I flipped open my phone and looked at my text inbox. Nothing from Alex yet, and it was eight a.m. I was on my break, and he should be awake for work. This was getting ridiculous, and I needed to get to the bottom of it.
It would have to wait until the end of my shift, though. Gus was testing me out as a supervisor before officially promoting me. Being a supervisor was surprisingly similar to, well, not being a supervisor. The main difference seemed to be that now, if I told someone to do something—like take over on cash—I could pull rank and force them to do it. No more cash register shifts for me!
But the downside to taking the promotion was the paperwork and the task of trying to schedule breaks, as four of us needed to take them around the same time, so I had to figure out schedules that meant we were never understaffed.
The real kicker was that all the while, I could feel the extra energy inside me, the electricity just beneath my skin as if it were crawling around inside of me, trying to break out, and it was driving me insane. More than once I’d made a stupid mistake because I was so focused on breathing deeply and trying to keep the blue marks from appearing on my hands. I couldn’t possibly let it out during work. While I’d only ever done stuff like turn appliances on and off at work, I couldn’t risk having something go completely haywire and explode.
Again.
“Uh, Holly? Earth to Holly?”
I was rubbing my face, trying to distract myself, and stopped to peer through my fingers at Angela. Whoops. I dropped my hands at my sides.
“What’s up, Angela?”
“Well, uh, there’s a guy outside, and he says he needs to speak to you.”
“A customer?”
“No…at least, he hasn’t bought anything yet.”
Who would be waiting for me? “Is it Alex?”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Oh, yeah, you haven’t met him yet, have you?” I put the clipboard I was holding down on the counter—probably not the best place to keep it, but I was more concerned with figuring out why Alex would come to get me at work. I opened the door—Angela had already gone ahead of me—and smiled a little awkwardly at Alex standing there. He looked like he was about to cry.
I opened the counter and walked over to wrap my arms around him. He buried his face in my hair. “What’s wrong, hon?”
He said something, but I could barely tell if he was speaking English.
“Let’s go to the back. I can take my break now so we can talk this out, okay?” He nodded into my temple, and I grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him towards the back.
Angela raised an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged, putting on my best I have no idea face. I had a bit of an idea, but I was kind of hoping I was being paranoid.
Hoping it’s just that you don’t trust him isn’t exactly great.
I ignored the nagging voice in my head and the crawling feeling underneath my skin—this was an amazing distraction from the electricity, as horrible as I felt for thinking it—and instead focused on Alex’s face.
“You know,” he said, “I hadn’t cried at all until I saw you.” There were tears on his cheeks, but when he looked up at me, I could see he had set his jaw, determined to tell me whatever it was that was bothering him without it affecting his speech.
“What happened? Something with Jesse?”
He shook his head and laughed through his tears. “No, not…not anything to do with Jesse. It was…it’s Lily.”
Thunk. There went my stomach, plummeting to about calf height. All I could think, though, was if I’d been keeping my energy on the outside again, I wouldn’t be able to deal with this. I would have exploded, literally. I would have killed him and possibly everyone else in the store.
“Oh, of course you’re angry—what am I thinking?”
“No, explain. I want to hear what happened. I’m not angry.” Yet.
“Well, she…she was over for the project—I swear that was the only reason I invited her over—and then we had a drink with dinner, and…and she kissed me.”
“You know I’m going to kill her, right?”
“Believe me, I’ll be right there with you, but it’s not completely her fault.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “You had sex?”
No response, except that he started sniffling again. I opened my eyes to see him nodding, a pained look on his tear-stained face.
“Fuck. I can’t…I can’t believe you’d do this to me, Alex!”
“I…I’m so sorry.”
“That’s it? ‘I’m sorry,’ and suddenly all of this goes away?” I took a couple steps back and breathed in and out as deeply as possible. I looked down at a metal rod sticking out of the wall. It used to be a cover for electrical wiring until they’d remodelled the bakery and that placement didn’t make sense anymore, but they’d left the rod. It led to the ground, though, which meant it was grounded.
I put my hand on it, focused on that—the sensation of cool metal against my palm—and let out the electricity clamouring beneath my skin, trying to direct it out only through my hand.
I need to keep this under control… It’s like I’m addicted to this feeling, this…way of getting excess energy out.
“Holly?”
Before I could react, there was a hand touching my shoulder, followed by a fairly loud crack! Alex took a quick step back, yelping and shaking his injured hand. I let go of the metal rod, sucking the energy back into my skin.
“W-what happened? Are you okay?”
“It was static.”
He looked at me strangely, like he was trying to read into what I’d said. I guess he wasn’t expecting any sort of sympathy this close to telling me he was cheating on me. Had cheated on me.
“It was only that once, then, I take it?”
“What— Oh, Lily? Oh, god, of course!” He stepped towards me again, arms opening to either give me a hug or hoping I’d hug him—I couldn’t quite tell which—but stopped before he reached me, looking at my eyes to see if I was open to the possibility.
I swallowed the rage and pulled him to me. It would be difficult to not think about him and Lily sleeping together.
He still felt like Alex. He felt exactly like he had two days prior and still was his normal self for the most part, but at the same time, he was…well, different.
We both sighed, and he pulled away, hugging his arms to his chest.
“So…what now?” he asked. “Would it help at all to hear I was a little drunker than I’d—”
“Don’t.” I held up my hand. “I don’t need to hear anything about it anymore. I’d just…really, I’d just like to pretend it never happened for now—until I figure out how we’re going to deal with this.”
“But we’re going to deal with this?” His eyes were threatening to spill over again.
I was screaming at myself mentally—reach out and comfort him, you ass!—but I couldn’t make myself move to even put a hand on his shoulder.
I couldn’t shake the almost slimy feeling that I wasn’t good enough because he’d turned to another woman to get what he wanted.
“I’m gonna kill her.” It would be easy, too, and there wouldn’t ever be any way for anyone to tell it was me.
“Holly, it…it was mostly her fault, but not entirely.”
You wanted to be a superhero, not a supervillain.
I sighed. “Well, I can’t exactly kill you for this, can I?” I made a feeble attempt at a smile, then looked up at him and realized how terrified he was. “No, I… Never mind. Was trying to make an awful, awful joke, to break the tension.”
“Oh.” He laughed half-heartedly.
Yeah, that helped. Shaking my head, I turned towards the counter and picked up my clipboard, staring at the break schedule for the day, but the names swam in front of my eyes. I couldn’t focus on it at all.
“Holly?”
That would be one of the problems.
“Alex, you need to go. I need to get back to work, and I…I need to think about this without you being here. I need to clear my head a bit.”
He’d started crying again at some point, tears spilling onto his cheeks, and I couldn’t believe that I was only noticing it now. There was definitely a time when I wouldn’t have gone even a few seconds without noticing Alex was crying while I was talking to him. That was enough for me to move closer and force myself to put a hand on his shoulder. Once that initial contact was made, there was a lot less holding me back. I pulled him into a hug, and he nuzzled my head for a moment.
“I’m so sorry, Holly,” he said as he backed away. “I don’t…I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You weren’t, obviously. I’m not going to say it’s okay, because I don’t know if it is. But I don’t think there’s anything you can do at this point. Even if you could buy me something or give me a gift that somehow changed how I feel about this, what would that say about us?”
He swallowed and nodded, but I could see the hint of a scowl in his pursed lips.
“Anyway, go to the bathroom there—” I pointed at the ajar door on the other side of the rather large room “—and splash some water on your face.”
I usually liked the fact that I didn’t cry, but the past few days had drained me, and I wished I still had enough in me to cry about this.
As he walked towards the bathroom—back slowly straightening out, regaining his normal composure—I called out to him, “Oh, and grab yourself a sandwich or something on the way out. You won’t have time to get one before school. Tell them I’ll pay for it.”
He smiled hesitantly, and I smiled back. I don’t know if I can properly trust you anymore…but I think we can get through this.
If it was really just this once.