He nodded again, looking over at me with those green eyes we shared, nothing but patience visible in them.
"You know…the situation with Kayla?" I said after a few more seconds of hesitant silence.
"The skank?" he asked, nodding.
I cracked a smile, loving him just a little in that moment. "Yes, the skank. Well, after my interview at the bookstore—"
"What interview?" he interrupted.
"Oh," I said, realizing I hadn't even told him about that. "I had an interview at the bookstore yesterday, and I got the job."
"Congratulations," he said. "Continue."
"Thank you. Anyway, after I found out I got the job I was really excited, so I thought I would just stop over at Derek's house and share my news with him."
"Naturally," he said, nodding his head once.
I nodded back. "Yeah, I thought it would be nice. Only…I didn't call first, because it was a surprise." I paused, debating whether or not I should keep going, then deciding I may as well. "And when I got there…Kayla's car was in his driveway."
Watching me, he asked, "What did you do?"
"Nothing," I said. "I kept driving and then I…turned around and came home. He called me a little while later and I figured he would mention it, you know? Tell me what happened. But when we talked he didn't say anything about it. He acted like everything was normal; he even said he was going to invite me over earlier, but he didn't because a buddy stopped over unexpectedly."
"A buddy," he said, cracking a smile. "That's an interesting term."
"I thought so," I said, nodding.
"Did you say anything?"
"No," I said, shaking my head and resting my chin on the pillow. "I wanted him to tell me. I didn't want it to seem like I…caught him."
"But you did catch him," he stated.
"I didn't catch him," I said defensively. "I didn't even see him. And…I don't know."
"Dump him," Alex said simply.
Rolling my eyes, I sighed.
"I know, that wasn't what you wanted to hear. It wasn't the right thing to say and it wasn't the right way to say it, but rather than waste 15 minutes putting it into softer words, I'm just going to get to the point. Dump his sorry ass."
"This is exactly why I didn't want to tell you," I said.
"Because you knew that I would give you good advice? Excellent reason, Einstein."
"You don't understand," I said, feeling even more frustrated than I had with my own though
ts.
"I do understand, Nicole. I understand better than anyone else that you know right now. The only person who could possibly understand more than I do is your mom—no, Mike would understand too, but your mom's dead and Mike's a bastard, so I'm afraid I'm all you've got, kid."
"I'm not doing this," I said, standing up.
"Go ahead, avoid it," he said, not standing up.
"There's probably nothing to avoid," I shot back, turning to face him with agitation all over my face. "I'm sure it's nothing, Alex. I'm probably just overreacting," I said with forced lightness. "You know what they say about making something out of nothing."
"Yeah, you go ahead and pretend that it's nothing. Pretend that the truth isn't staring you in the face. Pretend that you guys are going to be a happy little family and live a perfect little life once you get over this hump in the road. Pretend that love is supposed to be this hard, that nothing worth having is ever easy. You can find a million little clichés, Nicole, and if it makes you feel better, you can cling to them while you lie to yourself. Have fun with that," he said, standing up, the vein in his forehead suddenly very visible. "But you know what? When you let him use you and play you and you find yourself going out of your fucking mind, don't come crying to me about it then. I'm warning you now. I'm telling you that you need to get the fuck away from the kid—I don't care how, just do it. I'll send you to school out of state if that's what you need to get away from him, but please…don't make me go through this again."