The Ship Sinks

They had been one name, that was about to become two. Harry. Alexa. Halexa. Harexa? Not the best portmanteau, but they made do.

Alexa was luxurious, luminous, beautiful, her angles made for hashtags and yearning emojis.

Harry was handsome, mysterious, supportive and strong, all the better to sustain his ostensible girlfriend’s social media cache.

The paps followed them from London to Paris to Ibiza. They shaded their beautiful faces and eyes, gave fake kisses to a digital gaze that meant nothing.

They sat together in another luxury hotel room, laughing at the images, not pondering on what they meant.

---

Halexa meant glamour, fun, knowing side glances at the paparazzi that chased the pair over continents. It meant no time alone, always looking out windows, always considering what the next step meant. Harry and Alexa laughed at the spectators from separate windows, indulging, imbibing and not thinking of the consequences of their apparent separation.

Alexa wanted to be in fashion. Not just to be in fashion, but be fashion. She sat on the sidelines of the Parisian runways, making a studied, concerned face as she watched the perfect lanky mannequins stalk down the runway. She wondered what her face showed, and what her petite stature revealed. She leaned into her erstwhile boyfriend, hoping in their shared name she could find some satisfaction.

“So you’re Harry’s girlfriend,” his mother purred in clear if slow disbelief. Alexa blinked prideful tears away as she took his mother’s hand.

---

“Halexa!” Harry yelled, disporting a quickly emptied vodka bottle over the balcony rail. “What does it mean?”

Four years of carefully curated interactions on sandy French beaches, in immaculate museums, on select runways. Harry bowed at the honor of wearing the gilt brocade haute couture suit with Alexa on his arm.

Halexa. Hell. Exa? An exit out of hell, Harry hoped, and Alexa sometimes promised, to no avail.

Alexa loved their portmanteau. It meant she and Harry were one, despite the odds and the rumors of his other love. Yet it stole from her. Halexa was a fragment of her identity, attached to a man she wasn’t sure she loved.

Portmanteaus are fragile things, dependent on couples and their future possibilities. The media, especially social, grabs onto them, advertises them worldwide for the world to judge.

---

Alexa bit her lip, surveying the results on her phone, dreading the lecture to come.
She had no talent, after all, except for being pretty and willing. She was Harry’s accessory, a testament to his attractiveness and star power. The fan mail proved it.

Alexa,

I love you so much! Tell Harry hello for me. Thank you for being there and showing me anyone can be like you– Loved, beautiful, respected. I hear Halexa isn’t real but you show me otherwise. Put my savings into seeing you both at the June concert. Don’t let me down!

She couldn’t stand the lies anymore. She wanted to be on her own, to explore her own possibilities, be more than pretty. She worried about the hardship that a dissolving portmanteau would ignite.

“I’m not you,” she told him. “I’m Alexa. There is no Halexa.”

Harry shrugged and laughed.

“It was an ugly name anyway.” He reached out for his boyfriend, Cam, to declare a new portmanteau. “How does Carry sound?”

Harry kissed Cam’s hand. Cam smirked, confident in his ascendency. Alexa rolled her eyes. Stupid as it sounded, she knew it would set her free to be herself. Yet she hoped the new ship would sink.

Photo by Ethan Haddox on Unsplash