Filed to story: If He Had Been With Me Book PDF Free
So many times, I told myself that I’d finally seen the “real” Alexis, that I’d never fall for her antics again, but I always did. I understand now. I’d seen aspects of the real Alexis, but I’ve never seen them together as a whole. Now all those pieces have come together, and I can finally see the whole Alexis.
It’s actually a very simple picture. She’s a really insecure girl who defines herself entirely by the people she surrounds herself with. Her friends are a collection, a planetary system she has built to rotate around her.
“How dare I? Jack, you—“
“No, no,” I say. “If I wanted to, I could have called you here and said, ‘Hey, we were sleeping together all summer, and then my best friend died, and you didn’t even check on me.’ I could do that. You don’t get to do that.” I try not to have my tone sound like I’m talking to a child, but it’s hard.
“He was my friend too,” Alexis says. “Why can’t you or Sylvie see that?”
And it happens again. What’s unfolding is so clear that I laugh.
She’s surprised enough to lose her focus, and in the pause, I share my humorous revelation.
“This isn’t about us, is it, Lex? Sylvie broke up with you.”
I try not to laugh again, because now it feels a little mean, but it’s all so silly and obvious. Sylvie hurt her, so she’s trying to reenact that with me instead of looking at herself and wondering why Sylvie made that choice.
Alexis is sputtering.
“Sylvie and I didn’t break up! We both have a lot going on, and I’m going off to school, and she needs to find a new shrink—poor thing!—and we both needed to take a step back from our friendship.”
Alexis, who I used to think I was in love with, glares at me.
“Uh-huh.” I take a gulp of coffee, which hasn’t quite cooled and burns down my throat. “So my guess is that’s what Sylv said to you, and then you pushed back, because of course you did, and that’s when she said what you said to me, huh?”
“Said what to who?” Alexis sips the highland grog that I know she hates and tries to hide her grimace.
“You left her to grieve alone, Lexy. Damn.”
Once again, I feel like all the pieces have come together and I can finally see what should have been obvious.
“The day after the accident, why were people coming to your house instead of you going to Sylvie’s?” I ask.
“I went to the hospital when her parents called me. I was tired and wanted to go home! And our friends needed a place to grieve together, Jack. Sylvie isn’t my only friend.”
“There’s a basement in every damn house in this city and you know it,” I say. “Sylvie needed you. Damn, I wouldn’t have minded—” My serenity and my voice crack at this point, but it can’t be helped. “It would have been nice if you had said something to acknowledge that he was my best friend, Lex. Maybe my only real friend, I don’t know. But the fact that you compare your grief to mine? Or Sylvie’s?”
I shake my head. The whole conversation is a moot point.
I push back from the table to stand. I don’t think Alexis believes that I will leave without her permission, because she makes a scoffing sound at me.
I look at her one last time. She has a pretty face. For now.
“Sylvie said that you had a lot of growing up to do, but honestly, Lex? If you’re this far behind at eighteen, I don’t know if you’re ever going to catch up. I hope you do, but…” I shrug. I give up and stand up.
“Jack, you are not seriously—“
I am, and there’s nothing she can do about it.
eleven
Apparently, the final thing I must do to prove to my parents that I’m going to be okay is go out with “my friends” before I leave for college. This doesn’t seem like the time to point out that I am questioning whether I have friends outside of Finn. I’m starting to see how superficial my other relationships have been. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t given Sylvie such a hard time about everything. I suppose it wouldn’t help to reach out and tell her that she might have been right, that maybe I never knew what friendship was until it was taken from me.
But then Kyle texts me that there’s a party in St. Charles tonight, and even though it’s the first time anyone from our class has reached out to me since the funeral, part of me melts a little. Part of me wonders if it would feel normal. It’s not like Finn was at every party with me. Half the time, Finn was off making sure Sylvie wasn’t giving herself alcohol poisoning on a dare anyway.
The way my parents light up when I say there’s a party across the river that a bunch of the team will be at and I figure I’ll stop by and say some goodbyes? That almost makes it worth the effort. If I can fool my parents that I’m okay, maybe I’ll be able to fool myself eventually.
As I drive over the bridge, I think about how whenever we went to St. Charles, Finn would say something about the airport expansion and white flight, and I’d be like, “Yeah, people suck. What are you going to do about it?” If Sylvie was in the car, she would talk to him about it, and I’d zone out or make out with Alexis if she was there. It’s not that what Finn was talking about didn’t seem important, but I figured we were kids. What kind of impact could we make?
I guess I don’t think that way anymore, but I also don’t have anyone to explain that stuff to me.
I could ask Sylvie, but there’s a chance she’s not speaking to me given our last text exchange.
Once I arrive at the address, I recognize the house. I’ve been here before. It had been a small party where everyone else knew each other. Finn, Sylvie, Alexis, and I were only there because an upperclassman from the team knew the host and invited us along with him. For a small party, there was a surprising amount of alcohol. At some point, late in the night, a dude said that the cop who lived next door would be coming home from his shift soon, and wouldn’t it be funny if one of the girls flashed him?
Despite the number of people, including the host, who pointed out the obvious reason this was a bad idea, Sylvie volunteered for the job. It didn’t matter that most people at the house were sober enough to not let the superdrunk girl antagonize the cop, Sylvie and Finn once again argued about whether Finn was trying to control Sylvie by stopping her from doing something stupid. Worse still, they had their argument in the front seat of Finn’s little red car while Alexis and I were squeezed in the back seat and she was mad at me about some mysterious thing.
Whenever they had this fight in front of me, I always wanted to point out that sober Sylvie agreed whatever it was had been a bad idea about 90 percent of the time. I also wanted to tell Finn that he should know better than to force Sylvie to see logic when she was drunk.
Fuck, Finn, just let her sleep it off, I would think. And sometimes I would think,
You can’t argue her into being Autumn, dude. But I never said either of those things, and I’m not sure now whether I should have.
So.
At least there won’t be any happy memories plaguing me at this party.
This party is thankfully much bigger than the last one. I can tell from the cars outside. I wonder if the cop still lives next door because it’s pretty crowded on the street and the people in the backyard are not keeping their voices down, even if it’s only nine.
My goal is to have conversations with at least three people whose names my parents have heard me say before, and then I’m going home. Tomorrow, when my parents ask, I’ll say it was great seeing this person and saying goodbye to that guy, and then I’ll say I’m going to my room to pack, and I’ll take a nap.
I hop up the front steps and open the door without knocking, because it’s already that kind of party. I don’t see anyone I know, but the kitchen is at the end of the hall with a line for a keg, and I figure that’s a good place to start.
Right away, I notice Trevor Jones at the end of the line. Perfect.
“Hey,” I say as I approach, careful to stand back so that it’s obvious I’m not trying to cut in line for the keg. Maybe he’s in his own head, but Trevor blanches for a moment.
“Hey, Murphy,” he says.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing,” he says, like I’m a teacher or a cop. “You good?”
“I’m okay,” I say. “Who all is here?”
“You know, the guys and stuff.”
“Right,” I say to this nonanswer. Did Trevor always hate me and I never noticed? “Ricky here?”
“Yeah? Probably?”
The line shifts forward.
“Well, I’ll let you get your drink, and I’ll go say hi to some other people.”
“Cool!” He sounds way too relieved. He faces forward, and I wander off.
Everyone loved Finn. Even the people who Finn didn’t really like loved him because he treated everyone the same. Did people only like me because I was attached to Finn? Was having me around the cost of having Finn there too?