Living with Love (Lessons in Love) (13 page)

“So let’s go finish our tour!” Alex linked arms with Oscar and began leading him up the stairs once more.

“But if it’s okay with you, I’d rather we avoid the Egyptian section,” she added as they walked. “In all honesty
, the place kind of creeps me out.”

Oscar laughed at her admission
, an open, hearty laugh that Alex was relieved to hear. The tension that had been between them had lifted, and they could resume being friends.

“I like the model of the blue whale,” Oscar said as they headed back inside out of the cold, flashing their entry tickets.

“It’s so huge!” Alex commented, her eyes widening for dramatic effect.

“As a kid, I was always scared that it was going to fall down on everyone.”

“You sound like you were a real ball of laughs as a child,” Alex joked.

“I
was basically like I am now, all sullen and brooding, only smaller.” Oscar laughed.

“Well
, you’re lucky because you can pull off sullen.” Alex smiled fondly at him. “And I’m saying this from a completely friend perspective, but you’re one handsome man, Oscar Deloitte.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Alexandra Heron
.” Oscar returned the smile and the compliment as they resumed their visit around the museum.

****

The ice-skating rink outside the Rockefeller Center looked picture perfect, like an image straight from a greeting card. On the hard, white ice people skated around, laughing and smiling, lost to the fun of the moment.

Alex and Oscar stood on the periphery of the scene, unsure whether to participate.

“I’m not a skater,” Oscar protested for the third time, shaking his head stubbornly.

“Neither am I, but that’s what makes it fun!” Alex tried to convince him. The Oscar from Princeton had been fearless, but this new Oscar was more reserved, more timid at times.

“I promise to hold you up if you fall,” Alex said teasingly.

“You’re not going to shut up until I give it a go, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Awkward as ever
, I see.” Oscar smiled and sighed with resignation. “Let’s go make fools of ourselves by being the typical tourists who can’t skate.”

“You know, if you were a dwarf, you’d be Grumpy,” Alex declared as they headed over to pay and collect skates.

“Yeah, well, you’d be Dopey,” Oscar instantly replied. Alex had always admired his quick wit, it made him a great sparring partner for bantering, and she enjoyed seeing that old side of him re-emerge.

As Alex tentatively stepped out on to the ice
, she began to wonder if she’d made the wrong decision in insisting that they partake in the cliché pastime. The moment her first blade connected with the ice she realized how precariously she held her balance as her feet tried to slip and slide beneath her.

Behind
her, Oscar wasn’t faring any better. Nervously, he got onto the ice but then remained at the edge, clutching desperately to the side. Alex hovered close to him, though she was trying to skate without the aid of the side.

“You know, I think this would have worked better if at least one of us could skate,” Oscar commented as a seven
-year-old glided effortlessly past him, causing him to scowl. He never liked being shown up.

“We’re doing fine,” Alex insisted, though she did feel he was perhaps right. After they’d edged around a quarter of the rink
, she decided it was time to take things up a notch. She took Oscar’s hands, leading him out on to the ice. His feet whirled madly beneath him, causing her to giggle uncontrollably.

“I have poor balance!” Oscar insisted, blushing.

“Let’s just try to skate a bit,” Alex declared, pulling him towards her. But as Oscar drew closer, taking his weight in her hands caused Alex to lose her own center of gravity. She wobbled at first, her feet darting precariously beneath her, but then she steadied again.

“See, we’re fine
.” She smiled. But then she wobbled again and this time went crashing down onto the ice, her left hip taking the brunt of the fall. Above her, Oscar was looking down, smiling, and seeming to at last be having fun.

“Don’t just stand there smiling!” Alex said tersely, reaching up towards him. “Help me up!”

“No way, if I help you, I’ll go down. We’re stranded. We might as well just wait until the rink closes and someone takes pity on us and takes us back to civilization,” Oscar joked.

“This isn’t the time to be funny!” Alex grumbled, trying to push herself up with her hands and failing
, as she just kept slipping back down. Her left side was beginning to throb with pain, and she was suddenly keen to leave the rink and go enjoy a hot chocolate somewhere.

“Oscar, please
.” She held her hands up towards him and gave him a pitiful glance. He watched her with amusement, making no effort to help.

As Alex sat there helpless, she remembered another time she’d gone skating, with a man far more chivalrous than Oscar. Mark had effortlessly skated around with her, keen to make sure she was al
l right, ever the gentleman. She’d felt safe with him, and when he looked at her, she could see in his eyes that he adored her, but she was too young then to appreciate what that truly meant.

Oscar looked at her like a child might look at their favorite toy. She belonged to him, or had once, and he was proud of her, but he didn’t adore her, she sensed that much. Now, as he watched her struggling on the ice
, he was proving the lack of depth to his feelings once more. However much he may have once loved her, he would always love himself more, and a part of Alex had always known that. Perhaps it was why she had been happy to forsake him over the summer in favor of visiting Europe with Ashley.

“Oscar, come on, help me up!” Alex shouted, growing increasingly agitated by his lack of intervention. 

Finally, Oscar conceded to help, mostly because he was bored of skating and wanted to leave. He reached down and took Alex’s hands in his and began lifting her up onto her feet. But as predicted, the moment she was almost back up, he lost his footing and went crashing down onto the ice, with Alex quickly following, landing directly on top of him.

Around them some people sniggered at the scene
, and as Alex tried to get off of Oscar, she saw the funny side of the situation and began to laugh.

“It’s not funny
. You weigh a ton!” Oscar moaned, but he was smirking, always finding it funny. “I’m so pleased you said we should come skating,” he continued sarcastically. “I’ve had a hoot.”

“How are we going to get out?” Alex asked, smiling. It was clear that they’d need outside assistance to make it back to the safety of the edge.

“I think we’ll be stuck here forever,” Oscar teased. “I’ve got some mints in my pocket, but we’ll need to ration them if it’s all we have and we don’t know how long we’re going to be out here!”

“You’re not funny.”

“You’re right. I’m not funny, I’m hilarious.” Oscar stuck his tongue out playfully.

After ten minutes of scrambling around in vain, a passing couple took pity on them and kindly helped them to their feet and escorted them back off the ice. Alex thanked them while Oscar remained silent, blushing with embarrassment.

“Okay, you were right, skating wasn’t the best idea,” Alex concluded as they walked away from the skating rink.

“So what now?”

“I’m in the mood for hot chocolate.”

“I could go for something stronger,” Oscar declared, rubbing his now extremely sore back.

****

In the boutique tea room, Alex picked off the marshmallows from the top of her hot chocolate while Oscar nursed his neat whiskey.

“I don’t know how you can drink that stuff.” Alex looked at the tumbler and frowned. She remembered how her father had favored the drink, pouring himself one after a long day and settling down in front of the television. She’d sipped some once when he wasn’t looking and thought that it tasted revolting, like varnish.

“You get used to it
.” Oscar shrugged. “And it’s warming.”

“Are you okay to drink on your meds?” Alex asked.

Oscar nodded in response.

“I can’t imagine you as a teacher,” she continued.

“Why not?”

“I guess because I know you, like seeing you as an authority figure would be strange.”

“Teachers are people like anyone else.” Oscar shrugged, taking a sip of his whiskey and enjoying the warming sensation that trickled down his throat.

Talking about teachers made Alex once again think of Mark. Lately she was struggling to keep him out of her thoughts. She wondered what he had been like prior to becoming a teacher. Had he been lost and without direction like Oscar had been
, or had he always known what his calling would be?

“What’s on your mind?”

“Huh?” Alex snapped back to reality, surprised by the question.

“You looked deep in thought,” Oscar explained.

“Oh, nothing, just daydreaming, I guess.”

“I’m going to have some killer bruises,” Oscar said, wincing as he rearrang
ed himself on the wooden chair, his back protesting each movement.

“Me too,” Alex agreed, rubbing her sore hip.

“It’s a shame you don’t have a bathtub at your place. I could go for a nice long soak right about now.”

“Where would a bathtub go? There’s hardly room to swing a cat in my apartment!” Alex laughed.

“It’s certainly cozy,” Oscar said kindly, sugarcoating the fact that she lived in a shoe box. “But you’re doing it. You’re following your dream, and I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, Oscar.”

“I know I didn’t make things easy for you,” Oscar noted sadly, looking down into his drink with despondent eyes.

“You had your reasons for what you did.”

“I ruined your graduation.”

“You’re giving yourself too much credit,” Alex teased. “You maybe made it more dramatic, but ruined…
nah.”

“Fair enough
.” Oscar smiled at her response and had some more of his whiskey.

Alex had some of her hot chocolate, loving how it tasted warm and sweet. Outside a few snowflakes began to descend on the city, dancing around in the bitter wind. Alex watched them through the window, mesmerized by their dance.

“Do you ever miss home?” Oscar asked her as she watched the snow.

“Sometimes,” she admitted. But as she said the words
, she knew she didn’t miss home all that much. She missed the idea of home, or rather the memory of what had been. She missed the old home her family used to live in, nestled in a quiet street with great big trees lining the backyard.

She missed Christmases there, when her father would always bring home two fir trees, insisting that he couldn’t pick between them. Two trees meant that both Alex and Andy could decorate their own way, and ultimately, when their trees were complete
, they’d ask their father to judge a winner, but he always insisted that he couldn’t pick between them, that they were both so wonderful.

Alex missed that life. She didn’t miss the trailer, not really. It had never felt like home. Living there felt like some cruel joke where she was constantly waiting for the punch line, for someone to knock on the thin front door and explain that actually their old life was still waiting for them, that they didn’t have to stay there.

“I’m going back home for Christmas,” Alex informed Oscar. The thought of going back to Woodsdale filled her with trepidation, but she knew that she couldn’t keep running from her past.

“That will be nice
.” Oscar smiled.

“You’ll be in Boston?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I was so eager to get away from home when I went to Princeton. Keen to make a fresh start and distance myself from all my problems. But my plans backfired, as all my problems just followed me there.”

“Running always seems easier
, but in the long term it’s better to confront things head on,” Alex commented sagely.

“You sound like my therapist
.” Oscar smirked.

“He sounds wise.”

“It’s a woman.”

“Makes sense if they’re smart,” Alex quipped, sticking her tongue out.

“I know ice skating didn’t pan out,” Oscar said after draining the last of his drink. “But if the snow picks up, we could do snow angels and make snowmen? That’s really more my sort of holiday activity speed.”

“I didn’t have you pegged for a snow angels kind of guy?” Alex laughed.

“Well, mine are more snow devils, but that doesn’t sound nearly as appealing.” Oscar smiled, that familiar mischievous smile that Alex used to dream about.

“There’s a darkness in you, Oscar, but I like it,” Alex told him sincerely.

“Thanks, I wish I could learn to like it.” Oscar shrugged dismissively.

“You will
.” Alex smiled. “And even if you don’t, you’ll find someone who likes it enough for both of you.”