Between Friends and Lovers

(28) Alexandria

“You feel like you’re losing control,” Victoria said, and I stared at her with a thoughtful expression.

“Not really.” I shrugged, fiddling with my wristwatch. It weighed heavily today. “I’ve never had control to begin with. You can’t lose what you never had.”

“Fair enough.” She nodded with understanding. “But you said that you fear the longing you have.”

“Yes.”

“If I may ask why?”

The longing that I’ve battled with for a few months now. The same longing that kept me up all night. I’ve never considered myself a hopeless romantic, mostly because I hated the word hopeless. Why couldn’t it be hopeful romantic? However, putting that aside, I’ve noted that I really was hopeless. I was longing for something that I’ve never had, and it has placed me in tricky situations that I now regret more than anything.

It was my longing that pushed me to Oliver that day, a week before he moved to Shadowfall. It was also that longing that had me deciding to lose myself into a rebound that was now one of my greatest mistakes. It has now placed me in the trickiest situations where I wanted to find out something with Oliver while also trying to ignore the wishful thinking that pushed me towards Ricky.

“I believe that it’s the reason why I agreed to help Oliver,” I admitted sheepishly. “It’s also the reason why I’m not happy with the fact that Maverick is ignoring me.”

“Okay,” she said. “Can we focus on Maverick a little bit?”

I nodded. She hadn’t asked any questions, but I could already feel a knot forming in my stomach. Victoria was good at making me understand my own emotions and feelings—it was part of her job after all—and I was scared that she might make me realise just how serious whatever I felt for Maverick was.

“One of the first things you said at the beginning of the session was that one of the important people in your life was ignoring you,” she began, her voice sympathetic, and I didn’t mind it this time around. “What makes Maverick so important to you?”

“Uh, well.” I took a deep breath preparing myself. “When I was dealing with everything that happened sophomore year, Maverick was the first to hear me. I mean, I had my friends and family, and they supported me the best they could, but sometimes I felt like they couldn’t really hear me. I felt like even if I were to shout at the top of my lungs, they wouldn’t hear me. And it got worse when I slowly began getting addicted to painkillers. But through all of that, Maverick didn’t only hear me in my silence, but he stood by me when I felt like I was going to fall.

“During my worst spirals, he kept me sane, and when I felt like I was drowning, he became the reason I needed to fight through the current.” I looked at my hands, afraid to look at Victoria. “But what made me feel normal was when he also started slowly letting me into his personal life. He shared with me the issues he had with his parents and everything else. His doing that made me feel like I wasn’t made of glass as everyone else—except Theodore—made me feel. Being able to help him through his problems made me feel useful like there was something that I could do right.”

I paused before adding, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that Maverick is important to me because when everyone couldn’t hear me no matter how loud I’d scream, he heard me in my silence.”

“And who is Maverick to you?”

“A friend,” I answered with a shrug.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I finally looked up. “Even if I were to feel some type of way about him, I doubt he’d feel like that for me.”

“Why not?” she asked. “You’re a beautiful and smart young lady, Alex. So why wouldn’t Maverick feel that way about you?”

I nibbled on my bottom lip. “Who would want to be with someone who was in a toxic relationship that damaged her and left her broken?” I held on tight to my wristwatch. “Sometimes I believe that I don’t deserve love.”

“Being in a toxic relationship doesn’t lower your worth. You didn’t choose to be in a toxic relationship, and the fact that it happened to you doesn’t mean that you’re weak either.” She stopped before continuing, “And you’re worthy of love, Alexandria. You deserve love just as much as everybody else does. Believe that.”

Maybe one day I will. But that day wasn’t today.



                                     *****


By the time I stepped out of the session, I didn’t have any energy to function. After what Victoria said about me deserving love, I became an emotional mess. I cried more than I ever did in any of our other sessions, and Victoria let me. She even let me stay longer than usual. The session ended up being one hour and thirty-five minutes. But, as much as I hated getting emotional, I needed it.

So as I walked out, I was feeling sluggish and hungry, but all of that disappeared when I saw the person standing next to my car.

Maverick looked dishevelled. He was still wearing his school uniform, just like me, but his blazer was off, and his shirt was un-tucked. He didn’t look as put together as he was earlier in the day. However, he still looked good. The dishevelled look suited him. Or maybe it was the sunglasses and how he seemed nonchalant as he had his hands in his pockets while staring at the sky.

Once I was closer to him, he finally looked at me. The second his eyes landed on me, he stood up straight to his full 6ft height.

“Maverick,” I greeted, and he flinched. “How may I help you?”

“Hey.” Maverick Bouras—the jerk—had the nerve to look embarrassed. “I—uh—I wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay.” I crossed my arms. “Talk.”

Just because I knew how much he was important to me didn’t mean I was going to take him ignoring me lying down. I cared about Maverick, but I also cared about my sanity enough to want a decent explanation as to why he thought ignoring me was a good idea.

“I wanted to apologise for ignoring you.” He stopped talking and stared at me.

When he didn’t look like he was going to say anything else, I asked, “Did I do or say something wrong?”

He was quiet before saying, “No.”

“Then why?”

“It’s not about you or something you did. There was something I needed to come to terms with. I just—I needed—” he stammered before pausing. “It had nothing to do with you, agapi. I promise you that. I’m sorry.”

“I get that, Ricky. But if there’s a problem or misunderstanding between us, isn’t it better if we talk about it?”

“Some things are not easy to talk about,” he said quietly.

“I know... but you’ve been a constant part of my life, and this week was hard with you ignoring me. I felt like everything was off balance, and I didn’t know what to do,” I said before quickly correcting myself, “I’m not saying that it’s your responsibility to make me feel less anxious, but you’re important to me, Ricky. So, can we please find a way to talk about these things instead of ignoring each other? Please.”

“Right.” He nodded. “I’m sorry, Alex. I know that I should have talked to you, but this week made me realise something that made me feel things I wasn’t ready for yet. I shouldn’t have ignored you, but everything was just so complicated, and I didn’t know how to act like myself around you without blurting out what was bothering me. But that doesn’t mean that I did the right thing by ignoring you. I genuinely thought that it was the right thing to do at the time.”

I hugged my midsection, feeling a bit anxious. “Life is a bit complicated, isn’t it?”

Maverick looked at me, and I was glad that he was wearing his sunglasses. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see his stormy grey eyes. Now that he was standing in front of me, I desperately wanted to hug him, but I didn’t know if I should ask or just wrap my arms around him.

He chuckled before taking two steps forward he didn’t give me the time to question what he was doing before he placed his hands on my waist and gently pulled me to him. Like a chain reaction, I stood on my tiptoes and wrapped my arms around his neck, and in turn, he wrapped his arm around me tighter.

“Is it weird that I missed you?” he asked, his voice muffled.

“No,” I answered confidently. “And now you have to make it up to me.”

He laughed but didn’t argue.


                                      *****

Ricky’s way of making it up to me was to take to my favourite eating place that was on the other side of town on the outskirts. Knowing that it was going to take time, I texted my mother and told her that I’d be home later than usual. When she decided to call me, I told her that I was going to do an assignment with Maverick.

Of course, at the time, I didn’t know how truthful my words were. At first, the conversation was just us talking about what was happening during the days we weren’t talking. But after a while, the conversation shifted to school and Edwin’s assignment.

I kept my eyes on him while enjoying my chicken alfredo. Ricky had moved his lasagne to the side and was drawing weird figures on the table as he tried to make sense of the types of love we chose.

“Okay, so I chose philautia and pragma. Self-love and enduring love,” he began, still drawing what only he could see on the table. “You chose eros and mania. Okay, but what do they have in common.”

“Well, for pragma to be healthy and longlasting, there needs to be philautia, right? Both partners need to love themselves before they commit to someone else. Philautia can become eros—a romantic and passionate love—and then later become pragma. Eros and pragma can lead to mania.” I shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. “So I think the order we should go for is philautia, eros, pragma, and mania.”

He looked at me with clear interest before leaning back on his chair. “So you’re saying that pragma can lead to mania.”

“You don’t believe that?”

“I find it a bit harder to believe,” he said, his stormy eyes not moving from mine. “Mania is obsessive and possessive, and, in most cases, it leads to physical and emotional abuse.”

I pushed my plate to the side, placed my elbows on the table, clasped my hands together, and placed my chin on them.

“When you love somebody, you wouldn’t want them to leave you,” I began, my voice coming out soft and almost getting drowned by the noise around us. “You want them to always be yours even if that means you have to resort to the wrong ways just to keep them.”

He copied my posture. “If you love someone, you want them to be happy and free. And that means having to accept that you might not be the one who makes them happy. Being obsessive and possessive doesn’t help at all.”

“Really?”

“If I love someone, I don’t want them to get hurt. By me or anyone else.” His eyes were intense as he said this.

His voice held an emotion I was scared to find out about. I couldn’t remove my eyes from his. There was something swirling and burning intense in those grey eyes that made me wish I could know what he was thinking about. Maverick had always been intense. It was his thing. But every now and then, he upped the ante. I was sure that he wasn’t aware of it. But when he looked at me with that look, it made me feel on fire, like a fire was burning bright within me.

“Do you love someone, Maverick?”

He smiled before leaning back on his chair. “Maybe.”

Life was filled with maybes, I was used to it. But this one crushed me more than I was willing to admit. The thought of him having feelings for someone else was crushing. I wasn’t naive enough to ignore what that meant, but just because I felt something didn’t mean it was worth paying attention to it.

Even though Victoria told me that I was worthy of love, it still wasn’t that easy to accept it. I hadn’t told her the real reason why I thought I didn’t deserve it. No one other than my mother knew what happened that night, and I was planning to keep it that way. I didn’t want anyone to know, especially Maverick. I already didn’t have a chance with him, but once he knew, that would be even worse.

“So that’s a yes,” I said.

“You think it’s a yes.”

“It’s definitely a yes.”

“No, it’s not.”

This went on for three minutes before I decided to put an end to it.

“Maverick Lincoln Bouras,” I began, speaking slow. “I know you.”

He smirked. “I guess you do. And that means you know the answer.”

I did. I really did.

And I hated it. So, I decided to change the conversation because this was getting too intense for me.

“Anyway.” I cleared my throat. “Are we going to work on the essay every weekend?”

“This coming weekend, I can do it.” He rubbed the nape of his neck sheepishly. “But I can’t do it the following weekend.”

I tilted my head, confused. But Ricky focused his attention on his lemonade, leaving me to wonder why he wouldn’t be able to work on the essay. But then I remembered that the following weekend would be on the 10th of February.

“Your birthday!” I exclaimed.

“You forgot?” He smirked, but he didn’t look as nonchalant as he was trying to be.

“I didn’t forget.” I shook my head. “I have a reminder on my phone so I can remember to get you a gift. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is what are we going to do for your birthday.”

He looked shocked. “We?”

“Yes we, Ricky.”

Not a lot of people know when Maverick’s birthday was, and he wanted to keep it that way. For some reason, he liked spending his birthday on his own. Last year, I managed to convince him to let me spend his birthday with him, and that was when I found out that he volunteered at the cancer centre every year on his birthday. But I didn’t go with him last year, maybe this year I could convince him to take me with him.

“I’ll be at the centre,” he said.

“I’ll come with you.”

I expected him to argue with me or tell me no, but instead, he shook his head with a smile. And I knew that he wasn’t going to tell me no.



                                    •••••


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