All in my Mind

XI.

I kind of lied to you with that last bit. It's not like a complete lie, but I wasn't fully transparent either. I was misleading.

Fully transparency: Alexander was a virgin, but he also received oral sex once. He got a blowjob at a party when he was 17. It was complicated and messy and not something he liked to remember. If it wasn't relevant to the situation I wouldn't even mention it out of respect for him, but since it did happen the way it did, it's super relevant. For the poor kids sake though, I will give you a disclaimer.

Alexander didn't want the blowjob. If he had to rank it alongside his other life experiences, he'd put it way towards the bottom somewhere near the day he got all four of his wisdom teeth pulled. They both involved teeth anyways so it's a good comparison.

Also for context, this happened about fourty-five minutes before Addison sat down on the floor with him at that party. After all that the effects lasted for weeks... and maybe even for the rest of his life.

So I'm going to be excruciatingly detailed when I tell you this. The details matter.

To start, his girlfriends name was Molly. She was on the soccer team and she was a varsity cheer leader in the off season, but she'd only made varsity because someone else broke their leg, and she was only a cheerleader because she wanted to wear the short skirt to school. She was a junior, and she was probably going to be salutatorian of her class the following year. She grew up in a catholic household, but she definitely wasn't catholic. She was actually very staunchly anti catholic. She had all the tell tale signs of someone aggressively rebelling from their catholic upbringing, which proposed some problems for Alexander that he really hadn't seen coming.

Alexander's relationship with Molly was long, drawn out, and confusing. It started because Alexander had been nice to her when she was new in student government. She was a poster maker too. It lasted for almost a year. It actually ended at that party.

A little bit of context you should know: Alexander hadn't told her about any of the research he was conducting on himself/his father. He didn't confide in Molly for such things. They weren't really that close, which was partially the problem. Alexander had realized recently that he was going to be off to college soon anyways and he was not planning on taking this teenage relationship with him. He cared for Molly, and he didn't want to end things, but he didn't see a future for the relationship.

Especially because Mollys primary motive for dating him was rebelling against Catholicism by dating a non catholic. Alexander was newly an atheist. Atheists were an excellent rebellion in her opinion. He could tell. He could also tell that she was endlessly frustrated that the atheist only wanted to kiss and hold hands. Neither of them were mature enough to discuss any of that.

Now onto the complicated bit.

Parker's party was in full swing. Alexander was deep in his panic of definitely already having figured out his dad was hallucinating. He personally hadn't had any more obvious episodes beyond the bees and the German murmurings, but he'd maybe mistaken a voice or two in his head as his own anxious thinking, and he was exhausted. Some of his basic functions were lacking, and he'd not really noticed yet. What he did know was that it wasn't exactly a good day for him to be at a party.

He'd shown up with Molly. He could at least admit that she was really very pretty that night. She'd braided her long auburn hair back and she'd worn a cozy blue sweater that felt nice against his skin when he'd hugged her earlier. Even though he wasn't in love with Molly, he did like her. She was nice, and smart, and her lack of attentiveness to the fact that Alexander was losing his mind actually meant he would pretend everything was alright most of the time when she was around. They walked in holding hands.