Alex (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 3) Read online

  “Hi, Roberta is Colin here?”

  “He’s out back,” she said. She held the door open for me, and I stepped carefully around the kid who had appeared next to her that was looking up at me: my nephew, or one of them. There were two. This one, the smaller one, was Dylan, and the bigger one was Finnegan. Finn for short. His name was Finnegan Kilgariff. Colin might as well have named the kid Irish Irish. The little one, Dylan, never spoke to me. Never. I didn’t know why. He had only known me for like a month or so, but Finn and I were buds already. He could speak. He just never did with me. I found Colin on the patio with his son. They were taking the training wheels off his bike for him.

  The kid noticed me first.

  “Hi, Uncle Alex,” he said.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said to him. “What are you guys doing?”

  “We’re getting rid of your training wheels, right bud?” Colin said. Finn beamed up at his dad. “To what do we owe this visit?” he asked me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Olivia still lived here?” I asked him.

  “You found her, huh?”

  “Were you really just not going to tell me?”

  “Yeah,” he said, straightening up, “I wasn’t. She moved on with her life when you left, and you moved on with yours.”

  “Do you know if she’s seeing anyone?” I knew what the answer to that question was. I wanted to know whether he knew, and again, just hadn’t told me.

  “Would you let it go? You are five years too late to be asking shit like that. I mean stuff like that,” he corrected himself, remembering his kid was right there.

  “Just tell me if you know, Colin.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t talk to her about her personal life. If we talk at all, it’s about the kids or Robbi.”

  “The kids?”

  “She’s Dylan’s preschool teacher, and she was Finn’s before that. You tend to notice a lot of things when you pay attention, Alex,” he said sarcastically. Asshole.

  “All I want to do is get back in contact with her.”

  “You sure you want to keep hurting that girl, Alex?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When you left? I don’t know what you told her, but I know it fucked her up. I mean, messed her up. I’m not going to help you harass her again.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She gave me her number. I don’t need anything from you.”

  “She doesn’t need anything from you, Al. For real. Leave her alone. That ship has sailed.”

  He turned his attention back to the bike and his kid. I said bye to Roberta and left the house. The card was still in my pocket. The ship hadn’t sailed.

  It was floating right back into the docks.

  5

  Alexander

  I would let Will use the house to smoke up so long as he did it outside. Depending on my mood, outside could mean a lot of different things. Sometimes outside was leaning out of one of the windows and other times, when I was mad, outside meant out on the porch. Today, he had started out on the porch, but I had let him back inside because we couldn’t talk when he was out there, and I was inside the house.

  It was dark by then, and I had ended up inviting my friend Will over. He sat balancing his bony ass on the windowsill in the living room, blowing the smoke out the window. He was a habitual weed smoker. He did it for his chronic pain, which was a condition he actually had, not just an excuse to get a weed card. He had to direct the smoke outside because I didn’t want the smell sticking to Mom’s furniture and upholstery.

  Mom was never coming back to live there, but that didn’t mean I could turn the place into a frat house. Will smoked nearly every day. I didn’t know why he wasn’t three hundred pounds already. He had brought food over, but neither of us had had any of it. I didn’t want to eat. I felt like shit.

  Seeing Olivia again was not supposed to make me feel like shit. I had wanted to see her again for such a long time after we had broken up. After I had left, I would try to tell myself that it was no use hoping, but turns out I was wrong. I was going to see her again. Too bad it had crashed and burned.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Olivia hadn’t left town?” I asked him. The television was on, but it was just background noise. It was some ole Adult Swim cartoon.

  “Olivia? Olivia Sanger?”

  “Yes, Olivia Sanger, how many do you know?

  “Shit, I don’t know man, it never came up. I didn’t think you would care. Why do you ask? Did you see her?”

  “She ran into me with her car earlier today. What do you mean you didn’t think I would care?” I said.

  Will was one of the guys who was a leftover from the high school years. We had been in the same grade and had bonded at the time over being stoners. I had given it up because of the rules of college football when I had left. All that weed must have kept him young because he looked just the same as he had when we were younger. Still skinny and tall. His hair was buzzed short, and he always had on long sleeves, which made him sort of look like an addict. He wasn’t though.

  Will had stayed in Sacramento and managed to make the thing he would do to waste time, the thing that made him money. Since the state had loosened up its weed laws, Will had been making money working for a distribution company. Like a legal dealer basically. He smoked it to deal with the osteoarthritis in his hips, but also because he liked it.

  Sometimes my back hurt where I had fucked my vertebrae up, but I didn’t want to start smoking again. I could take a lot of pain, and it wasn’t at the point where it got in the way of my life and daily functioning.

  “She and I didn’t really stay that close once high school ended. We lost touch. You were gone. You never asked about her; I didn’t think you cared.”

  “You know how I felt about her,” I said to him.

  “Yeah, but shit, it’s been like five years. Are you still tied up in knots over that one chick?”

  I leaned back in the seat I was sitting in. I had pulled a chair close to the window so we could talk.

  “Fuck man, you need to get over her. I thought you had a girl. Cassie or whatever.”

  I rolled my eyes. He wasn’t about to compare Cassie and Olivia. Cassie and I were hooking up, but now that I knew Olivia was around, that arrangement would have to change. That was if Liv still wanted to be with me. She had practically run away from me when we saw each other; who said she even wanted to try get together again?

  It felt like the most obvious thing to do. We had been a couple before I left, so why couldn’t we keep being a couple now that I was back? The answer to that question was long and complicated. Most of all it was ugly, but was it too much for her to want to give us another shot?

  Sure, I had Cassie, and there had been a Michaela and maybe some Stephanies and Ashleys in the past, but I wanted her. I wanted Olivia. Those girls I had wanted to fuck. That didn’t mean I didn’t want to fuck Olivia, it just meant I wanted to fuck Olivia more than I wanted to fuck anyone else. Like if I had to choose… Livvy would win.

  “That’s different,” I said.

  “You know why? Because Cassie, unlike Olivia actually wants to see you.”

  “Shut up, Will.”

  “You have a girl who cancels plans to be with you, and another who you haven’t seen for five years, and you are going to choose the one who ran you over with her car?”

  “I was in love with that girl, Will.”

  “I know. Apparently, you still are.” I hated when he was like this. He was smoking weed; he should have been loopier, but he was being unnaturally clear-headed.

  I wasn’t still in love with Olivia. I just needed to talk to her. Seeing her again had shown me that the feelings I had had for her were still there. Since she was in town, there was no reason why we couldn’t try again. Maybe there were a couple of reasons, but I hadn’t heard one good enough to make me stop considering it.

  “I just need to talk to her.”

  “Uh-uh, leave her alone.”

  Had he be
en talking to my brother? Why were the two of them giving me the same bad advice?

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because it’s a bad idea and you know it.”

  “She’s back, and you want me to leave her alone?”

  “She’s not back, Alex. It’s been five years. Not five days. Five years. A lot can change in that amount of time, and a lot has.”

  “Fuck, have you been talking to her too?”

  “I don’t have to have talked to her to know that. I mean shit, look at you. In five years, you went from considering school here to flying clean across the country for football, ripping your shit up and now you’re forging blades for a living. You have a job and a house and pay taxes. You aren’t the same guy you were, and it’s just dumb to think that she would be the same as she was when you left her.”

  Will… had nothing. He had his relative health, a roof over his head and he owned his own car, but the guy had been alone as long as I had known him. He had never said anything remotely sexual in a woman’s… or even a man’s direction. I didn’t get it. There was a chance that he was still a virgin, but I really wasn’t curious enough to ask. He was the last person who I would take advice about Olivia from, but in this case, as much as it pained me to admit it, he had a point. I couldn’t talk to Liv like the last time we had talked was the previous weekend.

  Things had changed.

  She had become a different person without me, and I had become someone else too.

  “I can’t just do nothing.”

  “Yes, you can. You were living here a month no problem when you just got back. Nothing has to change. Just pretend you didn’t see her. You’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand, bro.”

  “Good, because I don’t. I remember Olivia too. She was nice. She was pretty. I’ve seen her buying food sometimes at the market. First of all, let me say fuck you Alex on her behalf to you for thinking you’ve been on her mind all this time. She has a life here. A job. Friends. She’s making it—without you. Showing up again will do nothing for her or for you, but stress both of you the fuck out more than anyone needs or wants.”

  “So, what? I just leave it? I just forget about talking to her again? What if there’s a chance?”

  “Dude,” he said, sliding off the sill and closing the window, “there is none. Leave the poor girl alone. She had proven that she could get along just fine without you. It’s your turn now. Show us how well-adjusted and mature you’ve become as an adult.”

  He sauntered over to the pizza he had brought with him and took a slice from the box.

  “Did you see her after I left?”

  “Nope, but I know you fucked up.”

  “Come on man,” I said.

  “What did you do? Cheat on her? I know you did something.”

  “We had to break up because of… just… some shit neither of us could control.”

  “Your wandering eye? You could control that if you wanted. You just don’t want to.” Was there a good reason Will and I were friends? Not really. We were friends because we had been friends for a long time. When I got back to town, I had tried a couple of friends’ old numbers, and Will’s was the only one that was still the same. He always told it to me straight, and I appreciated that. Even when he was calling me out.

  “I didn’t cheat on her. I’d never do anything to hurt her. Not on purpose.”

  “You’re in this position because you did,” he said walking back to the living room with the whole pizza box. The pizza was definitely cold, but it probably tasted great because he was high. “This is like doing her a favor.”

  “Who told you she doesn’t want me back though? You haven’t asked her.”

  “Hm… yeah. You know what, you might have a point,” he said, chewing thoughtfully. “You should ask her.”

  “What?”

  “She hit you with her car; you didn’t take her number or anything?”

  “I did, but-”

  “Call her.”

  I wanted to say that I couldn’t, but I wasn’t about to puss out. She had given me that card for a reason, but she had also told me not to regret getting it. Why was I hesitating; I wanted to talk to her?

  “Okay, I’ll call her.”

  I got my phone out and tried the cell number that was printed on the card she had given me. Will watched me as I held the phone to my ear, listening to it ring. It rang once, then twice before I got the busy tone. I ended it and put the phone down.

  “Busy,” I said.

  “Heh. Take that as a sign. The universe wants you to stay away from her. I think you should listen.”

  Will left when he had come down a little. I would have let him stay over; he was one of the few people who had the privilege, but he wanted to leave. He had wanted to hit a bar or something, but I just really, really wasn’t up to it. I contemplated calling Cassie to see if she wanted to bang, but I didn’t even really want to do that. She totally would have been free too, even if she had to cancel her plans to be free like Will had said, which was a little sad.

  Olivia being back wasn’t the only reason why I had to get rid of her. She was pregnant with some other guy’s baby, and she had come to me first. That was a red flag. I didn’t need her catching feelings because I didn’t do that shit. I had in the past but wasn’t going to with her. It wasn’t like I’d been fucked over by a girl hard enough that I had never been able to recover. It was just that I attracted women who were like me. They liked to fuck and weren’t trying to settle down.

  Livvy wasn’t like that… five years ago. Maybe she was now. I didn’t know. If she was, then maybe we could have more fun together than I had originally thought. I looked at the card and smiled. She was a teacher. She taught preschool. Well done sugar, you did it, I thought. She was twenty-three working in her chosen field, which was commendable. I had fucked my back up too badly to work in my chosen field, but at least one of us had made it.

  The card had little cartoons and shit on it; I guess because it went with her brand or something. The name of the school where she taught, and the address, were indicated on the bottom of the card. I had a nephew who went there… it wasn’t the weirdest place I could show up.

  She would hate me if I did it, but there was no way she had given me this card and not expected me to try to contact her. We were going to talk. It was not up in the air anymore. We were going to talk. She had given me the card so I could call her, but me… I preferred to do things in person.

  6

  Olivia

  It was all Iris’s fault. It was all her fucking fault. If her meddling ass had stayed the hell out of my phone, I never would have been out in the streets driving on a Saturday evening, and I wouldn’t have gotten into a fucking wreck that would take God knows how long to get mended. If I wasn’t out yesterday, I would never have run into Alexander Kilgariff.

  Why did seeing him again make me feel like I was going to spontaneously implode? Why did seeing him again make me feel like I was thirteen and not twenty-three? Seeing him was like the hard disk of my brain had been formatted and I didn’t know how to do anything anymore. Not talk, not cry, not react, just… stare.

  Stare because it was Alex. It was Alex. Why was it the day that I had a date, the same day when Alex had decided to come barreling back into my life?

  He had some goddamn nerve.

  How did I remember everything about that guy except how mean he apparently was? He was such a dick. We were on the side of the road, fighting like cats in the street. It was so embarrassing. I didn’t even know what to do. It wasn’t like it was something I could have prepared for. How did you get ready for the day when you finally saw the ex from your most painful breakup again?

  Alex and I… the way it all fell apart was tragic. It was horrible. I wish it was a knock-down, drag-out scream fest where we could both leave saying we hated each other, but it wasn’t. I had never been able to get to the point where the thought of Alexander Kilgariff didn’t make me
feel like there was an angry hornet’s nest in my belly.

  It was so dumb.

  We had been like, toddlers.

  Teenagers really, but what was the difference? It was different life stages, but they both featured the same belligerence and moodiness. We had been so young and so much time had passed. So much—nearly five years—but somehow… seeing that face again, it felt like not enough.

  I had blocked out a lot of what had happened during my teen years. I had blocked out a lot of what had happened during my teen years with regards to Alexander Kilgariff specifically. If I kept calling him Alexander Kilgariff, it made him seem more foreign and removed from me. Alexander Kilgariff was the way they called his name at the DMV. I had always called him Lex, but nope. No more of that. That was part of what I had tried to block out.

  I had gotten back to the house and literally hidden. I had groped for my phone for somebody to call. There was always Robbi. The thing about having young children was you were also probably young too. Roberta had a son in my class and before that had had another son in my class. The first one was already in kindergarten but the little one, Dylan, was still in my class. I got to see her whenever she came to pick him up from school, and the brief times she could fit me into her busy schedule as a stay-at-home mom.

  I didn’t want to talk to her as much as I wanted to yell at her.

  The phone rang more times than I was patient enough to wait for, but she picked up right as I was about to give up and hang up.

  “Olivia?”

  “Robbi? Where are you?”

  “Colin and I are at a movie with the kids,” she said. I felt a little guilt and then remembered what I had called her for.