Adam rolled over and put out his cigarette in the ashtray beside him on his bedside table as he glanced at the red glow of the alarm clock.
8:54pm
He got up and pulled on his boxers and his t-shirt, which had been lying on the floor, and took a sip from the beer can on his dresser.
"How many have you had?"
"Huh?" Adam looked up at Alexa, who was getting out of bed as well.
"How many have you had?" she repeated.
He looked down at the can in his hand.
"Oh, uh, I don't know. Does it matter?"
"No, I guess not," Alexa said as she picked up Adam's button-down shirt from the floor and put it on.
The couple stepped out of their bedroom only to be greeted by a haze of smoke filling the kitchen and living room.
"Shit!" Alexa ran into the kitchen and over to the stove, coughing and waving her arms around the grey fog. She pulled out a pair of oven mitts from a drawer and put them on, then opened the stove, which let out another large puff of even darker smoke. She removed a pan and dropped it onto a cooling rack on the counter with a clank.
"Great. Just great," she said as she stood over the pan of something black and charred. "Well, looks like takeout tonight," she chuckled facetiously.
Adam walked back into the bedroom to retrieve his jeans and took out his wallet from one of the pockets. He thumbed through it, and except for a couple of old movie stubs, his license, a maxed-out credit card and a photo of Alexa, it was empty. He stepped back out into the living room and into the kitchen with his wallet.
"I have no money," he said blankly, and a little embarrassed, as he tossed his thin wallet on the counter.
"Oh, well, neither do I," Alexa replied as she stood up on the kitchen table to turn off the smoke detector, which had started obnoxiously beeping, the sound echoing through the apartment. Her voice was a lot more light and carefree than Adam's.
"Maybe you shouldn't have called in sick today," Adam said under his breath as he turned away from her.
Alexa stared at him as she got down from the table. She let out a short breath in her state of shock at his sly comment.
"Uh…you did too, Adam," she said.
"Whatever."
"Typical," she muttered.
He quickly turned back around.
"What?"
"I said 'typical,'" she repeated herself as she stood with her hands on her hips, making sure he heard her loud and clear this time.
"What is?"
"You. Always blaming somebody else."
"What the hell are you getting at?"
"Nothing. Forget it," she said as she turned around to rinse out the pan from the counter.
"No. You started this, you fucking finish it," he barked at her with the smell of alcohol still on his breath as he stepped over to her and grabbed her by the wrist, making her turn around. She shook his hand away once she faced him.
"No! Forget it! You just get like this when you've had a few, that's all. It's fine, Adam. Whatev—" but her sentence was cut short.
When he hit her, her hand flew up to cover her face. Her fingers moved over her burning cheek on the left side of her face. Her mouth hung open in awe and pain as a tear made its way out from behind her tightly shut eyes and ran down her fingers. She opened her eyes and watched as the droplet fell and hit the floor. She stared at the black and white checkered tile of the kitchen, dazed and unable to look up at him. But she felt him staring back at her.
Alexa very slowly brought her gaze back up to Adam, only to find him in as much shock as she was in.
"Oh my God…" was the only thing Adam was able to let out. He moved toward her but she backed up away from him. He held out his arms to her but she kept backing away.
"Lex, I'm so sorry, oh my God, I didn't mean to, oh God, I'm so sorry, Lex, oh God…"
She quickly moved around him and ran past him into the living room and into the bedroom. He ran right after her, but she slammed the bedroom door in his face. She locked it but he didn't try to get in.
"Fuck…" The shock of the situation began to sober him up a bit. "Alexa, come out, I'm so sorry. Please, just let us talk about this. Goddammit…I know, I fucked up! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" He begged and pleaded for forgiveness, but he already knew in the back of his mind that this wasn't going to end well. He had messed up too badly this time.
Inside, Alexa took off Adam's shirt and tossed it on the ground and got dressed in her own jeans and t-shirt. She grabbed her suitcase from the back of the closet and began messily stuffing all of her clothes in it. She pulled out a drawer from her dresser and dumped its contents into the suitcase, threw in her books from her nightstand, pulled out her cell phone charger from the outlet on the wall and shoved her cell phone in her pocket. She tried to ignore Adam's pleas.
"Lex, I'd never hurt you!" he cried.
She hastily zipped up the suitcase, grabbed it by the handle, and opened the bedroom door, much to Adam's surprise. She stared him right in the eyes as she spoke.
"Well, you just did, Adam."
He didn't even have a chance to speak before she brushed past him and made her way for the door.
"I'll have somebody come by for the rest of my stuff in a few days."
And with that, she slammed the apartment door behind her. Adam was speechless. He couldn't believe what he had done to her. The image of her red face and teary eyes was engrained in his mind. He caused that. He did that to her.
Adam didn't try to control his rage this time. He screamed as he made a fist with his right hand and punched the bedroom door, sending it flying open with a loud bang. It flung back and he saw the hole he'd left in the wood. He panted as he began to fell his knuckles ache, but they couldn't possibly have hurt as much as he did inside.
Downstairs, Alexa threw her suitcase in the backseat of the car and got behind the wheel. She called her friend Jamie and breathlessly explained what happened and that she needed a place to stay. So Alexa drove to her apartment, crying the whole way there, blasting the radio. By the time she arrived, she was exhausted. Jamie had an extra room made up for her and she let Alexa crash on the bed right away, no questions asked. All she could do while she tried to relax was replay that scene in her head again and again. She was so shocked by it, couldn't believe that the person she loved most would hurt her like that. Alexa ended up crying herself to sleep for three nights after that.
