Good Morning Heartache (26 page)

“You’re avoiding the
subject,” Caitlyn commented with interest.

“Of course I am. I don’t
want to talk about it.” Alexis hoped that she was harsh enough to get her to
drop it, but not so much that the hormones would reduce Caitlyn to a puddle.

She failed.

“Why don’t you want to talk
about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk
about. It wasn’t any different than it usually is. It was a fling for the exact
span of time that he was here. He’s gone, so it’s over.”

 “I see,” Caitlyn said and
then sipped her iced tea through a blue straw.

“What do you mean ‘I see’?”

“You’re rationalizing this.
Alexis Conner doesn’t have flings for two weeks. She has brief encounters to
scratch an itch that never goes away. I think you actually like him, as a
person and not just as someone to dispose of in the morning.”

Alexis sighed. “No, I don’t
like him, Caitlyn,” she said slowly and carefully. “I think I love him.”

Caitlyn slammed her glass on
the table top, and a bit of her herbal tea splashed out. Alexis grabbed a
napkin and began cleaning up the table. Caitlyn’s hand covered Alexis’s hand to
stop her from cleaning up her mess.

“Does it hurt?”

“Like hell.”

“Then it’s probably love.
How did this happen?”

Alexis told her everything,
leaving out only the most explicit details, but nothing else. Caitlyn took it
all in on the edge of her seat, mouth wide open, stopping to ask questions
every once in a while. Alexis promised to buy Caitlyn new sheets for the
waterbed because she didn’t believe that she didn’t have “hot, sweaty sex” on
it. Alexis also took the opportunity to question the purchase of a waterbed for
a guest room, but she only got vague answers and a finger pointed at the husband.

Caitlyn also tried to
convince Alexis to press charges on Jimmy, but Alexis explained that she and her
sister talked about it, and she doubted that either one would ever bring it up
again.

Alexis ended with an
exasperated, “And there’s nothing I can do to fix it. He’s gone.”

“I have his office address,”
Caitlyn offered.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“You’re pretty good at
telling the truth. Start with that and see what happens.”

“I can’t do that. That would
make me too vulnerable. Right now, I’m the only one who can break my heart. If
I put myself out there, he can break it. I don’t think I can handle a broken
heart. Not from him. Besides, once he got back to his apartment and job in New
York he probably forgot all about the little fling he had in Massachusetts.”

“You don’t give yourself
enough credit. You’re pretty difficult to forget. Richard Dunn is proof enough
of that. I think that you should try. He said he loved you. He’s not just going
to forget that in a couple of days.”

Alexis wanted her to be
right. She wanted to jump in her car and drive straight to his apartment and
apologize. “No, he said he loved me to Richard to try and provoke him. He
didn’t tell me that he loved me.”

Caitlyn went over to her
computer, scanned through it, and then wrote something down on the back of a
receipt. “You’re going into New York tomorrow anyway. Here’s the address. Go
see for yourself.” She slid the napkin across the table and to Alexis.

After a long pause, Alexis
picked up the napkin, crumbled it into a ball and threw it into the remainder
of her coffee. The ink spread as the paper became saturated with mocha. “I can’t
do it. It’s over. It’s better this way.”

“For whom?” Caitlyn prodded.

“Both of us.” And from that
point on the subject was dropped. Alexis moved on to questions about the
Bahamas and the adventures that Caitlyn had over the last two weeks. She could
see in Caitlyn’s eyes and in her less-than-colorful description of her trip
that she still had questions for Alexis, but she didn’t ask. After an hour or
so, Alexis left, successfully avoiding further discussion of Ryan.

When she got into the Volvo,
Alexis wanted to cry. Every beat of her heart felt sore. It was overwhelming.
She hadn’t hurt over a man since Frank. And now she was realizing that what she
had felt for Frank was juvenile. Sure, she may have had a naïve love for him,
but it was more when, how, and why he left that was significant to her life,
not that he left.

The love that she had for
Ryan was bone deep. Her whole body ached for him, and it wasn’t just a sexual
ache. It was his warmth, his strength, and his big appetite that she craved.
She missed just talking to him and listening to his often awkward answers.

Alexis wasn’t great at
making friends, but she had made one out of Ryan Webb, and that was the part
she missed the most. She could get her rocks off with any guy—though at this
point she didn’t even want to do that—but she would never be able to find the
same friendship in anyone else.

She rested her head on the
steering wheel as she started the car. It was almost noon, and she needed to
pick up her sister for lunch.

Ever since Riley returned
home, they hadn’t fought. They had every lunch and dinner together, and they
had plans to go to the beach house on Saturday for a week. They both figured a
little sun and salt water would be good to help de-traumatize them and mend
Riley’s broken heart. Alexis didn’t admit to her sister that her heart also
needed healing. They had an action movie marathon each evening since Riley
returned. No love allowed. They both took pleasure in watching things blow up
on the huge TV in the living room. Riley commented that she was glad that
Alexis got new furniture and that they could both enjoy the room now.

Riley had asked about Ryan
once since he disappeared, so Alexis just told her that he went back to New
York. Riley replied, “Oh, I figured he’d stick around for a while.” But Alexis
didn’t dare question the comment. She wasn’t quite ready to share everything
with her sister.

When they sat down to lunch
at Papa Gino’s in Fitchburg, Riley got a really serious look on her face. Her
lips twisted as though she wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come
out of her mouth. So, Alexis prompted her.

“It’s just that… well, the
thing is,” Riley stammered and tried to talk around what she really wanted to
say.

“Just spit it out,” Alexis
said with a smile on her face. It was the first time that she said something
like that to her sister without being incredibly angry with her. In the past,
this type of behavior would have driven Alexis to the edge, but at this point
she felt like she could tease her about it instead of allowing it to enrage
her.

“I don’t want to go back to
The Franklin School,” Riley finally admitted, her head down like a puppy that
just chewed up her best pair of shoes.

Alexis could feel her
expression go sour, but she tried to fix it into a smile and to remain neutral
in her tone. “You have to go back to school. You have one more year. I didn’t
tell you this before, but if you don’t finish school, you don’t get your trust.
That was Dad’s stipulation. He wanted us at least to finish high school. If you
drop out after your birthday, the money stops. It goes to some charity in Guatemala.
I never had a reason to think that you wouldn’t finish school until recently,
but you need to know now.”

Riley shook her head side to
side. “That’s not what I meant. I’ll finish school, but I don’t want to go to
Franklin. I hate it there.”

Alexis took a deep breath.
She really didn’t want to fight. Things had been going so well. “I know, but
it’s only one year, and it’s a great school.”

“The girls are awful. I
never fit in there.”

“I don’t know what to tell
you, but it’s too late to get you into another private school. Most
applications were due last winter.”

“I was thinking that I could
go to a public school,” Riley said, playing with her thumbnail again, which
Alexis figured out was a nervous tick of sorts. She had learned a lot about her
sister over the last few days.

The idea was almost as
absurd as her dropping out of school. Riley had never been to a public school.
If she couldn’t fit in with the girls of Franklin, how was she going to fit in
with a population that was very different from her and from what she was used
to being around?

“Where would you live? They
don’t have dorms at public school,” Alexis pointed out, figuring that this
would be a deal breaker.

“I know that.” Riley paused
and put on her puppy dog face again. “I was thinking I could live with you.”

“You hate living with me.
You’d hate it even more during the school year. I’d make you do all your
homework every night. You’d have a curfew.” Getting along for a few days was
one thing but living together permanently was something completely different.
Alexis watched as the sparkle left her sister’s eyes.

“I knew you wouldn’t
understand,” she submitted. Generally, when Riley said that she was being
passive-aggressive, but that wasn’t how it felt this time. It felt genuine, and
the happy lunch was gone.

Their number was called, and
Alexis went up to the counter to get their pizza. A whole year with Riley
seemed like a long time, but all of her old excuses to send her away had
disappeared since Friday. They were getting along, and Alexis didn’t feel like
going home with men on a nightly basis. She didn’t feel like going out at all.

She slid the pizza onto the
table. The pools of grease in each little pepperoni cup were the most delicious
thing Alexis had seen in a long time.

“You’ll have to get a job,”
she said as she pulled a slice from the pie and placed it on her plate.

Riley’s head shot up, and
she looked intently at Alexis. “What?”

Alexis took a bite of her
slice. It was as good as she had hoped, and she was actually kind of hungry at
this meal. “If you’re going to live with me, you have to get a job. I recommend
that you pick up an application while we’re here. I wouldn’t mind a discount on
pizza.”

“Why do I need a job? I’ll
have enough money with my allowance.” Riley pointed out.

“You need to learn about
responsibility. If you want to go to school here and live with me, you’re
getting a job. You can drive the Volvo, but you have to pay the insurance,
registration, and gas.”

Riley bit into her pizza,
and Alexis could see her thinking as she chewed. “Okay. I’ll get a job.”

Alexis smiled. “I was
serious about homework and curfew. And I’m going to charge you ten bucks for
every piece of clothing you leave in the living room or on your bedroom floor.
I’ll take it out of your allowance monthly.”

Her sister laughed a little,
“Okay.”

“Oh, one more thing: if you
have sex on my couch again, you’re paying for the replacement,” she paused as
she watched the mortified look cross her sister’s face. “But,” she continued,
failing to contain the smile creeping across her face, “I’d prefer it if you
didn’t have sex on my couch at all.”

Riley raised her right hand
up and swore she’d never do such a thing again.

Chapter 1
9

Scanning the wall of books
in Eleanor Lehrer’s office took away any nervousness that Alexis may have felt
while the older woman looked over the work Alexis had produced in the short period
of time.

Her professor was probably
in her fifties and had the sophisticated air that age and academia produced.
Her hair was always pinned smoothly to the back of her head. She never had a
stray hair, either. If it wasn’t completely petty, Alexis might hate her for
it. Dr. Lehrer always wore a blazer or sweater set, even in the middle of the
humid summer. Despite this, she never seemed to break a sweat, even when she
had just walked across campus to teach a class. Today was a beige sweater set.
Alexis smiled when she thought that from a distance, from behind, she probably
looked topless.

Alexis turned her gaze over
to Dr. Lehrer’s friend, Regina Carson, who was sitting in the cushioned wooden
chair next to her, reading the second copy of the work she had brought. While
Dr. Lehrer could be brutal in her feedback, the opinion of the woman next to
her was far more significant because of what she could actually do for Alexis.

She didn’t want to stare at
them while they read, partly because it was rude, partly because she didn’t
want to see their reactions to her writing. So she concentrated on her hands
that were folded gently in her lap. She worked hard to twiddle her thumbs. It
wasn’t the mindless twiddling that most people did, which was downright lazy;
it was the kind where you tried to rotate your thumbs in opposite directions.
Infinitely more difficult. She had a lot on her mind recently that she didn’t
want to think about, so she looked up things to distract her. This was the only
thing that worked and wasn’t entirely stupid or illegal.

After Dr. Lehrer had read
the last page, she looked up at Alexis over the thin frame of her glasses. “Is
this it?”

There wasn’t a lot there.
Alexis knew it, but she wasn’t about to give the woman behind the oak desk any
excuses, at least any more. Alexis was proud of what she had written in the
amount of time she had and under the circumstances. Quality over quantity, she
thought, but just nodded in reply to her former professor’s question.

Quality over quantity had
been her motto for the last couple of days for her writing and for her time
with Ryan. At least the time they spent together was good, better than good,
even if it wasn’t long. Alexis was sure that the length of a relationship was
overrated anyway. Love was ephemeral.

“Can you produce more?”

“Absolutely.” Since Ryan
went back to New York she had spent a lot of time writing. They were all
tragic, but occasionally, when he popped into her head as she was finishing a
story, she’d write in a little hope. Just a little.