Page 19 of Margins

“Not even a little bit.”

“Okay.”

And with that, Alex lets Peter and E go for a while, enjoying the chance to get to know Elijah better, and offering up plenty of the same while they talk more about their families and their pasts and their hobbies and their travels and their likes and their dislikes. There’s a conversation about favorite carnival rides—the Zipper for Elijah and the Scrambler for Alex—and at least a dozen different movies they were obsessed with as kids. Elijah admits he loves bartending for the way it connects him to so many different human moments at once, and Alex tells him he went into journalism for the same reason, even though those moments come at him more quietly than anything Elijah experiences on a rowdy weekend night.

And then Alex gets to hear about Nora, the 73-year-old widowed neighbor who is all too happy to visit Poe on the nights when Elijah works, in part because Elijah runs errands for her, and maybe mostly because she and Poe are often the same kind of lonely. The fear of his own loneliness is difficult to remember while Alex has spent an afternoon like this, and somehow it doesn’t return, even after they’ve been sitting for too long, and Elijah tells Alex that he has to go home and get ready for work.

“You’ve got Elena this week?” Elijah asks as he stands to stretch, his hoodie pulled high when he takes the time to raise his arms over his head.

“I do, yeah. Cassidy’s dropping her off tomorrow night.”

They both grab their things and start to make their way back through the café and toward the parking lot, the two of them saying their goodbyes from several feet apart.

“Is it okay if I text you sometime during the week, just to see if we can figure out another time to sit down with the books?”

Alex swallows something light and warm and pretends he feels neither. “You can text me about anything. If I’m busy doing something with her, it might take me longer to respond, but I will. And I guess you’ll be working most nights anyway, but yeah. Whenever.”

“Anything, whenever,” Elijah nods. “Got it.”

After Elena has run inside with her suitcase and backpack and a routine greeting that still feels newer than that, Cassidy slips her hands into her back pockets and fidgets on the front porch. She has something to say, clearly, but she’s already turned down Alex’s offer to come inside for a few minutes, so he waits her out. Wonders if she has something more to say about how he looks and what good habits he’s picked up since the last time she saw him.

But that’s not it at all.

“We’ve been navigating things pretty well, I think. You and me. The uncertainty of how this is all supposed to go. What it’s supposed to look like,” she starts.

“Yeah, it’s—I think we’re doing okay,” Alex agrees.

“It’s hard sometimes, though—knowing where we've drawn lines, or what we’re supposed to share.”

“Okay,” he says. “I mean, whatever we are to each other now, we’ve been best friends for a long time. We can probably share a lot.”

Even as he says it, Alex can’t quite tell if that’s true. Maybe he’s never understood where friendship ends and something more begins, willing to share so much of himself with the woman standing in front of him now, even if it seems like that was never enough. An entire marriage rooted in friendship but really never growing any further off the ground. He trusts Cassidy, and still loves her, but he isn’t sure how much that’s true the other way around. Can’t figure out how long they’ve been living with such different feelings entirely.

“You can tell me anything,” Alex promises, the simplest way he can offer everything he’s always wanted to give.

But she looks up the street, uncomfortable in a way that makes his breath sticky in his chest, finally swinging her head back to him. “I’ve started seeing someone.”

“Someone.”

“Yeah, sort of an acquaintance of an acquaintance. Met him at a work thing and we’ve gone out a few times. It’s not—I have no idea what’s going to happen. It hasn’t been that long. I just thought you should know.”

Alex clears his throat and tries so hard to keep looking at her. “What’s his name?”

“Michael,” she says, her head tilted like she wants to ask why it matters. It doesn’t, of course.

“Okay, well, thank you for telling me,” Alex rasps. “Enjoy your week and I guess I’ll see you next Sunday.”

“Alex—”

“No, seriously, thank you. It’s—I’m okay.”

He’s pretty sure he’s told some version of that lie for the past 20 years even if the words taste unfamiliar now, but she nods and leaves and he stays there at his front door for another minute before he stops shaking long enough to find Elena and settle down on the couch.

The rest of their night is fine. Most of Monday, too. It’s mundane and Alex knows how to work with that, lists and rules and patterns and boundaries. It’s not until dinner on Monday night, when Elena casually mentions Michael while Alex’s fork is halfway to his mouth, that everything catches back up to him and he knows he needs some help to keep from falling down.

Or maybe help getting back up from there.

Because after Elena is asleep, Alex is sitting on his bedroom floor, his back pressed to the closed door and his head staring down at nothing. He picks up his phone to text Elijah because he doesn’t know what else to do, three texts fired off in rapid succession.

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