11
JASON
“There’s no need to take me to work, I could have taken the bus.”
“I didn’t have anything to do,” I lie.
I did have an appointment this morning with a drinks supplier and the accountant and God only knows who else. I’ve got a full day but none of it matters to me. I want to, and have to, stay with her for a little bit longer.
“Sure you feel like working today?”
“I’m fine, Jason. They just hired me, I don’t want to risk losing this job.”
“What time do you start?”
I look at my watch. “10:00.”
“You want to get some breakfast with me?”
“Jason…”
I know she wants to refuse, but I’m not going to let her.
“Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“Alex,” I tell her, turning my body to face her and taking her hand. “I would like to make up for some lost time. So many years have passed and I want to know everything about you, what you’ve done, how you’ve lived. I want to find my best friend.”
“Your best friend isn’t here. That person doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Okay then. Let’s say I want to know you, the new Alex.”
“There’s not much to know,” she says, lowering her eyes to our fingers which are still entwined.
“Let me decide that.”
“I don’t even remember what kind of person I was.”
“But I do. I remember everything. I remember everything about you.”
She raises her eyes to me and gives me a weary semblance of a smile and it takes all of the willpower I have to not draw her to me and hold her and transmit all of the emotions I am feeling for her now, emotions that I’ve kept to myself and that I’ve never shown to any woman, ever, because they’re not her.
Because no other woman can ever be my Alex.
“The college coffee house is open,” she says shyly.
“Let’s go,” I conclude, letting go of her hand and keeping at bay my agitation and feeling the hope which is growing in me and that I should try to suppress, but I’m weak, I always have been.
She was always my force, even if I never understood that.
And she’s always been in my heart.
Always and only.
We sit down at a little table and order two cups of coffee and pancakes. We sit in awkward silence, afraid that the wrong word could bring us back to the awareness of what what we are not, what we used to be and are no longer.
Always you will be part of me… And I will forever feel your strength… When I need it most… You’re gone now, gone but not forgotten… I can’t say this to your face… But I know you hear.
The music playing in the background fills me with regret for having let Alex slip out of my life.
