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I almost drove straight into a barrier when I noticed him.
He, too, did a double take, his eyes widening.
Alex motioned for me with his head to stop on the shoulder of the road. I did. He parked right behind me. It was surreal, seeing him back home. Especially as I was days from moving away and starting my own European adventure.
Alex got out of his car, and I did the same. He walked toward me. He’d gained weight. Enough to look like a man now, not a teenage boy anymore. And his hair grew. He looked good. Happy.
“Holy shit.” He laughed. “Honeypie.”
“Alex!” I threw my arms around him, hugging him. We hugged for maybe a full minute before I disconnected from him. Seeing him didn’t feel bittersweet anymore. Just sweet, with a dash of nostalgia. And it was weird, because it had only been a little over a year since we’d broken up.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, at the same time he said, “Holy shit, you lost weight. Eat something, Little Friend.”
We both laughed.
“I’m just visiting my parents for the week,” he said. “How about you? Where’d you end up going for college? Ever since Tom and Jadie broke up, I no longer get the tea about you.”
“Yeah, actually, I decided to study in London.”
Alex tapped his lower lip, considering this. “Expensive.”
I wasn’t going to tell him I got married. Not voluntarily, anyway. It just seemed like rubbing it in.
“Yeah.” I chuckled, tucking a flyaway behind my ear. “Well, you were the one who taught me to follow my dreams.”
I saw the moment it registered. The golden band on the same hand I used to push my hair away from my face. Alex’s jaw hardened before it relaxed again. Just a tic. A tic that told me he figured something out, but then thought better of it, because I was still so young, and it was only months ago that we told each other we would not be over one another for a very long time.
“Nice ring.” His tone turned icy.
“T—thank you,” I stuttered a little.
“Where from?”
I took a deep breath. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t lie to him.
“I got married, Alex.”
He closed his eyes, dropped his head, and smiled a grim smile, erecting his index finger in the air, as if he needed a moment to digest all this. I stood there like an idiot, waiting for him to take it all in, and feeling ashamed and guilty, even though I had no reason to be.
“Brent?” he asked.
“What?” I gasped. “No. Not Brent.”
“Who?” His eyes zinged with anger, and just like that, he became alive again. Animated. “Is it Ryan? Because I am going to kill the prick if it’s him.”
“I haven’t spoken to Ryan in years,” I spluttered, a little shocked. “No, Al. You don’t know him. His name is Patrick, and he is great.”
“Does he know you’re moving?” he demanded.
“He is British.” I swallowed. “We’re moving in together. I’m moving to London.”
“Of course.” He smiled tightly. “How fucking lovely.”
“Alex.” I sighed.
What could I say? That he didn’t even tell me he was home? That we had been broken up for a while now? That he was the one who chose to leave, and, just like our argument over Jadie and Tom all those years ago, he had no right to be mad?
But he did have the right to be mad. That was the thing. He had every right. Because I was lucky enough to fall in love again, and he wasn’t there yet.
Feelings didn’t always have to make sense in order to be validated, to matter. Sometimes they just…existed.
“Have a good life.” He galloped back into his car.
I thought about running after him, but figured it would achieve nothing. Even if I apologized—which I didn’t think I needed to, because I’d done nothing wrong—he wouldn’t accept it. Not right now.
Alex slammed his car door and drove off, leaving me dejected and full of remorse on the shoulder of the road.
A year later, I got an email from Alex. I was happily married to Patrick, and a little surprised from the blast from the past.
The email read that Alex was happy for me, that he was excited I was still married (he’d bumped into Jadie during the summer when he came to visit his parents, and she’d filled him in), and that he was sorry he was such an asshole last year.
I was glad he sounded happy, like he’d moved on, and wrote back. We went back and forth a few times. Alex told me he was dating a Chinese med student named Liyuan. He sent me a picture of both of them. They looked gorgeous and happy, and now I was pretty sure it was true what they said. That tiny women had a thing for tall men.
