I'll Be Here

“Shhh.  I am not using you and you are not a rebound guy.  You never could be.”
    I quickly squeeze my eyes shut for courage before I continue.  I need to say this.  “Maybe I gave my heart away to you once and I never really got it back in the first place.  It feels like I’ve either been chasing you or running from you for most of my life and when that didn’t work I locked you away into a box because it was safer and easier.  But I’m not trying to do that anymore.”
    “I’m not either.”
    By now, we’re both smiling so hard and loony that we’re almost laughing and Alex leans closer, resting his forehead against mine.  He reaches for my hands, intertwining our fingers.  “You drove all this way.”
    I nod against him. 
    “To see me,” he whispers almost accusingly.
    I nod again.
    Then he rolls back and just looks at me for a minute like he’s figuring something out.  My skin is prickling. 
    Alex stands and pulls me to my feet.  “Come with me?” 
    This time he doesn’t wait for me to nod; he just starts walking, trailing me behind him.  We make two rights and then a left and we pass a tall building that I recognize as Wyman, and then we go up a flight of cascading stairs that open onto a sunny concrete balcony bordered in sturdy-looking steel rails. 
    On one side of the raised courtyard is a modern building of rocketing glass and shiny metal and on the other side is a complex of three smaller buildings that look almost like industrial sheds.  Sandwiched between the sheds and the stairs are a cluster of tables and mismatched chairs buffeted from the sun by drooping trees bursting with a constellation of delicate star-shaped flowers the color of a kitten’s tongue.  
    “What is this?” I ask.
    “This,” Alex says, taking a step away from me, his hands held outward like he’s pushing the air away from his body, “is where the University’s Art Department is.”
    I look around again and now I notice a tall boy with crazy, puffed up hair and ripped jeans carrying a black artist’s portfolio under one arm.  He disappears beyond the double doors of the modern building. 
    Alex starts talking and he’s pointing, telling me which shed the kilns are in and what sketching classes are offered.  There’s even a letterpress class being taught in the fall.
    I am shaking something off, as if I’m waking up from a lucid dream into a fog of sunshine.  “Wait.  How do you know all this?”
    His face turns sheepish.  His bottom lip disappears into his quirked mouth. 
    “I got a tour last week and I may have talked to a few professors.”
    “What—” 
    But Alex cuts me off, encircling my arms with his hands, his face an earnest canvas.  “I still want you to apply to whatever art school you end up settling on—whether it’s in Rhode Island, or New York, or the Antarctic,” he insists. 
    “And I’m there, right beside you.  I can promise you that. I just figured that with next year already a done deal, you should at least be as happy here as you can be.  And one of the professors that I talked to assured me that you still have time to get them to look at your portfolio before you have to register for classes.  And if you can get at least one recommendation from a past teacher, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to get into any of the classes.”
    Whoa.  My brain is lagging seconds behind.  “You got a tour last week?   But that was while you were still mad at me.”
    “Yeah, well....  You may have beaten me to the main event by showing up here today, but I told you that I had already decided that I’d messed things up royally.”  He laughs.  “I was just so crazy—so crazy about you that I wasn’t thinking right.”
    My face must show all of the wonder I feel.  He pulls me to him with one hand on my lower back and the other cupping my waist.  His thumb plays against my ribs and his fingers make a small repeating pattern on my skin.  My body is flaming and I want to attack his mouth, but I also want to hear the words that are coming out of it.
    “Willow, I was just waiting for your finals to be over then I figured that I’d come and sweep you off your feet and we’d have the entire summer to you know—figure things out.” 
    I cock my head to one side.  “You mean that you’d climb a trellis up to my window?”
    “Something like that.”  Alex takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut.  When they open again, his pupils refigure as