This Too Shall Pass (7 page)

“Jesus, Travis,” she scowled. That wasn’t the same fruity drink. Travis laughed.

“Lexis, I’m hungry,” Riki decided. Of course she was, the food was just cleaned up.

“That’s because you wouldn’t eat your dinner. Come on, I’ll warm you up a hamburger.”

“I want a hotdog.”

“I don’t know if there are anymore. You’re dirty. What have you been doing?”

“Looking for worms in the dirt.”

Alexis snarled her nose, “Yuck, go wash your hands.”

When she returned, Alexis held Riki on her lap while she ate, happy that Mitch was no longer around the fire. She looked up, hoping that he’d left when she noticed him unloading his four-wheeler. Ugh.

“Do you see him? He hasn’t stopped staring at me since he got here,” Alexis complained to Bernie.

“I saw. You’re just going to have to tell him, Lex.”

“I have, Bernie. He’s stupid. He doesn’t get it.”

A few minutes later Mitch pulled up on his four-wheeler.

“Come on, Lexi. Go for a ride with me.”

“No thanks, Mitch.”

“Come on, Lexi, just one ride. I want to show you something.”

“Mitch, she said no,” Travis said with a stern tone, coming to her defense.

“No… you know what? I think I will go for a ride,” Alexis decided. She moved Riki to her seat and got up.

“Alexis, don’t go. Stay here,” Bernie begged. This was a bad idea.

“I’ll be right back. We need to have a talk.” Alexis downed the strong drink from Travis and traded Bernie for her full one.

“Remember this route?”

“What the hell are you doing, Mitch?”

Mitch ignored her, gunning the gas. Alexis had no choice but to hold onto him, trying not to spill her drink. He drove them along the river trail and then took another path through the woods. By the time they stopped, Alexis had finished every drop in her cup. She could feel the alcohol when she stepped off the quad with a stumble. Alcohol fueled her nerves and she was ready to tell him off, set him straight, and tell him to back the hell off.

“Remember this place, Lexi?” Mitch asked. He sat on the huge rock and let his feet dangle.

“Mitch, I don’t know what you thought when you came back here, but I’m not going to be a part of your life.”

Mitch took a step closer to her. “Sit down.”

“No, I need to get back to my girls.”

He moved closer again. “No you don’t, your sisters and Bernie have them all under control, and you know it. Sit.”

Again, he didn’t give her a choice. It was either sit or fall over. His grasp around her wrist, pulling her to the ground was no match for her alcohol induced state.

“No thanks,” she said when he nudged her arm with a bottle hidden beneath a brown sack.

“Come on, Lexi, lighten up,” he pressed.

Alexis took a swig, frowning as it burned all the way down. Ugh, she hated Tequila.

“I took your virginity on this rock, Lexi, but I am sure you already knew that.”

Alexis took another swig. She needed that one. It caused the same burning reaction as the last one.

“Mitch, what the hell are you doing? Did you bring me here to walk down memory lane? None of that matters to me. I am getting married. What part of that don’t you understand?”

“I don’t know, Lexi. I guess I was hoping we would get close to each other and you would see how much you mean to me.”

“You sound like an idiot, Mitch. I have not been around you for ten years. What do you think could possibly be there?” Alexis’s kicked her dangling feet, hanging from the rock, feeling the effects of too much to drink.

“I don’t know. You’re not supposed to be with Cory. You’re supposed to be here waiting for me.”

“You really expected me to just put my life on hold and wait for you to come home?”

“You did for a good many years, until your doctor friend had to move into town anyway.”

“First of all, he is not my friend, Mitch. He is my fiancé, and second, I was not sitting around waiting for you. I was engaged in other things in my life. Things that had absolutely nothing to do with you.”

“I’m so sorry I left you, Lexi. I should have married you like I had planned.”

“Yeah well, I’m sure that was a tough call, having two girls pregnant at the same time and all.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen that way. I didn’t even love her, I just did what I thought was expected of me.”

“I still don’t get what you want from me now, Cory.”

“My name is Mitch.”

Alexis laughed a full blown gut laugh, feeling the effects of alcohol.

Mitch was talking about dumb things they did in school and Alexis laughed, remembering them too.

“Remember that time Bernie got caught with Jimmy Nixon in the backseat of his car by the cops, and she gave them your name and address?”

Alexis laughed, “My dad was so mad when he yelled for me to come downstairs. I got down there and the cop says,
‘sorry sir, this is not the girl that I caught’
. I knew it was Bernie.”

“I’m glad Cory couldn’t make it,” Mitch quietly spoke. Before she knew what was happening he was on top of her, kissing her. Alexis felt like she was going to be sick. Her head was spinning out of control while she squirmed, trying to get away from him.

“Mitch, stop it. Get the hell off me.”

“I miss you so much, Lexi,” he confessed right before his tongue dove in her mouth again. Alexis really didn’t know what the hell was happening. It all seemed surreal, like an out of body experience or something. She didn’t even remember him getting her shorts off, not until she felt him enter her anyway. She was going to be sick. What the hell was going on?

****

“What’d you do with Mitch?” Bernie questioned with a confused look.

“Where is Kinley?” Alexis asked while she tried like hell to keep her balance.

“Cory took them home.”

“Oh God, Bernie, please tell me you’re joking.” She looked around at the somber faces of her family, knowing she was dead serious. Great.

“I wish I was.”

“When did he get here?”

“Right after you left”

“How long was I gone?”

“Over an hour.”

Alexis looked up to see the disappointed look on her dad’s face. “I’ve got to go.”

Travis protested when Alexis grabbed her keys. “Oh, no you don’t. You’re not driving anywhere.

“Give me my keys, Travis. I’m serious.”

“No, Bernie will drive you. I’ll follow you.”

“Alexis, what the hell were you thinking?” Bernie scolded.

“Bernie, I’m going to be sick.” Bernie stopped right in the middle of the dirt road. Alexis dove out of the car just in time. This sucked. This sucked so badly, and she sure as hell didn’t need the judgmental stares she was getting from Bernie and Travis. What the hell?

“Oh, God. I’m dying. I can’t deal with Cory yet,” Alexis moaned. Bernie pulled baby wipes from the console of her car and handed them to her.

“You have to. We’re here.”

Alexis looked up to see Cory sitting on the bottom step of the porch, bouncing a tennis ball off of the sidewalk. He didn’t even look up to the headlights. The ball bounced off the walk with quick, angry thumps.

“Call me if you need me, Lex,” Bernie said in a sad tone, getting out of her car and walking back to meet Travis in his truck.

“Thanks, Bernie.”

Alexis walked cautiously up to Cory, still bouncing the ball. He looked up, catching the ball in the air and glared at her.

“Too drunk to drive yourself home?” he asked.

“Cory,” was all she could say. She didn’t know what to say. Her heart was beating a million miles a minute, her mouth was dry, and she felt like she was going to be sick again. She sat beside him on the step and he jumped up, like he didn’t want to be near her.

“Where were you?”

“We just went for a ride.”

“For an hour?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I just want to know one Goddamn thing, Alexis,” he yelled angrily. Alexis looked down to the ground, knowing what the question was going to be before he ever asked.

“Did he put his dick in you?”

Alexis hesitated and looked up. The question caught her off guard. She wasn’t expecting him to ask it like that.

“That’s what I thought,” he said when she didn’t answer. Cory turned, and heaved the tennis ball clear across the field, and started toward his car.

“Cory, please don’t leave, let me explain.”

“Explain what, Alexis?” he said through gritted teeth. “How you can just go jump in bed with that fucking slime ball as soon as my back is turned?”

“Cory, no. It wasn’t like that.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. You more than likely didn’t use a bed. What? Did you take him out to the barn, too or did you just do it in a field somewhere?”

Her stomach was rolling again, “Cory, will you stop? Come here and talk to me.”

“No, Alexis. I don’t think there is anything that I want to hear from you. I’ve heard all I need to hear. I just can’t believe I was this stupid. I felt it all along. I knew this was going to happen.

“Where are you going? Cory come here.”

“I am going to take the real-estate sign out of my yard and sleep there. I’ll be after Riki in the morning.”

“Oh my, God. Will you stop and listen to me for five minutes?”

“Yes, I will. Tell me two things first.”

Alexis’s words were defeated. “What, Cory?”

“One, did you kiss him?”

“He kissed me.”

“Two, did he put his dick in you?”

“Cory, it wasn’t like that. I swear.”

“Did he, Alexis?”

“Yes, but—

“I’ll be after Riki in the morning.”

“And do what with her, Cory? Take her back to the lovely babysitter you hired for her when you came here? You’re not taking Riki anywhere.”

Cory disregarded her last remark and glared at her as he opened his car door.

“Cory, please don’t do this,” she begged.

Cory didn’t say a word, he got in his car and backed it up, spinning gravel as he put it in drive and floored it out of her driveway.

Alexis didn’t know what to do, she couldn’t lose him. She hated herself for getting on the back of that quad, all for nothing. The whole reason she went was to get him alone and tell him to back off. She knew there was no way Cory would ever believe that, not after waiting on her for as long as he did.

She gave him time to get to the town house and called his cell phone, of course he wouldn’t answer. “Cory, baby, please don’t do this, will you call me please? I’ll tell you everything. You just need to listen to me for five minutes, please?”

She got no response, not even after four text messages. She laid on the couch with a pounding head, pleading for the phone to ring. She jumped three feet when it finally did.

‘Hello,” she said, disappointed to hear Bernie.

“You okay?”

“I don’t think so, Bernie, he left.”

“He’s just mad, Lex. Let him cool off, he’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Do you think so?”

“Of course I do, but you can’t blame him for being mad. Travis was ready to kill Mitch. Thank God he was gone by the time we got back.”

“How could I have been so stupid, Bernie?”

“You could always blame it on the alcohol.”

“No. Not this time. What if he doesn’t come back?”

“He’ll be back, don’t worry. Go to bed and get some sleep, clear your head. Things will look a lot better in the morning. They always do.”

Alexis stayed on the couch, finally dozing off around three in the morning. She woke five hours later, hoping it was all a dream. Kinley’s yell for her reminded her that it was not a dream. She stumbled up the steps to her in a fog, changed her and looked in on Riki, still sound asleep. The highchair and Froot-Loops seemed like the perfect sitter for a while. Alexis made coffee, reflecting on the night she wished never happened.

Kinley cooed and shared her colorful circles with Mr. Dog. Alexis tried to interact with her, but it was hard. It was even harder when Riki joined them a few minutes later.

“Where’s daddy?”

“He went into town, sweetie.”

“I want Froot-Loops too,” Riki said in a yawn.

“You need a bath,” Alexis said when she noticed she had slept in the same clothes that she was playing in at the farm. The girls played around, talking and babbling like any other day. Her lost cell phone crossed her mind when she realized she hadn’t checked it yet. Maybe Cory texted. She found it in the couch, but there was nothing. Once breakfast was over, the girls played in the tub and Alexis sat on the toilet, holding the black cordless phone in her hand, willing it to ring.

It was after noon and she hadn’t heard one word from Cory. Her dad called to check on her, but didn’t ask too many questions. She was thankful for that. Bernie called to check on her, and even Travis called from his truck, heading south for a few days, but nothing from Cory.