Page 18 of Half-Hearted
Her mouth fell open. “‘Instead of apologizing’? Did you seriously just say, ‘instead ofapologizing’?”
That wasn’t the part I thought would snag her focus, but I bit my tongue. It had done nothing but make things worse for me so far this morning.
“Answer me first, then I’ll think about apologizing. It’s a simple question. Why do you keep dodging it?”
My entire upper body was vibrating with tension. “Because absolutely nothing about it is actually ‘simple,’ and you know it.”
The corners of her irate mouth jerked a few times as the blotched crimson in her neck started to creep up to her cheeks. Then she shut her eyes, took in a deep breath, and began massaging small circles into her right temple. And I didn’t know whether it was in an attempt to pacify her undoubtedly killer migraine or to calm herself down. Maybe both. Probably both.
I stayed silent for a while, trying to think of a way to fix all this. To make it all go back to normal.
I came up blank.
“Joel, I… just really need you to answer the question, please.” Her voice carried less than half the energy and volume it had two minutes ago. She sounded tired.
I opened my mouth, ready to come out with a cautiously worded answer she probably didn’t want to hear, but then she blinked up at me with those big brown eyes, and I… couldn’t do it. I couldn’t answer her question because I couldn’t bring myself to lie to her again. So I said one final catastrophically wrong thing: “I think it’s best if you go home now, Alexis.”
I expected her to argue with me. To put her foot down and demand I give her a real response. That would have been more in line with everything I knew about her. But instead, Alexis did something almost entirely out of character: she listened.
“Okay,” she whispered, eyes dropping to her lap almost defeatedly before she pushed herself off the bed and started to gather her things.
“I’ll drive you.”
No response. She wouldn’t look at me.
“Lex, come on…” I followed her all the way to the front door. “It doesn’t matter what my answer is. You know full well how bad of an idea it would be for us to fool around.”
She halted, then slowly turned around to face me with her mouth hanging open in utter disbelief. “Oh my god,” she breathed, then whipped back around and went for the door handle.
“No, just wait. You don’t even have shoes. Let me take you—” I made the unfortunate error of reaching for her arm. She yanked it out of my grasp so violently that it pushed me back two steps, purely out of shock.
“Don’t,” she bit out roughly, eyes brimming with fresh, unshed tears. And then, in the tiniest little whisper, she said, “I’m done.”
Those two words pushed my spiking heart rate straight off a cliff.
“Alexis—”
But she shut the door on my face.
6
Alexis
My shoes were gone.
I was standing alone on the sidewalk, staring blankly down at my bare feet as I tried to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. It felt like the answer was really obvious, almost like it was right at the tip of my brain and I just couldn’t seem to grasp it.
The tears had stopped as abruptly as they’d started in the elevator and were replaced with… nothing. I didn’t feel anything, which was vaguely bizarre. You’d think being rejected by the man I’d been hopelessly in love with for seventeen years would have sent me over the emotional edge into blubbering incoherence and uncontrollable sobs and all the other involuntary reactions that followed devastating heartbreak.
But I just… was. The tips of my fingers were prickling, and my head was still pounding to a silent, asynchronous beat of pain, but everything inside just… was.
“Miss, you alright?”
The concerned voice belonged to a blonde teenager with plump, rosy cheeks. She was holding an EarPod exactly two inches from a heavily pierced ear as she took in my lack of footwear and hungover everything else with furrowed brows.
I must have given her a satisfactory answer because she left me alone pretty quickly after that. And then I was walking. Somewhere. A couple of cars honked as they drove past. Maybe at me. Since I was still wearing Joel’s shirt and nothing else.
It smelled like him.
