if you hadn't left, things would be very different."

"Jared-"

"If you hadn't left, things would be exactly the way they're supposed to be."