Their relationship—if you could even call it that—started off as nothing more than frantic kisses and his calloused fingers trailing down her ribcage underneath suffocating bed sheets with his drunk friends in the next room. It was just for the summer, they kept telling (lying to) themselves. Whispers of don'tgetattacheddon'tgetattacheddon'tyoufuckingdare in moonlit rooms—whether it was his or hers didn't matter. All that mattered was that sweat-soaked clothes were littered across the carpeted floors and nobody could know, damn it. That, my dear, would be much too much of a risk, I'm afraid. If people knew of their intensely fast-paced relationship—of sorts—it could snowball into something neither of them wanted (to admit they longed for). She—this blonde teenage girl he was slowly tainting—was Alex's baby cousin. They were like family (except last time he checked family didn't do the things he did to her with his quick fingers—guitar lessons had paid off in more ways than one, it seems). That didn't stop Jack.
What had started out as a simple summer trip to Baltimore to visit family had quickly turned into something that could be described as lust at first sight (and maybe a little bit of mangled love thrown in but damn it, things didn't work like that for Jack Barakat, okay? He was the prime example of your stupid pretty boy with a dozen different girls attached to his hip). And Abbie had to admit, she didn't quite mind leaving her best friends in the dust to tipsily sneak off to darkened corners with Jack, his mouth leaving dark marks on her collarbone she'd have to explain later.
He doesn't know when the sex turns into something more poetic like making love or when he actually begins to care about when the spitfire girl with glinting blue eyes and a smirk that could almost beat the one he nearly always had plastered across his face will be going back to Illinois, but it does and just the fucking thought of her disappearing terrifies him. So Jack does what Jack does best when it comes to girls he actually starts to care for—he runs. He runs like there's no tomorrow and a week later a little white plane emblazoned with Delta on the side takes off with (his) Abbie in it, her eyes red-rimmed with tears brimming because damn it, she thought they had something.
It only takes a few hours before Alex is back at the house after dropping his cousin off at the airport, twirling his key ring around his index finger, a habit that always annoyed Jack. The latter is seated on a stool at the island, a glass of some unmarked alcohol he'd found in his hand, looking suspiciously as if it had just been drunken out of. Jack had been drinking more in the past few weeks, since Abbie stopped coming over, but it couldn't be so Alex didn't bring it up and left Jack's alcoholic tendencies to himself—it was easier that way, you see.
"Isn't it a bit early to be drinking, Jack?" Alex asks, his voice laced with a teasing edge that Jack should have picked up on, even drunk, and something that he could've distinguished as pity, had he been sober (because jackandabbie had never been a secret, not from oh so perceptive Alex).
"Come on, Alex, I haven't been properly sober in three weeks," Jack replies simply with another sip from the glass, wincing slightly in the process as the bitter taste explodes against his tongue. Alex, breathing out a sad little sigh, merely sits down across from his best friend in response, his brown eyes showing much more than just pity. Pity and guilt and maybe a bit of anger for hurting his fucking cousin—Jack should've known better, really, nobody hurts Alex's family if they want to make it out alive.
"I know about what—I know about you and Abbie," Alex phrased carefully as he stared at the marble of the countertops, his brown eyes studying something only he could see intently. Jack merely shrugged. He didn't want to think about her. Not now. Not after she'd left. He wanted to forget her. But, Alex wouldn't let that happen. "I think she loved you."
All it takes is for the L word to slip from between Alex's teeth, hung out in the open air between them, and Jack's standing, the glass shattered across the floor, his phone out, looking at flights to Illinois. He leaves four hours later without any luggage because damn it, he loved her and Alex had ruined his perfectly manufactured 'get-over-Abbie' plan with four fucking words.
He finds her after two weeks in a hotel, reusing the same clothes each day. School's just let out and teenagers are filing out of the high school, bright binders and backpacks clutched in their hands. A certain trio catches his eye. A tall, pixie-haired ginger girl with bright tights and brighter lipstick, a shorter girl in a Panic! At The Disco shirt with long dark hair, and—oh, God, it's her, damn it. He suddenly regrets even fucking coming to Illinois, it was all a mistaketaketake. He feels like a joke, smelling of his own sweat and liquor with poorly styled hair, watching teenagers come out after a long second day of school.
And then she sees him before he can run away again and her jaw is dropped and his chest is filling up with guilt and fear. She gestures to her friends briefly before crossing the grassy yard, shifting her stickered books to the other arm. She's looking down and then he realizes how bad she looks. She'd obviously been crying, but he'd never thought…never thought what Alex had said might be true.
It only takes a brief lock of their eyes—brown meeting bloodshot blue—before her books are hitting the dirty ground and his hands are on either side of her face and oh, God, maybe, just fucking maybe, happy endings can happen for JackfuckingBarakat, because who said you had to keep up with band boy image?