At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [70]
“Sit by me,” he said. “I have something to tell you.”
At his words, her heart skipped a beat. She moved next to him, feeling the warmth of his leg against her own. When he exhaled sharply, she felt herself stiffen.
“Is it about us?” she asked.
He stared in the direction of the kitchen, his eyes unfocused. “You could say that.”
“And the wedding?”
When he nodded, Lexie steeled herself for the worst. “Are you moving back to New York?” she whispered.
It took a moment for him to grasp what she was asking, but when he faced her, she saw his confusion.
“Why would you think something like that? Do you want me to move back?”
“Of course not. But the way you’re acting, I don’t know what to think.”
Jeremy shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so evasive. I guess I’m still trying to make sense of everything myself. But I’m not mad at you or thinking of calling off the wedding. I probably should have explained that right away.”
She felt herself relax. “What’s going on? Did something happen at the bachelor party?”
“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “But there’s more to it than just that.”
He started at the beginning, finally telling her about the depths of his struggles with writing, his worries about the cost of the house, the sense of frustration he sometimes felt in the limited confines of Boone Creek. She’d heard bits and pieces of it all before, though she admitted to herself that she hadn’t sensed how difficult it had really been for him. He spoke in a voice that omitted blame, as if talking to himself as much as to her.
She wasn’t sure where he was going but knew enough to stay silent until he’d finished. He sat straighter.
“And then,” he added, “I saw you and Rodney holding hands. Even when I saw it, I knew it shouldn’t bother me. I told myself that over and over, but I guess that the other stresses I was under made me think it was something more. I knew how ridiculous the belief was, but I guess I was looking for a reason to take it out on you.” He gave a halfhearted smile. “Which was exactly what you told me the other day. Then you went over to Rodney’s again, and I just snapped. But there was something else I haven’t told you. Something that happened after each of those events.”
She reached for his hand, feeling relief when he accepted it.
He told her about the e-mails he’d received, describing the anger and anxiety they’d caused. At first, she had trouble understanding what had happened, and she tried to keep her voice steady in an attempt to stifle her growing sense of shock.
“That’s how you knew what was in the journal?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know whether I would have noticed it otherwise.”
“But . . . who would have done something like that?”
Jeremy sighed as he answered. “Alvin.”
“Alvin? Alvin sent them? But . . . that doesn’t make sense. There was no way he could know—”
“Rachel told him,” he said. “When she left? She went to see Alvin in New York.”
Lexie shook her head. “No. I’ve known her forever. She wouldn’t do that.”
He told her the rest of the story as best he could piece it together. “And after I stormed out of the bar, I didn’t know what to do. I just walked for a while until I heard people running up behind me. My brothers . . .” He shrugged. “They could see how angry I was, and that got them going. Put a couple of drinks in them, and they’re more than happy to start a brawl. They kept asking what Alvin did and whether they should have a ‘talk’ with him. I told them to let it go.”
In a role reversal, Jeremy seemed to find it easy to keep talking; Lexie was still trying to digest what he’d told her.
“They ended up bringing me back to my parents, but I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t talk to anyone up there about everything that had gone on, so I changed my flight to the first one out this morning.”
When he finished, Lexie felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
“I