2.19: the second stage is ANGER

"Why do people think that you're my boyfriend?"

Alex hadn't been one to snort or giggle or any gesture that indicated the lack of self-preservation, but he actually choked and coughed and proceeded to have hiccups as soon as I clamped my mouth.

"W-W-What?!" he gasped.

"Are you okay?" I put my hand on his forehead, because there was a little fear in the back of my mind that aliens had abducted him and what was standing in front of me was just a decoy. An eerily similar decoy, but different nonetheless.

He swatted my hand, and most people would be offended if a guy did that, but I felt bad because I had enforced him to a rule of no touching without warning. I had just broken my own rule. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. Are you sick?"

"I'm not sick. Just before I got here I finished a daily 5k run and I'm actually enjoying my kombucha." He looked at me with his clear green eyes, and I noticed the flush on his cheeks that confirmed his previous statement. "Are you sick?"

The question sounded simple, but it was not, in every sense of word. My body was slightly sick, and I suspected that it had been sick since the last four years, due to an accumulated hours of sleep-deprivation added with too much laser-focusing during my editing days. Anybody who said that achieving laser-focus was something that we all should aim was a sick masochistic. Whenever I gained laser-focus (and somehow it came very easily to me), I ended up working non stop for hours and forgetting what bed, or life, felt like. 

My mind, however, was positively sick.

For the last 17 hours, my laser focus was channeled to a single person with great hair, great body, and particularly great eyebrows. To be more specific, the times that I'd spent with this unfairly genetically gifted person. It was awful. I felt that things would be better if I could fix my brain and remove the parts that were contaminated by him.

I very probably might lose most of my brain cells, but at least I would be a happy idiot.

"You are an idiot," Alex said. Apparently, I had voiced some of my thoughts out loud. "Unfortunately, you are not an happy idiot."

"If only idiocy comes hand in hand with a constant feeling of zen."

"They do, actually. That's why I'm a sad pessimist." He clocked his tongue. "It's a good thing I make a lot of money. Anyway, when does your filming begin? It's supposed to be today, right?"

"Ah, about that. I met... Penguin yesterday, and he cancelled on Audra."

The next three seconds, I saw Alex trying out a few expressions. First, it was the jaw-drop. And then, he fixed his mouth and tried to feign ignorance. In the end, his forehead gave away his true feelings and I saw lines and lines and lines forming all over his face.

"He came in here yesterday?!"

I nodded.

"And you met him?"

I nodded.

"And it's all fine?"

I nodded. "This is a confused nod."

"Thank you for pointing it out."

"It's just... I think I'm fine. I seriously thought I would just drop dead if I ever see him again, but I'm obviously still standing. It's just..."

"It hurts on your chest?" Alex helped.

"And my head. And my arms, and my toes and hands. It hurts everywhere." I put a hand on my chest, testing it. "But yeah, the chest hurts the most."

Alex shrugged. "Some people do die out of a broken heart. But really, April. I... I don't have words."

"Did you know that the wood guy was Penguin?"

He didn't answer that question, and instead asked me another. "Did something happen yesterday?"

"I found out a scary side of myself," I confessed, shuddering when I remembered the amount of cups I threw towards Him. "I can actually be quite violent. It's a good thing I'm bad at aiming things."

Alex was quiet. He was always quiet when he was thinking, but the complete absence of sound made me uncomfortable. What made me even more uncomfortable, though, was His last words before disappearing.

"He told me good luck with you," I said to Alex, because he was a good friend, and most of the time he was able to help me figure out context from things I didn't quite understand. "And I quote, verbatim, 'good luck with your boyfriend.'"

"I never said to anyone that we're dating," Alex was quick to diffuse the situation.

"And I know you have a long string of girlfriends. Sometimes you date two at the same time."

"If both consent to it, then why not?" he shrugged nonchalantly, but his face and the way he pulled his eyebrows together said otherwise. "I don't know where he got the idea of that."

"We are close," I said. "But it's more like brother and sister close. I remind you of your dead sister, and you're like a quieter, smarter version of Quentin." I smiled at him as I recited the nature of our relationship. Nevermind that I found Alex better looking than Quentin in every way (especially around the shoulder area), and nevermind that I thought his green eyes could be hypnotizing sometimes.

Alex's eyes roamed all around my face. For a second he held up his hand, and I had a tiny bit desire to reach for it, to feel some badly-needed human warmth. But like 90% of the times, both of us returned our hands to our respective sides.

"I need to smoke," he announced suddenly.

I followed him to the balcony, and he retrieved yet another exotic brand of cigarette. Alex travelled a lot, and his parents travelled a lot. I bet they had a stash full of Japanese or Indonesian or Vietnamese cigarettes. Most of them smelled fruity and non-offensive.

He seemed a bit more relaxed whenever he smoked, though, and I liked him the most when he was relaxed. It was contagious, and I found myself inhaling slower and longer breaths.

"I wish I have a vice like that," I said. "You have smoking and Bella has kickboxing. Even Audra puts on crazy make-up whenever she has a row with Quentin."

"So you can hear them when they fight?"

"Trust me, hearing them making-up is worse," I retched as the images started to flash. Sometimes I liked being Audra's roommate, but how weird it was to actually meet (and interact) her during the day after knowing that she had just been 'plowed relentlessly' the night before?

"I never thought that he'd actually show up," Alex's voice was just a notch above a whisper, but I didn't need to ask to know who he referred to. "I know that he's been doing well. But I never thought that he'd show up."

"He used to be your favorite fighter," I pointed out. "You must be excited."

"I don't do that any of that child's play anymore," he seemed legit offended that I reminded him of his previous days of pimping street-fighters and getting money out of their blood and sweat, literally. "You must be excited."

I recoiled at the thought of it. Exciting didn't feel like the right word for it. I was afraid. Fearful, actually, of what could possibly happen. And hurtful and humiliated, because I ran after him the second time and got rejected again. With a nonsense reason, at that.

"I'm just angry."

I blinked, surprised at the words that I'd just said myself. Angry had never been within my nature. In fact, I'd get suspicious of myself because I'd been devoid of that emotion since I was a kid. It was easier to be sad, less tiring. And I'd been sad for years. But after yesterday, all that sadness had been gone, and it was just... anger.

"I want to hurt him as bad as I want," I let my mouth loose and those words came out. It surprised me, but I wanted to know more about what I could say when I didn't leave any preservation into my subconscious. "I want to hurt him so bad, and then I want to kiss him. Wow. It's really weird."

When I looked up, I saw those green eyes. As always, they looked calm, but I could actually feel the turmoil beneath them. Alex ran his tongue on his bottom lip, which could only mean that he would say something bad. Something that I wouldn't like. "I..." he began, and then stopped. He exhaled loudly, and then put out his cigarette. "Can I try something?"

There was so much plea on his eyes that I couldn't help but stare. Why I hadn't noticed this before? Alex would never be the kind of handsome that He was. Alex looked too soft, too lean, and a bit too rich for that. But there was something regal about the way his neck was shaped, long and slender and delicate. The way his lips were always the rosy color of healthiness, his poreless, clear skin. He took care of himself well, or maybe he just had really good genetics.

And then that perfect skin were nearing towards me in a snail-pace. "Give me your hand," his voice was commanding.

I held up my hand.

There was hesitation in the way Alex moved, how he held his hand up for a few seconds too long, before then he intertwined mine with his.

It was warm.

"We never hold hands," I was just stating facts, but for some reason I felt the need to say it. As if I was celebrating something. "This feels..."

"Weird," he finished my sentence aptly. "But I don't mind."

I looked at both of our hands. His hand weren't that much bigger than mine, and so dry and warm and it snugged nice. I massaged on the paw of his hand, and then felt the side of his wrist, his pulse beating fast. "You know, if I were a doctor I'd recommend you to take an MRI," I said. "Your heart-rate is alarming as it is."

"Shut up," he leaned his face slightly to the other side, refusing to face me. "I'm only doing this because you look like you need to be held."

I smiled as I saw through his lie. "You know you always rub your eyebrow when you lie, right?"

He didn't respond, but his face reddened a bit.

-

-

-

Alex and I held hands during the full duration of his second cigarette (and his pulse still alarmingly high.) and went back to the apartment. Today was supposed to be the filming day with Audra and That Guy, but since He bailed, Audra had nothing to do and I was out of work for once.

Audra didn't make it a priority to communicate with me during our off days. Our interest didn't match a lot, and often I found it awkward to look at her and know that she was the girl Quentin lost his virginity with. If I ever get my hands on a memory-device, I would delete the memory of Quentin telling me about his first night with Audra.

But today was different.

"Aaaaappp!" Audra called me the way Quentin called me. "Phonecall for you."

I checked my cell phone just in case there was any missed call, but I found nothing. "My phone is as dead as it is!" I told her as Alex rolled his eyes towards the direction of Audra's room.

"No, I mean there's a phone call for you! On my phone."

I went into her room, and nearly immediately froze to death because of how low her room temperature was. Audra liked cold, and she loved turning on the AC no matter what the weather was.

Audra was not draped in any make up, and I almost jumped back because of how different she looked. It wasn't that she was ugly, she just looked different. Her make up videos always paint her the picture of Ultimate Daddy's Rich Girl, if there was ever a stereotype for that. Her hair was lavender (it changed according to the trend), her eyes were clear blue, and she had really pale skin that was slightly flushed around the cheeks and extremities. Overall, super pretty. Bare-faced, she was pretty, too, only not Bella's level of stunning.

Maybe that was why she was so hostile around Bella. I didn't look as good as her, even if I put an effort to my looks. But if Audra and Bella ever walked together on a street, then people would look at her the second after they finished checking out Bella.

"Just take it," Audra looked exasperated. "Here."

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Ry- I mean Penguin."

At the same time, I heard his voice. "April?"

All of a sudden, I regretted my decision to just blindly put the phone onto my ear. My knees somehow blurred into jellies and all the previous warmth I accumulated from holding hands with Alex just evaporated to the chilly wind of Audra's room.

"Ugh. Okay, you can sit," Audra motioned to the fur-draped chair in front of her table. "I'm just tired that he's only answering in full-sentences whenever it's concerning you. Any mention of collabs, and he just reverts to monosyllables."

"Are you there?" His voice sounded weary, almost careful.

"Hi," I whispered.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," he didn't waste any time beating about the bush, which I was grateful for. "I never thought that I'd met you yesterday. You look good."

I was at loss of words. What was the polite way to respond to this? He looked incredible, too incredible even, but even the thought of saying that to him would kill me. A grunt was all that I could manage, which disappointed me, because yesterday I was such a Rambo.

"I know that you probably don't want to see, or hear, or even think about me again. Okay? Believe me, I know, and it's for the best," there was a sharp inhale on the other side. "But I'm a selfish man, April, and even though I tried my damned best, I..." another inhale. "You just crawled into my skin and refused to let go. I'm trying hard to let you go, but I'm fucking hurting everywhere. I want to meet you again, even just as friends, even as an acquaintance. I just... can't remove you from my life."

His words were jumbling together, but it made everything more genuine. All the uhmms and aahhss added authenticity to his words. Which broke me even further.

"It will probably kill me if I watch you together with anyone else, but it's much better than the thought of never again being able to see or talk to you. I'll not try anything with you, April, I promise that I'm not that much of an asshole. But please let me be a little selfish and let me be in your life again. As anything that you're comfortable with."

"Anything?" I whispered to the phone.

"Anything."

By this time, my whole cheeks were wet with tears. I sniffed, confused if what I was feeling was a surge of sadness or a surge of happiness. If was never this confusing before, but apparently relationships blur my feelings.

"I'm not ready to be friends with you," I said. "I can't even say your name."

"Can I just be around? I heard that you're Audrey's editor."

"It's Audra."

"I'm willing to be in her video if that means I can see you once a week."

"A month," I stated. "Once a month is enough."

"Okay. Okay." I could hear the smile on his reply. "Once a month it is."

"You were such a meanie," I said to him. "But you know that, right?"

"I know. I'm sorry."

I grunted once again, neither accepting nor refusing his apology.

"And thank you for not telling me to go fuck myself in hell, because then I don't need to call the delivery men to cancel my order."

"What delivery man?"

-

-

-

The answer came not five minutes later, when a Fed-ex guy came knocked and delivered one huge Teddy Bear.

And it was just the first of one string of many, many, many delivery guys delivering a lot of Teddy Bears in various amount of size and colors.

The fifteenth and the last one came two hours later, and the last bear was a small fluffy keychain. The last one came with a note.

Please tell me it's not too late.

-

-

-

Woot!

It's supposed to come earlier than this, but I'm having another flight to a friend's wedding. I feel like the airport is my second home now, y'know? I'm here 6 times a month, and it's both stressful and annoyingly-cool at the same time. Next update is Wednesday (and since we all live in a different timezone, it might be Thursday for some of you). My period is fine, guuyss, thanks a lot for the concern :D And really, I'm fine with updating a lot and I don't really beat myself to it. I have a tendency to get distracted and your gentle reminders keep me motivated. Thank you for that. And also thanks a lot for all the readers who tell me to slow down. I love you so much :)))))

Anyway, what do you think about a new (shortish) story with Clinical Depression as the central theme?

I'm only thinking about it because I've just had a bad episode and it's really really really... depressing (sorry for the lack of better word). But I hate how all the shows in the world romanticize it and make it looks cool to have depression. Eugh. Or if you do have a book or a show that depicts depression well, please let me know!