"Sonny, I'm sorry. I know, I should be more patient, but I can't. This is eating me alive inside." She paced the room, still in her tan suit, her long coat billowing out behind her. Her hands whipped around, her mind too busy trying to keep up to notice Sonny's huge grin and deepening dimples.
He approached her carefully, as if she were a fragile champagne flute, delicate and easily breakable. "Alexis, Alexis. Calm down." He held her wrists gently, transferring his serene attitude from his to hers. Propelling her towards the door, he let go long enough to turn the knob, and then pushed her out the door before him. He nodded towards her penthouse door, letting Johnny know where they would be in case Carly woke up.
He repeated her name again, his voice stronger, snapping her out of her babbling spell. Satisfied that she was done, he smiled. "I was going to come over tonight anyway. It's ok. Calm down, all right?" Placing his hands on her shoulders, he guided her to the sofa, pushing her enough for her knees to bend. When she sunk down into the couch, he came around it and sat in front of her, on the coffee table.
She sighed heavily, the stress rolling off her in waves. "I'm sorry. Ned just- he won't give up." Her brown eyes locked onto Sonny's, only giving him a mere glimpse of the pain she was enduring. She dropped her face into hands, her laugh rough and staccato. "So what did you need?"
He pulled her hands from her face, gently sweeping away the hair away. "It's ok to breakdown once in awhile."
"I know." Her voice was low, her eyelids heavy from sadness and exhaustion. "You said you were going to come over anyway?"
Sonny cleared his throat, keeping his hand on her knee. "This Jamie guy, do you have a picture of him? We could run that, maybe come up with something."
His eyes followed her as she stood up from the couch to make her way over to the front closet. She reached up to the top shelf to bring down the heavy box. Kicking the door closed behind her, she returned to the couch, setting the box on the table next to Sonny. She opened it, her hands trembling slightly as she reached in. Sonny watched her unlatch the false bottom and pull out a pair of pictures.
Her eyes watered slightly, her mind bringing her twenty one years into the past. She turned the first one around and handed it to Sonny. "This is Jamie and I right before I got pregnant."
Sonny studied the picture carefully, his focus more on Alexis than on the man in the picture. "You sure haven't changed much," he teased. Her hair was a little longer in the picture, her face a little more round, but other than that, she looked the same.
She swatted at his knee, turning the other picture for him to look at. "This is the same night. We were at a beach bonfire." She clasped her slender hands together, leaning over her crossed legs to observe Sonny's reaction.
Sonny's eyebrows creased with concentration. The man in the picture looked hauntingly familiar. His dark hair was kept short, about the same length as Jason's, and spiked in a similar fashion. His eyes looked like black marbles, beady and vicious. A goatee hid his chin. His skin tone was slightly lighter than Sonny's, but his body hair was just as dark. The man in the picture only wore a pair of swim trunks that grazed his kneecaps. With one hand in his pocket, he leaned against a tree with the other.
He flitted the photograph between his thumb and first finger. "Ok, this might work. It will take a little longer, but hopefully this will work." He stood up, his mind flipping through the mental rolodex of faces he stored away. Jamie Masters wasn't among them, but he looked like one of them. Not too much, but enough so that it gave Sonny the chills.
His eyes finally fell on her slumped form, and he grinned. Carefully,
he reached over to take the blanket from the back of the couch to unfold
it and cover her with it. Then he closed the box, hefting it's weight,
to place it back on the shelf in the closet. He turned once to make
sure she was still asleep before he exited the penthouse, turning off the
lights behind him.