Between Friends and Lovers

22: Alexandria

The cafeteria was a vibrant and inviting space, bustling with activity and alive with chatter. Situated on two levels, it was a hub of culinary delights and social interaction.

When entering the cafeteria on the lower level, we were greeted by a lively atmosphere and a feast for the senses. The walls were painted in alternating bands of maroon and navy blue, creating a sense of warmth and sophistication that echoed the school’s colours.

Large windows lined one side of the cafeteria, allowing natural light to flood the space and offering a view of the beach. At the centre of the lower level was the main serving area, where some students were still lined up to select from a mouthwatering array of dishes. Stations offered a variety of options, including made-to-order sandwiches, fresh salads, hot entrees, and different dishes inspired by flavours from around Middlegrad.

The aroma of freshly brewed coffee and baked goods wafted through the air, drawing students to the coffee bar and pastry counter tucked away in one corner of the cafeteria. Baristas expertly crafted espresso drinks and frothy lattes, while bakers displayed an enticing array of muffins, pastries, and cookies.

After grabbing our sandwiches and lattes, Jackie and I ascended the staircase to the upper level, where it was a bit calmer—a more relaxed and casual atmosphere—with cosy sitting areas and communal tables.

We took a seat at our usual table, where Cece was busy scrolling through her phone, ignoring her salad. She looked up when Jackie and I took a seat on the opposite side of the table.

She looked around in confusion. “Lily is not joining us?”

There was something in her voice that made me pause and look at her.

“I’m not sure if she’s busy with newspaper stuff,” I said, grabbing my vanilla latte and taking a sip. “Or she’s with Indigo.”

“Clubs open next week,” Cece pointed out.

“Then she’s with Indigo.” I shrugged.

“Wait, she made a friend? I have to meet her.” Jackie swapped the half of her chicken mayo sandwich with half of my bacon sandwich.

Before I could say anything, Cece beat me to it. “Why do you two do that?”

Jackie and I looked at each other before looking back at Cece. I wasn’t sure what she meant about that. Was it the food thing? That would be weird because Cece has been around me and Jackie for so long that by now, she knew we were indecisive when choosing food. So we always choose something we can go half-and-half on.

“Want to meet Lily’s new friend?” Jackie asked.

The same time that I asked, “Exchange food?”

“Both.” Cece took a sip of her water. “One, if you’re going to buy food, then buy something you’ll eat and finish on your own. Exchanging food is so middle school. Two, Lily is about to turn seventeen, and I believe that she’s fully capable of choosing her own friends without you two meddling.”

I didn’t know what annoyed me more. Between her middle school comment or me and Jackie meddling in my little sister’s life, it was hard to say which one was more annoying.

But in all of it, Jackie and I had the same mindset, so we both tilted our heads, and I grabbed the chicken sandwich while Jackie picked up the bacon sandwich and we both took a bite. And slowly began chewing.

Cece rolled her eyes. “Real mature, you two.”

“And now that’s settled.” Jackie leaned back on her chair. “I don’t get what’s wrong with us wanting to meet Lily’s new friend. If she’s hanging out with Lily, then it’s only a matter of time before she joins our group.”

“Whatever.” She stabbed a tomato and popped into her mouth.

“What’s your problem with Lily?” Jackie asked. She had a low tolerance for Cece.

“What makes you think I have a problem with Lily?” Cece sneered.

“Because I don’t think you have a problem with a girl you haven’t met,” Jackie snapped. “So what’s your issue with Lily?”

“I think you guys make her out to be this perfect angel while she’s not,” she responded with a shrug. “Lily is not some defenceless little girl that you have to protect.”

“But she is my little sister, Cecilia,” I said, getting annoyed. “And this might be something you’re not used to, but some of us care about our siblings and want them to be happy.”

Before she could answer, I took a bite from my sandwich and looked away from her. I didn’t want to argue with Cecilia. She tended to be very opinionated and would argue for a long time if entertained. So it would be beneficial to me to just ignore her.

Something caught my eye at the lower level near the coffee bar. Maverick and Cooper looked like they were in a heated conversation. Well, Maverick was the one talking, and he didn’t look happy. Cooper, on the other hand, had a grin.

Seeing the way Maverick looked made me curious. What would make him this upset? I was tempted to text him and ask what was going on, but I didn’t think he’d want that. I wasn’t great at keeping in contact with him. I’ve seen different sides of Ricky to the point where I wasn’t sure which one was the real one. I guess I was worried that if I get more invested in this, more than I already was, it would hurt even more when he turned and showed me a side of him that I wasn’t used to. I’ve talked myself out of texting him multiple times simply because I’ve convinced myself that I’d be annoying him, pushing this friendship to limits that Ricky didn’t want to reach.

Yet, I craved more. I desired more with Ricky. To get to know the real him that he didn’t show everyone. I felt like he had started showing me bits of it, but now I wondered if I had ruined it with the whole Oliver situation.


                                   ~•❤️•~


“Why did you agree to do it?”

Even though I was expecting it, the question still caught me off guard. I knew Victoria was going to want to know why I agreed. It was something that I should have prepared for when I decided that I wanted to tell her about my agreement with Oliver.

It was my first session since schools opened. Last week Monday, I decided to skip a session, and when my mother asked, I told her I was busy with back-to-school stuff. Which wasn’t exactly the truth. There had been a lot of things on my mind, and I wasn’t ready to have Victoria try to make me understand my own emotions.

“Huh?” I asked even though I heard her.

“You said that you’re not fully sure about this,” she began, “So what made you agree to do it?”

I pursed my mouth. Of course, there was Oliver’s reasoning, which ended up being the reason why I agreed. But after the conversation I had with Jackie, I had time to think about this whole thing. I wasn’t sure if there was another reason why I agreed to do this. But I did feel like there was an unconscious that wasn’t conscious and fuelling my decision.

“Uh, well...” I cleared my throat. “I just wanted to understand why I settled for that kind of love.”

“What kind of love?”

I glanced at my leg, which was bouncing up and down. I held my tongue and didn’t voice out how much I hated that question. However, I had to be honest and point out that I understood why she asked it.

“The bare minimum love,” I answered with a sigh.

Maybe it was because I was starved for affection. Maybe I wanted love so bad I was willing to put up with all of it. But that wasn’t a valid reason why I stayed for so long. It didn’t explain why even though I knew that the relationship with Theo was toxic, I still stayed.

I could blame him. I could blame Theodore Duncan for manipulating and controlling me to stay with him. But still, that didn’t feel like a valid reason. A piece of the puzzle, yes, but the real reason? Not even close.

There was something else that made me stay. It seemed a bit absurd for me to be sure that there was a hidden reason fuelling my behaviour, especially since I wasn’t even sure what it was. But I swear on my mother that there was something unconscious fuelling my decisions.

There was a point where I was sure that it was hope. Maybe I subconsciously hoped that everything that had been happening between Theodore and me was just a fluke and that he was the one who was going to love me the way I deserved. I thought that even though we had our challenges, things would work out in the end.

I mean, almost all the relationships that the adults in my life had were similar to ours. They always had these arguments, which would end with doors slamming and silent treatments that would last for days. It always seemed a little theatrical and looked like a telenovela kind of love. But once I was in that kind of relationship, I accepted it as the norm because I saw people around me go through that.

Maybe that was where the problem was stemming from. The roots. I mean, no tree bears bad fruit if the roots are in good condition, right? If the roots don’t have a problem, then the fruits will be good.

However, since my roots were the problem, the fruits weren’t good to look at or eat.

“Okay.” She smiled. “And you think that by doing this, you’d understand why?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “I mean, isn’t it one of the ways to learn what kind of love I want and need.”

“Not quite.” She glanced at her file before saying, “Usually, when it comes to that, I always advise my patients to take time for themselves. Be on your own and learn what you as an individual want. Work on your self-love before you can begin loving someone else.”

“But I don’t want to be alone,” I blurted.

Victoria tilted her head as if to try and read me better. “And why don’t you want to be alone?”

Being alone made me feel lonely. And loneliness was suffocating.

I didn’t like being alone since that was one of the first steps in my spiral. When I was alone, I tended to overthink, and that would lead to me feeling overwhelmed and needing an escape.

I was never good at finding a good way to escape reality. The reason I even had an overdose was because I got too attached to the pills that offered me a few hours of escape. I knew that if I were to take time and be by myself, I would walk down the destructive part again.

I had walked it once, and it nearly took my life, so I wasn’t ready for that gamble again.

“Alone means loneliness,” I answered with a shrug.

“I beg to differ,” she said, her voice sympathetic. “Alone doesn’t always mean loneliness.”

I fixed my plaid skirt, still wearing my school uniform. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s healthy for people to balance being around people and being alone. Being alone gives you a chance to spend more time with yourself and get to know yourself better.”

“But what if I don’t want to get to know myself better?” I asked, pursing my mouth. “I mean, what I already know about myself hasn’t made me enthusiastic to get to know me better.”

“Getting to know yourself better is very fundamental,” she responded, her expression still kind and sympathetic—I could do without the sympathy, though. “When you get to know yourself better, then you start to look at the relationships and things you do differently. You learn that you should love yourself first and prioritise yourself. And that gives you the strength to cut out relationships and things that no longer make you happy or grow as a person.”

I heard what she was saying, but I didn’t know if I believed it. Being alone hadn’t worked out very well for me, and I was scared to even attempt it again. It was something scary to even consider. And if it was scaring me before I even did it, then maybe I wasn’t ready to do it.

“To be able to love another person—love thy neighbour—you need to be in a good place as well. You need to take time and learn more about yourself. Work on self-love, and in that way, you’ll be able to pour love into other people.”

“I get it.” I nodded, even though I knew that I didn’t get it.

“You can’t pour from an empty cup, Alexandria,” she advised. “That would only leave you exhausted and drained. You don’t want that.”

Victoria was forgetting the most important part of this monologue of hers. This was something easier said than done. It was easy to talk about how I needed to work on my self-love, but I doubt that it was going to be easy to do.

Besides, who said I couldn’t work on my self-love while also learning about what kind of love I want?

“Okay.”

Victoria looked at me as if she wanted to say something but decided not to. Maybe she could tell that I wasn’t buying what she was selling.

“Do you know what your love language is?” she asked, and I raised an eyebrow.

Love languages. I knew what they were, but I wasn’t sure if I knew what mine was. It had been so long since someone cared about what made me feel loved that I hadn’t paid much mind to it.

“I’m not sure I know what my love language is,” I admitted sheepishly. “It has been so long.”

“Since you’re convinced that this is what you want to do,” she began, not taking her eyes off me. “Find out what your love language—or languages—is. Also, go deeper and find out why that makes you feel love.”

“Why that makes me feel loved?” I echoed.

She nodded. “Yes. Love languages are one of the ways we can learn more about ourselves. When we focus on why we react differently to each love language, then we understand ourselves better. Do we accept a love language because we never had someone do that for us, and therefore, when we meet someone and they do it for us, it makes us feel loved? Or do we feel loved when someone does it for us because we’ve seen everyone around us have that, and we began longing for it? Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Yeah.” And this time, I was telling the truth.

“Love languages are one of the ways we can make an unconscious conscious.”

“And then we can begin healing from it,” I added.

“Right.” She glanced at the time. “And if you need any help understanding any of the love languages, I’m here to help.”

I nodded with a smile.

In my mind, this just became real. When Oliver and I agreed that we were going to do this, I thought that was the last shock I was going to get, but this session just proved otherwise.

I was now questioning if this was something I wanted to do.

Learning about each others’ love languages seemed like something that was going to bind us together. And if Oliver and I were going to be diving into what made each one of us feel loved, didn’t that mean we were, once again, going to develop feelings for each other?

But most importantly, where does that leave Ricky? Because as much as I’d love to pretend that there was nothing between us, I couldn’t ignore the way my heart fluttered when he was around... however, I wasn’t sure what it really meant. It could have been my mind playing a trick on me. Loneliness did mess with the mind.

But what if it wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me.

                              ~•🤍•~

Enjoy!

Stay safe🤍