Chapter 17
Alex managed, somehow, to make it back to his house before he completely broke down. He was thankful that Angelica and Phillip were at school. Especially with all the concerns and doubts that Angelica had been having, he really didn’t want them to have to see how crushed he was. He held his breath as he pulled into his garage, clicking the closed button and waiting for it to shut while he turned the car off.
The moment that the garage door was completely shut, the tears that Alex was trying so hard to hold back come all at once.
He moved his hands up to the top of his steering wheel and leaned his head down, sobbing. Jesus Christ, what had he done? He had come to the conclusion while he was driving that it was him that was the asshole, not George. If Eliza, or hell, even if it was Maria, wanted to fake her own death for whatever reason, Alex would take the secret to the grave. How could he expect George to do anything different? Especially when George and Martha had known each other for so long.
At first, Alex had trouble with the fact that Martha and George had known each other for years, but the more that he thought about it, the more he realized that he had known that before. He had also met Martha once, when she came to visit George after the first big fight she and her husband had. Alex had completely forgotten about it. He was working for another big-business firm with John, and they were spending the majority of their time trying to make names for themselves. He had only been able to see George once or twice per week anyway, so he hadn’t cared much when George said that a friend of his was going to be staying with them for a few days.
Martha slept on their couch for nearly a full week, but Alex could only remember being home for one or two evenings. George took the whole week off to comfort Martha, even went back with her back to her home for more than a few days, but Alex . . . he didn’t think it was worth it, taking time off work to comfort a woman that he didn’t know.
Looking back on it, he wondered how much of an asshole Martha thought he was, and whether she justified George’s leaving from his actions then. God, he was awful back then, wasn’t he? He was never around for George, and he spent more of his time working than he did anything else. Sure, he tried his best to make time for George, and to make time for his children, but things weren’t easy. He was trying to make his way up through the ranks, trying to make a name for himself. He was overworked and exhausted, all the time, but that didn’t mean that he deserved anything that had happened between George and him.
Alex sat up straight and lifted his hand, pressing his fingertips against his eyes and rubbing them, the pressure from his fingers fighting against the pressure from his tears. He pressed as hard as he could and breathed in and out through his nose, trying his hardest to calm himself down. He may be upset, but at this point, he was the only person responsible for how he was feeling. He should have listened to what George had had to say, let him explain himself. It was only fair.
Alex counted to ten before he got out of the car and went back inside. He grit his teeth and forced himself to calm down, forced the tears to stop. He went into his kitchen and squatted down to the lower right cabinet. He was glad that his children weren’t home. He didn’t want them to see him drinking, especially not during the day. Actually, maybe they shouldn’t come home at all tonight, just to be safe. Just few text messages and . . . there, they were staying with their mother for the night. Nothing to worry about at all now.
After only a few seconds, Alex already felt out of control. He grabbed a bottle of vodka and stood up. He put the bottle on the counter and grabbed a glass, filling it up nearly halfway with the liquor before going to his refrigerator and getting out his orange juice. He filled the cup the rest of the way up with that and took up to his office. He turned on his lap top and sat down, kicking his legs out and downing the glass in one gulp. He logged in to his computer and went back to that locked folder that he had shied away from for so long.
Soon, his screen was filled with pictures and videos of George, of things that he had for so long told himself that he was better off not remembering. He watched the things they had done with Phillip and Angelica, the things that they had done as a couple. Every surprise party, every secret surprise, every major event—everything in one location in front of him. He saw how happy George and he had been together, how much love they had shared over the years.
He had to bring the rest of the bottle upstairs to get through it.
Within an hour, Alex was quickly on the path to heavy intoxication. He hadn’t gotten this drunk in years. The last time he could remember drinking this much was the day that George had left him.
Alex walked across the office parking lot, the good mood he had been nursing all day suddenly slipping into something akin to depression. His stomach suddenly felt tight, and it was getting hard to breath,
John, who was walking next to him, looked at him cautiously. “You okay, Alex? Do you need to sit down or get some water or something?” He took a step towards Alex and took his hand, using his thumb to rub at Alex’s wrist bone the way he always did when Alex was in the midst of a panic attack.
Alex pulled his hand back and shook his head. “I’m fine, John. Just a bit of a headache. It’ll go away in a moment.” He gave John a tight smile and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek as they reached his car. “I’ll call you later, all right? We can talk about what we want to do for George’s surprise party then—he is going to work on his store expansion tonight. You can come by, if you’d like.”
“Yeah. Let me just grab some dinner and then I’ll swing by, okay? Like an hour?”
“Yeah. See you then.”
Alex climbed into his car and watched John walk the rest of the way across the parking lot o his own car. He waited for John to pull out of the parking lot before he slouched down in his seat, the anxious feelings growing worse as he pulled out his phone. Something just wasn’t right.
Alex contemplated just going home when another idea struck him instead. George was probably already on his way to the stand (now a storefront), but he would pick up Alex’s call, regardless.
Alex unlocked his phone and hit his “favorites” list, quickly tapping on the first contact, which had a picture of George and him, kissing. It was one of the first pictures they had taken together, and had always been Alex’s favorite.
The phone rang three times before going to voicemail. Alex pulled his phone away and stared at it, his brows furrowed. George’s phone had never done that. If it was off, it went straight to voicemail, and if he couldn’t pick up in time, it rang eight times before it went to voicemail. But three? That was unusual.
Maybe they had forgotten to pay George’s phone bill again. It wouldn’t be the first time that that had happened, both men too caught up in their lives to realize that the due date for the bill had passed. Normally when that happened, however, he would get a very different message regarding his call: “The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please hang up, and try again.”
Well, he might as well follow the phantom message, even if it hadn’t shown up. He hung up and shook his phone a few times before calling again. This time, it only rang once before it got sent to voicemail.
Alex hung up again and lowered the phone as he realized that George must be sending him to voicemail. It wasn’t something he normally did, but perhaps he was on the phone with one of his carpenters, or the architect, or, hell, even one of his employees. Yeah, that must be it.
Alex ignored the heavy feeling in his stomach and put his phone down, pursing his lips before turning his car on and making the drive back home. As he drove, he kept glancing over to his phone in the cup holder, hoping that George would call him back or at least send him a text. Ever since George’s refusal of Alex’s proposal, George had been acting strange. He had been distant, and he didn’t seem nearly as happy as he had once upon a time. It was starting to make Alex incredibly uncomfortable, and he couldn’t help but wonder if all of this was going to come to a head soon. He desperately hoped not.
The closer he got to the house, the more anxious he felt. He felt like he had swallowed a handful of bees, his stomach jolting with every bump that he went over in the road. When he finally pulled into the driveway, the feeling that something was wrong was nearly overwhelming. He opened the garage door and pulled in, turning his car and shutting the garage before he went into the house.
The very first thing that Alex noticed when he walked through the door into the kitchen was that Rivera didn’t come out to greet him. Granted, the dog was getting up there in terms of her age, so she struggled with getting down the stairs from their bedroom to the door. Even then, however, she would bark from the top of the stairs, greeting her master vocally until he could make it up the stairs to see her.
“Rivera?” he called out, dropping his briefcase on the counter and shrugging his jacket off. He waited for a moment, but didn’t hear even the sound of her collar as she shook her head.
Again, the anxiety got worse. He hoped that George had just decided to take her with him to the shop, and that nothing had happened to her. He didn’t know how he would explain it to George if he had.
As Alex walked through the living room, however, he was struck with the realization that something was really wrong. The paintings that normally hung above the couch, the ones that George had so diligently picked out were gone, leaving blank spots that showed how filthy the wall really was. Alex walked over to wall, glancing down behind the couch to see if they had just fallen. (They had not.)
Alex bit his lip and reached down, squeezing his thigh hard enough for his nails to cut through his dress pants. He took a deep breath before going up to George and his bedroom, trying his hardest to keep his gaze locked forward and his eyes away from the collections of pictures that were missing. Photographs of George’s family, of his nieces, his nephews, all gone.
Alex could feel himself starting to hyperventilate as he threw open the door to their bedroom. At first, it looked the same as it always did, but the moment that he opened the closet door, he fell to the floor. All of George’s clothes were gone, empty hangers in their wake.
He stared up at the colored plastic for a moment before he pushed himself up off the floor. He walked over to the dresser and pulled the drawers open, letting out a whimper when he saw that those were empty, as well. He pulled he drawers all of the way out in panic, tossing them to the floor and crouching down to see if, somehow, George’s things managed to get trapped behind the wood.
When he couldn’t find anything, Alex ran back downstairs and grabbed his phone, which he had left on top of his briefcase. He tried calling George again, although this time he was sent straight to voicemail without pause.
Alex hung up the phone and began to text George. As he typed he crouched down and grabbed the whiskey from under the sink, taking a big gulp. It burned as it went down, but it was welcome against the sharp ache in his chest. Before Alex could get a full message typed out, however, there was knocking on his door.
With wide eyes, Alex tightened his grip on the bottle and ran to see who was there, taking another hefty gulp of the fire-like liquid. He grabbed the knob and threw the door open, his heart sinking as he saw that it was only John,
John was looking down at his phone, but when he looked up, he nearly dropped his phone as he looked at Alex. “Alex? What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
Alex hadn’t noticed the tears falling down his cheeks, but at John’s words, he completely lost it. He fell to his knees and took another gulp before covering his eyes and sobbing. John dropped down beside him, rubbing his back and staring at him in confusion. He adjusted so that he was sitting with his back against the wall and pulled Alex into his lap, wrapping his arms around Alex’s shoulders and holding him tightly. He kissed his forehead and stroked his hair, waiting for Alex to tell him what was going in.
Alex shook his head as he felt a particularly painful lurch in his stomach. He stood and bolted for the bathroom, making it just in time as his body expelled the large quantity of alcohol he had taken in. He dropped down to his knees in front of the toilet and vomited, the burn that had felt so pleasant going down turning into an agony as it came back up.
Fortunately, it was only a matter of minutes before Alex was finished. He fell back onto the ground, landing on his rear and ruining his good dress pants as he landed in a splatter of sickness. He groaned and buried his face in his hands, closing his eyes and counting to ten before standing and going into his bedroom. He stripped down to just his boxers and undershirt, throwing all of his business clothes into a corner of the room.
As Alex looked around the room, however, he was struck with the same feelings that he had had when he had realized that George had left him. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t really changed the house all that much. He had wanted to, desperately told himself time and time again that he needed to leave, but he could never find the courage to. This had been the place that George and he had spent their life together, the place where his children had spent a good part of their childhood. He just couldn’t do it, not to himself, not to them.
Alex went back into the office and picked the bottle back up, taking yet another drink (was the bottle really almost empty? He could have sworn it was full just a few minutes ago) before going down to the kitchen and slamming it on to the counter. What good did the bottle do if it was empty? He had to have something else there that he could drink. Whiskey, maybe, or one of those fruity, girly drinks that Gil insisted on brining over all the damn time. There had to be something, right?
Before Alex could find anything else to drown his sorrows in, however, he heard a knock on the door. He let out a sound of disgust before going to see who it was. It had to be John. Who else would come to see him, especially on such a fucking awful day such as this? He didn’t know how much time had passed since he left the prison, but if it was the afternoon . . . hell, George was probably on his way to paradise with Martha and JP now. John probably wanted to gloat about the fact that he was able to convince the Judge to let George off, and he would spent the whole fucking night berating Alex for running out of the prison like a little kid afraid of the monster in the closet.
Alex kicked the door with his foot before he opened it, shocked to see that it was already nighttime. “Look, John, you can fuckin’ talk shi’ about all this tom’row—”
“Hi, Alexander.”
Alex took a step back as he saw George standing in front of him. From the street below, Alex could see John’s car, but John only stayed long enough to blow him a kiss before driving away. Alex looked up at George, his eyes widening and his mouth dropping in shock for a moment before he realized that he was in his undershirt and boxers. He stuttered for a moment before slamming the door in George’s face, running to the closet and grabbing the first jacket that he could find.
In his drunken state, Alex didn’t realize that he was wearing one of Angelica’s bright pink velour track jacket until he had opened the door and George looked at him like he was a crazy person. He cleared his throat and held the door open, trying as best as he could to make himself appear a lot less drunk than he knew he really was.
If George’s expression was any indication of Alex’s acting abilities, his intoxication was much more prominent than he was hoping for. He stepped past Alex and crossed his arms, leaning back onto his heels and keeping his eyes resolutely away from Alex. He stared at the wall, at the door, at the stairs, at anything that wasn’t Alex before saying, “Uhm, I think we need to talk.”
Alex coughed and pulled the jacket down further, his cheeks burning as he couldn’t help but stare at how attractive George still looked when he wasn’t wearing a jumpsuit. He could feel himself growing interested, the alcohol holding back all of his inhibitions and putting his emotions front and center. “Uhm, it’s late . . . maybe you could, uhm, sleep on the couch, and uhm, we’ll talk in the morning—when I’m more, uhm, more sober?” He winced at the way his words were slurring together.
Before George had a chance to say anything, however, Alex managed to push past him and go upstairs to his room, locking himself in his bedroom and throwing himself on his bed before he had time to convince himself of doing anything else.
Alex prayed that sleep would come quickly.