Just Another Reason I Could Never Forget You

I hadn’t seen Alex in a few days.
Despite the festive period and our ever-increasing text frequency, he was busy with band stuff and I hadn’t seen him more than through the window as he drove off to wherever his busy schedule took him that day. I’d love to say I hadn’t had a chance to corner him, tell him what I felt, but I also kind of wanted it to be perfect. I didn’t want to blurt it out in a five-minute conversation as he rushed to get off somewhere, nor did I want to do this over text.
So, I waited.
I knew Alex was home for Christmas and the following two days. While unnecessarily busy at the minute, they’d all carved out their own time for their own celebrations with family. I’d had my Christmas with Marissa yesterday while Jack was finishing up whatever the band was up to at the minute, exchanging gifts and drinking eggnog until I had to force Jack to drive me home (my dad was not impressed his car was left elsewhere). This morning had been dedicated to my family, to spending time with my parents and not turning it into a screaming match, and we’d had a good time.
By 5pm, I was a little stir crazy from being inside, so I stepped out the back to plan the next couple of days of my life while my parents curled up on the sofa to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. I must admit, despite wondering what the hell my parents ever had in common, they still loved each other and it was nice to see. I feel like teenage me saw them run around by themselves, their ‘raising a child’ bitterness and angst about chores and the wild things I got into, and thought that meant their love had died and they were trapped. They weren’t: they’d stayed together in spite of the stress I caused, not because of it. I smiled to myself at the thought, taking a deep breath of the cold air and basking in the darkness.
“I thought I’d find you out here,” an amused voice rumbled from Alex’s side of the fence. I span to look at him, my smile widening.
“And this is the last place I thought I’d see you.” Through the light seeping from his back windows, I could see his shrug and his smile, moving over to the fence toward me.
“I was waiting for you,” he admitted. “I figured you’d come out earlier, but here we are.”
“How long have you been waiting?” I asked, meeting him at the fence line, leaning against the wood next to him as he followed suit. We turned to face each other, scarcely a hands width apart. I didn’t feel on edge, comfortable with our proximity and the warmth I could feel radiating from him.
“Not forever. I’ve been in and out. This time I’ve been here about five minutes.”
“So, what do you want?” I watched his eyes flicker with sheepish embarrassment briefly.
“Nothing. Just wanted to see you.” My lips twitched into a new, soft smile as my stomach flipped and my heart soared. I needed to hear that.
“Me too.” His smile mirrored mine and I wanted nothing more than to push forward toward him and press our lips together, but I held back. I was going to talk to him first before I acted on my hormones and, while I’d planned on doing this in the coming days before he went back to work, I hadn’t even thought about what I was going to say. “Have you had a good day?”
“Fantastic. Mom’s cooking is the best. How about you?”
“Definitely one of the better Christmases I’ve had in the last decade. Just wish our parents still did holidays together.” He nodded slowly and I took it as a reciprocation. That had been one of the best I’d had. Period.
He moved suddenly; his hands braced against the fence as he hopped to my side. I jumped before letting out a small laugh at his action. He held out a hand for me, and my reflexes took it before I had time to even consider it. He tugged softly, pulling me toward our gate and out to his car.
“Where are we going?”
“For a drive.” He glanced back at me and I nodded as if to say ‘that’s fine’. The heat hit me as he turned on the car and I shuddered, the cold making one last grab at me through my coat before it dissipated. We drove almost in silence, a few scattered words as he made his way to wherever we were going. It was comfortable, even the small talk and the radio playing quietly. I wanted to curl up on my seat and stare at him, but I held back. I was going to enjoy one last trip with him before I told him anything and, frankly, I didn’t know how I’d get back if it all went to shit.
He pulled into a small parking lot, facing out to look over the town and the twinkling lights from the warm houses below us, decorated for the season. It was gorgeous, even if it was suburbia.
“Why are we here?”
“I just… needed some time.” I raised an eyebrow at him and he grinned. “Yes, with you.” I snorted, allowing his admission to embolden me further. The thought that this would go to shit was becoming quieter and quieter.
“Okay, so talk to me,” I told him. “Tell me about your day, and your plans, and everything you’ve gotten up to. Talk me through how you make coffee and how you still haven’t worked out how not to overbake cookies. What’s exciting you today?” For the first time, the silence was loud. He looked me over slowly, as if he wasn’t sure what to say.
“I’m getting a dog,” he blurted after a few seconds. “You told me I should get a dog and, well, now you’re back, I think I’ve got a dog-sitter.” I laughed loudly, pushing down the feeling in my gut that it felt like he was saying ‘I know you’re staying, and I’m sticking around too’.
“A dog? When?”
“In the New Year, mom doesn’t know yet.” I shook my head and watched his eyes twinkle as they looked at me.
“Okay, how many times a day do I need to come and check on them? How many walks do you want me to take them on? I have no boyfriend; I’ll be your designated dog sitter.”
“How about we do the first week together and work it out from there?” He chuckled. It felt like another invitation, like he wanted us to have a dog.
It was finally the time. It was time to put myself on the line and tell him what I was feeling and hope he felt the same. I wanted to even the playing field, for us both to finally be on the same level and take this one step at a time as we got used to the new normal. Back to what we were, but with less angst and trauma and an open reciprocation of love that we used to feel ashamed of.
“You lied to me,” I said softly, not accusingly. I told you, I hadn’t planned what I would say and somehow the information I’d gotten from Isobel the other day was falling from my lips. Not ‘I love you’ but ‘you lied to me’. Why couldn’t I make this easy for myself? “You told me it was a first date, but it wasn’t, was it?”
I knew why it had come to mind: because I was being honest and it felt like I was hiding something from him. I wanted him to know where the admission was going to come from, even if I wasn’t capable of handling it normally.
“No,” he sighed. “It was going okay, honestly. Until what you said.” He grimaced, realising I’d set us onto a different path than we had been. Where we had been going felt like a blind admission, another trip down the same path we’d been on before. I wasn’t here for that.
“What did I say?”
“That you’ll always love me.” My throat dried and I swallowed thickly, understanding flooding through me. Was it because he felt guilty? Never. Now was my time to finally not be a coward.
“Alex—"
“I’m a self-sabotaging bastard, and I’ve spent the last two years working to change that, but... I haven’t had anything important in that time. Not until you came back.” I couldn’t tear myself away from the desperate look in his eyes, the need to explain and tell me what he’d done and why he’d lied so I didn’t walk away again.
How did I put into words that I was never going to walk away ever again?
“I think we both sabotage ourselves more than we like to admit. We’ve both lied in the last few months, I just… I wanted you to know I knew. I wanted to be honest.”
His tongue flicked across his bottom lip and, once again, I fought back the urge to pull him to me. He stayed where he was and silence fell on us again. I could see the gears turning in his head, and yet we continued to stare at each other in silence. I could still see our town glowing beneath us out of the corner of my eye, trying my best to work out why I was here, why he jumped the fence to see me and waited in the cold. I could feel it in my bones, but I wanted him to say it.
“Why am I here, Alex?”
“You know why you’re here: because I want you here. I always want you here.”
“You didn’t say that in Michigan.”
“Self-sabotage, remember?” One side of his mouth eased upwards in an attempt at a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and showed me no sign of happiness at his own words. “What was I supposed to do, Hol? You told another guy you loved him that exact same day and then ran to me when he broke up with you. I’d have killed for that in September, but then I spent time with you and I remembered what being with you was like.
“I’m fucking addicted to you and the way you make me feel. I obsessed over every memory I had of you while you were off with another dude, trying your best to fall in love and forget me. But you couldn’t, could you? You loved him but in love was somewhere in the past.”
“It’s never been in the past, you know that better than anyone.”
“Do I?” He looked at me intently, and I did my best to meet his eyes, to not back down.
“The only person who knew that better than you was John.”
He didn’t scoff at the name, but his head bobbed lightly, acknowledging the name of the man who simultaneously got in our way for the last two years and brought me right back here. With Alex. In his stupid car, in our stupid hometown, with this stupid pounding in my chest that I had no right to.
“But you didn’t?”
“I don’t—I don’t know.” I thought back on those first few days of tour, to thinking about the anger that coursed through my veins constantly at the very thought of him, to throwing myself onto John at the first sign of him caring about me, about every petty little argument I’d had in the last three months. “I knew when the guys told me you’d be on tour and I damn near had a panic attack, I knew on my birthday when I threw my phone at a wall, I knew that first night when you pissed me off and I still wanted to kiss you, I knew when I watched you kiss Sammy and I wanted to fucking kill her, I knew when Jack told us off because he was right. I’ve always known, Alex, I just didn’t want to admit it.”
“So why do this? Why put us through everything we went through?”
“Because you deserved it,” I snapped, unintentionally harsh. I knew I’d promised honesty, but there was honest and then there was cruel. “You hurt me and you didn’t deserve to be given the second chance I wanted to give you from the moment I first heard your fucking name.” He didn’t flinch, he didn’t look offended or hurt or anything I expected.
“That’s bullshit.”
“You know what else is bullshit?” I asked, ploughing on through my fear, my anger, my regret. If I knew a damn thing about myself, it was that I was blowing up because I was scared of him feeling the way I felt and falling right back into that same vulnerable place I’d always been in. I knew enough to know that I loved him, that I was trying to scare him off so it wasn’t my fault I was sad and alone. But I’d never managed that before, so what made me think I could do it now? “What’s bullshit is I’m fucking terrified of you. I dream about you, about what could have been, about what could still be, and every time there’s this clawing feeling that all I’m doing is letting myself get hurt again.
“I’m not scared we’ll make the same mistakes as last time, but I’m scared this is another John. That I’m jumping into this and not seeing you clearly. John was my best friend and I went into it with an idea of him that I fucking clung to and I got hurt because I wasn’t seeing him clearly.”
“I’m not John.” His tone was still soft, but there was an edge as I brought up that same name again, trying to force it in-between us. I wanted to run with it, to twist the knife in further so I didn’t get the chance to try this again, to get hurt or be happy, whatever would happen.
It took everything in me to hold myself back, letting my anger wane back into fear that drove me onwards.
“No, you’re worse,” I breathed. “You make me second guess myself constantly, like I’m picking up on signs I’m so sure mean you still want me, and the next second I’m twisting them into some platonic fucking nonsense. I want to take things slow, desperate for you to ask me out for fucking… dinner and a movie or something and go about this like normal people, but I also want to do everything together. I want to spend Christmas and birthdays with you, plan vacations for a year from now without worrying I’m overstepping. I want to kiss you whenever I see you, tell you I love you before you leave, give you a key to my—” His lips cut me off before I could spew any more nonsense that I knew I’d regret.
I savoured it, not sure if it was to shut me up or as a reaction to something I’d said. I felt his lips moving against my own, his hand on my face as he poured every ounce of feeling into me. I felt how much he’d missed me, how much he wanted this, the desperation inside and his normal confidence hiding under it all. He knew me, every inch of me, and he still wanted this.
“This isn’t something new,” he told me, separating our lips just enough to speak to me. Foreheads still pressed together, breath still mingling, he carried on. “I’m three years further into this than I should be, but even when I put my stupid rose-tinted memories of you aside, I just see you. You’re everything I hoped you’d be one day, a little softer around the edges than you used to be and more open with what you feel, but still annoyingly stubborn and stupidly independent. And, well, I think I fall a little more in love with her every day. You make me smile when I see you and, if nothing else, I think that’s something worth pursuing, don’t you?” My heart felt fit to burst as I looked at his slightly hopeful expression, all thoughts of John and taking this slow fading from my mind once more. All there was for me was Alex. I could understand his jealousy and petty anger more than I understood anyone else’s, and being away from him still hurt the way it had done when we were lovesick teenagers. For all my fears since we reunited, I never doubted that I loved him. And now I knew he loved me.
“Of course, I do.”
“Then let’s do it,” he told me, grinning.
“Do what?”
“Dinner and a movie, but I’ll still tell you I love you before you leave.”