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Alex stumbled into the lounge, wiping sleep from her eyes. She sideswiped a pouffe, her feet just missing a stray cricket bat.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.” Tom threw cushions off the couch and shoved his hands forcefully into its deepest recesses. “You were late last night. You dirty stop out.”
The brightness leaping through the large windows taunted Alex’s pounding head. Her mouth tasted sticky and metallic, like it was coated with wallpaper paste. She hugged her stomach, clad in newly purchased blue plaid cotton pajamas.
“Where is everyone? What are you doing?” Aspirin. She needed Aspirin. She rummaged in the kitchen cupboards. Her head spun like a wound-up ballerina inside a jewellery box.
Tom nudged her out of the way and liberated a bottle of Paracetamol from a high shelf. “Harry’s taken Olivia out for the day. She made him feel guilty about missing Friday’s party and cancelling their date last night.”
He shook two tablets into Alex’s hand and handed her a bottle of water. “God, she was in an epic mood last night. I don’t know what’s eating her. She was fine when I left for the pub. Olivia and her moods, eh? They change like the English weather.”
They both smirked. Alex may have only met her forty-eight hours ago, but Hurricane Olivia was already an erratic force to be reckoned with. She swallowed the two tablets and plunked herself face down onto the kitchen table, just missing a bundle of flowers suffocating in layers of orange tinted cellophane. A slight head shift alleviated the pressure on her now mountainous zit.
“Have you seen my wallet? This place is such a tip.” Tom snapped his knuckles. “If I show up at the match without cash again, the lads will skin me. I’m already half-hour late.”
He knocked over Olivia’s muesli box from the top of the microwave, showering oat flakes and dried fruit onto the floor. Alex lifted her head. The swaying microwave’s clock glared 12:36 p.m. at her.
“Oh, two things…a delivery came for you yesterday afternoon.” Tom ignored the spill and wrestled a card from the flowers.
“Can you read it to me? Everything’s…fuzzy and… moving,” said Alex. The muesli mess scattered on the hardwood didn’t help, lying there begging to be swept up.
“It says ‘Beautiful flowers for a beautiful daughter. Just a little something to make you feel at home. Love and kisses, Dad, Helen, and Joan xo’. Aw, that’s sweet. They’re not roses. What are they?” Tom pressed on the plastic wrap.
“Probably snapdragons. If they look like funny little jaws, they’re snapdragons. My favourite,” said Alex, her head still in a face plant.
Tom shrugged. “Weird choice.”
He moved back towards the unruly counter congested with dirty plates, overflowing ashtrays, and several empty wine bottles. “And your suitcases showed up last night around seven…bloody hell, there it is.” He plucked his missing wallet from behind the Styrofoam clutter of last night’s kebab take-away. “Man, your cases are big. They wouldn’t fit in your room, so I tucked them in mine. Feel free to unpack in there and then leave the empty cases in the lounge. One of us will stow them later…somewhere.”
A flush of relief interrupted the nauseating ripples in Alex’s stomach. She raised her head, taming the errant strands of hair that stuck to her oily face. “Oh thank God. My entire life is in those bags. That’s my day figured out, then.”
She let out a big sigh and dumped her forehead on the table. “Baggage. Everyone’s got some. Sometimes it just takes a while to catch up to you.”
Tom adjusted the collar of his Chelsea shirt and snorted. “That we do, oh Wise One. Well, I’m off. Can’t keep the Blues waiting! Good luck with the hangover—and the unpacking.”
• • •
One steamy bath followed by a buttery English muffin and an overflowing bowl of sugary cereal, returned Alex to the land of the living. Just in time, too.
Her mission: to unpack…so daunting, like a life-size game of Tetris, but instead of puzzle pieces, her clothes, books, and personal items had to find their most space efficient positions.
Alex hung each item of clothing individually in the wonky wardrobe, testing its stability. Would the weight send the cupboard crashing down on top of her? She grounded its base with her heaviest books including her chunky volume of Bartlett’s Quotations, a prize for earning the highest grade in English during her senior year of high school. Pairs of motorcycle and ankle boots, and Chuck Taylors also lent their heft.
Books sorted by size—paperbacks on top expanding downward to coffee table tomes on the bottom along with two large spiral-bound photo albums from her childhood—scaled the walls of the room in three Jenga-worthy towers. Without shelves or a desk to display her framed pictures, she placed them atop the book stacks. Photos with her brother Robbie and of the family cat shared pride of place alongside comic con shots hamming it up with Elijah Wood, Hayley Atwell, and Matt Smith.
She tucked away her final necessities—several bashed in boxes of Lucky Charms cereal, Pop-Tarts, and packages of Twizzlers. If she smartly rationed her stash, it could last until September. Home sweet home.
She stood back to admire her work. No limbs were crushed underneath falling furniture; no books were sacrificed. Mission accomplished.
With the unpacking behind her, Alex relaxed, her mind reacquainting itself with all the things she deemed important enough to cart across the ocean: her mementos, clothing, food. But her packing list—a strict roll call of what to bring, what to leave behind—wasn’t infallible. What you leave behind says as much about you as what you bring along.
Her shoulders sagged under the weight of her memories. The seldom mentioned, the unseen—the people left behind—haunted her heart. She hated herself for feeling a shred of sadness over leaving her mom. She shouldn’t let it bother her. Usually it didn’t. From an early age, Alex knew her mom didn’t love her like she did Kathryn and Robbie. It was as if Geraldine blamed Alex for delaying the inevitable—the divorce from Michael. If Alex hadn’t come along, she wouldn’t have wasted seven years tied to a dead marriage. But when their union crumbled for good and they stormed towards a permanent split, Geraldine wouldn’t let Michael take Alex to England, denying him what he wanted most. She’d rather hold on to the daughter she didn’t want than allow her ex to ‘win’. But at the airport four days ago, it was as if Michael had finally triumphed. Dropping Alex at the curb, Geraldine didn’t cry, her face hard and defiant. Alex hoped for a last minute emotional reprieve, a hug, some sniffles even, but got nothing—her mom didn’t crack.
Alone with her thoughts, Alex knew she shouldn’t be disappointed by that reaction, but it did bother her, more than she had expected. You can be belittled, ignored, and rejected, and eventually fly the nest, hoping never to return, but those familial bonds still pull and twist, making you yearn for what you don’t have and probably never will. Sure, her mother was more invested in the older kids, her smarmy politician boyfriend, and her precious job, and she seemed to dole out affection to Alex in meager amounts, bit by bit—none of that behaviour was new—but she was still her mother. Your mother is supposed to love you unconditionally.
And so are your boyfriends. Well, one boyfriend. There was only one. Devin. All the other flirtations didn’t count—stolen kisses in clubs, clumsy fumbles at house parties…little crushes, little infatuations, but nothing that prepared her for the full-on tidal wave of all-consuming love and devastating heartbreak that Devin brought to her life. It was easy to purport to Lucy that he was out of her life—gone, banished, never to be thought of again—but the reality wasn’t that simple or painless.
The last two-and-a-half years were all Devin. Calendars and dates didn’t matter; life events were bookmarked according to what she and Devin were doing at the time: her first A on a play came just after they slept together for the first time; her stint in the university’s brief production of The Unravelling—on the heels of their first fight. Everything linked back to him. Her life tied to his and vice versa. He may have moved on back home with Taylor, and Alex may be a world away on another continent, but she still struggled with letting him go. It was during quiet moments that she felt the strings painfully tugging all the more.
