Invisible String

Chapter 13 - If This Was a Movie

She pushed me into a room nearby and set up my bed. Alex got up from a chair by the wall and walked over to my bed. Laid out on a rolling table nearby were magazines, chocolate, coffee, and a large bouquet of flowers. He rolled the gifts over to me.

"Beat you here," he said, smiling.

"I see that." I grabbed one of the two coffees from the table and smiled back at him.

"I'm sorry about earlier. Maybe you were right," Alex said.

I shrugged. "I'm not so sure about that."

The nurse cackled behind me. "I, for one, believe that kid deserved every last bit of that beating if you ask me."

I shrugged and said, "She's probably right."

I took a magazine off the table and got comfortable while flipping through Time magazine and picking at the box of chocolates. They were good, too, not cheap and full of the fruity ones, I hate those.

"Thank you, by the way," I said randomly while reading about the current president taking over the world. He looked away from the TV which was playing The Wedding Singer.

"For what?"

"For everything. For getting me into the ICU, even if it wasn't completely necessary. For kicking that kid's ass. For bringing me this stuff. For being here with me now. Thank you for everything. For loving me."

He got up from his chair and kissed me on the lips softly for a moment. "I do love you," he said as he brushed my bangs off my forehead. "And you don't have to thank me for that."

"Maybe not, but I want you to know that these things aren't going unnoticed. It means a lot to me."

"I know it does." He kissed me again before sitting back down in the chair nearby.

The nurse had been right, and by the time seven o'clock rolled around, I'd passed all their tests, and my stats were perfect, so they released me. The nurse wheeled me out to the car as Alex pulled up, and I was off and on my way.

We went back to Alex's place out in the northern part of Los Angeles and decided to crash there for the night and catch a flight back out to New York in the morning. He had to get back to work soon, but his concern for me won out over interviews and appearances for at least a few days.

It was a quiet night, and I laid in bed the whole time with Alex right beside me while we binge-watched half of the first season of Orange Is the New Black. He'd never seen it before, and it had been my third time through. He didn't care for it nearly as much as I did, but he appreciated it enough that we kept watching, and I was thankful for that. I certainly needed something to keep my mind off of last night's events. Which happened to be on the cover of every single tabloid magazine known to man.

At some point in the night, I got on my phone and opened up the Yahoo! news app. Oh boy, was that a mistake! The first ten articles were about the Grammy's, and the top two headlined the fight that landed Jaiden Brinkley and me in the same hospital. Apparently, there was some sort of ridiculous battle between Alex and Jaiden over me. I laughed when I read it, and Alex looked away from the show and over at me.

"What are you doing?"

I shook my head while tucking my phone under my leg. "Nothing."

"Not nothing. You were laughing. And at a very not-funny scene."

Piper was in a verbal sparring match with Alex, from the show, not my Alex.

"I was looking at something on my phone."

"Okay."

He shrugged, turning his head back towards the TV and casually running his hand down my leg to my phone. He picked it up and turned on the screen. The first thing that popped up after he unlocked it was a tri-cutout picture of Jaiden, me, and Alex, in that order at the top of the article. Alex's eye twitched, and I could see he was biting his cheek.