Just Remember to Breathe (Thompson Sisters)

Alex is going to tell me to go to hell. If she does… well, it was great to see you.”
    Jessica leaned forward and whispered, “Are you here to try to get her back?”
    I nodded, and she said, still quietly, “She still loves you.”
    I closed my eyes and said, “Thank you.”
    Then I saw her, slowly descending the steps. I felt tension grab me by the throat. She was wearing a white sleeveless dress embroidered with roses. Around her neck was a heart pendant necklace that I’d given her two years before. That was possibly a hopeful sign. Her mouth was slightly open as she approached the door. I could see she was cautious. She was afraid of me. Afraid I’d hurt her again.
    I took a deep breath, drinking in the sight of her, then said, “I um… I was hoping we could talk, so I thought I’d drop by.”
    Her mouth quirked up in a half smile on the right side. “You thought you’d drop by? From four thousand miles away?”
    “Distance wasn’t really a factor in my mind.”
    She looked at me, and whispered, “I can’t do this if you’re going to hurt me again, Dylan.”
    Oh, God. I swallowed, then said, “Will you just… hear me out? Please? If I’m wrong, and you tell me to go away, then I’ll go, and you’ll never have to hear from me again if you don’t want to. But I’m begging you, Alex. Give me a chance. Just hear me out.”
    “Okay,” she said in a small voice. She looked at her twins and said, “Can you tell Mom and Dad to continue dinner without me? And not to come down here under any circumstances?”
    The twins nodded simultaneously, and Alex stepped outside, with me, and shut the door behind her. She took a seat on the front stoop, carefully sweeping her dress under her.
    “Sit down,” she said, indicating the space next to her on the stoop. I nodded. My heart was thumping. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt like this, unless it was the night I first asked her out an eternity ago. Christ, I was terrified. What if she said no? What if she told me to go to hell, to get out of her life? Or worse, what if she said yes, and then we ended up hating each other later?
    Damn it, I thought. Stop that. Just do it. Go for it. For once in your life, step the hell out of yourself and say what you mean.
    “Okay,” I said. “Look, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of writing. About what you said. About… me, and who I am. About you. About us.”
    She nodded.
    “I’m not very good at this, Alex. But… it’s something I have to do, okay. I’ve got some things to say, and I’m asking you to hear me out, without interruption, all the way through.”
    “Without interruption?”
    I nodded. “I don’t want to lose my train of thought, all right? Please? When I get to the end, you can ask me questions, or tell me go take a hike, or whatever, all right?”
    She gave me a sardonic smile, and said, “Okay. You set the rules. No interruptions.”
    “Thank you,” I said.
    I took a deep breath, then felt in my pocket, filled with index cards. I took them out.
    “Wait,” she said, grinning, her eyes bright. “You wrote this down? On index cards?”
    “I don’t want to forget anything,” I said. “I told you, I’m not very good at this. So I wrote some notes to keep me focused, okay?”
    “Wow,” she said. She had a half smile on her face.
    “You’re interrupting.”
    “You haven’t started yet.”
    I rolled my eyes up at the dark sky and muttered, “Oh, boy. All right.” I glanced at the first card. It said, Jaffa.
    “Do you remember the night we were in Jaffa? In the Old City?”
    She nodded.
    “Okay,” I said. “That’s the night I realized that I really wanted to get to know you. I saw you before that, at Hunter College before we flew to Tel Aviv. But you were so far out of my league, I didn’t even know where to start. And the flight over was awesome, and well, I mean, we flirted. And that was awesome. I was very attracted to you. But when we were walking back to the Youth Hostel, and I saw that really old house. It looked like it might have been a thousand years old.”
    “Abandoned,” she said. “I remember.”
    “Yeah. The thing was, I wanted to explore. And you came with me. The others were all worried. We might be trespassing or something. I don’t remember what they were worried about, to tell the truth. But that was when I realized how brave you were. And… wow, I admire courage. I think that night was when I started to fall for