Page 16 of Watching Ames

So I went, purposefully heading in a couple hours after my normal time and circling the block twice, making sure to peer in through the tall windows. When I failed to see the familiar set of broad shoulders and dark hair, I slipped through the front door. The line was slightly shorter than usual, likely because most people were thinking of lunch rather than coffee so late in the day. I got my drink, shrugging with a forced smile when the barista asked where Alex and I had been, hating that we had so effortlessly become a pairing in the eyes of everyone here.

The interaction had me so unsettled that I skipped sitting down and walked back out the door, turning sharply to the left and regretting that I parked so far away as my feet carried me over the sidewalk. There were a few people on the sidewalk, corporate workers talking in sharp tones on their phones and children speaking animatedly to their parents, their voices ebbing and fading away as I passed. But one stood out among all the rest, ringing out in a shout just as I saw my car in the distance.

“Ames!” His voice sent a mixture of dread and excitement through my veins, the two competing for dominance. I hated that my brain hadn’t turned totally against him, my instincts recognizing him first as a friend. I froze in place, wondering how quickly I could run away if I pretended not to hear him. But I took too long to decide, Alex’s fingers wrapping around my elbow in a loose grip. It felt casual, the way he touched me, but when I looked at the tension lining his hands and the white knuckles from where he gripped me, I suddenly wondered if he’d let me go if I tried to shrug off his hand. “Please let me explain.”

I glanced up at his face, noticing the dark circles under his eyes and the rumpled quality to his usually pristine appearance. He looked like the jilted lover in a romantic comedy, pouring whiskey in his cereal and not showering for days. Except that wasn’t totally true, because instead of looking pathetic, he just looked like a more volatile version of himself. He was still just as attractive, his dark eyes and wavy hair flopping over his forehead the same way it always did. But the friendly warmth behind his eyes was gone, replaced with an intensity that flipped my stomach.

But alongside that intensity was desperation, and the fact that the dissolution of our friendship had affected him just as much as it affected me had me nodding at his request.

“Can we sit?” Alex tilted his head in the direction of a nearby bench, and we turned in that direction, settling in the shade as he turned to face me. “So -” he started, but I interrupted, finally coming back to myself, allowing my anger to bolster me. I was suddenly sick of having my feelings and input consistently trampled on. Peter abruptly leaving and re-entering my life, Bex moving in without notice, Alex acting platonically to my face and sending me anonymous gifts behind my back.

“Before you start, I need to make some things clear. What you did was fucked up. Maybe your explanation and your intentions will explain everything away, maybe not. But I haven’t had a lot of friends in the past few years, and you were truly one of the first friends I’ve had in a long time. Spending time with you was so great because I didn’t have to pretend. You didn’t have any preconceptions or expectations that I had to live up to. I could just be myself, and it was nice to do that with one fucking person. And then I find out you’ve been lying to me? Sending me gifts one day and then looking me in the eye without a word the next? It’s not okay.”

“You’re right. I admit that I’ve omitted some things. But I havenotlied to you. I’ve told you before, I would never lie to you, and I stand by that. As for the rest, I guess I should just start from that first time we met.” He blew out a breath, smiling slightly at the memory in a way that had my heart clenching. “That interaction, you totally blew me away. You were beautiful and sweet but also funny and forward, calling me a stuck-up coffee snob without meaning to and then ordering me a coffee without even asking. But you clearly didn’t remember me, even when I saw you atIronwooda couple times in passing, so I never said anything. I had seen you with Peter, so I knew you were in a relationship, and I figured I’d admire you from afar indefinitely.”

He paused for a moment, lips tilting into a frown and his eyes darkening as he continued, “But then you got sad. Whenever I saw you before, you seemed so full of energy and life. You were always talking to Delon and Adam, cracking jokes with the baristas, humming to yourself as you worked. But a couple of months ago, you came in one day, and you just seemed…not yourself.”

He described the time after Peter’s and my fight with such precision, and I was surprised that I hadn’t hidden my depression during those weeks as well as I thought. Or maybe it was just Alex who picked up on quite how not-okay I was.

“You were sad, and you seemed so lonely. I would catch you staring out the windows instead of working. I kept hoping that you’d snap out of it, that it was a temporary issue, but it lasted for so long. And then I found out about yourMorelinterview, and I thought that would be what boosted you back to normal. But your eyes still looked dead. Better than they were, sure, but still not where I wanted them to be. Not back to normal. So I ordered the flowers, wrote the card, and signed it with my initials because it wasn’t meant to woo you but to make your day. Give you a boost before your pitch. After that, I just couldn’t stop. I ordered the silver envelopes so you’d associate them with me, even if you didn’t know it was me.

“I fully planned to stay on the sidelines, using the gifts to make you happy without stepping on your toes. Except then we ran into each other after the concert, when you lost your phone, and when I saw you in the coffee shop after that, it was just too fun talking to you. And I totally understand you’re with Peter and I respect that, but I couldn’t keep away anymore. I won’t keep away anymore. I like being there for you. I like being with you, period. And I plan to be there, whenever you need me. I’m not going to push anything beyond our friendship, but Iwillfight for that.”

I took a moment, absorbing what might be the longest monologue I’d ever heard from Alex in the weeks knowing him. His eyes shone sincerely where they bore into mine, the intensity of his gaze coupled with the admission of his attraction toward me made my cheeks pink despite my attempts to keep calm, and I broke eye contact to glance down at the wringing hands in my lap before I responded.

“Okay.” I glanced back up at him, his gaze still firmly on my face as if he could read my thoughts before I spoke them. “It does help knowing that this wasn’t some sort of prank. But I don’t know, I think I still need some more time to get my head on straight before I’m ready to sort this out quite yet.”

“I understand. But I’ll also warn you, I don’t quite play fair and I don’t give up easily.” For a moment, that dangerous glint entered his eyes again, a sharp twist of his mouth sending goosebumps racing down my arms. But he lost the danger just as quickly as it arrived, smirking as he told me, “Plus, I have a few more gifts up my sleeve, so maybe those will win you over.”

I stifled my laugh with a cough but the triumph in Alex’s eyes told me that I was caught. I grabbed my coffee cup from where I had set it on the ground, the drink still lukewarm after sitting on the sidewalk for minutes.

Alex frowned at the cup in my hand, eyes narrowed as he stared at the coffee. “Did you pay for that?”

“...Yes?” His question caught me so off guard that my answer came out unsure, both of us studying the coffee cup as if it appeared from thin air.

Alex didn’t respond, just nodded once, a quick dip of his chin, and then he was surging toward me, pulling me in for an unexpected hug, wrapping his arms around me and tucking my head into his chest. One of his hands splayed across the small of my back as the other twined through my hair, cradling the back of my head in his palm.

We hadn’t hugged much, Alex and I, our friendship the past few weeks so platonic that I assumed his gifts as my admirer were the result of a joke rather than actual interest. But despite our lack of physical contact, and even though we were in a weird place in our friendship, it felt nice. The warmth of his body seeped into mine and his arms supported me so fully that I melted almost completely within the wrap of his arms. We stood like that for a few moments, and I could nearly pretend that things were back to normal. Too soon, I forced myself to take a step back after spending some time conjuring up all the anger I had before our conversation. The anger that dissipated all too easily with Alex’s words.

“Maybe I’ll see you around,” I told him, giving Alex a small wave as I headed to my car.

“You will,” was all he said, the words a threat and a promise all at once. I felt his gaze on my back until I drove away, and even then it felt as if his eyes followed me the rest of the night.

The next day, Alex wasn’t at the coffee shop, sitting at our table or running after me as I walked out the door. But when I went to pay, my coffee already waiting at the counter like always, the barista waved me off, telling me it was paid for.

Chapter11

Him

The dayswithout Ames were a hellscape. I enjoyed spending time with her way too much, drinking coffee or eating lunch or watching her teach, the passion in her eyes and the skill of her hands as she created designs from a ball of clay. She was more beautiful in a pair of dirty overalls and clay-splattered hair than should have been possible.

So going from spending every day with her to no contact was a painful existence. Most of my days were still spent working, catching up on jobs that I let fall to the wayside in preference to spending time with my girl. But I spent my nights thinking of ways to win her back, ways to make her realize that she couldn’t stay away from me just like I hadn’t been able to stay away from her since the moment we met. I could only hope I got the chance, my skin itching to see her, touch her, every moment we were apart.

It didn’t help that I hadn’t watched her in weeks. Over the course of us becoming friends, I had stopped watching her on the cameras littered throughout her apartment, preferring to get my fix straight from the source. Invading her privacy beforehand had been part of the job, and later, a way to soothe the obsessive burn I felt for her. But when we were talking every day, my almost-nonexistent conscience crept up, telling me I was betraying her trust by watching her. Funny that she felt the same way, enough to block my number and avoid the coffee shop for days. As if either of those things would stop me.

My newfound ethics were pretty much gone once she cut me off, though, and I was reduced to methodically checking her internet trail as a way to keep close to her. I noticed an uptick in her searches for household items and houses for rent, my pulse skyrocketing when my suspicions were confirmed after I saw emails between Peter and his assistant talking about getting a realtor to set up showings.

There was no fucking way she was moving in with that asshole, and I hated that I knew I was somehow responsible. It didn’t slip past my notice that the trends in her search history started the same night she had texted me a flurry of angry messages before blocking my number. She had been putting her trust in me, opening up and enjoying time with me, but that had fallen to pieces, and she felt backed into a corner.

---