I had tears in my eyes by the time I stopped
laughing. He was so different than I ever would have imagined he would be when
I first met him…in a good way.

I helped him clean up the kitchen and once I got
past the cookbook thing I asked him, “Do you read a lot?”

He nodded. “I missed out on a lot by not finishing school,
or going to college. I read every chance I get. Come here, I want to show you
something.”

I followed him through the living room and down the
short hall that led to his bedroom. He opened the doors there to what I assume
was supposed to be a linen closet. The entire thing was filled with books. I
stood there looking at them with awe. “Have you read all of these?”

“Yep.”
I looked at the bindings. There were cookbooks and auto books and home DIY
books. There were books about nutrition and exercise and human anatomy. There
were books about animals and motorcycles…it went on and on. This guy had to be
a freaking genius. I was a little bit intimidated.

“Wow, this is…you’re…”

“Weird?” he said with a grin.

I hugged him.
“No, not at all.
You’re amazing.” I think he may have blushed just a little bit. He closed the
doors and led me back into the living room. He put on a movie and we cuddled up
on the couch. As we watched the previews and waited for the movie to start, my
mind drifted again back to Dad. I just couldn’t believe he’d told Ian to stay
away from me. I’m a grown woman. What makes him think that’s okay?

“Hey babe, are you okay?” Ian asked me.

“What?”

“I asked if you were okay. You’re about a million
miles away. What’s on your mind? You do think I’m weird, don’t you? It’s like
high school all over again,” he said, half-jokingly.

“I still think you’re amazing,” I told him. “If
those high school girls thought you were weird, it was definitely their loss. I
was just thinking about Dad again.” Ian was lying back on the couch with his
legs across my lap. He sat up and put his arm around me.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry. I
feel so embarrassed that my father sat you down
like
you were a thirteen year old kid and told you to leave his daughter alone. I’m
surprised he didn’t take his gun out and clean it while he was talking to you.”

“He has a gun?”

I laughed, Ian really looked worried. “I don’t
know,” I told him. “It was a joke, sort of. It’s not really funny. It pisses me
off.”

“Well then, that’s what I’m sorry for. I shouldn’t
have told you. I don’t want to cause problems between you and your dad.”

“You didn’t, Ian. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Ian
made a face and I said, “What?”

“I kind of promised him I would stay away from you
so he didn’t expect you to find out.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have done that,” I told him. “I
mean, I’m glad you told me…thank you, but I wish you would have stood up to him
and then maybe he’d stop this nonsense.” Ian smiled and I said, “What?”

“You’ve obviously never been a guy and been put in
the position of having a face to face with Dad. It makes the toughest guys
balls shrivel up. Think about it…if this was just some other guy, you could
tell him to mind his own business and then if he chose not to, you could kick
his ass, right?” I nodded and he said, “But this is your dad. No matter how
much you disagree with his methods when push comes to shove in the long run,
you’re gonna stick by him, right?” I nodded again and he said, “It’s kind of a lose/lose
position I’m put it. Besides, I don’t have that much experience with dads.”

“Because you didn’t date much in
high school?”

“Because I’m not really a guy who
“dates,” at all.
I “hang out” with girls or I…”

“Have sex with them?” He had the decency to look
abashed as he said, “Yeah, that. But I don’t usually meet Dad. So, it’s
nerve-wracking and I didn’t want to do anything to make you hate me.”

I nodded. He was right, I hadn’t thought about it
like that. “He shouldn’t have put you in that position. I’m really sorry. He’s
so messed up over my mom. It’s been so many years and he’s still just sitting
there, letting her ruin his life. It drives me crazy. It drives me crazier
because he honestly believes that he’s helping me by keeping men away from me.
I can’t believe that he thinks I’d be better off alone forever than to have to
experience a heart ache or two in my lifetime. I
’d so much
rather end up
with a broken heart. That’s no way to live.”

“You’re right. Have you told him that?”

“More than once,” I said. “But, I was in high school
at the time and technically he had the right to tell me who I could and
couldn’t date at that point. Now, I’m a grown woman though and he doesn’t have
that right. So, I think maybe it’s time for another talk.”

“I guess I shouldn’t expect to be invited to any
family dinners any time soon, huh?”

I laughed again. “We might need to give it a cooling
off period,” I told him. He grabbed me around the waist then and pulled me down
next to him on the couch.
“Oh my God!”
I said, looking
at the television.

“What?”

“Back to the Future, really?”

“You don’t like it?”

I laughed. “You really are a nerd aren’t you?”

“Fine,” he said, “I’ll change it. Or we could play a
video game…or have sex…”

I giggled. “No more sex! You
perv
,
you’re killing me!”

“Right, because I’m the one who got in the shower
with you all naked and sexy.”

“Did I do that?” He tickled me and said, “Yeah, so
just give up the innocent routine.”

“Okay, you’re not the
perv
,
I am. But I do think I need a “cooling off” period. Which movie would we be
watching?”

“I have a lot of porn…I hear you perverts like that
sort of thing.”

I threw a pillow at him. “Try again.”

“Star Wars?”

I laughed. “Anything made in this century…that’s not
porn?”

“Oh! I just bought the new Hunger games.”

“That’ll work. You have popcorn?”

“Check the cabinet under the microwave,” he said. He
got the movie ready while I went in and did that. I found a few packages of
microwave popcorn and stuck one in. While it popped, I walked over to the
refrigerator and looked at the pictures stuck there underneath beer and UFC
magnets. There was one of a much younger and thinner Ian in a suit. His arm was
around a pretty blonde haired girl in a dress suited for a prom. In the bottom
right corner it said, “Winter Wonderland 2007,” he would have been a sophomore.
That was the year he got into trouble with the steroids. It made me wonder what
was so special about the girl that he kept her picture on his refrigerator
seven years later. “What
ya
looking at?” His voice
startled me. I turned around and he was leaning in the doorway. He looked so
damned hot in just his shorts. I was no wonder I was turning into a pervert.

“Just looking at your pictures,” I said. He came
over and glanced at the fridge
like
he hadn’t seen
them before himself. He pointed at one of him and Emma on the beach. He
couldn’t have been more than seven and Emma was about four. They were super
cute and since they were wearing beanies and you couldn’t see her hair, they
almost looked like twins.

“That was our first trip to the beach. That was
taken before Emma ran into the ocean and my mother screamed bloody murder while
my dad fished her out.” He was smiling at the memory, but his eyes looked sad.

“When was this?” I asked, pointing at the picture of
him and the girl.

“
Winter
formal, sophomore
year,” he said.

“Is she someone special?” I asked him. The microwave
dinged and he avoided my question by taking out the bag and dumping the popcorn
into a bowl.

“Grab us some waters and let’s go back in the living
room. I’ll tell you why I keep the picture.”

I got the water and followed him in. We sat back
down on the couch and he handed me the bowl. I took a handful and popped a
couple in my mouth and waited. Finally, he said, “The picture being on the
fridge is not about her. I mean, she was a nice girl…my first real
girlfriend….”

“What’s her name?”

He laughed. “Whitney, but it’s really not about
her.”

“I believe you.
I as just curious
what her name was.
She’s pretty.”

“Yeah, she is. I saw her about three months ago, I guess.
I ran into her at the store. She has a baby and another one on the way. She
married the guy she started dating after we broke up. She seems happy, so
that’s good. But, the picture is about me…and that year…and all the things that
changed after that.”

I took a drink of my water and said, “Tell me about
it.”

CHAPTER
TWO

ALEXA

“I told you I was on the wrestling team. I was
really good, but no matter what I did, it didn’t seem like I could put on any
bulk. The other guys were always bigger than
me
. Then
one day, Whitney and I were hanging out at her house and her older brother came
in. He’d been away at college. She introduced me to this guy that looked like
the Incredible Hulk. After he left the room I asked her if he was always a big
guy. She said he was kind of skinny in high school. She showed me a picture and
he’d been even skinnier than me.”

“He was using steroids?”

“Yeah, but she didn’t seem to know
that and I didn’t know yet.
He was home for spring
break, so I spent as much time at her house as I could. I kept bugging him
about his work-outs and his diet and one day before he left to go back to
school he finally said,
“Kid, you’re not
going to get a body like this just eating a high protein diet and working out.
I take a lot of supplements.”
I was relentless and he finally let me buy a
few doses of his stack and he showed me how to order my own online. They were
legal steroids and I always took them by mouth. But I was under eighteen so it
was illegal for me to order them and there were rules through the school about
not using them…legal or not. It would be like taking your mom’s Xanax. The
prescription is legal, but if it showed up in your pee, since it isn’t your
prescription, you’d be in trouble.”

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