But You Love Her (Alexheed)

Chapter 13

Hey, Stowe
Um, about earlier . . .
Can we call?

Samheed kept back and forth writing messages, and deleting them. The dark and cloudy sky outside dimmed his room to a dark shadow, his opened messages with Alex illuminating at his face. He didn't want to sound too desperate, nor apologize straight on the device. He considered it, writing an apology for what he said earlier, but he always stopped himself. Texting an apology felt empty to him, and in all honesty, he just wanted to hear Alex's voice.

The wind howled, trees shaking furiously with high racket. Samheed couldn't get his mind to think straight, no matter what he tried to keep himself busy with. Every minute or so, he would reach for his phone and check for a response.

Nothing to his avail.

Eventually he forced himself to wait longer than five minutes before checking, then ten, then twenty. He gripped his nails until the last minute of the hour until he could check again. He didn't like this uncertainty. He would have walked the entire mile to Alex's home if the wind outside wasn't so hazardous.

His heart was racing, and his mind had never before felt so jumbled up. He heard a ding, and rushed over to his phone. It was Lani.

He contemplated opening it, but then decided not to while he felt so unstable. For goodness sake, why did his heart work this way? If only it would stop beating so loud that it was all he heard. If only Alex would answer the stupid phone.

Eventually, his phone died, and Samheed, frustrated, fiddled for the charger and plugged in it. Of course, it had to take the slowest time ever to turn on.

In the meanwhile, he paced, trying to think of what happened after the situation. What Lani and Aaron did with Alex afterward. What was Alex doing now? Was he alright?

He chided himself for his thinking, that for the past couple hours his mind was stuck on the person who didn't want anything to do with him. That he was wasting away the day just for a message that may never be answered. "Damn it," he muttered to himself. "Stop, Samheed."

Instead his mind involuntarily went to the past. How Meghan had told him that Alex probably lost trust in him made him feel numb. As if, those years of confiding to each other were absolutely lost because he moved. His mind made him situate himself back into the past, back to when they were ten.

"Are you sure about this?" Young Alex had said, quivering in the cold. His voice was still small, and muffled by the scarf that wrapped thickly around his neck and lips.

"Just hold on to me," Samheed had reassured, his legs kneeled on a glossy wooden sled, which the two had found hidden by a trash can. In the soft powdery snow, they had climbed up the highest hill they could find at their familiar park laughing giddily as their small fingers tried to grab on and pull each other up.

To them at that fresh time, the hill seemed like an ever growing mountain, and as the two climbed, they felt like powerful explorers who searched the arctic to try to be the first to land to the top of Mount Everest.

Alex had even created a makeshift flag, beautifully adorned in a burst of colors wrapped to a lengthy long branch. When they reached the top, they looked at each other and grinned so wide their cheeks hurt.

Samheed remembered how his pulse fluttered under his skin when Alex smiled, his cheeks rosy red in the cold and his short curly hair wrapped with a glossy red ribbon, with which the wind seemed to constantly have the color flicker to an occasional silver. "We've made it!" Samheed exclaimed and Alex laughed.

"We're so high, too!" Alex added. In reality, the hill wasn't too steep, but they felt proud.

"Wait, check this out," Samheed whispered. He turned to the horizon, where in the distance they saw the marbled fountain of the park and the benches that circled it. He pulled up his hands to the side of his mouth and whooped to the top of his lungs.