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Alexis loved fiction. The words coloured her dreams, concocted worlds and fabricated imaginary events and people, swallowing her in every page she turned.
So, she jumps at the turning of the doorknob, her nose deep in a story of a man with two souls, each one struggling to overpower the other.
It intrigued her. What’s it like to have two souls? She would wonder as she turned yet another page and continue reading.
“Lex, I’m home.” The sound of shoes hitting the floor and sock-covered footsteps against wood has Alexis jogging to meet her best friend at the doorstep of the one-room apartment they shared together.
“Hello,” Alexis grins good-naturedly and plucks the black handbag dangling on Mary’s tired shoulder off. “Come in quick, the cold is getting in.”
“Hope you didn’t mess up the house when I was away,” Mary says slyly, removing her coat and hanging it up on the hooks embedded into the white wall.
“Didn’t.” Alexis confirms, and holds up the book she still had in hand. “I was reading.”
“Good book, right?”
“Yep,” Alexis chimed, plodding into the bedroom they share and collapsing on the queen-sized bed in the middle.
Mary followed suit, taking her bag from Alexis and placing it on her timber desk. It was littered with papers of subjects of Medicine, Chemistry, and Biology, not missing crumpled ones of reports she had done.
Juggling part-time jobs and university was hard, but she knew she had to do whatever it takes to look after Alexis, who was like easy prey for a society as torn as this one.
“Please, I beg of you, Mary. I need you to look after my daughter.”
She could still see the kneeling image of Alexis’ father, Mr. Swanson, discarding his dignity and putting himself down in hopes that Mary would agree to his seemingly absurd request.
It was easy for her to say yes. After all, Alexis had been there for her when it counted. It was her turn to repay the debt.
She knew what it was like to be abandoned, anyway. She had been raised by her father, her own mother having left them when she was young.
She did not want Alexis to experience those same feelings of being unwanted.
“Oh, Poo.”
Mary turns at the sound of her nickname rolling off Alexis’ lips playfully, a nickname given to her because Alexis had wanted to give her a more unique name instead of ‘Mary’, which Alexis had claimed to be ‘unoriginal’.
Mary had pretended not to be hurt by it.
“What?” She responds, not turning around entirely, as she gathered her papers together in effort to tidy her desk a little.
“Where’s the book you got me?”
Alexis’ innocent question made Mary clam up, her fingers tight around the papers. Oh, right. She had given Alexis a lie as to why she had gone out in the middle of the afternoon when she had the night shift at the diner both of them worked at.
“Er–” she struggles to cover up her lie, and suddenly flashes of Elaine’s face wavered in her eyes. She should have remembered to pick up a book from the bookstore nearby. Damn it.
“–ah, fuck it.” Mary curses, running a hand through her ebony tresses.
“What?” Alexis asks, sitting up from the bed, narrowly missing Mary’s words.
“No–Nothing,” Her best friend says quickly, and sighs in defeat. Guess she would have to opt for that.
“Mary, promise me that you’ll give this back to me someday if it fails.”
She drops it into her waiting hands, words that had been bled out, locked between the pages of her heart and soul. Mary looks up, confusion colouring her features.
Alexis only whispers her quiet wish.
“Please.”
“Poo. Poo. Poo.”
Mary snaps out of memory lane at Alexis’ gentle tone, and realised that her hands were squeezing the life out of the research papers in her iron grip.
“Did you forget to bring it back from the store?” Alexis’ despair made Mary chuckle, pulling away from the table and chucking her papers as neatly as she could at an empty space on her messy desk.
“Think so,” she mused, flashing Alexis a fake apology as she tumbles on the bed beside her best friend.
“You’re so forgetful.”
Alexis’ frown has Mary laughing at the irony of it all.
“You were worse,” the plumper of the two remarks, nuzzling into the soft bedsheets. “You’d forget things left, right, and center.”
Her nose crinkled at that, Alexis flicking her friend’s forehead with a finger. “My pre-accident self couldn’t have been that bad.”
Scowling, Mary sat up and began counting her fingers. “Let’s admit it; you forgot where you kept the salt, the flour, my paintbrushes, my racket–”
“Okay, okay,” Alexis shoots back, a pout carved onto her lips. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I am right,” Mary laughs at Alexis’ frown, and pushes herself off the bed, walking over to the cupboard and pulling the door open. She rummages through it for a while, tossing sweaters, button-ups, and jeans away.
Finally, she finds what she has been looking for. She brushed three years worth of dust off its cover, blowing on it to reveal the words ‘remember’ scrawled across it.
“I’ll go retrieve it some other day,” Mary speaks, straightening, the small black book in hand. “But for now, this was a book a friend of mine wrote. Well, it isn’t really a book but–”
“Thanks!” Alexis’ sunny smile, the only thing that had truly been left of her best friend, spills happiness over her lips. She took the black book out of Mary’s hands enthusiastically, before realising that it was breaking apart at the seams, at which she switched to a more gentle manner of thumping through its pages.
And for a moment, Mary understood why Elaine fell in love with Alexis.
Sparkling dark eyes that followed every word, every sentence, every line closely as if they spoke volumes, like she was immersed into another universe altogether, were plain enchanting.
Mary smiled affectionately and ruffled Alexis’ chestnut hair, at which Alexis peered up at her with those same enchanting orbs.
“What?” She frowns, annoyed at being disturbed.
“Nothing,” Mary giggles, her hand leaving Alexis’ hair. “Just glad to see you so chipper.”
Her frown not leaving, Alexis turns back to reading, her brows furrowing more as she flipped through each page.
Mary leaves her be, shuffling to the kitchen to prepare dinner, letting Alexis explore a world she used to live in.
