Her voice startles me and makes me drop the book I was reading. I get up from the stool behind the counter to pick it up, but he beats me to it and we find ourselves on our knees, very close to one another.
Too close.
“Are you following me?” I ask him as he sets my book down.
“I’ve been waiting to see you at the pub for a few days but you haven’t showed up. So, I called your dad and he told me you work here.”
He takes a pause, a bit too long, and then lets out a sigh.
“Is it…safe?” he says, coming closer. “It doesn’t tire you out too much?”
I huff, exasperated. He’s a carbon copy of my father.
“I don’t do much, and it’s just a part-time job, it probably won’t last long, I’m covering someone’s maternity leave,” I say, impatient as everyone seems so anxious for me. “It’s not the work that creates a problem for me. The things I need to worry about are…” And I cut myself short before I can regret what’s about to come out.
He doesn’t insist and changes the subject, at least in part.
“Nice here. I’m not surprised to find you surrounded by books. Things haven’t changed that much.”
“It’s not like I can…” I stop, feeling sorry for myself and I hate it.
I let the thing go and hope he won’t pick up on what I started to say.
“How are you?” he asks and I can feel like I’m about to scream. The same question everyone asks me every single day.
“Great!” I reply with a touch of bitterness, as I turn the page.
“Alex…” His tone of voice is sweet and dangerously intimate.
I look at him and find his eyes once again, the ones I used to know, still veiled by a subtle opacity that almost killed me.
“I’m sorry to have gone away in that way, to have let us lose touch as we did…the other night you didn’t give me the chance to tell you.”
I nod and swallow hard, starting to feel strangely anxious.
It’s Jason, he’s here and that’s not good.
I shake my head because I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know if I really want to get into this conversation with him, but he doesn’t let go, he’s stubborn.
“Please, talk to me, Alex.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because I decided that it’s time to face this thing. Truthfully, I’m trying to face a few different things right now. I was recently at my dad’s house.”
“How is he?”
“The same as always, downhearted, dejected and lost.” He pauses and sighs. “Like me.” He concludes, and my hands begin to tremble and my heartbeat speeds up, keeping time.
“Your father is a good person. He has suffered terribly and deserves to go on with life and to have you by his side,” I tell him, trying not to think of the last words he said to me.
“Yeah…” He sighs and his glance wanders around a bit before returning to burn on me.
I’ll never be able to go on like this, I’ll never be able to leave the house. It’s not possible that after all this time my feelings are still there, so evident and dangerous.
I’ve been in love with him my whole life, from the first time he came in my house with his mother.
Years of joking, making fun of each other, laughing and crying. A bit of everything. We have shared everything.
