Chapter 53

Alex laid on her stomach down on the living room rug hanging on to every word of her mother's phone conversation. Scott was at school, dad at work, and Justin was taking a shower. It was near lunchtime and she was still in her pjs. She had got up about an hour before and was still quite groggy. She wasn't sure at what time her and Justin had finished their long conversation. At one point her dad had come up and said goodnight. Scott had even had a seat on her bed and talked for about an hour with them. All she remembered was that it was well after midnight when Justin covered her with her thick comforter, kiss her briefly and said goodnight. As soon as he flicked off the lights and closed the door, she was knocked out.

And now she was trying her best to study and read her textbooks for the classes she was missing. She had talked with her professors, and while some had been lenient; others had not. But it was so hard to study when your mom was talking as loud as she could.

"...oh this is SO exciting....Yes, I don't think it should be a problem at all. Charles is going out of town tonight on business. He has to stay in Juneau, and Scott is off for the weekend. So this will be just fine....Well, I'll be there at 5 then...Talk to ya later Kath...bye now...."

Sandra clicked off the phone and sighed happily against the couch. Alexandria turned back to her textbook, skimming her finger along the line of words as she read.

"Hey baby?"

Alex groaned silently. She really needed to study. "What ma?"

"Um, tonight do you think you and Justin can keep fort here. You know dad's in Juneau and Scott is spending the night at Trevor's. And well Kathy Marsew, you know the lady that runs the gallery. She said that they are having a big painters fest in Sitka and they want me to go."

"That's great mom. So it's just me and Justin?" She turned back to her book.

Sandra chuckled. "Yes baby. You happy about that?"

Alexandria shook her head. "I think you are more happy than me."

Her mom stood from the couch, walked over to the glowing fire and took a piece of wood that was piled beside the hearth and tossed it in to add to the heat. "Nah, Justin is the happiest."

"I am?"

Alex looked over her shoulder at his voice and smiled. He was a figure of grace and suaveness as he strolled over to her and towered above her. She looked up at his freshly shaven and washed body. She could smell the aftershave and she could see the color in his complexion from the hot water. Everything about him intrigued her. She had learned more about who he was growing up and had heard the stories the night before of everything that had happened to make him the man she saw standing above her in a long sleeve shirt and jeans. Everything that had made him the man she loved.

He nudged her with his socked foot and she grabbed it, to keep it from bothering her. Her mom stood up from the fire and squeezed behind Justin and the wall to walk back into the kitchen. Alex noticed how her mother's hands grabbed on to his shoulders as she passed. She giggled and he sat down beside her.

"What?"

"She has the biggest crush on you." Alex flipped the page of her text and pushed her glasses up on her nose.

"Well, I have a big crush on you." Justin whispered, leaning over on the floor to press a kiss to her black hair that was tossed up carelessly in a bun.

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever, I gotta study, so...well, you are going to be bored out of your mind. You can go snoop around or bother my mom, but I really need to concentrate."

"Oh..." He sighed disappointed. "..ok."

"Sorry Alaska isn't the most happenin' place." She swung her feet that were dangling up in the air and switched hands that were propping up her chin.

"Well, uhh...give me a suggestion of something to do." Justin pulled on her bun and let his hand wander down to her back that he rubbed affectionately.

"that..back rub..now." Alex demanded.

"Ok." Justin smiled as she dropped her hand from her chin and rested the side of her face on her bent arm. He sat up on his knees and she propped her book up on its bottom and held the top so it wouldn't fall. Soon she felt his hands slowly push into the muscle of her back.

"Ohhhhhh yeeeeaaaahhh..." She groaned, closing her eyes, trying her best to keep reading the words about chemical bonds and not think about his strong hands molding and kneading her back.

"Man, Lexia...you have knots all in your back."

"Well when you work with a kid under the age of 10, it happens." She groaned. Her hand dropped from the book and it fell back on its spine. Her eyes closed and she succumbed to the feeling he was creating in her back. It spread from the force of his palm and fingers and soared through her back and then to every inch of her, making her numb.

"Mann..." Justin bit his lip as he tried working out a certain spot at the base of her beck and shoulder.

"Ohhhhhhh o o ohhhh..." Alex whimpered.

"Does that hurt?" He stopped his rubbing at a halt.

"Don't stop. Go harder. Please." He chuckled as she whined and he worked out that one spot on her neck.

Justin pressed on her shoulders in a classic massage manner. "Any other particular places?"

"Lower back. Like right above my butt."

Justin chuckled and scooted down on his knees a bit. He slowly pushed as hard as he could into her lower back muscles rotating his palms. "Oh...my...god..."

"Like that?" Justin asked.

"You have know idea."

"I thought you were supposed to be studying." He smirked and lifted up the back of her pj shirt a bit so that the thick flannel wouldn't get in the way.

"Who cares about-" She stopped when his warm hands touched her skin. Her ice blue eyes popped opened in shock then lazily close as he worked on her spine.

"I love you." She mumbled as he pulled down her shirt and patted her back a bit.

"Love ya too. Now, do me." He smiled and put himself in the same position as her. She turned her side to look at him and giggled.

"I have to study." She pulled her book in front of her face to block Justin. She giggled when she looked at the words and saw they were upside down. Just as she was about to turn the book, a hand plucked it from her grasp and set it on the part of the wood floor not covered by the large rug and slid it far away on the other side of the room, near the entranceway to the kitchen.

He smiled at her and dipped his head so they were only a breath away from each other. "Like you tried to say earlier. Who cares about studying?" He smiled and leaned in closer.

"What do you two want for lun-ohhh, sorry."

Alex looked up at her mom and sighed. "I don't care. But you two are too much of a distraction. I'm going up stairs to study. Don't bother me." She scrambled off the floor and ran over to her book, picked it up and ran up the steps.

"What am I supposed to do?" Justin yelled after her.

"Make me LUNCH!"

He looked at Sandra and raised an eyebrow when he heard a doorslam.

"She's one strange girl." Sandra giggled.

Justin pushed himself off the floor and walked over to the kitchen. "Yeah, that's Lexia all right. Very strange."

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That night...
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"Come on..."

"But it's going to be so cold. Can't we stay here and cuddle by the fire?" Justin pouted from his relaxed position on the living room couch.

Scott had left right after school to go to a friend's. The school he went to was year round so he had a 4 day weekend that start that afternoon. Her mom had left shortly after that and her father was already in Juneau doing business.

The young couple had tried their best to cook dinner, and well...it ended up in being a fresh, homemade gourmet dinner consisting of 2 nicely chilled glasses of Pepsi and a hot pepperoni Tombstone pizza. They finished off their meal with two perfectly mixed mugs of Swiss Miss.

It was a grand dinner.

And now they had retired to the living room, being only lighted by the glowing fire and they were just cuddling and talking, enjoying the time alone when Alex gasped, sat up and started pulling on his hand like a eager child.

"Why do we have to go outside?" Justin whined.

"Oh come on, this is going to be the coolest thing. Please." She begged, pleading into his eyes.

"All right all right, give me a jacket and a blanket." Justin sighed. She went into the coat closet and gave him her dads fur lined leather jacket and even giggled when he put the hood on, lining his face with the thick bristles of hair. She tugged on her own jacket and carried the blanket with her just in case.

She opened the front down and was met with the cool winter chill. "What are you doing?" Justin asked AGIAN.

"Listen, I want to show you something." She walked out on the front porch, and sat down on the front steps. He followed her and blew on his hands with his white breath. She grabbed his hands and made nodded to the outdoors. "Look." She whispered.

He moved his eyes from her and looked out over the snow that seemed to be illuminated to the black trees a distance away. Finally his navy eyes fixated on the reason that she had pulled him outside in this minus zero weather.

A weird haze of greenness danced across the starry sky. He had heard of the northern lights, auroras in science class and on the occasional Discovery channel show, but this was...indescribable. It was so foreign to him and strange he thought he was seeing a painting, or watching a movie. This couldn't be real. "Wow."

"Yeah, Andrew was the first person to teach me about the auroras. It's just the reaction with nitrogen and oxygen molecules hitting our atmosphere. Sometimes they stay suspended like a painting other times they dance...like this. I like these the best; they just glow like an ember in the sky kinda. Andrew and me would always come out here. Sometimes on school nights we would sneak out here and just watch them together, not say anything...just watch."

He hugged the jacket to his body and watched the lights dance across the black sky. Alex sighed and let the bitter air sting her eyes and make them water. "After he died, I didn't want to ever look at them again. But eventually I couldn't help it. You would be driving at 5 and it would be pitch black and there they were. But I don't know. I mean, its still hard because I can still picture him sitting right where you are just staring at the sky. Sometimes...especially when he got sick...I would just stare at him instead of the sky. He wasn't supposed to be outside because he was so ill, but, he always got me in the middle of the night and we would sneak out here."

She looked down from the sky and saw that now he was looking at her. She could tell he didn't know what to say, most people didn't when you talked about someone who had passed away. But she didn't care. She wanted him to know her feelings, her feelings that she had kept inside for the past 10 years of her life. "I uhh, isolated myself once he passed away. It became like a drug almost. I could just lock myself in my room or play hoops by myself and not have to worry about letting someone get close to me. I was always so terrified that something would happen and they'd be taken away from me. Even Cole, who I dated for like 2 and half years, I didn't let him get to me. It was just like a routine thing. We'd smile, we'd kiss, we'd go out. But that was it. I thought moving to Florida would get me out of this phase. I think mom and dad did too. That's the only reason they let me go so far. But Florida just closed me off even more. I only connected with your brother, and that was just last year. I've been so scared..." She whispered as a tear fell down her cheek and another slowly followed from her other eye.

Her icy eyes mirrored the bluish snow blanketed across her wide front yard. "It's so easy to not let people in ya know? I mean, I had it down to an art form. Someone would try and get to know me and I would just shoot them down. I had a way of just letting people know by how I walked in a room that they just shouldn't waste their time on me. And then you...why the hell did you waste you time on me? Why did I let you?"

"Alexandria. I've never wasted any of my time with you." His voice was soft yet serious.

She looked away and sighed, her heart feeling heavy and her throat going dry. "I use to love Alaska. I use to love the snow and sky and open space. And I hate that I've fooled myself into thinking that I despise it. When I was 8 I wanted to build my own log cabin and live up here until I died. Why did I let that change?"

"You didn't, Lexia. I can tell by the way you're eyes lit up when you saw your house for the first time in a while 3 days ago. Just the way you were excited in letting me see where you grew up. You didn't even have to think twice about where we would go to get away. You immediately said Alaska. You might think you tricked yourself, but that's just been a front. That 8 year old girl is still in you some where. And I see more of her everyday. You just...you need to let it go. I know it's hard. But, you need to let HIM go Alexandria. It's been 10 years. Give yourself some peace of mind. You don't have to forget him I mean, you cant. But you gotta let God have him, Lexia."

She sniffed and looked down to the cracked wooden steps. She whispered her emotion thick with her voice. "But it's so hard."

Justin reached down to her face and cupped her cheeks in his cold fingers. She looked up at him as his thumbs ran under her eyes. "I can't make you do anything. This is a battle with yourself. But I'll do anything I can to smooth the process."

She scooted over and leaned her head against his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "You've done so much already, Justin."

"No..." He whispered. "...what's something I can do right now for you? Do you want me to just sit here? Or sing to you?" He smiled. "Or give you a massage?"

She sighed and lifted her head off his shoulder. With one last look at the dancing greenish glow in the sky she stood up and offered her hands to Justin. He looked up at her, his forehead brushing against the fur of the hood. But before he put his hands in hers, she moved the hood off his head and kissed the top of his newly shaved area. She cupped the sides of his head and tilted it up towards her. Her body paused for a moment when his hands lightly wrapped around her upper arms as she leaned over him. She moved her lips to his and kissed him gently, pulling away before he was really able to respond.

"There is one thing you can do...."

He replied in a whisper. "What's that?"

She leaned in and kissed him once more a bit more forcefully, but still she pulled back and breathed against his wet lips. "Love me Justin. Please?" Her eyes moved from his lips to his eyes and stared into those dark pools that were staring back at her.

He smiled and she could feel the movement near her lips and see the crinkles in the corners of his eyes. "I think I can arrange that."