I swallowed, trying to make the strange lump in my throat go away. I started to speak, but I felt my eyes begin to burn, so I stopped and nodded again.
"Are you sure?" he asked. "You really…don't look okay at all."
Since my only options were to speak or eat, I crammed some French toast into my mouth, buying myself a little bit more time.
Watching me, Alex allowed his fork to finish its journey to his mouth and he also took a bite, but his green eyes never left my face.
When I finished chewing I took a sip of orange juice, and, gathering my courage, said, "Did you mean what you said to me the other day?"
He blinked. "I'm…going to need you to be just a little more specific."
"When you told me that you would send me to an out-of-state school if that's what I needed to…get away—did you mean it?"
He slowly lowered his fork to his plate, and the moment seemed to hang in the air forever before he finally said, "Yes."
&
nbsp; Feeling at once relieved and depressed, I let out a small sigh and nodded. "I'd like…to take you up on that offer."
He didn't say anything, but just finally saying it aloud made tears well up in my eyes, tears that I didn't want to let fall.
At first, I didn't know what he was doing, but he suddenly stood up from the table and walked over to my side, gently pulling my arm to indicate for me to stand.
Confused, I stood up and just kind of watched him uncertainly.
Then he wrapped his arms around me and lightly pressed my head into his shoulder.
He was hugging me.
For all that I was trying to hold my composure, that seemed to break it, and before I had time to even comprehend that I was crying, I was sobbing violently into my dad's shoulder as he rubbed the back of my head and promised me everything would be all right.
I stayed home from school that day.
I didn't feel that I could handle facing Derek so soon, and Alex was off that day, so he suggested that I just skip that one day.
I didn't argue. I needed the day off.
Alex spent the day tiptoeing around me like I was a very breakable porcelain doll, but he was trying valiantly not to let me know it. I could tell he wanted to ask me about it, what had finally pushed me over the edge, but the dream was still too fresh, the fear and horror of it still too real. I wondered, in the brief moments that I let it cross my mind, if that was what my mother felt like when she drove head on at Sarah all those years before, sealing all of our fates. I couldn't think about it for long though, because just seeing that flash of Kayla's face and then Sarah's face, that moment of realization…it made me shudder, and I had to distance myself from the memory.
To Alex's credit, he seemed to know better than to ask.
While I played hooky that day, Alex and I sat together on the couch for hours watching Rosemary's Baby and The Omen, although I may never understand why Alex thought these would be good heartbreak/mourning movies.
It worked though. For those four hours, I didn't feel like crying.
It was approaching noon before he finally turned the television off and asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"
I shook my head. "No."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
I nodded my head and said kind of slowly, "Actually, I want you to tell me about her."
He hesitated. "Jamie?"
I nodded again. "Yeah. Tell me about the Jamie you knew."
A soft smile touched his lips, the first one of the morning, and he said, "Where do you want me to start?"