The Aqua Net Diaries (20 page)

Alex Delaney

If we cannot find the road to
happiness, let's make one!

—Alex Delaney

Alex Delaney came into my life the fall of my junior year. He was a popular senior with a tangled mane of curly gold hair and bright blue eyes. He was California cute, right in the middle of landlocked Richmond, Indiana. We had Humanities class together and began to cast longing, electrically charged glances across the room at each other until I couldn't stand it anymore. If he had been Tommy Wissel or Tom Mangas, I would have just written him a coy little note (Me:
Tommy, I think marriage would be wonderful, but being your mistress sounds like fun. I wouldn't want Suzanne to find out and I wouldn't want to disrupt a marriage—but don't
I have a nice chest?
Tommy:
Yes, what I can see of it. I can't tell real well though. But maybe if I had a chance to see it better I would know.
Me:
You're pretty sly, aren't you? Now let me think. When would you get a chance? I could move over a seat so you could have a better view, but that probably wouldn't be much better. Any suggestions?
)

But Alex was different. Alex seemed worlds older than anyone I had dated before. He moved in an orbit far beyond the one I knew. He was best friends with John Dehner, Tom Dehner's older brother. Alex was a senior. He was
experienced.
The whole idea of him was vaguely unnerving. Visions of Freddie Prinze, my first true love, with his tight jeans and wicked smile, came to mind.

I wrote my friend Holly Ogren a note in AP History class.

Jennifer:
Tell me about Alex!

Holly:
I don't know him very well, but from what I know of him he's really sweet. Diane Weigle went with him for a long time. That's about the extent of my knowledge.

I knew all about Alex's previous relationship with Diane, a pretty redheaded senior. She was smart and nice and well-liked. She wasn't an ex-girlfriend you could hate like Carrie Hockersmith. She and Alex had been together for a Very Long Time, but had recently broken up. I was just single myself. Curt Atkisson and I had split up not long after Homecoming.

Finally, after two weeks of meaningful glances in Humanities, one of Alex's friends got sick of our silent pining and decided to get us together. Alex asked me out, staring at the ground the entire time, and I said yes, staring at my feet.

On our first date, Alex picked me up in his little red Toyota and took me out on the town for dinner and a movie. He was shy and I was shy and I thought how weird this was
since I liked flirting with boys almost as much as I liked writing stories or singing into my hairbrush and pretending I was a rock star or driving fast with Joey to the Dayton Mall. I thought,
Heaven help us. We will never get through this night.

In the movie his arm inched closer to mine, brushing against it on the armrest. I had been through this dance many times before and knew what to do. If I didn't want him to hold my hand, all I had to do was put my hands in my lap. If I wanted him to hold it, all I needed to do was leave it there on the armrest and let him take over. I left it there. He moved his closer. This went on for most of the movie until finally our fingers touched and then he took my hand.

After that, our shyness went away. On the way home, we laughed a lot. He was funny. We talked over each other. By the end of the evening, we were kissing in his car. Kissing was what we were best at.

There was another date. And another after that. He always called me when he said he would. We talked for hours on the phone every night until my mother told me to hang up, that it was time for bed. It wasn't long before we were going together. He walked me to classes and wrote me notes. I wrote him notes back. I wrote him a poem. He wrote me one. He called me “Gorgeous.” He told me he loved me. I told him I loved him.

I wondered if this was what grown-up love felt like. I had loved Eric Lundquist, but that seemed young and innocent compared to this. Love with Eric was sweet and heady and giddy. It left me light-headed and breathless. Love with Alex made me want to put my head between my knees and throw up into the trash can. It felt painful and exhilarating at once, like being on an upside-down roller coaster or slamming your finger in the car door. I always felt slightly unhinged, like I wasn't in control, something I hated.

I met his brothers (all blond, too many to keep track of) and he talked to me about his parents, who didn't get along and were always fighting. I felt bad for him because my own parents were happy. They never argued and always got along and the three of us liked to do things as a family, like go out to eat or to the movies, or on trips to Cincinnati or Chicago, when my dad wasn't too busy working at the college.

Alex and I did our homework together and tried hard to study without falling into and onto and on top of each other. Inevitably, we always wound up engaging in fierce make-out sessions in his basement or in my basement, which left both of us angry and excited and wound up for days.

We talked about sex all the time. He knew I wanted to wait to do it till some unforeseen time in the future. I wasn't sure when this would be exactly, but I was sure the time would make itself known to me, that there would be a magic moment when all the stars aligned and I would just …
know
.

My dad, as if he sensed what was going on, never said much to Alex. At least he let him inside the house, which was an improvement. When Alex said, “I don't think your dad likes me,” I cheerfully pointed out that he hadn't been made to wait outside on the front step. A week or so into our relationship we were even allowed downstairs in the family room with the door closed, which was amazing. One night we heard the door open and my dad started down the stairs. Alex and I broke apart and sat chastely beside each other on the couch, our hearts pounding. My dad stomped down the stairs without stomping—a gift he had perfected. He didn't say a word. He walked by us to his stereo, fussed about with his albums, and then, again without saying a word or retrieving a single item, walked by us and went back upstairs.

“Your dad is good,” Alex said. “It's like he came down here and peed on you and he didn't even have to say anything.”

We watched TV the rest of the night without touching.

We went to basketball games together. It was the most exciting time in history for RHS basketball, because after years of being mediocre, of never ever winning a state championship in a state that worships basketball, the Red Devils won sectionals. Then we won regionals. Then we advanced to our first state finals in thirty-two years. Even I was excited.

Although we did things with Alex's friends (which was thrilling, especially when John Dehner was around because, like his younger brother, he was so effortlessly cool), most of the time Alex agreed to do things with my friends because that was what I wanted. He would invite Joey over to sit with us in his basement and listen to music or watch movies, or he would come along on shopping trips to the Dayton Mall with Jennie, Hether, Hill, Laura, Joey, and me.

It was on one of those shopping trips that I saw the bear. The bear was enormous and white with a blue satin bow around its neck. It cost eighty-five dollars. I saw it and immediately loved it, and that was all it took. Alex picked it up. He said, “You want it, Gorgeous, it's yours.”

I said, “Oh no, it's too expensive. It's too much.” But I did want it. I was already thinking how upset I'd be if I didn't get it.

He said, “Nothing's too much for you.”

I said, “You shouldn't.” But I was thinking,
Please get it for me. What could be more romantic?

He kissed me and carried the bear up to the cashier. Hether, Laura, Joey, Hill, Jennie, and I watched as he pulled out his wallet and paid for the bear in cash.

Hether said, “Jesus. Someone must be getting some.”

Jennie said, “Or if he's not getting some, he'd better be getting some later.”

I said, “No one's getting some. He just loves me.”

Joey said, “Poor frustrated bastard.”

I sat in Jennie's station wagon with that bear on my lap all the way home to Richmond, Alex beside me, Laura on the other side of him, Hether and Joey in back, Hill up front next to Jennie. They were all blathering on about something, talking over one another. Alex was holding my hand, and I was holding on to the bear. Every now and then Alex would lean over and kiss me. As I sat there, the strangest feeling started coming over me, like I was in the car, but not in the car. The air felt close and hot. I rolled down my window.

My hair was blowing, but I didn't care. I was having trouble breathing. Little by little I was suffocating underneath the bear—the bear that I had wanted so desperately
less than twenty minutes earlier. The noise from all the talking was making my head hurt, and my hand was sweating where Alex was holding it, and my nose was itching from the bear's fur, and the weight of the bear was crushing the breath out of me. All I could think was,
I have got to get out of here. This bear must weigh five hundred pounds. I am going to die underneath this bear. Why can't I breathe?

“You're so complicated, just like a series of boxes,” Alex said to me sometimes, “and every time I open one, there's another inside. I don't think I'll ever get down to that last box.”

How dare he try to get in my business,
I wrote in my journal, the one I never kept for more than a week at a time.
Everywhere I look, he is
there
. It was maddening, this desire of his to want to know me, to understand me, to see inside me.

I went home that night, after the trip to the mall, and I sat the great white bear in my green beanbag. I said, “You listen here, bear. You tried to kill me in that car, and don't think I don't know it. What was that about anyway?”

The bear looked at me. From my mirror, pictures of Alex, of Alex and me, smiled out into the room. They were everywhere.

I broke up with Alex a week later. I loved him, but to my mind it had to be done. I was in the prime of my life. I couldn't, wouldn't be tied down. Even as I told him good-bye, I had ideas that maybe one day we would end up together in the real world. We would have adorable curly-headed babies, some blond, some dark-haired. But that would be a long, long time from now, someday when we were very old. I would be thirty, maybe thirty-one. He would be thirty-one or thirty-two.