WHEN ARI MET ALY

by Sorenna Wise

  “It’s weird,” he said. “You ever just like, connected to someone you don’t even know? It’s like, you sit down with them and all of a sudden you’re telling them your problems.”

  It was a perfect parallel to Jake and I when we first met, but obviously, I didn’t tell him that. We didn’t need any more solidarity. Instead, I opted for a much more impassive answer. “I suppose.”

  He chuckled. “I shouldn’t have been drinking with her. I was asking for trouble. But, I don’t know. I guess I wanted to help her. She looked like she needed it.”

  He was painting a very different picture of Alyson than the one with which I had become familiar. Part of me thought it was a masterful ploy to manipulate Blaise, who was nice, but not necessarily canny. He was too soft-hearted to be any sort of match for her. But I also had to admit that Jake could be biased too. What if she had some sort of problem, an undiagnosed mental illness that no one knew about? What if she was clinically delusional?

  Or, I thought, what if I’m just as big a sucker as Blaise is? I resolved not to be taken in by any sob story he might tell me. As far as I was concerned, she was guilty until proven innocent—of being a horrendous witch, that is. “Her?” I said out loud? “A damsel in distress? You have got to be kidding me.” He held out his hands as if to say he couldn’t be held responsible for the things he was telling me.

  “I swear. I thought she was going to start crying right there.”

  “So, what? You agreed to help her stalk her ex-boyfriend?”

  Blaise looked momentarily offended. “Hey, I never said anything like that. I didn’t find out how bad the stalking was until weeks later. I just…” Here, he hesitated. “I don’t know. I must have related to her in some way.” I raised my eyebrows, not saying anything. “I mean, she was still in love with him…and I’m still in love with you. I thought by doing what I could for her, I’d be helping myself too.”

  I had to make a concentrated effort not to let my jaw drop. Had I really just heard that? “You…” I couldn’t even find the words.

  “Yeah.” His voice was grim, like he was already wishing he hadn’t let that slip out. “I want to pretend I didn’t get into this because I hoped it might win you back, but I can’t.” I was literally speechless. Even if I had known what I wanted to say, I don’t think I could have formed the sounds. “I know it’s stupid,” he added hastily. “That ship’s sailed. I didn’t come here expecting you to take me back.”

  “This might be belaboring the point,” I said, when I finally regained the ability to speak, “but I really need you to explain this to me, or else I’m never going to stop thinking about how it happened.” He gave me a reproachful look, and for the first time that night, I actually felt slightly bad. “I’m sorry,” I said, noting sardonically that once again, I was the one apologizing for things I shouldn’t be. “You know how I am. I overthink everything.”

  “I was really hoping you wouldn’t make me say it. It makes me sound like a jerk.”

  “In all fairness,” I told him, “you were.”

  His lips curved upward into a tight smile. “I deserve that.” Collecting himself, he drew in a deep breath. “I know you thought I was crazy after we had that last conversation at the bar, and afterward, I thought I was crazy too.” He ran a hand through his sun-bleached hair. “The thing is, I did it that way because I was convinced you’d try way harder to make me stay. In my head, you were going to, like, maybe leave for a little bit and then come back and tell me you wanted to try and work things out. I don’t really know what I was thinking or why I had it all figured out like that. Realistically, I should have been ready for it to go the way it did. But I wasn’t. And you didn’t do any of that stupid shit like I was counting on. That threw me off.”

  “What the hell?” I knew it was bad to interrupt him, but I couldn’t resist. “Of course I didn’t do any of that! That’s ridiculous.” Although his narcissism was always known to me, hearing it described to this extent in his own words was jarring. “I cannot believe you thought I would.”

  “I said it would make me look bad.” He didn’t seem keen on defending himself, so I let it go. “Anyway, like I said, you didn’t buy into it, and I honestly didn’t have a plan after that. I assumed we would be back together in a month. Of course, we weren’t.”

  I gazed at him in mute amazement, resting my face in the palm of one hand. “It hasn’t sunk in that we’re having this conversation yet,” I said dully. “I just…really?”

  “I’m not proud,” was all he said. Then, “After I realized you were pretty much gone for good, I tried to move on. I went on some dates, spent a lot of time on the beach, all of that. Nothing ever panned out, though. I just kept thinking about how dumb I was.”

  “You could have called me,” I reminded him.

  “I almost did. But what was I going to say? ‘Oh, hey, sorry I dumped you like a piece of trash. I thought you’d beg me for forgiveness and when that didn’t happen I realized how bad I screwed up. Do you want to give it another shot?’ You would have laughed in my face.”

  “Actually, I probably would have just hung up on you.” He was right, though. If he had called me at any time during those four months I spent wallowing in desperate singleness, I was so bitter and angry that I wouldn’t have given him the time of day, no matter how hard he tried to sweet-talk me. A small part of me was grateful that he’d comprehended his wrongdoings thoroughly enough to know that it was unacceptable for him to simply waltz back into my life like nothing had gone wrong.

  “Either way,” he said, “I wasn’t ready to face that. So I didn’t do anything. I told myself it was all over, and it was real close to working until I saw you at the diner.”

  I hid my smile, thinking of the way he’d looked among the cars for Jake. “You were jealous, then.”

  He grimaced. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I met Alyson a week or so later, and…this happened.”

  “What’s she like to you?” I asked. “Is she mean? Jake doesn’t really discuss her, but he’s told me she’s not nice.”

  “She’s…smart,” he said deliberately. “And she doesn’t always acknowledge reality, you know? Like, it’s obvious to me that Jake isn’t going to take her back. I mean, why would he, now that he’s got you? But I don’t think Alyson will come to terms with that anytime soon. It’s not what she wants, so she just makes like it doesn’t exist.” He shook his head. “She’s going to get herself in some deep shit someday.”

  “Arguably, she already has. I can’t imagine how she thinks this is going to resolve itself. Maybe that’s what they’re talking about right now.”

  “I think so,” Blaise agreed. “The difference between me and Alyson is that she’s like I was when you and I first broke up, except she stayed that way. She’s still certain she’ll be able to talk Jake out of being with you.”

  I pursed my lips. “I hope not.”

  Blaise glanced back toward the opposite side of the fountain patio, where Alyson and Jake had melted into the soft, encroaching shadows. “I hope you’re ready,” he warned. “Depending on how their talk goes, she might be making a scene when they come back. You better grab him as fast as you can and get out of here.”

  “You’re talking like she’s straight out of Jurassic Park,” I remarked. I found myself smiling; despite the lingering heaviness of his confessions, it felt like something inside of me had finally settled into place.

  “You don’t know her as well as I’ve gotten to.” His face took on a half pained, half exasperated expression. “You’ve never heard her talk about him. It’s like she thinks he still owes her marriage and a family, even though I doubt he ever promised either of those things, right?”

  I frowned. “He said that’s part of the reason he broke it off. He wasn’t ready for that level of commitment.”

  “With a girl like her, who would?” I snorted, and he glanced at me, a genuine smile working its way across his features. “I’m serious. I know I couldn’t handle her.” />
  “So I guess I was wrong in thinking you guys were actually involved, huh?”

  He made a scornful sound. “You kidding? There aren’t any men but Jake in her world. Also, I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m an idiot, and not in the way you do. She thinks I wouldn’t be able to find my way out of a paper bag.”

  I saw Blaise for who he was then, and I felt sorry for him, this boy who had tried to help the wrong girl and gotten himself tangled up in her problems. Sure, maybe he was angling to see me again, but I’d sold him short. I patted his shoulder. “Why don’t you just tell her you’re through?”

  “I’ve considered it. Then I think, who’s going to fix her if I don’t?” He caught my eye. “’Fix’ is the wrong word, but you know what I mean. I think she’s got a lot of problems that nobody’s bothered to deal with. Probably because no one’s ever stuck around long enough.” He fell silent for a moment. “I bet she thought Jake was going to be the one who would.”

  “God,” I said. “Don’t make me feel bad for her, too.” I had grown so comfortable disliking her.

  Blaise chuckled. “No, no, I’m not excusing her. All the stuff she’s done is her own fault. She’s not the kind of crazy where she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  I stood up and stretched, training my eyes toward the spot I imagined they would emerge from. “Do you think we should go find them?”

  “No.” Blaise’s response was immediate. “We have to wait until she’s done, otherwise we might make things worse.” He was probably right. I sat back down. “Jake is a good dude,” he added.

  “You know what?” I replied. “So are you. We just weren’t meant to be.” Possibly the corniest thing I could have said at that exact moment, but he got my drift. He nodded sagely.

  “Yeah. I like to think it made me a better person.” Sitting side by side on the edge of the fountain, the stillness between us was actually companionable, the closest to peace that I think we’d ever gotten. I turned my face up toward the glittering spread of stars, searching idly for constellations. I had found both dippers and Orion’s Belt by the time Blaise nudged me back to attention. “Here they come,” he said quietly. “Doesn’t look good.”

  We could nearly taste the tension between them as Jake and Alyson came toward us across the small, cobblestone square. They were walking apart, his hands deep in his pockets, her arms folded across her waist. Instinct told me not to get up and meet Jake halfway. Blaise and I exchanged a sidelong glance. I think we were having the same thought: I’m glad that’s not us.

  Jake smiled when he reached me, but I could tell it was forced. “We should go now,” he said, without any discernible emotion whatsoever. I didn’t need to be told twice. The boys shook hands, and Alyson and I afforded each other a small tilt of the head. While her back was turned, Blaise waved us off. Neither Jake nor I looked back.

  He said nothing until we got into the car. Then he leaned back on the seat and let out his breath. “Christ,” he muttered.

  “How bad?” I asked.

  He glanced at me. “The worst.” I took his hand. “She said she still loves me. Pretty much begged me to come back to her. Of course I said no.” He gazed darkly out the windshield. “It was all downhill from there.”

  “Blaise was telling me about all of that,” I said slowly.” He turned to me, interested. “Apparently they had a real heart-to-heart when they met.”

  “When was that?” He furrowed his brow. “She’s not exactly an open book.”

  “They met on the beach,” I said. “She was probably creeping you at the time. He bought her a drink, and that’s what he got.” He seemed less surprised than I expected. “I thought maybe it was just an act to try and sucker him into doing whatever she wanted.”

  “Truthfully, it probably wasn’t.” Jake leaned forward and started the car. “Let’s go back to my place. I’ll tell you there.”

  CHAPTER 8

  I sat on Jake’s sofa, examining a vase that was perched on the shelf beside the TV. He hadn’t seemed so when I first met him, but I was gradually learning that he was a pretty private person. I didn’t know much about his mother, and nothing about his dad. And up until now, I’d hardly known anything about Alyson, either.

  He came out of the kitchen with a glass of water for me and kissed me on the top of the head as he handed it over. “My mom made that,” he said, noting the direction of my line of sight.

  “It’s really pretty.”

  He made himself comfortable next to me. “Yeah, she’s good at her job. Maybe you can meet her soon. She’s been asking about it.” The comment reminded me that Jake had yet to meet any of my own family either, and that filled me with a weird sense of unease. I had sent Christine pictures at her request, but photographically was the only way any of my relatives knew him. The paranoid part of me started wondering if that meant we’d failed some sort of litmus test for the long term viability of our relationship. The fact that Jake was about to detail the train wreck that was his relationship with Alyson didn’t help. “Where do you want me to start?” he asked.

  This was starting to sound like an episode of Intervention. “How about the beginning?” I said.

  Jake and Alyson met at school, where he was in the art program and she was—as I suspected—a dance major. Their fine arts areas of study meant that their social circles frequently overlapped, and it wasn’t long before they were acquainted. “I wasn’t a big partier,” said Jake, “but I went to a few, and sometimes I’d see her there. A lot of our friends got the idea that we’d make a good couple, so they tried to set us up. That’s how we had our first date.”

  Listening, I was captivated by the way he managed to capture the details of whatever he was talking about. It must have had something to do with his artistic nature; hearing him describe the colors of things, or the sounds, made me feel like I was gazing into his memory. Under different circumstances I might have been jealous that he remembered even his first encounters with her so exhaustively, but I was just too fascinated.

  He told me about how everything was great originally. For a while, they were really into each other; they spent a lot of time together just talking. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with her. “This was at the beginning of the fall semester of my sophomore year,” he explained. Winter break went by without incident. I visited her after the holidays and it was fine. There weren’t any issues when we got back to school.” He smiled a little. “You know how there’s always a token couple among your friends that everyone knows about? That was us for almost a year. I want to say it was good, but knowing what came after? I don’t know.” The smile faded. “I wish I’d had the foresight to be ready when it all started to collapse.

  “Alyson was always kind of the jealous type. She’d get mad if she saw someone looking at me, or if I had to work with a girl in my class on a project or whatever. I just figured she must have been cheated on and ignored it. I knew I wasn’t going to be unfaithful, so why worry? But the longer we were together, the worse she got. She started asking to check my phone. She wanted all my passwords so she could make sure women weren’t emailing me. She looked at my browser history.” He sighed. “All that was bad, but it was nothing compared to the way she acted around other girls in person. If we were out and she saw someone talking to me, she’d freak out. If she thought they were flirting, it was like the end of the world. And if you’re someplace like a college campus and your girlfriend is acting like that, word gets around, you know? I think people judged me for staying with her.”

  “Well, I mean…”

  “I know, I know. In that sense, it is my fault. But part of me thought it was just a phase. All we had to do was last long enough and she’d get over it. I was wrong about that.”

  “She just kept spiraling down, huh?”

  “I think the absolute worst was when she threatened one of my friends. We were watching a movie, and I got this text. She grabbed the phone first, and she acted like she’d been shot. I didn’t know wha
t was going on.” He ran a hand through his hair. “My first thought was that someone had pranked her and sent me naked pictures or something, because at that point, she was kind of a joke among the friends I had left. It wasn’t funny, but it didn’t surprise me either. She was an easy target for them.”

  “Oh man, that’s terrible,” I said. “That’s the worst joke ever.”

  “She was yelling about who is this and why don’t I know this number and are you cheating on me, and it was so loud that I thought my neighbors were going to call the cops.”

  I had to ask. “What was the text?”

  “Are you ready for this?” He smirked. “My friend had asked me what grade I got on the test we’d both taken the week before. That’s all. It was literally, ‘Hey, what did you get on the exam?’ And Alyson flipped out. She didn’t run in any visual arts circles, so she didn’t know this girl. I guess that’s what set her off.”

  “What did you do?” I wanted to know. “What can you do?”

  “It was the only time I ever yelled back at her,” he said. “Looking back on it, I wish I hadn’t, but when I saw how mundane the text was, it made me furious, you know? We’d been dating for almost a year and a half. I thought eventually, she’d trust me. The revelation that she didn’t, and that she wasn’t going to, really got to me. I kicked her out of my apartment after that, and I honestly thought that was it. I started packing up her stuff so I could send it to her later.”

  “You kicked her out?” I asked. I was impressed. “Damn.”

  “I wasn’t about to let her stay. Not after the show she put on.”

  “No, it makes sense. It just seems…out of character for you.”

  Jake glanced at me. “Is that a nice way of saying I was whipped?”

  I giggled. “Well, it wasn’t, but since you brought it up…”

  He put his arm around me. “I’ll admit it. I kind of was. Alyson’s the kind of girl who makes you want to do whatever you can to make it work. I think she depends on that mentality, ‘cause once you find out how she really is, I don’t think there are many people who would stick around.”