Wilde About Alec

by Cate Faircloth

  I realize I am giving more away than I usually do. I don’t even talk to my brothers like this about my work, even when I was talking to them. Mia has this way about her that defies everything I’m used to, and I actually want to change sometimes.

  “You light up when you talk about your job.” She holds her face in her hands as she looks at me.

  “I don’t… you do, though. Even when you were talking about doing that big wedding last minute,” I tell her.

  She shrugs like I’m lying but doesn’t deny it. “Well, it’s good to like what you do. Makes things easier.” She trails off like she has something else to say.

  “Yeah.”

  I hadn’t noticed how close we had leaned into each other. I see the smooth curve of her cheek and rounded chin before I meet her eyes again and find them wide like always. It is so easy for me to get lost in them, and I think that’s what scares me the most about this. It isn’t that I wasn’t prepared to feel like this, to even meet someone that was making me rethink everything, or that I was seeing myself doing things I hadn’t pictured in a long time, it is just that I don’t want Mia to feel things for me. I don’t want her looking at me in wonder because one day she might be looking at me with different questions in her eyes.

  “I don’t like the flower shop as a career. But it’s all I have right now.” Mia breaks the silence. I swallow and pull myself out of my reverie.

  “What does a… sorry, what is it called?”

  “Botanical scientist.” Her brow raises.

  “Yeah. That. What did you want to do at first?”

  She answers me as she takes the food out of the oven to cool. “In my undergrad, I did a lot of research, and I liked that. But my projects finished before I graduated. Labs were very private and hard to get into, so none hired me once I did graduate. I couldn’t wait until one did hire me because I wanted to move away from home and not take money from my parents.”

  “You don’t like your parents?” I get up and find a bottle of wine in the fridge for us to share.

  She gets two glasses and stands next to me as I pour. “It’s not that I don’t like them. I just don’t like the strings that come with them. They’re… rich society type, and it was always hard to try and branch out from them. My mom stills holds paying for college over my head, so it sucks even more that I don’t have a job in my field to show for it.” Mia breaks off as if catching herself from getting too serious. But I don’t mind it. Somehow, I feel honored to hear her speak so candidly. It makes me wonder why I even tried to distance myself from her in the first place. Because this—sitting and talking with her—feels like nothing I’ve ever pictured myself doing.

  “That’s shitty of your parents. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks. That’s why I just wanted to take this job and live on my own.”

  I wait until we are sitting at the dining table, and I’ve had a few bites. Whatever chicken and rice combo she made is amazing, and I try not to think of how good she is at so many things.

  “Do you still apply for jobs and stuff?”

  “I haven’t in a while. The ones I want aren’t hiring.”

  “Well, you should just find something. You might find out that you don’t even want to do research.”

  She pauses, giving me a contemplative look. “That’s true. I might try that.” She shrugs.

  We finish dinner, and I clean up. I still don’t know where everything goes, so she helps with that. The whole process feels domestic and easy between us. She doesn’t ask me any more questions about why I came here or anything I’ve avoided before, and I appreciate her not prying. But it’s mostly that if she keeps asking, I would confess everything.

  It’s almost nine before we leave the kitchen, and our conversation dies down. I could talk to her for hours and not track the time. In the hall between our bedrooms, I try to say good night to her without kissing her up against the wall like I keep picturing.

  Mia is just… her beauty is conventional but stunning and tailored to her. The softness of her lips, the natural red color and heart shape is calling to me. Even the way she hides her slight curves under her straight dresses doesn’t deter me. She doesn’t even have to try to be alluring or provocative. Her demure ways, slight flirting, and secretive looks are enough to have my brain churning away.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow?” Mia shifts on her bare feet as she looks up at me. She is much shorter than me, and more times than not I just want to pull her to my chest, her head stopping right over my heart.

  “Yeah. Maybe. It sounds like we’re both busy at work now.” I try to let her know that my mood swings are more unpredictable than parkour, but I think she already knows that.

  “Yeah. True.”

  “Thank you for dinner.” My body faces away from her, but I don’t want to turn away completely.

  “No problem. Good night.” She steps away as do I, but we both pause.

  I wonder if it’s even appropriate to hug or kiss your roommate good night—on the cheek even. So, I don’t. We do smile at each other before turning away and clicking our doors shut at the same time.

  In the safety of my room, I lean against the door as I exhale theatrically. I cross the space of my room scratching my head as I start the shower water to get hot and strip before getting in. I wash away my swarming thoughts from head to toe—the day going up and down between my conversation with my brother and dinner with Mia. I haven’t had any stable emotions since the day I spent with Dad before he died.

  Part of me thinks he waited to tell me before he could die. He wasn’t even sick, but heart attacks can come out of nowhere if you aren’t prepared for them. Or maybe it’s that the emotional toll holding all of it in took on him just came to light. None of us were ready for it, regardless.

  I get out, cinch a towel around my waist, and look at myself in the mirror. I look the same, still young with messy hair and slight muscles. It’s my eyes that have changed, and the rest of me that feels different. I wipe away the moisture from the shower and brush my teeth before entering my bedroom again where my phone rings to interrupt the silence.

  I eye the name showing up cautiously, both shocked yet not at all surprised by it.

  “Hi, Mom,” I answer the phone.

  “Alec, sweetheart, hey.”

  I need to sit at the sound of her voice. She sounds… tired.

  “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  “Me?” She laughs only slightly. “I’m worried about you. I haven’t heard from you since you’ve moved away. None of your brothers have heard from you. It was like Isaac all over again.” She sighs, and I feel guilty for the first time. I probably should have before, but I just didn’t, not until hearing her say it and hearing my mom sound so worried. It isn’t like when I was younger and would stay out too late. It’s really hearing the uncertainty in her voice, and I feel shitty for all of it all at once.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ve just been going through some stuff,” I say, partially keeping stuff from her.

  “I know. We all have been since we lost your father.” She sighs, and the mention of him reminds me why I really left.

  I rub against my bare knee before I clench into a fist. “Did you still love him? After all these years?” I ask her.

  Her silence tells me the question came out of nowhere, which it did. But I have been wondering since I found out the truth. I questioned everything I thought I knew about my parents once I found out the truth about them. I hear her breathing on the other end, some shuffling, and the sound of something closing telling me she is probably reading in the library again.

  “I did. I still do. I always loved him very much. That’s why this has been so hard.” Her voice cracks, and I want to leave her alone, but curiosity is killing me. It’s keeping me from sleeping every night, and it’s the same thing that’s kept me from calling anyone.

  “I know, Mom. I believe you. But I have to ask why. I mean, Dad told me the truth about everything before he died. I know… Mom?” I
gravel.

  My body seizes like I am waiting for an attack of some sort. Maybe my body has just been tensed since the very first day when I sat in Dad’s office, and he turned my entire life around in circles. And at the funeral, when I thought Mom already knew he told me, but she didn’t. The two of them were way more secretive than we could have ever imagined. Me, my brothers… we have no idea what went on behind their closed doors.

  “Yeah, sweetheart. I didn’t know he told you. I’m sorry…”

  “Sorry that I found out or that you didn’t tell me?” I scoff, my half-laugh is void of any emotion.

  “I don’t know. But I didn’t picture it being like this when I can’t see you. I made mistakes so many years ago, but it doesn’t change anything about how much we love you, Alec. Will you tell me where you are?”

  I sigh as I stretch out my hand blowing out a breath of frustration. “A small town in Connecticut,” I say as I comb through my wet hair.

  “Oh. Okay. Well, will I see you soon? We can talk about everything then.”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it, Mom.”

  “I understand. But you’ll call more, at least?”

  The yearning in her voice makes me give in.

  “Yeah. Of course. I have to go now, Mom.” I pinch the bridge of my nose.

  “Okay. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Good night.” I hang up and stare at my blank phone screen like nothing ever happened. I let out a breath as if I had been holding it in the entire time.

  I feel damn near lightheaded because I didn’t expect her to call me at all. I didn’t expect anything that has happened over the past few months to go down either. There is no one for me to vent to, that I can even talk about how unfair things are.

  But I know Mia is right down the hall, and thinking about her makes me want to run to her. I’ve been running for so long with no direction. I get the feeling of one from her.

  I change into flannel pants, and before I get back in my bed, my phone dings with an email. I frown, annoyed already. But nothing can hide my shock when I see it’s from Isaac. Isaac, who no one has heard from in ten years, is texting me. The number doesn’t tell me it’s him, it’s the message.

  Isaac: It’s Isaac. If I signed the will, you can too.

  And nothing else. I don’t even know how to respond to him, but I do.

  Alec: It’s not that easy.

  And I don’t even slightly think he will reply back. It doesn’t make sense. Everything is coming apart in the family, and I feel like I’m the cause of it. I don’t know how to contain my frustration and anger, a bunch of emotions that are moving too fast for me to even land on one right.

  I don’t know how to get a handle on anything, and the only thing I’m certain of is the woman down the hall that my head keeps floating to. I don’t think about it when I leave my room and cross the hall to knock on her door. There are dim lights under the bottom of the door crack, so I think she is still awake. It’s only two seconds after I knock that I hear the patter of her feet.

  The door swings open, and I find her in a huge shirt covering her small frame and seemingly nothing else as she looks up and over me with my bare chest the same way too. I want to grab her right now, fist my fingers through her curly hair she let down, and kiss her like she has all the answers. But I know what that will do to this living arrangement, so I don’t.

  Instead, I just ask her, “Were you sleeping?”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “Watching Fresh Prince reruns.”

  I nod but don’t say anything back. I don’t know how to say ‘I just don’t… want to be alone.’

  “Want to watch it with me?” She reads my mind opening her room to me. It’s just like her—flower pots by the window, pale curtains, light bed sheets, a fluffy rug in front of her four-poster bed, and decorated TV stand. Jasmine and lilac scents come flooding in.

  “Yeah. Sure,” I say.

  And it’s easy to walk into her room and forget about everything.

  10

  Mia

  That night sparked something that seemed to dwindle away the more the days went by.

  I’m not surprised since it seems so typical of Alec. Of how he does things. I liked making dinner for the both of us and having a real conversation where he didn’t evade every other question. I even liked when he showed up out of the blue at my door like he needed me but didn’t tell me. We watched old episodes until they ended around 1:00 a.m., and he said a simple good night again. Four days ago.

  Friday is here, and I only saw him in passing when I was making a snack, or when I was already in the living room, and he was walking around. No more conversations about nothing, not much of anything. It’s like something happened, and he was reminded of his old ways, or the front he seemed to be putting up. I already know that I like him… I just don’t know what it is I like because it feels like I have met two different people.

  Work keeps me really occupied getting these arrangements set up and working with Haley to get them ordered. Half our usual distributors haven’t been able to fill the large orders at such short notice, so we had to find others. It all reminded me of how Alec was talking about doing what I really wanted to do. Last night, I sat down and applied to three small labs within the university nearby. It wasn’t much, but it could be the start of something.

  I wanted to tell him, but for some reason, I couldn’t muster up the courage to go knocking on his door like he did to me. I wanted to. I just wanted to be around him again to smell his deep, intoxicating scent, look into his deep eyes and try to find answers in them… just do anything with him. It’s getting to where I don’t even remember what his voice sounds like.

  “I told you the guy was weird. Just forget about him.”

  “I live with him Haley, it isn’t that simple.”

  “Pfft. I haven’t seen my roommate in three months. Just stop leaving him extra food and being nice. He obviously has issues, Mia.” Haley is speaking sense to me, but I’m just not hearing her. I avoid it and move on to the next big floor pot. I’ve been so distracted, I haven’t watered in two days. If I kill all our plants, I definitely won’t be qualified to work in any lab.

  “I know. But who doesn’t have issues? He doesn’t seem like that, not when he was talking to me.”

  “Okay, Mia. You always want to fix things. He isn’t some dying plant breed, you know.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, I know.”

  She helps me water the rest, and we close the tab out on the register. We actually needed a calculator because so many people came in for their weekend flowers. It never fails.

  “So, what are you doing for your birthday? You barely ate the cupcake I brought.” Haley reminds me of what I’ve been dreading all day.

  “That was definitely a mini cake, which I did love. Thank you. But I don’t have anything planned, no.” Twenty-five wasn’t a big deal to anyone, I don’t think.

  There was nothing monumental or special about it, but I felt like that for all my birthdays, so I didn’t see the difference anyway.

  “No problem. But seriously, nothing? I’ll take you to the club.” She nudges me, and I stare at her in turn. Her jeans and pink t-shirt are so normal, I wonder if she did it just for me.

  “We both know the clubs here suck. And no, I don’t want to do anything. But thank you for the cake, really.” I hug her, and she laughs.

  “You’re so gloriously boring.”

  I finish out the day, and we both head home going in opposite directions on the street. She lives close enough to walk home, and I go to my car. The drive is boring. I keep thinking of Alec wondering if I’ll see him when I walk in or later on. If I were more forward, I would probably say something, but I also don’t want living together to get complicated or uncomfortable. So, I left it alone, and I still leave it alone.

  His car is in the driveway, and I walk inside to hear him in the kitchen. My heart flutters with the tingle of my fingers as I drop my purse and rou
nd the corner to the kitchen. I plan to make myself a fancy dinner, but instead, I gasp when I find him in the kitchen. The dining table behind him dimly lit with a few candles, and my flowers freshly watered because I can just tell. I feel underdressed in my jeans and plain white t-shirt. It seems I chose the wrong day not to wear a dress.

  “What…” I announce myself, and Alec turns with a smile. He still has his work clothes on—dark khakis are more casual with his blue button-up, the tie gone, and top buttons loosened.

  “Happy birthday.” He grins, and I bite my lip in surprise before I smile back and approach him slowly.

  There is a deep-dish lasagna pan on the counter, and I can’t believe he remembered what I said my favorite food was.

  “Thank you. How did you know?” I look up into his eyes only a few paces away. He is so much taller than me, I want to bury myself in his chest with his arms around me.

  “You got a letter from the super.” He shrugs like it’s nothing. Like he didn’t go out of his way to do this. I wonder why he opened my mail in the first place, though. “It wasn’t addressed to either of us, that’s why I opened it,” he explains as if he read my mind.

  “Oh. This is… I wasn’t expecting this at all.” I look around again impressed by how quickly he must have done everything.

  “It isn’t much.” He points to the lasagna, “It’s Stouffers.” His grin is sheepish, and it makes me smile too.

  I touch his arm lightly, and it’s electric before I pull away. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome… hope you’re hungry.”

  I smile at him and nod. I’m starving for so much more than just this dinner with him, though. We start with a salad and wine. We talk about our days like it’s all routine, and I realize it all feels way too familiar. But it’s nice. I sit close to him on the side of the table, and every now and then my knee brushes his. Both our hands stay poised on the table like the other is just waiting to reach out and grab it.