“Sorry,” Rachelle mumbled. The other two girls didn’t even respond, just huddled behind their friend. “I didn’t know what was going on with her.”
“Whatever,” Chyna stated dismissively. “Alexa, hey, look at me.” Chyna gently turned her head to face her. Lexi’s brown eyes were blank and bloodshot as if she had been crying, but every other indication was vacant. “What happened?” Lexi stared at her friend. “It’s okay. You can tell me if you want, but you don’t have to.”
Lexi could tell she was worried. Chyna’s voice was cracking with concern. She had never seen Lexi this way. That’s because Lexi had never felt this way. She felt comatose, as if she no longer needed anything to sustain her body. She could stare off into open space indefinitely and nothing else would matter. Maybe nothing else did matter.
“Chica, can you even hear me?” Lexi hadn’t noticed that she had still been talking. What was so important? She wanted to drift away...far away from this time and place. “Alexa, wake up. What has gotten into you?” she asked shaking her shoulders gently. She felt her head loll back and forth as her neck lost control of keeping her head upright. She still didn’t make a move to speak up. Chyna looked to be near to tears and there was nothing Lexi could or would do about it. She wanted to be left alone. “I just...I don’t know what to do with her,” she murmured standing and speaking to Lexi’s roommates. “What could have happened to her?”
Chyna jumped backwards as a knock sounded from the front door. Rachelle crossed the room swiftly and gasped as it swung open.
“You son of a bitch,” Chyna cried stalking across the space. “What the hell did you do to her, Jack?”
“I...Lex,” he murmured softly glancing around Chyna at Lexi’s near statuesque form.
Lexi glanced up for the first time feeling as if she had been awakened from a dream. She hadn’t expected to ever hear her name uttered by his voice ever again. “Jack.”
He attempted to enter the apartment, but Chyna blocked his way. “How dare you think you can walk back into her life like this! She’s been sitting like a completely unresponsive rock for the past seven hours because of you...and you think...”
“Chyna, cut it out,” Lexi commanded her voice weak but controlled. “Let him in.”
“Are you sure?” Chyna asked biting down on her lip. It looked like the last thing she wanted to do in the whole wide world.
“Yes.” That settled it and she moved away letting him enter the dorm. Rachelle shut the door behind him and quickly made her, Claire, and Elizabeth very busy. Chyna stood by ostensibly, ready to pounce at any second in the event that he hurt her friend again. Lexi sighed. “I’m alright, Chyna. You can go. I know you’re supposed to be meeting with Frederick today. He hates when you’re late.”
“He can deal,” she grumbled not budging.
“Go. I won’t have him angry with me. I’ll call you if I need you.” Chyna looked anxious about the situation but, eventually, nodded and left.
Lexi noticed how bad she ached all over for the first time since that morning. She had never fixed her dehydration problem and every muscle in her body was crying out from thirst. Her eyelids were heavy and pink lips chapped. Her back ached from sitting ramrod straight for seven hours. Most of all, her heart hurt terribly. She had closed off her emotions when he had walked out the door, but now with him standing in front of her, it all came back in a wave. Her heart was tearing, breaking, being shred to pieces, and it was unlike anything she had ever experienced. She wanted to gasp out in pain, but she kept her mouth closed and held in her aches. Jack had come here for a reason, and she wanted to know what that reason was.
“You said if I had something more to talk to you about...anything better that I should come back,” he told her speaking quietly as he sat next to her on the couch.
“It took you seven hours to think of something good enough to say to me?” she whispered, her voice raspy.
“Please, Lex,” he pleaded his blue eyes boring into her.
“Go ahead.”
Jack took a deep breath before speaking. “I’ve always been the kind of person who believed that I’d never find someone I wanted to commit to. That after all the shit I went through with my parents’ divorce, I’d never want to be with someone indefinitely. I’d never see another person as anything more than a divorce waiting to happen. I pushed every person I’ve ever been with away from me, and for what?
“I did it, because I was scared. I did it, because I was selfish. I wanted everything and really all I was doing was accepting nothing. And you…you, my dear,” he said his hands reaching for her cheek but dropping before he reached her. “I hurt you more than all of them. I lied, cheated, and took you for granted. You were it for me, and I managed to even fuck that up.
“I fuck up, because I don’t know how to do anything else. I’m worthless. I’m less than worthless. I should never have been in a relationship in the first place. If anyone had known what I was capable of, they would have run. But you knew and you stuck by me. You put up with me even when you had no reason to. I know I’m terrible at showing it but I do love you. I want you to know that you have my heart. You always have and you always will.”
“Jack, how can you say that to me?” Lexi asked fighting back tears.
“Because it’s the truth,” he murmured.
“But you’ve never been able to show that to me.”
“I might be able to.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Jack’s hand went to his pocket and dug around for a second before retrieving a tiny black box. Lexi gasped as her eyes took on the shape of a jewelry box.
“What...what’s in there?” she asked her voice shaking. Her eyes were wide with wonder and a hint of fear.
He cracked the box open revealing an exquisite princess cut diamond with a string of matching diamonds on either side. The band was pure white gold. It had an old timey feel to it, but Lexi had never laid her eyes on a more beautiful ring. “This was what I was going to give to you to prove that you have my heart.”
Lexi hand flew to her mouth in shock. She couldn’t help shaking her head in disbelief. No. Not now. Not after everything. She couldn’t drag her eyes away from the amazing diamond.
“No,” she murmured.
He nodded picking the ring up out of the box and twirling it around between his fingers. “I know I don’t deserve you, Lex.”
“No,” she muttered again.
“I know,” he said nodding. “This was my grandma’s ring. My mom gave it to me over my brothers, because she knew that I would choose someone who really mattered to me, not just the first person who came along.”
“Jack, please, just stop.”
He seemed to ignore her. “Now I wasn’t planning to show this to you, but,” he looked up from the ring into her wide-eyed brown orbs, “this was meant for you. Only you.”
“No.”
“But either way, that was what I had to tell you to show you my heart,” he whispered.
“How could you do this now?” she murmured, tears forming in her eyes even though she had told herself over and over that she wouldn’t cry.
“It was the only thing I could think of,” he said snapping the box shut and stuffing it hastily back in his pocket.
“What does this mean?” she couldn’t help asking.
“I took a job in Atlanta. I won’t be a burden on you any longer. I can see what I did to you, what I continue to do to you, and I won’t let that continue to happen. I fucked everything up by sleeping with Stella, and I know that. I’ll never forgive myself, and I don’t exactly expect you to forgive me.”
“Atlanta?” she asked her voice coming out strangled. “I thought you got turned down.”
“The man that I interviewed with last night suggested me to a friend and as long as I’m in Atlanta by tomorrow night I have the job. It was a last minute kind of thing,” he told her.