"When? You've never hurt me, not like that. I don't understand. Are you okay? Your nose is bleeding again. What happened? Were you mugged?" Who in their right mind would try to mug Alexander Kirk? Who on this planet would dare to lay a finger on my boyfriend?
"Shhhh, shhhh, I'm just fine. Look, it's not bad." He drops the frozen food for a moment and I see a vivid crescent-shaped welt. In art class, we made leaf rubbings with crayons. Sometimes people do the same thing to make impressions of tombstones and memorials. Alex's bruise is like a rubbing of his skull, pressed into his flesh between a fist and his eye socket. He really hasn't convinced me it's not bad.
He holds the berries up again with his right hand, and I can see that his knuckles are pale and smooth. It's his lips that are covered in blood.
My instinct is to fix it, to lick it away and to kiss all his bruises and to hold him. That's my job, my privilege. I lean close, centering my palm between his shoulder blades and pressing delicately against the tension. The smudges of drying blood that I left behind crack along creases of his mouth as he opens it. "Mitch–" I take his lips in mine, breathing in the smell of iron as I soak them with my tongue and scrape them clean with my teeth. The frozen berries find their way to the floor, and his arms move behind me. He lifts me as we kiss, and I hold his neck and his mouth as he carries me blindly, inch by inch, to the living room.
He deposits me gently in an armchair, kneeling to let me down. He sits back on his legs and looks up at me. His face is hurt, and lost and broken on top of that. A kiss wasn't enough to heal him. "I love you," I promise. The corner of his mouth turns up in hope, and the hope casts shadows of fear in his eyes.
"I love you," he says. It's never, "I love you too," because it's never just an answer. It has to be more than that. "When I met you, I was jealous of you, of the way Scott adored you and showed you off. And then one day I was jealous of him, of my own boyfriend, of the way you adored him back."
"He knew."
"I think so. I don't know how, though, because I didn't act on it and I certainly didn't tell him. I was committed to him. I loved him. I didn't let my eyes wander. I was going to be his, and I wasn't going to leave him, especially not for his best friend. I had made up my mind to be loyal. I loved him."
It kills me to hear that in the past tense. Alex loves me now, and I love him. I shouldn't want him to still love Scott, and I certainly don't want them to get back together again and leave me, but I don't want Alex to hate him either.
"He changed," Alex continues. "Maybe it was depression; I don't know. I don't think it makes a difference to me, because he still hurt you. That's what we fought over most of the time. I told him he was mistreating you, and he accused me of loving you, and I did, but that was beside the point, because I was his and I loved him. But he told me to leave. He didn't want me anymore." His voice is constricting. "Do you understand? Mitch, he loved you."
"No. That was a long, long time ago. He got over that in high school. He barely spoke to me when he was in college."
"He tried, Mitch, but he never got over you."
That's not true. "What were his words? His exact words?"
"He didn't–"
"He didn't say he loved me. Because he didn't, and because even if he did he wouldn't tell you, because he loved you, Allie."
"He sent me away. We had been so happy, all three of us. It was enough for me. I wanted it back. I begged him. I wanted to fix it."
"Me too."
"But I also wanted it to stop. I was so tired."
"It was terrible. You had to go."
"I didn't want to. Even then, I begged him to give us a chance. We had been together so long. I never said so publicly, but I wanted him for better or for worse, Mitch."
"Always, no matter what." I understand.
"Yeah. He was messed up, but I loved him."
"You still love him."
"No." Alex's shoulders slump and his eyes drop.
"It's okay. I know you've chosen me."
"I have no right to love him."
"It's not your fault."
"If I loved him, I wouldn't have... I was angry."
"It's okay. He rejected you. You did everything you could. You were devoted to him but he turned you away. It's okay to be angry."
"I didn't want to leave him, and I didn't want to leave you, and I didn't want to leave you with him. He wasn't good for either of us. I was angry, but you should have seen his face. Nothing I said affected him. He accused me, to my face, of being unfaithful. He probably didn't even mean it. I don't know, but I told him it was true."
"You what?"
"I told him that you and I... for months..."
A tear slips down over his fresh bruise, but I don't reach to wipe it away. "You did this."
He nods, nostrils flaring and chin quivering. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
"How could you?"
"I was selfish."
"No. I'm trying to understand. Give me something, please.
"I didn't think he believed me, not at first. But he did, and I found out soon when you talked to me."
"But you didn't tell me."
"No."
"Why?"
"You would never have left him."
"No, I wouldn't have."
