thirty-five
208 days until wedding
trevor's pov
Days. Days had passed since the moment we last saw each other in the flesh. Despite how wrong I knew all of this was, Alexandrea remained on an endless loop my mind refused to part ways with. I thought back to the very last time her skin met mine and how inexplicable she made me feel. How the intensity of her presence alone burned about a fire within me.
Time passed exponentially slower these days. I even found myself—on multiple occasions I might add—glued to the face of the clock anticipating the end of every lecture and work shift she hadn't attended. The only way I managed to keep the guilt of my interest regarding her absence at bay was the fact that her father was in serious condition and there wasn't a thing I could ask without overstepping professional boundaries.
Hinkhouse would be packed with lovers tonight to celebrate each other for Valentine's Day which meant Kevin would be in today to check the holiday profit and make sure the restaurant and its staff were up to his standards. With Alex's absence and Kevin on-site, lying about her whereabouts would no longer suffice.
Once I've made it into the restaurant—nearly at its capacity as I've anticipated—Kevin hands me a pink and red button-up shirt he's requiring everyone to wear by the looks of the few trainees wearing them in the dining area. Back in the kitchen, Josh stands over the grill flipping steaks and burgers. He waves the spatula as a greeting before motioning me over to his station and despite the steady ticket orders piling up for both of us to start, I head his way.
"He's already asking about her," Josh says. "Wanted to know why she hasn't clocked in for the past few days and why the register seems to reflect that."
"What did you tell him?"
Josh shrugs, admitting he opted for the truth and told Kevin he hadn't seen her in the past few days. He even goes on the explain that his boyfriend Sawyer was closer to her than he was and even Sawyer hadn't heard anything. He tells me that he's worried about her and didn't think to keep the fact that no one has heard from her a secret. Alex wanted her whereabouts to be kept between us, so instead of indulging him in the reason for her absence, I nod a subtle agreement and find my way to my station.
The day transitions from morning to noon within the blink of an eye and traffic in Hinkhouse refuses to cease.
Once I've clocked out for lunch—thankful to have avoided Kevin for the time being—I phone Alexandrea, but as expected there's no answer. For as long as I can manage, I stuff my face with a burger fresh from the grill to distract myself from thinking about her but there was an unshakable conviction Josh's words about Alex brought me. Even though she had disclosed her location to me, it didn't alleviate the helplessness this situation brought about. Worrying was an overstatement. I should've been doing more to help her... To show her I cared and I was thinking of her.
What the hell is going on with me?
What her family was experiencing right now wasn't something easily swept underneath the rug or forgotten. Her father may have very well been on his death bed by the hands of himself and my only contention was an unanswered phone call. As much as I tried suppressing it, thoughts and scenarios haunt me for the entirety of my lunch.
Once my break is over, I'm back to flipping beef and making small talk with Josh as the orders continue to pile up. Kevin is out on the dining floor taking orders for a few customers while simultaneously training the new staff. A job reserved for Alex considering she'd been the most recent hire. My eyes teeter from the searing heat of the grill and the dining area to get a good look at his composure. If he didn't seem angry, perhaps he wouldn't fire her for missing a few days.
But Kevin was a professional and catching him angry in front of customers was a rarity. Still, my eyes trail his every step until his attention is focused elsewhere. Though his words are stifled in a sea of chatter around him, his lips read: I'll be back. Take over.
He doesn't say anything else, just gestures ahead in the direction of his office and out of my sight.
"Trevor! I needed that burger two minutes ago!" One of the new hires says, sending a jolt of surprise through my body.
I remember specifically during training one evening reciting the cardinal rules of working the stove and grill. Never take your eyes off the stove. Outcome—critical. At all times while working either stove or grill, your eyes are never to leave the surface if there is food still cooking. Bouts of fire tend to shoot up from its surface and my lack of discipline for those rules seemed to have reaped their consequences on the sleeve of my shirt as I've trained my eyes back towards the stove.
"Shit!" "I holler, attempting to shake the fire away. It only matures into a larger blaze.
Luckily Josh is beside me in less than a few seconds with a towel drenched in water. For a while, I'm glued in place—horrifyingly witnessing the flames devouring the left sleeve of my new shirt. The pain is excruciating but slightly subsides as the wet towel smothers the life of the fire from my sleeve. Josh leads me in the direction of the lounge, and immediately pulls his phone from his pocket to dial 911. A dispatcher guides him through the first-aid procedure after he's pulled the kit from a drawer beneath the microwave.
He proceeds to follows the instructions coming from the phone, although it all begins to sound of distant chatter to me. All I could focus on was hoping the commotion went unnoticed, especially with the boss here, but Josh barely has enough time to begin dressing the wound before Kevin barges into the lounge.
"What the hell happened?" He says, using a hand to mask the smell of charred flesh and blood dampening the air.
"We've got to get him to the health center. Immediately. These could be third-degree. This towel won't provide much relief soon," Josh replies, somehow handling his composure with ease, before passing the phone to Kevin.
He isn't wrong. The pain had gotten so intense my arm no longer throbbed, but was numb.
I'm reluctant to glance in Kevin's direction again, fearing what his response will be, though I fight through the unpleasantness and shift my attention towards him anyways. Yet he isn't the person my eyes find first. They're hers.
She eyes me before they dart to my injury and back to me. Her face no longer possessed the richness it had the last time we saw each other. Instead she looked dull—droopy-eyed, and full of despair. It's her that breaks our contact as she walks towards her cubby to remove her winter attire.
There's so much to be said, yet it all vanishes from my mind in her presence.
Alex lingers in the lounge for a moment—making sure our eyes wouldn't meet again, but it wasn't as easy for me to pull my eyes away. I silently prayed that she would come over to check if I were okay, though I knew the possibility of that happening in our current predicament was slim to none.
Our eyes do meet once more but it's only for a second before she signals to Kevin towards the bathroom with her Valentine's Day shirt in hand. He quickly dismisses her with a nod, leaving me to bear the queasiness in my stomach alone. Why did I feel this way? Why was the pain of her leaving the lounge more brutal than the burn on my arm?
Once Kevin is no longer on the phone, he dresses my burn and instructs Josh to drive me to the Health Center. When we arrive, they pull me back immediately. The nurse practitioner babbles on, but again, nothing but the sound of faded echoes register. The only piece of information I managed to hear was needing to stay overnight.
Josh rises from his chair with a hefty sigh the instant the nurse exits the room.
"I can call Kevin and ask if I could stay longer if you need me to."
"I'm sure you have much better things to do than sit in a clinic with me. I'll be fine here alone. It'll give me time to think."
"About Alex?" He questions hesitatingly. If it weren't my swift denial or the fact that I clam at the mention of her name, I might've been able to convince him it had absolutely nothing to do with her or that I had no idea what he was talking about, but I fail. "The way you two looked at each other in the lounge earlier was intense. Maybe neither of you realize what it is, but something is there."
I'm terrified—enough to be grounded back to reality and in my right mind.
"I was only shocked to see her. Couldn't help but think something bad had happened to her either."
Josh is an intelligent man. Not that it took a rocket scientist to detect the obvious tension that did in fact take place in the lounge. Thankfully he doesn't attempt to elaborate. He shrugs his shoulders and heads in the direction of the exit.
"I'll let Kevin know they want to keep you for the night. Take care." And with that he's walking down the hall out of the Health Center.
After only an hour, I've already indulged my mind on everything about STDs, teen pregnancy, and stress management from the pamphlets sprawled out on the side table near my bed. But even the horrific images of syphilis isn't enough to take my mind off of Alexandrea's return.
When had she arrived? Why hadn't she returned a single one of my texts or given me the courtesy of her whereabouts so I wouldn't have made such a fool of myself in front of our coworker and boss? There was so much I needed to know from her and it couldn't wait until tomorrow. My phone—nearly dead—has a few missed calls and text messages from Meghan. She'd most likely heard about the incident from her sister or some other source she had lurking around campus. Though my intent is to leave her out of whatever shred of privacy I had remaining, my daughter had a right to know why it would be her mother tucking her in tonight and not me.
In an effort to preserve any of the life my battery had left, all Meghan receives from me is a text explaining my safety and my earliest return. For Alex, I dial her number by memory and wait for an answer. The phone continues to ring, eventually growing louder and closer as if it had been closing in on me. Only it had. There's no answer from the call, and as her voicemail plays in my ear, the last slither of power remaining on my phone ceases to exists.
She approaches the door with her phone locked in a secure grip. She'd still been dressed in the custom Valentine's day shirt Kevin provided, and her eyes appear bloodshot.
"I was just—what are you doing here?"
Perhaps it came off a tad bit rude and though I wouldn't openly admit it, I was glad to see her.
"Kevin may be a douche bag for making us wear these stupid pink shirts, but he's not heartless," she says, entering into the room to sit in the empty chair across the room. "He didn't want you here by yourself so he swapped Josh out with me. If it's too weird, I can leave."
Alex examines the room from the top to the bottom as if she'd never been here or a hospital before. But I know it isn't that. I could only imagine how her days might've gone being confide to the hospital's ICU at the cost of her father's wellbeing. If I weren't selfish and didn't want to spend this time away from everyone to be with her I may have encouraged her to go back to Hinkhouse instead of torturing herself in here with me.
"No, that's okay. I was thinking about you. It's why I called. I didn't know you were back in town."
"Dad's girlfriend practically kicked us out of the hospital. We made it back earlier this morning." She avoids looking my way as she speaks and I can only imagine the pain she's in. I'm tempted to go to her or to ask her over to me, but the words refuse to come. "I heard that burn was nasty. What's the prognosis?"
"Third degree. The nurse said my arm will never look the same again. I'm okay though. It could've been much worse you know?"
She only nods and finally removes her hearty winter coat then grabs something from her bag before sitting it on the floor beside her chair. In her hand is the script of the play. I watch in silence as her eyes deliberately follow line after line of the booklet.
With everything going on in her personal life, I had no intention of making her participate in the play or anything behind the scenes because it felt insensitive and inconsiderate. And as much as I wish I could have avoided the question I'm sure she knew would arrive sooner or later, I couldn't.
"If you don't mind my asking, how's your father?" Those same bloodshot eyes break from the pages of The Scarlet Letter and find mine again. I'm tempted to pull away from her gaze at the risk of her reading through it the way Josh was able to, but I don't in hopes that she realizes it for herself.
"Better," she says, readjusting herself in the chair. "The doctors felt his body was strong enough to come off the coma inducing medication. He should wake anytime now. It's the only reason I came back."
Recalling our conversation where she confided in me about the details of her father's injuries, I couldn't imagine him living through something as severe as that. Let alone doctors assuming a brain that has been blown through with a bullet could actually function without the help of a machine, but I'm sure not to let my uncertainty slip through my lips. Not when it was obviously eating her alive. And especially not when this burn could have been a lot worse than it turned out to be and it could've been me in the ICU and Emma struggling to make it day by day.
There's nothing I can say to express my condolences enough. Nothing I'm certain she hasn't already heard once before so I nod. Luckily it suffices enough for her to focus back on the pages of the script.
"You're excused from participating in that if you're not up for it. Given the circumstances."
It wasn't like I hadn't punished her with stage director for reasons beyond truancy anyway. How selfish would it be to make her do all of that while juggling with the uncertainty of her father's fate? I wouldn't be able to live with myself.
"Don't count me out just yet, Professor. School and work are the only things keeping me from self-destruction."