So I Met Alec Track

Part VI

Part VI

"You're serious?" Alec says over the phone a few days later. I hate doing this, because he's actually calling me from work to arrange a date afterward like a normal person.

"Hey, you're lucky I picked up. Consider this your one phone call," I say as I tilt back in my desk chair.

"Should I rattle my tin cup against the bars?"

"No, you should go riding."

"Why does this matter so much?"

"Because you're an adrenaline junkie, but you've wrapped it up completely in responsibility. You need to let off some steam. When you can bring me your mud stained jersey, then you can take me out again. Tell you what, even better, I'll cook. How that for incentive?"

"I don't know how you cook."

"Two years, professional chef."

"…There are planters in front of the main entrance. I could just rub a jersey in one of them," he says thoughtfully.

"You could, but then you would be a lying liar who lies and would live with the guilt for all eternity. Besides, I know what mud spatter looks like. Go riding."

"But what about…"

"Ride first, then talk. Then snogging. Then maybe something else. Until then, shoo." I hang up.

He does not try to call back and as the days stretch on I wonder if I've made a bigger gamble than I realized. So it is with a little relief I listen to his voicemail.

"I have the mud stained jersey, and my muscles are going to givie me hell for it tomorrow," he adds, muttering, before his voice picks up again. "So I demand my rightful prize." There an edge of weariness, but also a relaxed triumph in his voice.

He's even on time the next evening, standing in the door of my spartan but cozy apartment, filthy jersey and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold in hand. I take the jersey over Pilot, who is wriggling against his shins in ecstasy that someone else exists to pet her, and make a show of skeptically examining it.

"Do I pass inspection? You look great. Your eyelashes are growing back." He leans over 58 pounds of boxer mix to give me a soft peck in greeting.

"Very. Pilot, sit." I blush that he noticed the returning eyelashes I had greeted with utter joy a few days ago.

"No, she's fine." He crouches down to pet her as she sits. "She's…what happened to your cast?"

"I took it off." I turn to hobble back towards the kitchen. "It got wet in the shower and was positively rank. I'll get a new one at the clinic tomorrow."

"How did you get it off?"

"With a breadknife."

"A breadknife," he says flatly.

I hear the door slam and turn to see Pilot looking curiously at an empty space.

"Alec?"

I see his car peel away from the curb as I reach the window. At first, I am miffed, Alec's ability to get walk away leaving me in confusion beginning to wear. But after a little bit it strikes me that I maybe have been coming at him a little high handed and that perhaps I've pushed too far. A happy Sam can sometimes be an insufferable Sam. I try calling him but he does not pick up and in 40 minutes I have run over every conversation, every possible nuance of every word and gesture between us, until I'm sniffling over tupperware as I put dinner away.

When the door slams again.

After throwing a gym bag on the couch, he points next to it and tells me to "Sit." before he goes into the kitchen to rummage through my cabinets. I would consider asking him what he is looking for but his expression indicates death is imminent if he is pushed. Of course he would resuscitate me and take me to the hospital afterward, but then he would never speak to me again, which would be, I realize, much worse.