Alex (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 3)

by Hope Hitchens

  “You made the decision to sleep with her when you knew she had one. You did know she had one, right?”

  “She has more than one. The list isn’t just two guys long.”

  “So then it’s just okay?” she asked. “So then it’s just fine to sleep with someone you know is in a relationship?”

  “It is her job to care about her relationship. Not mine.”

  She stopped.

  “Okay. Fine,” she said. She walked away from me back into the kitchen. Her purse was sitting on the counter where she had dropped it when we got to the house. When she came out of the kitchen, it was over her shoulder.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I am leaving. I don’t want to have this conversation with you anymore,” she said. What was that? This was like the third time she was doing it. You couldn’t just check out when you didn’t want to talk anymore. When’d she start doing this shit?

  “You’re not leaving, Liv, come on,” I said. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  “Did you sleep with that man’s girlfriend when you knew they were together?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know from the beginning. I found out after we had already started hooking up.”

  “So you found out, had an opportunity to stop, and didn’t?” she accused.

  Did she have to say it like that? I mean, I had, and I had never felt anything about it, but now, I felt like maybe I should if it bothered Olivia that much.

  What was the big deal, though? It was not my fault. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else. It was someone else. It was who knew how many guys? I wasn’t going to lie, though. That would have just made it worse.

  “I don’t know why you’re mad, babe. I haven’t seen her in weeks.”

  “Because you knew what you were doing was wrong or because of something else?”

  “Because of you. I want you. I don’t want that other girl.”

  She scowled.

  “Was she just a random hookup? You have a lot of those?”

  “Olivia, please.”

  “I’ll see you Sunday. Hurry up and get your bike fixed.”

  She walked out without another word.

  13

  Olivia

  Saturday night was the first night I spent at my new place.

  I had wanted to move earlier, but the inconvenience and time wasted thing was inconveniencing me and wasting my time. The boxes and bags of clothes and miscellaneous objects, I could fit in my car, even if they took more than one trip to move. A lamp could fit easily enough in a passenger or back seat, nestled among boxes of shit and the bedside table it stood on. The mattress and bed frame were another story. I had had to put the bed frame together when I got it, and once it was no longer an entire bed frame, I could fit the pieces in my car somehow. The dig was putting it back together again.

  How hard could it actually be if I had done it before?

  Rick had ended up being nice enough to help me take it apart and to also inform me that I could find the reassembly instructions on the website of the place I had gotten it from initially. He had also been nice enough to help me transport my mattress from the house to James’s loft. Iris had been walking on eggshells around me. Good, because she should have been, and Hayden just wanted to know when I would be moving back in.

  Saturday night was mostly bed assembly and not as much sleep as was optimal. The bed was not yet all the way assembled. I had given up and slept on the mattress on the floor before I had finished. I had woken up to an eighteen-pound monstrous fur ball walking across my chest and had thrown the comforter off myself so violently I’d scared it away. I had passed out with my door open, but I had thought it would be safe because the cat slept in James’s room. It must have gotten out when he woke up to feed it.

  I shooed it out of the room and closed the door behind me. The loft lit up beautifully with the natural light from outside. The cat meowed at me, probably asking how the hell his dad let someone move in without his approval. I hadn’t thought to bring any groceries with me, so the only thing I felt comfortable helping myself to was coffee. James had a French press, and the coffee in it was already lukewarm. I poured it into a glass and added ice. He had soy milk in the fridge which would do for now before I bought my peppermint coffee creamer.

  James might have been younger than me, but he ate like someone who cared about his arterial health. His refrigerator was full of colorful vegetables and fruit, some steaks and a few condiments, but no takeout leftovers in sight. No alcohol either. He walked in as I was reading the label on a bag of green powder I had found in the cupboard—some kind of powdered vegetable or algae supplement. Gross.

  “Hey, how are you?” James asked cheerily.

  “How am I? Your twenty-pound monster woke me up,” I said. “I can’t have him coming in my room.”

  “He was probably just curious about all the activity. He wanted to mark your stuff with his scent.”

  I wanted to throw up. That thing wanted to do what?

  “Nuh-uh. President Bartlett and I, we need some boundaries.”

  “I don’t like to restrict him. He needs to feel like he owns the territory.”

  “He is a house cat, not a cougar. He doesn’t have a territory.”

  “I’m telling you, when you stop him going in there he’ll just harass you until you do. And when he does, he’ll probably poop on your bed or something.”

  “I don’t want him in my stuff.”

  “Just don’t leave anything lying around that is small enough to fit in his mouth, because he will take it.”

  “I’m locking that door, James. I don’t want him getting near me,” I said, flinching when I felt the cat rub up against my legs. I moved my leg and looked down, seeing its odd eyes staring up at me.

  “Give him a chance; he actually seems to like you. He hated my last roommate.”

  I moved my leg again, feeling the cat’s hot, furry body rub against me.

  “If he comes near my bed again I am going to build a wall.”

  “You can close your door, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” James said.

  It was Sunday morning and just after eight. James was awake, but he wasn’t barefooted making coffee, or in running shorts. He was in a shirt and dress pants like he had somewhere to go, and not the supermarket for some English muffins.

  “Are you expecting someone?” I asked him.

  “I’m going to church,” he said.

  I stared at him. I wasn’t familiar. My parents had raised Iris and me very loosely Christian. We had gone to church as a family until we were teenagers and they would ask us whether we wanted to go anymore. The answer was always no and had been ever since. The last time I’d been in a church, Hayden was getting baptized.

  Why, I wanted to ask, but I didn’t? Standing there in my pajama shorts and tank top without a bra on and no makeup, I felt a little self-conscious. James had seen me in my bra before, and he had never stirred anything other than feelings of you know, friendship. He was younger than I was, by just months, but it was enough. We lived together now. I had to get to know him as a person, not just my TA.

  “By yourself?” I asked. I imagined him maybe taking his mom, the way Alex took care of his mom.

  “With my girlfriend.”

  Well, blow me down.

  I had no idea he was seeing anyone. I had never thought to ask because part of me thought there was no way he was, and the other part sort of thought he might be gay. An unfair assessment, but I had literally nothing to go on. I saw the guy every day, and all I knew about him was his name was James, and he was good with kids.

  “Have fun? I’ll be moving a couple of furniture pieces in today and finishing up my bed frame.”

  He smiled at me.

  “That’s fine. Just be careful with the floors,” he said. “You can eat whatever you want, by the way. Just replace something if it runs out.” I thanked him as he left. I’d lucked out. He wasn’t going to make us separate our food accordi
ng to the shelves in the fridge or bark at me when the cream cheese ran out.

  The one thing I liked to have in the morning—besides coffee—was cereal, and he didn’t have any. He had oatmeal and granola. I could do a Cinnamon Toast Crunch and even Fruity Pebbles, but what I wanted was Lucky Charms. Sugar cereal. Like a shot of pure glucose right to your brain first thing in the morning. Breakfast of champions. He didn’t even have regular sugar in the house. He had various syrups and a bunch of dried fruit he probably used as more wholesome sweeteners than I was used to. I made myself a bowl of oatmeal drowned in maple syrup and shooed the cat off the countertop when it jumped up to see what I was doing. That was where we would prepare food. Again, gross.

  I had lived with two people who had a kid. I could deal with President Bartlett. I just didn’t want to. I loved kids. They were gorgeous. They were people for one thing. President Bartlett was a thing. President Bartlett would eat my body if I died in my sleep.

  I got into my room and shut the door behind me, keeping the cat out.

  It was time.

  I had to go back to the house.

  I needed my stuff, and I needed to talk to Iris. The last mission to talk to Alex had had to be aborted. I had no right to make judgments like that about him, but… it bothered me.

  If someone cheats, it’s on them, but he said he knew. He hadn’t known from the beginning, but he had found out and then not done anything about it. Maybe he was with her right then—that guy’s girlfriend. Yeah, it wasn’t his responsibility to make sure that woman wasn’t sleeping with other people, but he could have been less of an ass about it.

  That was the guy I had been scared of. It was Alex before we started dating. The one who was a player and was with a different girl as often as he pleased. It was who I thought he had stopped being when we were together. Maybe he had for the duration of time we had dated, but he was apparently at it again. Why couldn’t it have been something he grew out of that had changed with the rest of him?

  Whatever. They could have fun. He could have till I next saw him to think up an excuse. He hadn’t tried to call me, and I wasn’t going to call him.

  I got ready to go to the house, dodging Mr. President on my way to and from the shower. Sunday was a day that anything could be happening at the house. Rick and Iris were probably home. In the event that they were not, they had to come home sometime. Especially her.

  I wanted to kill her. Nothing that serious, but I wanted her just to have a shitty day today. To get really bad diarrhea or get a really bad dye job at the hairdresser; some sort of bad luck or something from the universe. I was mad. We were supposed to be sisters. What she did had to fly in the face of sisterhood somehow even if I wasn’t entirely sure what it was.

  Iris let me in, but she let me get upstairs after saying hi to Hayden and Rick before she followed me up. I couldn’t take the closet with me, but I had to take the chest of drawers and vanity. What would Rick and Iris do with my leftover furniture, anyway? If I didn’t take it, I would just have to buy more, which I would probably have to assemble from Ikea or something.

  I let Iris stand awkwardly in the doorway and speak first before I acknowledged her.

  “Ollie?”

  “Yes, Iris?” I asked her, not bothering to look up from the chest of drawers I was pulling the drawer pieces out of. I could sit it in my car easily enough, but the drawer pieces would fall out during the trip and probably get damaged.

  “Can we talk?”

  “If you want to say something to me, say it now. I’m leaving as soon as I figure out how to move these things into my car.”

  “Ollie, I’m so sorry.”

  “Best place to start a story is the beginning, Iris.”

  She sighed and came into the room. There was nowhere to sit down anymore, so she just slumped against the wall.

  “Before you and Alex got together, he used to date a lot of different girls; older, younger, it didn’t matter,” she began.

  “I know. I was there,” I said.

  “One of the people that he did date, just before he got with you, was a friend of mine. Leslie. We were in the same year, and they were hooking up in secret. She didn’t want anyone to know she was hooking up with a sophomore. When they were together, she got pregnant.”

  My head shot up.

  “What? How do you know? Did he know?”

  “I knew because she told me. She didn’t tell him. She didn’t tell anyone else. She ended up having a miscarriage before she ever started showing. By that point, he was with you, and he seemed to be sticking to just the one woman.”

  “Where do you come in?”

  “When I got pregnant, I panicked. It wasn’t supposed to happen. The guy was older. We were dating, and he was sort of… helping me out,” she admitted. Where was this going? When did we get to the part where Alex and I broke up?

  “When I got pregnant, he wasn’t happy. He dumped me. He told me to get rid of the kid, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to tell Mom and Dad that I was pregnant by some older guy so… I lied.”

  “You said it was Alex who got you pregnant? Alex, my boyfriend? Alex who was two years younger than you? Why would you say that?”

  “I had to pick someone. He… no offense Ollie, but when I said it was him, Mom and Dad believed me. I know you couldn’t have been blind to the reputation that guy had.”

  “That doesn’t make it okay to do,” I said. What the hell? She sounded like those cops who wouldn’t care that a prostitute was murdered because they live ‘high-risk lifestyles.’ “Did you ask Mom and Dad to tell me that it had to end?” I asked.

  “They made that call themselves, Ollie.”

  I sighed.

  “I can understand you not caring what happened to Alex, and what he felt, but what about me? That was the worst breakup I’ve ever gone through. Why would you tell a lie that you knew would hurt me?”

  “I’m sorry. I had to choose, and I chose me over him.”

  “No. You chose yourself over me.”

  “Olivia…” she started, defeated. “I don’t know how to say I’m sorry to you. You have to believe that I would never-”

  “Too bad, you already did.”

  “You aren’t going to forgive me?”

  I looked at her. She looked scared. She looked a little shocked. Maybe she had come into this believing that whatever she told me would be totally fine. I would just let her explain herself, and we’d hug it out like best friends. She’d missed the worst of it. Her lie was just the tip of the iceberg.

  After Mom and Dad came to me telling me I couldn’t see Alex anymore, he and I had talked. He said, more or less that I had been a waste of his time, and he turned down too many girls thinking I would finally put out for him, and I never had. He had said he was not staying in California for college after all. And then he left.

  Just went. Not a text message, not an email. Nothing. Not even a halfhearted, ‘we can still be friends’ suggestion.

  I was eighteen when it happened. I took it like a bullet to the gut. I knew that he had a reputation, but the rumors, even though they never completely stopped when we got together, at least slowed down. When he said that, it was like I didn’t know him at all. I thought he had changed for me, but apparently, nope. He said it to me himself, then left me in my juices, alone, to marinate.

  Lucky me, I got to find out all this shit after I had managed to get over it and build myself something of a life. I was ripping the scab right off. Turns out Iris had been the one who had made the first cut. I left the house with my furniture precariously balanced in various parts of my car.

  Was I going to forgive her? Not today.

  I got back to the house and after a few trips up and down in the elevator, got everything up and in my room to be put back together and made useful again. Lugging my furniture around during this move was more exercise than I had gotten the whole year.

  I put the vanity by the window, so I would be able to use natural light when I d
id my makeup. I started piling my stuff on its surface before remembering James’s warning about the cat and instead replaced them all in the tiny drawers.

  My phone rang, making me jump. I picked it up. It was a number I didn’t recognize.

  “Hello? Hey, Livvy. Where are you? Mom and I were expecting you today.”

  I shut my eyes. It was Sunday. I had forgotten to go with Alex to visit Deana.

  “Oh my God, Alex. I am so sorry. I’ve been so busy with moving, and it totally slipped my mind.”

  “That’s alright, babe, we’ll just come together tomorrow, won’t we?”

  I frowned. Why was he being so nice about it? His voice, deep and sonorous was sweet and gentle. Like he was talking to a kid, or his wife or something. Someone he liked. This was not the way Alex spoke to me, or to anyone. He had at one point, but that was ages ago. I thought he would be a lot madder. Especially since I had walked out on him the other day like that.

  “Yeah… Alex, what’s gotten into you?”

  I heard some muffled speech before Alex spoke again.

  “Alright, babe. See you tomorrow. I love you,” he said.

  The line went dead before I had time to tell him anything back.

  14

  Alexander

  I was almost done with the second chandelier.

  That would make two out of the five that I had been working on.

  The couple, the woman actually, was really particular about the way she had wanted them to look: six or more light mounts per piece and a lustrous finish with paint. I hated painting my work. It was like a way out. If you did a shitty job with the metal—cracked it in the forge by heating it too long, or didn’t do tight enough welds—it was all hidden. I liked attention to detail. Even though they would be mounted to a ceiling, too high up for anyone to really see if the metal had stress fractures or not, I liked my shit to look like it was done by someone who knew what they were doing.

  I had twisted the metal so that once it was pounded out; it had an interesting grain, not the heavy, solid, homogeneous grain a lot of the medieval, Tudor-style light fixtures the couple were using as inspiration had. Just a little modern twist. All for me, just to make my job a little more interesting.