I'll Be Here

the time to play head games with myself.
    While mom and Jake buzz about the house dressing in their formal wear, I attempt to tackle my reading assignment for English but I end up having to start the chapter twice because I haven’t comprehended a word. 
    5:50 arrives.  And then 5:51… and then 5:52… When I look up next it’s 5:55 and I hear the doorbell. 
    Alex has always been prompt verging on early.  He gets it from his mother.  Two summers ago mom and I went to a modern dance performance with Brooke, who insisted on leaving the house ridiculously early.  We ended up waiting in the hot car for twenty minutes for the box office to open.
    The scene in the front hall is almost identical to the one last night.  My mom and Jake are hovering, talking over one another.  Aaron is hopping on one foot, his head bobbing with excitement as he shows Alex the lego-constructed creation clutched in his tiny hand.  Alex’s eyes are moving from Jake to my mom, who is trying to take the bag containing our Chinese food from his hand, to Aaron.  Even Ferdinand has decided to get in the mix and is currently zig zagging in and out of the clustered legs. 
    I almost want to giggle at the overwhelmed expression on Alex’s face.  Frankly, it’s a shocker when he doesn’t take a step back and excuse himself out the front door never to be seen or heard from again.
    “Oi,” I say, stepping into the fray, “give the man some room to breathe.”
    Alex’s blue eyes dart up and my belly does a flip. 
    “Hi.”  He sounds a bit breathless.
    My mother’s stare is burning a hole in my cheek but I don’t look at her.  I don’t think I can handle her cat-ate-the-canary expression right now. 
    “Jules,” Jake says and then jingles the keys. 
    Mom springs into action, grabbing her shimmery shawl from the back of the blue upholstered chair in the sun room.  Her heels click against the tiled floor as she lists off things that I already know about my little brother like how much toothpaste he likes on his toothbrush and to make sure to cut his food into small enough pieces. 
    “…and if you let him watch that movie with the witches before bed he’ll—”
                “Have nightmares,” I finish the sentence for her. 
     Mom gives me a look and then turns to the hall mirror and wipes her finger over her teeth to remove a smudge of bronzy lipstick.  As she and Jake pass through the front door, her hand touches Alex’s shoulder affectionately. 
    “Keep an eye on them,” she says to him, just loudly enough for me to hear and be mortified. 
                “I will,” Alex promises as the door shuts behind my parents.  We stand, perched awkwardly on opposite ends of the hall. 
                Finally, Alex clears his throat and his eyes venture to mine.  There is a question there.  “Chinese?”
    ***
    The root of the problem is that I’m still not sure what’s happening between Alex and me.
    The lines are blurred.  I’m balanced on the cleft of this invisible valley and I can feel the wind rushing up from the empty space below me—it whooshes by carrying my breath away with a tug.  Goosebumps ripple across my arms and my heart spasms as I lean out over the infinite depths.  I can’t see a thing.  Just a mass of dense shapes that range from black to blacker and then slip away all together. 
    I’ve spent the last hour trying to convince myself that this is completely normal—that Alex Faber and my little brother sprawled out on their stomachs racing remote-controlled cars across the living room floor is my regular Saturday night routine. 
    Alex sits up and tosses me one of the plastic-wrapped fortune cookies from the coffee table before rolling back to the floor.  His shirt catches and exposes a sliver of his stomach.  It’s incredibly sexy and I imagine how the skin there would feel underneath my fingertips. 
    He cracks the hard shell of both his and Aaron’s fortune cookie and pulls out the slim pieces of white paper and pops one of the halves into his mouth. 
    “Read mine!”  Aaron shoves the fortune into Alex’s hand.
    Alex sits up and clears his throat.  “You have a kind heart and a gentle soul.”
    Aaron screws up his face and we laugh.  “That’s silly!  It’s not a fortune.  It’s more like a—like a—”
    “Statement?”  I offer.
    Aaron bobs his head my way.  “Yeah.  I guess.  But I don’t really know what a sta-ment