Page 92 of Alexander: Alexander's Story

“No, actually.” She watches my face fall. “Maybe another time in the future, though. You know, once I get my land legs back to full working order.” She looks down, pink staining the apples of her cheeks. She’s embarrassed. My heart sinks. Mentally, I’m already carving my fucking headstone.Here lies Alexander Palomino, who died of guilt.

“Well, the second you do, I’ll be there.” I lean forward, putting a light kiss on her forehead.

Normal. She wants normal. Give her normal.

march

Things couldn’t be further from fucking normal. I hate it here because I knowshehates it here.

I thought she loved it here. And maybe she did, but I don’t think she does anymore.

I thought she loved me. And maybe she did, but again, doesn’t feel like it anymore.

She’s almost nothing like the Emma from before. She’s angry and bitter and quick to temper. She cries over small things and big things, too. She sleeps a lot during the day but tosses and turns all night. It’s killing me watching her like this.

But that’s my penance to pay, isn’t it?

“Ow,” she says, staring at me.

“Sorry.” I release the hold on her leg, releasing the tension of the stretch I’d been helping her with.

“This is pointless,” she huffs, rolling her eyes. The daily routines are rote and monotonous. Every day looks a lot like the last, with little forward progress.

“Do you want me to get Blanks?” That’s her M.O. lately. When she gets tired of me, she’ll ask for him instead. Each time she does, it guts me. She’s become incapable of hiding her annoyance with me. Even if she can’t remember, it’s like her body still does.

She doesn’t spare me the same sympathy as before, and I feel each day like a pull on our bond. I don’t know what that said about us if we didn’t work when she couldn’t be the one picking up my pieces.I think it says I’m a piece of shit.

“I don’t know, Alex. I’m just…” She puts her hands over her eyes, either fighting back tears or exhaustion. “I feel dead.Inside.” When she drops her hands, I see it. The lack of life reflects back at me. Been there, felt that.

“What can I do?” I don’t have the same innate ability as her, or as Blanks, who knows what to do without being told. I’m exhausted, too, from always seeming to do the wrong thing. I need her to tell me the right thing.

She closes her eyes and sighs, fighting off a tremble. “There’s nothing you can do. I’m going outside for a bit, okay?”

I’m about to ask if she wants company when she stops me. “Alone, I’m going alone.” I nod, then take her hand and pull her up. She glances at both our hands.

“Why did you stop wearing your ring?” she asks.When I stopped feeling worthy of wearing it.

Instead, I tell a white lie. “Our rings are together, at the jewelers, being repaired.” She swallows, gives me a vacant look, and walks to the mudroom to get bundled up for outside.

Her ringsareat the jeweler’s. They’ve also been ready for pickup for two months now.

Her walk is less hobbly these days, but she wouldn’t be running anytime soon. It hurts somewhere between getting a fingernail removed and a root canal to watch her, only slightly less painful than the full-blown cardiac arrest I suffered the first time I watched her move post-accident.

I can’t help but keep watching her as she gets ready. Maybe it’s because she’s still a fall risk. Maybe it’s because I broke her. But as I watch, all I can think is:I don’t know how to make her better.

I don’t know how to make anything better. That’s sort of my whole life in a nutshell. I’ve never met a deed, good or bad, that went unpunished.

I only know how to be with her in the before. Before I ruined it.

Grabbing my coat off the hook beside hers, she stares at me.

“I’m going alone, Alex,” she says defiantly.

“No, you’re not,” I give it right back, not meeting her eyes. When she sits down to put on her sneakers, I pull them out of her hands and kneel to help her put on her hiking boots instead.

“I can’t wear those. They’re too heavy.” Another annoyed protest.

“Then I’ll carry you,”literally or figuratively. “When’s the last time you went down to the cove?”