“Oh, well that’s probably for the better,” she said trying not to convey her emotions too strongly. There had been plenty of reasons for Jack and Danielle breaking up. The distance and Lexi were just two of the many. But if Danielle hadn’t said anything about the others, Lexi wasn’t going to be the one to bring them up. “What about Kate? Obviously she brought me up, so I’m sure her story was interesting,” she stated sarcastically.

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Do we have to talk about Kate? I know how you feel about her. I know how she feels about you. And now Bekah knows how Kate feels about you. And let’s just say, it wasn’t a conversation I wanted to be present for.”

“Oh,” Lexi replied slightly taken aback. She hadn’t really thought about what Kate might have said about her beyond the usual. Lexi had been so concerned with what she was going to tell Bekah, that it hadn’t even crossed her mind what Kate might have said about her. “Did she claim that I was the reason that you wouldn’t commit to her?” she asked finally.

He let out a puff of air. “Not exactly, but you didn’t help anything either.”

“Me?!? You were the one…”

He cut her off. “I said, let’s not talk about Kate.”

She quieted, her chest heaving up and down in a familiar burst of anger. “Fine.”

“What are you going to tell her?” he asked hesitantly.

She shook her head deep in thought. She still wasn’t sure herself. At first, she had been certain that she was going to tell his girlfriend how Jack was an awful terrible person, and that Bekah better get out before things went downhill. After all, that was what she had told Chyna she was going to do. That’s what she had screamed at Jack in the hallway. But, after finally being in his presence, Lexi wasn’t sure if she could do it. “I’m not sure yet.”

“There’s just so much you could tell her,” he stated vaguely. Lexi could tell he seemed a bit anxious about the whole situation.

“I know.” And she did. Their history went back for six years and the fact that they hadn’t been together made the whole story juicier.

“Did you mean what you said in the bedroom? That you were going to tell her not to make the same mistake you did.”

“I did when I said it,” she offered. “But I was angry, and now I’m not so sure.”

“I guess that’s a good thing,” he said, optimistic to the prospects. She could tell he wanted to ask more questions, but he held his tongue. Lexi was grateful for that. She didn’t really want to have that conversation.

Lexi pushed her hair behind her ear again before asking the question that had been nagging at her since Jack had called the first time. “Why didn’t you tell her about me? You had to know Kate was going to say something.”

He ran his hands back through his hair several times thinking the question over. He adjusted his position so that he was lying with his head back against the armrest before addressing her. “I didn’t want her to know about you. I...” he paused collecting his thoughts once again. “I met Bekah shortly after you and I…well…you know. I had no interest in dating anyone. But when I told you she was about as persistent as I am, I wasn’t lying. After a few unremarkable dates with her, I called the whole thing off.”

Lexi looked over at him surprised. She had assumed their relationship was picture perfect. It was refreshing to hear that it wasn’t. “Why? What happened?” she asked curiously.

“She wasn’t you.”

Lexi gulped. She wanted to just scream at him for not calling her afterwards, for not calling a month later, a year later. They could have worked things out if he hadn’t run out, if he had just come back to her. But instead he had been with another woman. Now the distance between them was unbearable.

“Bekah doesn’t take no for an answer,” he continued. “I was pretty messed up after I left New York, and she slowly brought me out of all of that. I stopped trying to see you in her, and I found that things went much better. I found I could like her. Soon we were together all the time. The relationship progressed rather quickly from there.”

Lexi sighed heavily. The way his eyes lit up at the mention of their relationship pained Lexi. She could tell Bekah made him happy...happier than she had ever been capable of making him. Their relationship was everything she had hoped for with Jack, but had never been afforded.

“I don’t know how much more you want to know, but Bekah wanted to move in with me when her lease ran out. Her parents are pretty well-off and have been helping her financially. They told her they would cut her off if she moved in with her boyfriend before she got married. That’s pretty much where we are now.”

“So, it’s not because she wants to get married so desperately? It’s about money and moving in with you?” Lexi asked trying to process this new information. Jack had made Bekah situation seem much more...desperate on the phone.

“No. No. No. It’s really about her wanting to get married,” he remanded hastily. “She is playing it off like those are the real reasons. Honestly, she doesn’t need her parents’ money or approval,” he finished. Even though Lexi wasn’t really looking forward to meeting Bekah, she had obviously captured something with Jack. Lexi was kind of curious about her.

“Can I ask you something?” Lexi asked sitting up to get a better look at him.

“You just did.”

“Ha. Ha,” she said dryly. A smile appeared on his face as he sat up to meet her gaze.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Where are all your picture frames?” Whatever he had been anticipating, that hadn’t been it. “You used to have a ton of them, but I don’t see any.”

“When you were snooping?” he asked playfully. She nodded. His smile waned slightly when he responded. “The glass broke in a bunch of them when I moved here, and the rest are in my closet.”

“Why didn’t you put those up? I mean at least the woods shot,” she said remembering a particular black and white photograph of a rickety bridge over top of a creek surrounded by age old pine trees at sunrise. It had always been her favorite.

“I don’t have it anymore,” he said sheepishly, his eyes fixed on the floor.

“Where did it go?” she asked intrigued. He had always loved that picture as much as she had. For the longest time, it had hung in a thick black poster sized frame above his bed.

“I destroyed the frame.”

Her mouth hung open as she imagined his prized portrait torn to shreds. “Why would you do that? It was your favorite picture.”

He shook his head. “It was your favorite.”

Realization dawned on her. He had gotten rid of it because of her. He couldn’t look at it anymore because of her.

“Two days after I threw it away, I felt terrible and fished it out of the garbage. The picture was still intact except for a few small tears from where the glass broke. I gave it to my mom.”

Lexi forced the conversation to lighter subjects. She didn’t want to continue to suffer from long lost memories. She told him about school and her internship. He bored her with accounting information, and how his immediate supervisor was an older woman he couldn’t stand. They watched highlight reels from last year’s mediocre football performance from their Alma Mater. Luckily, the team was still ranked in the top twenty-five due to good recruiting. She listened when he told her about his Fantasy Football strategy for the upcoming season, and gave him pointers on who she thought was going to play well. He regaled her with stories from Seth’s bachelor party in Las Vegas earlier that summer. She told him about Chyna’s congratulatory weekend in Atlantic City when Lexi had been accepted into her internship.

“This feels so familiar,” she breathed leaning her head back against the arm of the loveseat.

“Yeah, I suppose it does,” he agreed amicably.

“You have a girlfriend.”

“You don’t have a boyfriend,” he added.