MARSHALL APARTMENT
Alex
sits at the desk, his elbows
up on its surface. In part, they are providing support for his chin, which
is resting against his fists. But they are also serving as a sort of security,
as well.
His arms are surrounding the journal,
spread open in front of him. The only light in the room is the direct beam
of the desk lamp just in front of him. He is in his own little world, one
in which he and the journal are all that exist.
His eyes run over the pages furiously,
drinking in all the words that he has tried to block out for so long. Since
he opened this book a few months ago for the first time in so long, he
has run to it more times than he would care to admit. He hasn't written
in it again; the half of the journal that remains untouched will stay that
way forever. He started a new journal when that semester ended and he put
this one away, and now it serves only as a portal back to that time.
He looks up from the journal, staring
at the calendar hung on the wall in front of him. "Seth," he says quietly,
barely even a whisper. The name sounds so strange on his lips, for he has
uttered it so few times in recent years.
If I could just go back in time
... if I could change the way things went ... He knows it is the greatest
impossibility, but that doesn't stop him from imagining. If things had
gone down differently back then, maybe none of what happened with
Jason and
Lauren would have had to happen.
Maybe I'd have been strong enough
not to be sucked into that.
It's too late for that, though, and
he knows it too well. He drops his attention back down to the pages of
the journal and relives the emotions that once dominated his existence.
He is so absorbed that he doesn't
even hear the tiny knock on the door, already cracked open.
Through the slight opening, Lauren
can see Alex's back. He is bent over something at the desk and reading,
it appears, very intently. She cannot help but stand there and watch him.
This is the first time she has seen
him since the night of Whitney's party. That night, the news was so shocking
to her. It was like being in some sort of parallel universe. Now, with
the time that has passed, it seems far more real. She's had time to look
at her relationship -- if it can even be called that -- with Alex in retrospect,
and she's been able to assemble all the clues with the benefit of hindsight.
It is possible for her to see how the young man just a few feet away from
her -- the young man to whom she devoted so much energy and about whom
she spent so much time thinking -- could be gay. It no longer seems like
some cruel trick that he was playing on her; it feels like reality.
"Alex," she says softly, hoping it
will be enough to get his attention. That it does. He whips around, startled
by her sudden appearance.
"Your mom
let me in," she explains.
She opens the door tentatively and takes an unsure first step into the
room. He doesn't stop her.
He closes the journal but leaves
it out on the desk. "What are you doing here?"
"I wasn't going to come," she says.
"But I wanted to see you, for some reason. I felt like I had to."
"I'm so sorry," he blurts out. "If
I had any guts, I would've taken the initiative to let you know that instead
of waiting for you to come to me. I never meant to hurt you, Lauren."
"I know."
"You do?"
"Yeah." She shuts the door to give
them some more privacy. "I came over here thinking I needed to bite your
head off for treating me like such an idiot. And I am still mad -- I can't
get over that so easily."
"I take responsibility for everything
I did," he says. "Jason tried to talk me out of it a million times. I just
... I didn't want to accept it. I didn't want it to be true. And I thought
that if I could make it work with a girl -- especially a girl as beautiful
and as lively as you, the kind of girl I always thought I'd be with --
then the other stuff would all just go away."
"Obviously it wasn't that simple."
"No. And now I've gotta face up to
who I really am. I'm ready to do that, I think. I just wish it didn't take
you getting hurt for me to get to this point."
"I do, too," she says sadly.
"Look, Lauren, I know I really blew
it--"
"Yeah, you did. Honestly, I'm not
sure why I came to see you. Part of me wanted to totally tear into you
for this, and part of me was hoping that when I saw you, everything would
be all right and we could be cool again."
The thought lingers in the air, and
finally Alex has to pick it up. "Can we?"
"Maybe," she says very uncertainly.
"I hope so. But it's gonna take time. Maybe I needed to come here for me,
to see that I could do this. I don't know."
Listening to her sounding so devastated,
so confused, is breaking his heart. "I am so sorry, Laur."
"I'm sorry, too," she says, opening
the door again. "I really am."
She disappears out of the bedroom,
pulling the door closed behind him. Alex continues staring at the door,
but when that becomes too difficult, he swings back around in the chair
and puts his head down on the desk.
"Why did I have to ruin everything
so badly?" he mutters, wanting nothing more than to kick himself senseless.
"When is this ever going to be easy?"
One .
Two .
Three .
Four .
Five .
Six .
Seven
Main Page .
Current Episode .
Episode Archives .
Story Recap .
Characters .
Making Prints .
Interact .
Around King's Bay .
Links
