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“Yes, I always did and so does my family. When did he change it to Alex?”
“When he arrived here four years ago. I told him it was ridiculous, but he insisted. We are just finishing up here; I’m his cousin, and he stays with us. Would you like to come home with me and we can talk some more?”
“Oh, yes. I have so many questions and won’t be talking to Xander until tomorrow. I’m bursting.”
Janelle cleaned the two children’s mouths and hands. Then she went to the cashier and paid the bill. Sophia looked up at Ava and grabbed her two fingers with her tiny hand. Ava smiled down at her. She reminded her of her niece. Not much was said on the ride to Janelle’s home because the children insisted they sing their favorite song.
When they arrived, Janelle took the children in the house and left them with their father. Then she took Ava to the apartment over the garage.
“Alex stays here. It was a mess when he got here, but he, my husband, Billy, and my father-in-law fixed it up. It’s better that he has his own place rather than be around all the time. Not that he would care. He loves playing with the kids, and they love him.”
She unlocked the door and opened it to a tidy one bedroom apartment. Ava remembered that Xander was always neat and he continued that trend here. Everything was in its place. The living room consisted of a couch and a recliner. No television was in sight, and the only electronics were an old laptop and iPod.
Janelle must have been reading Ava’s mind because she answered the question she had on the tip of her tongue.
“Alex doesn’t have much call for television. He prefers being creative.”
Ava had no idea what that meant. He never did anything creative other than in the courtroom (and bed) while they were together. Janelle pointed to a stack of notebooks on the side table next to the couch. A sketch pad sat on the coffee table along with several charcoal pencils. She picked one up and ran her finger over the point.
“I have to go inside. This will be our little secret. I thought you should know how Alex spends his time. I’ll let you explore for awhile. Just make sure you put everything back where you found it. He is very particular about that.”
Janelle left the apartment, and Ava saw her walking to her house through the window. She picked up the sketch pad and flipped over the cover. The first page had a sketch of just her face as she slept. The next page had her wearing sunglasses like when they had been in Lake George on Memorial Day weekend. The next was a sketch of her reclining on the bed in her sheer lingerie. He captured her soft curves perfectly.
She paged through several more sketches of herself. On the last page was a drawing of her in her graduation gown. It was a great likeness, and he had captured the features of her face perfectly.
She was so astonished that she spoke aloud in the empty room. “He did this all from memory?”
Each sketch had a date, and it seemed to Ava that he started drawing at least one a month since they had been apart. She put the sketch pad down exactly where she had found it and explored his apartment further. His refrigerator was clean but had mostly bottles of water and Gatorade. His freezer had a multitude of frozen foods, Hot Pockets, and frozen pizzas. She found not one vegetable or fruit in the kitchen.
Next, she went into his bathroom. It was small, much smaller than the apartment in the city that he had occupied. The shower was a molded standing-only stall. But it was clean. She noticed that he still wore the same cologne from four years ago. She unstopped the top and inhaled deeply. She loved that smell on him.
In the hall to his bedroom, he had a few framed pictures, one of his family and two of her. The first was the picture he had taken from her laptop years four years ago that had been taken at Sam’s brother’s loft one New Years Eve. The second was the picture that was in the enclosed bulletin board at Camp Kids Afloat. She was in her white bikini. She knew that he had taken it.
She entered his bedroom and found a neatly made queen sized bed. It was sparsely furnished; besides the bed, there was a dresser and a nightstand. She opened his closet to find barely anything hanging. He had one suit, a pair of khakis and two dress shirts with ties around the hanger. This was vastly different from what his closet in Manhattan had been. Back then he had many suits, more than he could wear in a week. He also had a whole drawer of ties and many dress shirts. She opened his dresser and saw mostly t-shirts, well-worn but clean jeans, and tank tops. The top drawer held his underwear and socks. He kept his boxers rolled, and she unrolled a pair and looked at them.
She closed her eyes and remembered back when they were together. She loved his body especially when he wore nothing but his boxers. They outlined his muscular legs and backside. She stuck them back into the drawer, and her hand rubbed against something hard. She moved her hand around until it grasped onto a box which she pulled out. It looked like it had been caked with something, but it was obvious to her it held a piece of jewelry. She opened it to find a dazzling diamond engagement ring.
She sat on the edge of his bed and removed the ring from the box. She held it up to the sunlight that came through one of the windows. It was beautiful with a large emerald cut center diamond, maybe two carats. The ring had a platinum setting and was surrounded by smaller accent diamonds around the main stone and band. She wondered if he planned on asking her to marry him. She could never say yes until they discussed things from the past. Plus she no longer knew him, and that would take time. She slipped the ring back into the box and put it back in the drawer as she had found it.
Ava went to the living room and sat on his couch. His iPod was on the table next to the sketch pad, and she picked it up. She turned it on and found it was on U2’s All I Want Is You. The repeat was set which meant that he sat and listened to the song over and over. She released the song and scrolled through others on the iPod. They were all related to love — lost or otherwise. He had several U2 songs: With or Without You, Stay, Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. She found Peter Gabriel’s Your Eyes. It made her realize that he was just as miserable these last four years as she was.
She was careful to put the iPod back on the U2 song and set the repeat. She didn’t want him to know anyone had gone through his things. The next thing she did was look at the entries in the stack of notebooks. She took the top one off of the stack and opened it to the page he had bookmarked. The date he had written at the top of the page was today’s. She read the entry.
I saw her, held her hand, kissed her. It made me realize what a mistake I had made being away from her all these years. She is still the beautiful, intelligent woman that I left but there is something more. There is a hurt below the surface. A hurt that I created and will work, for the rest of my life, to wipe away. She is the woman I want to marry, and that is my future goal. I will work towards making her happy for the rest of our lives.
Ava pulledthe notebook against her chest. Her eyes burned with tears. She paged through the notebook and found entries for each day. She replaced the notebook and pulled out the one from the very bottom of the pile.
This isone of the worst days of my life. I’m in my apartment surrounded by reminders of Ava everywhere. Her perfume is here, her clothing. I found a strand of her hair on the pillow she used. I’m leaving in less than an hour to fulfill the promise I made. I don’t know how I will live without her, but I have to try. What a Happy Birthday this is.
She pagedthrough the entire notebook and each entry tore at her heart. On each page, he wrote the goings on of the day without her, a poem or a sonnet by a famous author. She replaced the notebook not wanting to read anymore because she was sickened by his feelings of guilt and remorse. Janelle entered the apartment with some iced tea just as she shoved the book on the bottom of the stack.
“Pretty sad stuff isn’t it?”
Ava blushed because she had invaded his privacy.
“It is, and it’s worse because I was going through the same thing.”
“Those first two months were the worst for Alex. He spent a lot of time up here drinking his days away. I finally got sick of it and threw him a lifeline. I told him that if he didn’t get his act together, stop drinking and get a job he would have to leave. He promised he would, and he did. Billy’s father hired him at the lumberyard, and he has been there ever since.”
