The Sure Thing

by Samantha Westlake

  I fought down a sarcastic answer, considered that I was standing in a bookstore filled with physical titles, and that we didn't make any money from ebooks. "I guess they're more convenient for some people," I offered.

  She let out a huff, making her feelings clear towards the subject. "I think they're just awful. That's what's ruining society."

  "Uh huh." I accepted the wrinkled twenty-dollar bill that she laboriously extracted from her big purse, made change. I waited until she'd toddled out of the store before I picked up my phone, looked down at the text message displayed on its lock screen.

  Then I settled down on the stool behind the store's counter, just staring at the words. Should I text back? Should I meet him? Did I have anything that I wanted to say to Alex Hamilton?

  I did. Conflicting words and thoughts welled up in my head. I wanted to throw myself into his arms and kiss him, and at the same time, I wanted to smack the shit out of him, kick him as hard as I could manage between the legs, send his balls back inside his asshole. He chose to keep his powers over me? Why did he think that I'd ever want to speak with him again?

  Eventually, fighting against my own emotions, I swiped to the left and deleted the message. If I talked to him, it would just bring up the feelings that I'd been struggling to bury. True, I'd barely managed to cover them at all, but even that little bit of work would be undone if I spoke with Alex.

  He, apparently, didn't get the message.

  He sent three more texts to me over the course of the afternoon, all with the same message. I deleted each one, until the phone buzzed again, this time as I sat at home eating some leftover lasagna for dinner.

  "No!" I typed in, hitting send. Stop texting me!

  For a minute, the little bubbles popped up beneath that message, as if he was typing out a response – but nothing came through for a few minutes as I stared at the screen. I turned the phone's screen off and tossed it aside, and it didn't ring for the rest of the night.

  When I got up the next morning, however, there was another message waiting for me. "I need to explain myself," I read off.

  I snorted as I spread some peanut butter on a piece of toast. "Yeah, like I want to hear any sort of explanation from you," I said aloud. "The explanation is that you'd rather have power and money and anonymous sex than be with me. No need to explain any more – I get it."

  I deleted the message and headed downstairs to help the usual morning customers.

  The messages kept on trickling in over the next few days. It seemed like Alex really did want to talk, although he insisted on not conveying it over text message. He insisted that we needed to meet in person, as if he wanted to subject me once again to the pain of seeing him, of remembering how he'd loved me with his body, if not his mind.

  I ignored them all. Eventually, I just left my phone turned off, and didn't even carry it around with me. If someone really wanted to get in touch with me, they could drop by Davies Books in person.

  Unfortunately, it seemed that Alex had that same idea.

  It was nearly ten days after he walked out of my apartment, after sleeping with me and then discovering that ding so stripped him of his powers. I was downstairs at Davies Books, helping the last of the morning's customers pay for their items, when the bell jingled above the front door.

  I looked up – and my breath froze in my throat.

  Alex stood there, just inside the door. He looked over at me, and I wished desperately for the floor to rush up and swallow me. No such luck, however; his eyes locked onto me.

  He stepped over, and I immediately turned my full attention back to the customer in front of me. "Now, Mr. Edwardson, are you sure that I can't get you anything else?" I asked, hearing a touch of desperation in my voice. "Would you like a bag to go with that? Or maybe there's something that you'd like to order? We can handle pre-orders, if the author releases something new."

  Mr. Edwardson frowned at me, and then looked down at the dog-eared used copy of Great Expectations that he'd purchased. "That's okay, dear," he said. "I don't think that Charles is going to be releasing any new versions, not any time soon."

  "I could recommend some other books by similar authors," I threw out. "And some of them are on sale!"

  Mr. Edwardson's eyes lit up with the gleam of avarice at the mention of saving money, but Alex stepped up behind him, resting a hand on the old man's shoulder. "Excuse me," he said politely. "Can I speak with her for a moment?"

  Scowling, Mr. Edwardson turned to give this impudent young whelp a good lashing of his tongue – and then stopped, his mouth hanging open for a second. "Yes, of course," he said politely, nodding and moving aside. "I do have an appointment to get to, anyway." He tottered towards the door, and then paused, jerking slightly as if someone had yanked back on an invisible leash.

  "Oh, and one other thing," he said, looking as he didn't believe the words coming out of his own mouth. "Thank you very much, Ms. Davies." And then, before I could say anything else, he ducked out the door.

  Alex looked after him, frowning slightly. "Crass old bugger. I had to push surprisingly hard to get him to say thanks."

  I looked up at him, my mouth suddenly going dry. "So your powers came back," I said, for lack of anything better.

  He looked over at me, and the expression of uncomfortable uncertainty that appeared on his features matched how I felt. "Yeah. A few minutes after I got home, after I left your apartment."

  "Good." So it wasn't permanent, at least. I stood there for a minute, searching my suddenly empty brain for anything to say, as he apparently did the same.

  "What do you want, Alex?" I finally asked, just as he opened his mouth.

  "I need to tell you something," he said at the same time, his words overlapping with mine and jumbling together into incomprehensible sound waves.

  We both looked away, feeling equally awkward. He managed to speak up an instant before I recovered.

  "I need to talk to you," he said, leaning forward a little over the counter that separated us. "I've been texting you about it-"

  "I've noticed."

  "-but you've been ignoring them," he went on. He reached up and ran a hand through his hair, and I hated how my eyes noted the flexing of his muscles. He looked a little rough, as if he hadn't shaved quite as thoroughly as usual. The stubble on his cheeks wasn't enough to hide his beauty, however, and I felt a traitorous little surge of desire flare inside me. Ten days wasn't enough to get over this man. I doubted that ten years would be enough. "But really, I need to explain myself."

  "There's nothing to explain." I turned away, opening the drawer on the cash register and tucking away Mr. Edwardson's bills. "You don't have to tell me anything about why you made your decision."

  Not looking up at him, I heard him groan. "I kind of think that I do," he said.

  I waited to the count of ten inside my head, hoping that he'd give up and walk back out of the shop. When I reached double digits, however, I could still feel his presence in front of me. "I don't want to hear it," I said.

  I waited for him to get angry. Instead, he just crossed his arms. "Then I'm not leaving," he said.

  That made me finally look up at him. "What, like a child? You're throwing a tantrum?"

  "Not a tantrum," he countered, although I saw a muscle twitch in his jaw. "I'm taking a stand. This is a nonviolent protest. Like what Gandhi did."

  I laughed in derision. "You're comparing yourself to Gandhi, now? I bet he didn't launch his protest while wearing a thousand-dollar suit!"

  He didn't take his eyes away from me. "Come on, Paxton. I'm really sorry for how things broke off between us, but I was kind of stressed and in shock. I wasn't expecting for my powers to vanish, and... and I reacted badly."

  I glared back at him. "Not enough."

  "How about all that apology, and a pastrami sandwich?"

  My stomach, betraying me as usual, chose that moment to let out a grumble. "You think you can win me over with food?" I asked, trying to inject incredulity int
o my voice and hoping that he hadn't heard my gastrointestinal gurgle.

  He just smiled. "I know that I can. I paid attention, Paxton."

  Hearing my name leave his lips sent a little tremble through my strong stance against him. What could it hurt to hear him out? My heart capitalized on this momentary weakness, leaning on me like a mob tough extorting a victim. Just go along with it for a little bit. You can say no at any time.

  "Fine," I gave in. "But I'm only listening to you this one time so that you'll leave me alone. After this, I don't want to hear anything more from you. I need to get past you." I took a deep breath, feeling it tremble a little inside my chest. "I need to move on."

  That hurt him, I saw. For a second, his eyes blinked, flashing with pain. "Okay," he said softly. "Let me say my part. And then, if you don't want to have anything else to do with me, you can choose to do so. I won't try and contact you again after this."

  Part of me cried out in pain, wanted to tell him that of course I'd contact him, that I wanted him back like crazy, that the flame of love he'd ignited in my chest wasn't going to go out anytime soon. I fought that inner voice down, told it that our love was dead, that Alex probably just wanted to make himself feel better for shittily walking out on me. This was just a way for him to repair his own bruised ego, make himself not feel quite so much like the bad guy in our breakup.

  Interrupting my thoughts, my stomach let out another growl. "So, about those sandwiches," I began.

  Alex smiled, and my heart burned a little. "I've got them in my car outside," he answered.

  "So you want me to go out and leave the store unattended?"

  "Take a lunch break," he countered. "I'm sure that all of your customers," and he paused to look around at the empty store, "will be able to wait a half hour or so before picking up their book purchases."

  "You don't know our grumpy customers," I muttered, but he did have a point. I stepped out around from behind the counter, feeling a bit like I was removing the barrier that protected me from Alex. Now, with nothing between us, I found the forbidden urge to tackle him and kiss him, beg him to take me back, coming through stronger than ever.

  I pushed it down, instead walking out of the store ahead of him. Of course, he'd managed to snag one of the impossible-to-obtain parking spots right in front of the store. That, more than anything else, convinced me that he had his powers back.

  Selfishly, I wished that I could reach out and steal them from him again, just by being in his presence.

  Alex opened up the passenger door of his car, lifted out a bag from Zia's Delicatessen, passed me my sandwich. There was a bench a few steps from the entrance to Davies Books, and we took seats side by side on it, sandwiches on our laps. For a long minute, neither of us spoke.

  Finally, I took a deep breath. Let's get this over with. "Okay. Talk. You have until I finish this sandwich – and then I'm going back inside, and never seeing you again."

  "You might have to eat slowly," he said with a wince. "But there's something that I haven't told you. I never told you about how I first found out that I had these powers."

  I tried to conceal a little surge of interest. It was true – he'd never told me how he first got the powers, and from the way he always changed the topic, I suspected that it was painful for him to recall.

  But why did he want to share that detail with me now?

  He started talking, and I listened.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ALEX

  *

  Ugh. Reader, I haven't been looking forward to this part. There are some parts of my history that I feel totally ruin my image of a cool, suave, handsome Adonis of a man, and this is probably the worst offender. So if you want to keep on thinking of me as a kind of male god, exemplifying sex personified and like Ryan Gosling, Ryan Reynolds, and George Clooney all rolled into one super-man, you might want to skip this chapter.

  But then again, maybe you're like Paxton, and you want to pry into my past and figure out my flaws, why I can be a bit of an ass at times. In that case, I suppose you might as well keep reading.

  Just keep in mind that I warned you. These next few pages don't paint me in the most flattering light.

  Looking over at Paxton, I could tell that she wasn't keen on sticking around for long, not if I didn't tell her the complete and open truth. I doubted that, if I'd showed up without a sandwich for her, she would have even come out to talk to me at all.

  I couldn't squander this last chance.

  So, even though I hated every single detail I revealed, I opened my mouth and began to talk about something I hadn't told anyone, not once.

  "I... I didn't look like this when I was a kid," I began, gesturing down at myself.

  She raised an eyebrow as she looked sidelong at me. "What's that mean?"

  I heard the acerbic tone of her voice and barely contained my wince. She definitely wasn't sounding at all sympathetic towards me. "I mean that I was a scrawny, ugly little loser of a kid. And that's the truth."

  There. Even remembering it, now, hurt me. Deciding that a picture would probably do a better job of explaining than I could manage with words, I grabbed another item that I'd brought in the same paper bag as the sandwiches.

  "Here," I said, lifting out the book and opening it on my lap. "This was my school's yearbook. There's one picture in here, I feel, that properly sums up all of my childhood, in a single image."

  I found the marked page and turned the book around, holding it out for Paxton to see. She peered at it, still frowning. "Which one is you?"

  I moved in a little closer to her on the bench so that we could both look down at the book. I felt the softness of her thigh bump lightly against me and nearly lost my concentration, but managed to hold off any seductive thoughts. Telling her the truth was more important. "This one. There, see that kid flopped down on the ground, with the football team captain's foot on top of him?"

  "What, you weren't the football team captain?" Paxton said, joking. Maybe. Her voice didn't give anything away.

  I barked a short, sharp, bitter laugh. "Furthest thing from it. I was the loser nerd kid that no one liked, that never got invited to anything, who was always the first target of every bully. The reason I'm on the ground in this picture is because Jimmy," and I tapped the football quarterback, "just gave me a wedgie and dumped his drink over my head."

  "And someone took a picture of that?" Paxton looked down at the picture, then back up at me, her mouth falling open. "And they thought it was appropriate to put in the yearbook?"

  "Why not?" I shrugged. "Everyone did it to me. Hell, there was an underground bet going around about whether or not I'd try and kill myself before I graduated."

  "Oh my god." Paxton pulled the book over to her lap, peered down at the caption. "Wait – the caption says that this is 'the football team giving school punching bag Alex "Piggie" Hamilton a roughhousing.'"

  "That was me. Welcome to growing up in small town America, where a bit of bullying is good for a kid's character, helps shape those wimps into real me. When they don't kill themselves, of course."

  "That's horrible!" Paxton looked up at me, her face softening, but I held up a hand.

  "I'm not done yet. There's more to the story."

  She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she bit the words back. Instead, she closed the book firmly, nodded, and turned towards me so that I had her full attention.

  "I thought that college would be my opportunity to turn myself around," I went on, looking down at my lap. My fingers were twisted together there, a batch of nervously writhing worms. I hated even remembering those dark times in my life, but I needed to tell Paxton, to finally get it out there. "I met Tommy, but one friend isn't exactly a turnaround. And try as I might, I couldn't seem to catch a break."

  "Like what?"

  "Oh, take your pick." I felt anger creeping into my tone, forced it back out. "I managed to get up the courage three different times to ask out a girl – three rejections. Bam, bam,
bam. I managed to get a decent scholarship when I first came into college, since I saw it as my only way out of my hell of a hometown. But the stress and pressure got to me, and I ended up losing the scholarship from poor grades. I tried to work a part-time job, but that just put me back at the bottom of another social ladder, another place for everyone to pick on me." I shook my head. "It's like I had a damn 'kick me' sign on my back, and everyone could see it except for me. It never stopped."

  "Until you got your powers," Paxton guessed.

  I shook my head. "Nope. Not quite yet. There's a little more drama to come, first."

  Her eyebrows jumped, perhaps wondering what else could possibly happen to make the story even sadder, but she waited and listened.

  "It was a week before Christmas," I said, my voice growing softer.

  This, right here, was the worst part. I'd never told anyone else about this part. Even Tommy didn't know these details. I'd kept them inside me for so long, I'd nearly succeeded in convincing myself that they never really happened. That the whole thing wasn't real, just a fiction in my head.

  "I'd found out that I barely managed to pass most of my classes – I had been on probation for my scholarship, and I hadn't done well enough to keep it. I was about to run out of money, wouldn't be able to afford the next semester's classes."

  I closed my eyes, feeling almost like I was reliving the damn memory itself, back there in the grip of soul-crushing, utterly demoralizing fear and hopelessness. "There was a party that I knew about, off campus. I wasn't invited, of course, but I decided to sneak in. One last college hurrah, try and get a real college experience before I had to give up and go find some minimum wage job and attempt to save up enough for another semester of tuition.

  "I got to the party, and it was a madhouse. I snuck in, sure enough, started drinking. I hadn't had much experience with alcohol before this – surprise! – and so, in short order, I got very drunk."