My Favorite Part // Fexi

11. Comfort

Fez doesn't stay on the phone too long with Lexi. His heart races as he simply gathers all the information he needs, then hangs up the call and jogs out to his car to go pick her up across town.

To his understanding, she'd gotten into a pretty bad argument with her sister and ended up running away out of frustration. She didn't provide much detail, but he didn't need to know the specifics of it. If Lexi needed him, he was on his way-simple as that.

On the drive to get her, his mind raced with thoughts about his feelings for her. He wanted to finally approach the idea of them being together for real, and was ready to ask her if she would be his girlfriend. It'd been a really wonderful three months; Lexi was able to make him feel things that he didn't even know were possible, they'd grown close enough for him to start to let down his guard, and now he just didn't think he wanted to wait any longer.

But, Fez knew he had to do things the right way. Lexi was a good girl. She wasn't cheap or easy. She was respectable and deserved the maximum effort from him.

Fez pondered on exactly how he wanted to ask her to be in a relationship. He'd never done it before, and he already knew that he'd be Lexi's first, as well.

Times like this, he truly wished for a father. Or really, either of his parents. So that he could get some guidance on how to ask a girl out, or just about growing up in general. There'd been so much in his life that he had to figure out how to do on his own from an early age, so this particular time would be no different.

He frowned as he thought about everything, still driving to his destination as fast as he could without getting pulled over.

He really missed being able to talk to his grandmother. She'd had a very bad stroke a few years prior, and things just hadn't been the same for her since.

At first, her speech was only limited to being able to croak out a few words or phrases, but then she stopped speaking altogether about seven months ago-as her condition began to worsen. They now only communicated on paper when she had the strength to use her 'good arm' to write things. It killed him on the inside.

The doctors said that she'd most likely be in a vegetative state for the rest of her life, and had opted for them to pull the plug and end it, but Fez downright refused. He didn't care if they were the professionals, he'd given them a good piece of his mind that day as he was being escorted out of the hospital by security. How dare they try and suggest for him to get rid of the only true parent he'd ever known.

His grandmother was all he had left. She'd sacrificed so much to take him in and raise him all by herself after his own mother died, so there was no way that he'd give up on her. He'd take care of her until his dying breath (or hers, much to his dismay)-no matter what it took.

Plus, she was a total badass! So part of him still (almost naively) hoped that somehow she could beat the medical odds against her and make a triumphant recovery. Even if it never happened, it still gave him something to be hopeful about.

Since a young age, she had always taught him that "Love is the one instinct you can't trust". He hadn't quite understood with that meant, but always kept it in mind. He grew up in a household that was dominated by a strong, independent woman who never needed a man.

He never saw his grandmother go on any type of dates, talk about anybody she was seeing, and she absolutely never-under any circumstances-brought men over to the house.

He'd later grown to realize that this was all intentional. There were a lot of bad people out in the world with bad intentions. And as his grandmother Marie had always been firm in explaining that her actions were done to protect her grandchildren, he knew deep down that it was also an effort to protect herself as well from getting hurt..again.