Sometimes it felt like she belonged to a different world. Literally. Like wherever she came from was so out of the ordinary, I couldn’t even imagine it.
I’d never been farther than Rochester—well, once I went to visit my cousin Josh back when he was still living in South Dakota, but that was it. And his town wasn’t much bigger than mine. I’d never even been on a plane before. I had no idea what living in a big city was like.
Alexis would bring me things sometimes, food from places over where she lived.
When I was a kid Grandpa would get me a Happy Meal every time we went into Rochester for the hardware store or the dentist. Most people take stuff like that for granted, but McDonald’s was a treat for us here, a big deal. Hell, it still was.
But the stuff Alexis brought me was something else. It was like wherever she came from, nothing was average. She brought these rainbow macarons from some French bakery in Minneapolis, wrapped in red ribbon and brushed in gold leaf. Handmade chocolates from an artisan chocolatier with apricots inside of them. These fancy donuts with bacon on them, soft colorful cupcakes from Nadia Cakes. Most of it was too nice to eat. I didn’t even want to touch it. It was like the little rose-shaped soaps Grandma used to keep in a bowl in the downstairs bathroom that nobody was allowed to use to wash their hands.
Stuff like this—her Mercedes, her designer clothes, opera singers in her ER—all of it served to remind me that she belonged to somewhere else, some universe a million miles from mine.
She’d told me what hospital she worked in. I Googled it. It was the second largest hospital in Minnesota after the Mayo Clinic. It was the third best training hospital in the nation, a level-one trauma center. I found a documentary about her family, a two-hour show on the History Channel. Her dad was this world-renowned cardiovascular surgeon. He pioneered the Montgomery Method, some fancy way to do heart surgery. Her mom was a huge philanthropist and a spinal surgeon to boot, and her brother was a famous plastic surgeon.
Alexis was part of some elite medical legacy that I couldn’t even begin to understand. But every single time she showed up she still slid into my life like she belonged here anyway. Every single time it made it that much harder to let her leave and go back to where she came from. And when she did, it gave me a sinking sense of hopelessness, because how could I and this place compete with whatever that was out there?
She said she didn’t see a future with us. That our lives didn’t fit. I knew there were things I could never give her. At best, I had about as much to offer as my damn dog—companionship and entertainment. I couldn’t talk to her about the stuff her ex probably did, I couldn’t make the money she made or buy her expensive gifts or take her on vacations.
But I could love her better than anyone ever could for the rest of her life. That, I knew. And if there was even a fraction of a chance that might be enough, I was going to take it.
I didn’t have time to play it cool or let things happen slowly. I had to make my argument now. I was going to talk to her about the way I was feeling, I was going to ask her to let me try and make this work.
We took Hunter back behind the garage and spent the next half an hour washing my stupid dog. We locked him in the kennel to dry off and then went to take a shower.
She stripped in the bathroom, and I watched her as I got undressed next to her.
“I hope he learned his lesson,” she said, stepping under the water.
“You know he didn’t.”
She laughed.
Last week he’d gotten porcupine needles in his nose. Alexis had to sedate him and take them out with pliers. This wouldn’t have been noteworthy except that he’d done the exact same thing the week before that and clearly learned nothing about sniffing porcupines.
I couldn’t say I could really fault him for chasing down things that could hurt him. I couldn’t stop doing it either.
We’d already hosed ourselves down using the same stuff we’d cleaned Hunter with, so this was just a quick shower to wash our hair.
She stood under the water rinsing out the shampoo, and I wrapped my arms around her from behind and kissed the side of her neck.
My body reacted to her. Everything in me reacted to her, all the time.
When she called, my mood lifted. When I saw her coming down the driveway, my heart would pound. When she was here, I slept better. When she was gone, I was sad. She felt like the sun. Like she was the reason for everything. Like I’d always been waiting for her to get closer and bring me to life.
I pressed my hard-on into her, and she leaned into my chest. “Don’t you want to wait until we get out?”