With the help of rehab and extensive therapy, Marissa manages to make her way through high school and college. She suffers a brief relapse in her junior year of college when she finds out that her ex-girlfriend, Alex, died in a brutal accident. But despite the odds, Marissa pulls through. Keeps going.
She manages to make a life for herself, and happy might not be the word she’d use to describe herself, but she’s surviving. Her carefully cultivated routine and tenuous grip on her sanity come screeching to a halt, however, when she gets a text from a number that, even after all these years, she hasn’t had the strength to delete from her contacts.
It’s a simple message. Just asking to meet up for coffee. She considers ignoring it entirely; deleting it and blocking the number. But some part of her says not to. Instead, she agrees to meet up, planning to confront whoever would choose to pull such a heartless prank. What she finds when she gets to the coffee shop is the last thing she expects: Alex, alive and well, smiling up at her.
Marissa takes Alex back to her apartment with little preamble. She thinks it must be shock that keeps her from breaking down on the way there from the coffee shop, because this can’t possibly be happening. But it is happening. Someone she thought was gone from her life forever is sitting on her couch, staring down into a mug of tea that’s slowly going cold.
Alex doesn’t give much in the way of an explanation. Nothing that amounts to more than they must have lied to you.
Marissa lets her stay with her. She doesn’t ask where Alex has been, doesn’t ask why she decided to suddenly step back into her life. She doesn’t want to question any of it. Just wants this bizarre dream to go on a little bit longer.
Alex says she’ll only be in town a few days, but days turn into weeks, and Marissa’s sure she has something to be getting back to. A job, a home, people who love her. But at the same time, she can’t find it in herself to mind that Alex is still there. She spends more and more time with Alex. She cancels plans with her friends, puts off errands, leaves for work later so that she can spend more time in Alex’s arms.
Alex seems different though. Distant sometimes, like she’s not really there. And other times, desperate to cling to Marissa as though she were her only tether to the world. Of course, it’s been years since Marissa knew her. They’ve both changed.
Alex’s behavior gets more intense as time goes on. She gets belligerent whenever Marissa so much as mentions going to spend time with other people, she does whatever she can to keep her from leaving the house, starts getting explosively angry and breaking things when she doesn’t get her way. It leaves Marissa afraid to cross her, and regardless of how much she loves Alex and is glad to have her back, that’s not how she wants to live her life. She says as much to Alex, who apologizes, promising to do a better job of watching her temper.
But that temper comes back even worse than before when Marissa brings a friend from the gym over. She gives them and Alex a brief introduction before disappearing down the hall to grab the book she said she was going to lend her friend.
It’s eerily quiet when she steps back into the hallway, and she feels uneasy. When she steps into the kitchen, she understands why: her friend his lying motionless on the tile floor, surrounded by a slowly growing pool of blood.
Alex, knife in hand and not a hint of remorse, tells her she had to. That she couldn’t let Marissa be taken away from her.
Marissa makes a move to see if there’s anything she can do - maybe it’s not too late, maybe if she stops the bleeding, there’s still a chance - but Alex is faster.
Adrenaline courses through Marissa’s veins, the smell of blood causing nausea to roil in her gut. She tries to tell Alex that there’s still time, nobody has to die, but Alex insists that she won’t let anyone take Marissa away from her. There’s a wild look in Alex’s eye, and in that moment, Marissa’s not sure how far Alex is willing to go to keep anybody else from having her.
She lunges to grab the knife from Alex and they both struggle for control until Alex slips in the pool of blood, sending them both crashing to the floor.
Marissa feels the knife rending its way through flesh, and the last thing she hears Alex say is a hoarse “I love you” before all she can hear is static as the world blurs around her.
