Thanks for the kind words. Theorycrafting is always fun. The answers to most of your questions will be provided in the next chapter. As for "why didn't Alex come back," the subtext here is that Alex and Jaye have both found different methods of dealing with the elephant in the room: Alex avoids it entirely by running from it, and tries to cope through personally unrewarding womanizing, and...Jaye has her own strategy, which will also be explored in more depth in the next chapter.