A/N; Hey hi hello. Once again I'm going to apologize for the bit of an emotional roller coaster ride this chapter turned out to be. I swear things start to get better soon [next chapter soon even -hint hint-]. Things have to get bad before they good. I promise there is a good, bear with me. Just a note, for any of those of you reading this story that also happen to be reading my Kames story, by chance, just a notice that it's kind of on hold currently until I can work up the muse for it again. This story's been coming particularly easy for me as of late, and a Keeping Faith update is almost ready, too. So expect that soon if you're into that, as well.
Long on the note this time, my bad! Thank you to all of you lovely readers and reviewers as per usual! Love love love to you.
Enjoy!
-Kay.
Chapter 12-
Grace had told him he could come back the next day while she was at work to grab and pack up some of his stuff from the apartment. When he had showed up again late in the morning the following day, the emptiness of the home somehow made him feel empty, too. Even worse was the tiny black velvet box sitting on the kitchen counter, a post-it note reading 'take it' stuck to the top of it. He didn't know why he had for some reason assumed Grace would keep the ring. Why should she? All it carried now was heartbreaking memories for her.
Her harsh words seemed to echo on a loop in his head as he moved about the familiar apartment, gathering up some of his things. Everything felt very robotic, as if he wasn't in his head for most of it. The next afternoon, he was set to fly back to Minnesota once again, and somehow he found himself absolutely dreading it. How was he supposed to go home, face Logan after what had happened the day before? How was he supposed to tell him?
The sick feeling in his stomach was becoming far too constant for his liking. It was still there even after leaving Grace's apartment, having left a few packed boxes and the money to ship them back to Minnesota there. Once back in his hotel room, he laid out on his back on the queen sized bed, staring dazedly up at the ceiling. He could have slept, should have slept, really, all things considered, but instead he found himself reaching for his cell phone on the bedside table.
"I swear to God, if you don't answer your phone right now…" he mumbled at the dial tone in his ear.
"Nice to know you're still alive." Kendall answered finally on the third ring.
"Alive, yeah, that's the word." James muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Are you alone right now?"
"Sounds like a phone sex opener." Kendall snickered.
James sighed heavily.
"Okay, okay, yeah, I'm alone. What's up?" The other boy asked, voice a little more serious.
"Are you eating or drinking anything?"
"Why does that- What?"
"I'm trying to make sure you're not about to choke on anything, just answer the damn question."
"No, you dick, I'm not. What gives?"
The brunette took a deep breath and shut his eyes. "I slept with Grace."
There was a moment of silence on the other end before Kendall erupted into a fit of laughter. James opened his eyes and scowled at empty air.
"This isn't fucking funny." He snapped.
Kendall's laughter cut off abruptly. "Wait. You weren't actually being serious, were you?"
James pressed his lips together, letting his silence answer the question for him.
"YOU WHAT?!"
James winced and pulled the phone away from his ear for a second before bringing it back again. "Thank you, my eardrum really needed that."
"Literally, I am going to fucking throttle you when you get back. What were you thinking?!" Kendall continued to speak loudly, practically yelling into the brunette's ear.
"It just- happened."
"Oh right, I'm sorry. I forget that you just trip and fall and have sex with people at random." The blonde hissed.
"Things just escalated, okay. She was hurting and angry, and I got angry, and we just-" James huffed out a breath. "I need your help, alright, that's why I'm calling."
He could hear his friend's voice mumbling something under his breath on the other line, but he couldn't quite make out the words. He safely assumed they weren't anything he really needed to be hearing, since they probably involved making him feel even guiltier. Though, at the point he was at, he wasn't sure anything could actually make him feel guiltier than he already did.
What he and Grace had done was wrong. Point blank. Getting caught up in the moment wasn't an excuse, and even if he was going to use it until he was blue in the face, deep down he understood that it didn't work like that. Whether or not he and Logan had officially established what they were, what their relationship stood as currently, it didn't matter. If it had been a random person, it might have been a little different, not very, but at least a little bit. The fact that it was Grace, the girl who he was supposed to be married to by now, the one that he had essentially abandoned for Logan, only to find himself sleeping with her the moment he was away from him, that made things worse. James didn't know how it was possible for things to keep getting worse.
"Help." Kendall snorted. "Seriously, you drop a bomb on me like you fucked your ex fiancé while you were supposed to be sorting things out and coming back to the best friend you're supposedly in love with here, and you want me to help you with something?"
"Isn't that what friends are for?" James mumbled, voice vaguely carrying an air of sarcasm.
"As if I haven't done enough for you already by helping you get away from the wedding you took off from the other day. Have you forgotten about that? Oh wait, probably. Considering you fucked the girl you left at the damn altar."
"Kendall," James groaned, frustrated. "Please just- let it go. For now, at least."
"No I-" He listened as his friend sighed heavily on the other line, the image of the blonde's brow furrowed coming to his mind easily from all the past moments where Kendall had become over frustrated with him. "I really can't right now, James. I don't even- I just can't. Call Carlos for whatever it is you apparently need, but leave me out of this one."
Suddenly there was a sad kind of shame mixed in with the overall guilt that didn't seem to be going away. He knew if even Kendall wasn't willing to help him out that he had screwed up to a new degree. It seemed that no matter what he had done in the past, the blonde boy had always been there, always had his back. Almost just like he had declared as so before the disastrous wedding in his makeshift toast. For a moment, James thought about bringing that up, almost as some sort of bargaining chip, but he refrained. He had done enough damage already, and he was well aware of the fact that it was far from finished. The last thing he needed to do was completely and totally soil what friendships he had left. Sighing reluctantly, he nodded slowly to himself.
"Fine. But.. Please don't tell Logan…"
"Oh no. I'm not saying anything to him. That is definitely your job. And I swear to God, James, if you don't tell him…"
The brunette didn't need to hear whatever threat his friend could conjure up for him, he got the point. If he didn't tell Logan, things would only get even worse, on more than one account.
He ended up alone at the airport back in Minnesota. He hadn't bothered calling Carlos after all, because despite the fact that the shorter boy probably would have done his best to help in a heartbeat, James didn't want to drag his friend down to his level. Especially not when that friend was happy go lucky Carlos. Not to mention the fact that James was well aware Kendall and Carlos shared just about everything. He wouldn't have been surprised if the blonde had already informed their friend about James's further stroll down Idiot Lane.
He could have called his mom to meet him at the airport, he supposed, but he wasn't sure he had the ability to look her in the eye currently, so he avoided that. Getting a rental car once again, James drove directly to Logan's apartment, arriving there before it even occurred to him that not only was Logan at work for a little while longer, but he hadn't given any thought at all to how he was going to break the news, explain himself. He was doing so damn much explaining himself lately.
Easily enough, knowing Logan and his choice of placement, he found the extra key to the apartment underneath the flower pot next to the door. Almost on some kind of autopilot, James walked to the fridge in the kitchen. By some miracle, Logan actually had a few beers in his fridge. The brunette popped the cap off the bottle and took a good, long drink from the chilled beverage, hoping to ease even a tiny amount of his tension. It wasn't working out so well for him.
Curiously, since he really hadn't had much thought or opportunity to before, he glanced around his best friend's apartment, taking in the very simple, very tidy, very Logan look the entire place had. James chewed at his lip anxiously, twirling the cold glass bottle of beer between his hands as an idle distraction. When that wasn't working for him, he began curiously shuffling through the small stack of mail ads that Logan had left on the counter. When he slid one grocery ad out of the way and found an opened white envelope tucked in between some of the junk mail, his brow furrowed.
Turning the envelope over to the front to see where it was from, James's eyes widened slightly. UCLA. Logan was getting letters from UCLA. For a different reason than the usual in the last week, James felt sick to his stomach. What if it was Logan's turn to leave? What if after all the mistakes he had made, the one good thing he finally knew he wanted was going to slip away from him? For a moment, Grace's still-haunting words echoed in his head. I hope someone breaks your heart…
He tried to tell himself that everything was fine. He didn't know what the letter said, didn't know what it meant. But then why would Logan have tried to hide it? James remembered the night of the wedding, Logan reading a letter he had quickly shuffled aside. Had he had it the whole time? Irrationally, as his defenses started to kick into gear more, James began feeling angry, of all things.
It wasn't fair. None of it was fair. He hadn't meant to screw up as badly as he had. Why did the world have to keep taking it out on him?
His temper was flaring up more than he should have let it, but he was just so frustrated. With himself, with all of the current uncertainty in his life, with the thought of losing Logan still being an actual possibility, even after everything.
James didn't turn as he heard the front door open, his brow remaining in a furrow as his jaw tightened. Logan called a greeting as he dropped his keys onto the small table beside the front door before he was moving toward where James sat at the counter.
"How was your.. flight…" Logan's voice slowed and trailed off as his eyes caught on the envelope in his hands.
As if the quick glance wasn't enough indication that he had already seen it, James held it up, looking sideways at the shorter boy. "You're going to California?"
Logan sighed, inching away from him as he rolled his eyes. "It's an acceptance letter, James, not a one way ticket."
"You didn't even tell me-"
"We haven't done a lot of talking about anything lately, if you hadn't noticed." Logan cut him off, giving him a pointed look.
"And whose fault is that?" James snapped back.
Logan's eyebrows shot up momentarily, giving James a halfway questioning look before he shook his head. He let out a sarcastic laugh and stepped away from him, walking toward the couch. Stopping halfway there, he turned to face him again, this time a reprimanding look on his face as he pointed across the small room at him.
"You do not get to be angry with me. Not after everything."
James resisted the urge to wince, recalling that Logan wasn't even aware of his most recent fuck up just yet. He turned on his stool, looking at the dark haired boy with narrowed eyes, anyway. "You can't keep doing that. You can't keep using that as an excuse and acting like I can't be upset about things, too. It's not fair. How many times do I have to apologize? I'm sorry."
"And I'm sure you are sorry, James, I don't doubt it, but that's not the point." Logan shook his head. "What did you honestly think was going to happen? That you were going to leave Grace and you and I were just going to go back to hooking up in a dorm room on nights I needed to be studying and waking up to go buy crappy coffee together the next morning like it was before you left? You weren't just gone a couple of days, James, it wasn't even a couple months. You were gone for two years, and you had a whole new life lined up for yourself –one completely without me in any way, I'll add."
"Stop."
Logan shook his head again, squaring his shoulders as if he was giving a speech he had actually worked to prepare. "No. No, I'm not- I might have spent a huge portion of that time you were gone missing you and on some level hoping you would come back, but it wasn't all-consuming. I had to live my life, too. I had goals, I wasn't just going to stop reaching for them because you left."
"You never once even mentioned wanting to go to UCLA before." James argued.
"James, up until a little over a week ago, you and I weren't even speaking to each other. How precisely was I supposed to share that information with you?"
"This is something we should have talked about before I went back to talk to Grace. You had the letter then, didn't you? I saw it on the counter that night."
Logan's jaw tightened. "So what?"
"So, I don't know, why didn't you think, hey, maybe I should mention this to him since he kind of just dropped everything he had going for him for me. I should probably let him in on what's going on here." James snapped, sneering.
"That is not a crutch, James! You keep doing this- this 'I gave up everything for you,' and it's not a fair argument."
"Well, it's the truth, I did."
"I never asked you to!" Logan shouted.
James was taken aback by the declaration, opening and closing his mouth a couple times as words seemed to fail him for the moment. Somehow Logan's words hurt twice as much, knowing what had happened back in New York. Logan grimaced and ran a hand down over his face, turning his back toward him.
"Sure, maybe some part of me wanted to be enough to change your mind, but I wasn't actually counting on it, okay?" he muttered harshly. "When I wrote you that letter, and you went on your way to get married, I thought that was it. Even more than the first time you left, I could really feel how over it was. So I didn't bother begging you to stay, begging you to change your mind, because I'd already begged you not to go once and you did anyway. I was setting you free, finally letting you go."
James shook his head slowly, unnoticed as Logan kept his back to him still.
"Am I glad that you did change your mind, that you didn't go through with getting married? Yes. Selfishly, I'm beyond glad. But do not act like I made you leave her. I never once asked you to give up anything for me, that was your choice."
Swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat, James slid off the stool, leaving the letter on the counter as he moved over to Logan. It seemed the nearer he got to his best friend, the sicker he suddenly felt, knowing he couldn't just continue to be mad at him, knowing he had much worse news to still deliver.
Tentatively, almost feeling as if he shouldn't, James ghosted his fingers along the back of Logan's hand. The shorter boy's brown eyes darted down to his hand when he felt the light touch, sucking in a slow breath and continuing to keep his back to James, despite their current closeness.
"Do you have any idea what a fantastic medical program UCLA has? Or how hard it is to get into that school, let alone on a medical scholarship? Well, I did it. By some miracle, I managed that. Maybe it was the hours and hours of hospital service, or the copious amounts of professor recommendation. Either way, I worked tooth and nail for that damn scholarship. You could at least pretend to be proud of me."
The tall brunette bit down hard on his lower lip as he just barely began to feel it tremble, eyes starting to sting.
"I am proud of you." He whispered, fingers gently brushing against Logan's.
The reality of the situation was that James had jumped on the first opportunity he could possibly find to channel the anger he was feeling toward himself onto something else. In this unfortunate instance, that happened to be Logan, which he knew wasn't remotely fair. Logan getting a med scholarship to any great school, regardless of how near or far it was, that was phenomenal news, and definitely something James was proud of him for, even with the small amount of underlying pain that lingered. The last thing he wanted to do was take that pride away from him.
"I'm sorry." He said, continuing to whisper.
Slowly, Logan turned to look at him, a soft expression on his face.
"Are you s-" He cut off mid-question, his brow furrowing as his eyes roamed lower, over James's neck for a moment.
James stiffened, teeth snapping together.
"Wow, are these still from the other night?" Logan asked, sounding slightly bewildered as his finger gently prodded at one of the still fading bruises on the side of James's neck.
James winced, both at the pressure on the bruise and at the assumption that the marks obviously had to be from Logan himself. He hadn't even thought of going out of his way to cover them up, it hadn't even occurred to him. His mind was in a dozen different places and evidently none of those places saw it fit to remind him to make an attempt to cover the few scattered hickeys along his neck. When James parting his lips and taking in a shaky breath, hazel eyes retreating to the carpet, was the only answer Logan got to his question, his hand recoiled in an instant. His face contorted in painful realization.
"Oh."
"Please, let me explain." James begged, reaching out for the smaller boy, but Logan stepped back from him, holding his hands up in almost defense as he shook his head rapidly.
"N-No. I need-" Any calm he had been maintaining and was still working to keep up was faltering fast, his quickly pooling eyes and wavering voice giving him away almost instantaneously. "I need you to leave. Now."
"Logan-"
"James!" Logan raised his voice, trying to sound firm, demanding, but James could see right through to the root, to the pain. The pain that he was yet again the cause of. "Get out."
The taller boy's mouth hung open for a moment as he felt as if what air was still in his lungs left him. He clenched his teeth together, his own eyes beginning to prick with moisture as he gave a very stiff, very deliberate nod. He didn't want to go, not at all. Under different circumstances, he would have argued, demanded his explanation be heard, not let it be as simple as just throwing him out while emotions were in a flurry. Then again, under different circumstances, there shouldn't have been anything to fight to explain in the first place.
Dazedly, James made his way to the front door, leaving Logan standing still in the spot that he was in as his subtly trembling hand turned the doorknob. He glanced back at his best friend, only for a second, but even just that one brief moment felt like it could very well knock him on his ass. Because the continued hurt and the suffering in Logan's teary, chocolate colored eyes was the worst thing he could have imagined. A moment later, he was shutting the front door behind him with what felt like a very final click. He didn't know if he would ever be welcome back through that door again.
Somehow he kept it together enough to drive, however robotically. It wasn't until he stopped, parking at a curb and shutting off the car, that he seemed to come off autopilot and back to his head, recognizing the distantly familiar neighborhood he had driven to. Why he had let himself get to Logan's mom's house instead of his own mother's he couldn't figure. All things considered, pretty soon Joanna Mitchell wouldn't want anything to do with him either, much like James imagined Logan already didn't. Eyes stinging, he glanced toward the front door to the house, dimly lit by the porch light.
He remembered one Halloween, back in middle school, all four of them –him dressed as the grim reaper, complete with face makeup his mom had put on him, Logan as a mad scientist, Carlos a ninja, and Kendall a zombie hockey player- had been squished together on that front porch, after a long night of trick or treating, peering into each other's candy-filled pillowcases, bargaining with one another over which candies they would trade for which.
Then there was freshman homecoming. James had left early with Logan because the smaller boy wanted to go after his date ditched him the second they got to the dance. The two had sat on the brick porch step in their semi-formal wear, James throwing out lame joke after lame joke until the embarrassment and sadness had seemingly vanished from his best friend's face.
Maybe that was what had led him there, memories. There were many places around the small town they had grown up in that he could have gone, countless other memories in other locations, but at this house, there was more comfort from it. Logan, wherever he was, had always been like a second home to James, even growing up. As stupid a notion it was to go seeking comfort for potentially losing Logan in a place that did nothing but remind him of him, James thought that maybe he understood his subconscious reasoning.
Slowly, the brunette got out of his car and made his way up to the front porch. He hesitated before knocking, fist raised and breath caught in his throat, but his hand fell back down to his side. It wasn't exponentially late, it just nearing ten, so he wasn't concerned with the possibility of waking Joanna up, he just didn't really know what he was doing.
What was he supposed to say to her? Was he supposed to explain how, once again, he had hurt her son and didn't know how to fix it, didn't know how to fix anything anymore? Joanna didn't even know the details of the relationship between him and Logan, he assumed. How was he supposed to let her know what was wrong when she didn't know the full story? He figured it wasn't his place to reveal those details if Logan hadn't already, considering she was his mom, not James's.
In defeat, James slumped onto the porch step, letting his dully aching head fall into his hands. He wished there was a rewind option for his life. Going back a few days, a few weeks, going back to that night two and a half years before, when this horrible downward spiral seemed to begin, he would have done things so differently. Everything could have been changed. For all he knew, if he hadn't been so scared and stupid back then, it could have been him and Logan getting married. The thought alone made his chest tighten.
What if they never got back to a semblance of alright? They were barely working toward it before he had gone back to New York and somehow managed to mess things up even further. What if by now it was just too late to make it right? There were too many wrongs, too many mistakes, and not enough proper fixes? How was he supposed to live with that? It was hard enough trying to stomach the idea of losing Logan for good, but the reality? The reality would kill him, for sure.
"Jamie?"
James flinched, quickly uncovering his face and jerking in the direction of the front door he hadn't even heard open. Joanna looked down at him, concern written all over her face.
"Honey, what are you-"
"I'm sorry." James blurted out quickly, voice shaky.
"James, sweetie, what's the matter? Why are you out here?" she murmured, moving to sit down beside him, pulling her dark gray sweater tighter around herself.
For some reason his eyes followed the woman, unable to move away even as his vision began to get blurry with tears. "I- I didn't- I messed up. I k-keep messing up and I just came here and I don't really know why, and I'm sorry. God, I'm so, so sorry."
He was burrowing his face in his hands again as whatever resistance he had somehow been managing to keep up finally crumbled and he cried. He cried for leaving, both recently and two years before. He cried for hurting Logan and for hurting Grace, for using them and for breaking both of their hearts when he really had loved the both of them. He cried because he was lost, didn't know what he had, what he was doing, where he was going. He just cried, for the first time in a long time really cried, as if he had been holding so much back there wasn't anything he could do anymore but let that all out in the form of tears. He couldn't remember the last time he had cried like this, so much. Probably when he was a kid.
Furthering the helpless child feeling, Joanna wrapped her arms around him, a hand stroking the back of his head as he sobbed into her shoulder. She was murmuring soft, comforting words to him, and a part of him really wished she wasn't. She shouldn't have been the person trying to make him feel better and telling him everything was going to be okay. There was a larger part of him, however, the currently more active and emotional part of him, that needed it, craved for someone to finally tell him things would be alright when it seemed that every other possible sign was telling him the opposite.
Joanna coaxed him inside, and while he knew in the back of his mind that it wasn't the best idea, he was tired. He was just so damn tired and it felt like everything hurt all at once, he didn't have it in him to refuse or argue. She made him drink some water after plopping down on the couch, but she didn't do any questioning. He wondered if she just assumed he was so upset about what had happened with the wedding, or about what he had talked to her about beforehand when he had visited. He didn't know what to think about his best friend's mother –the best friend he had just broken the heart of for the umpteenth time- comforting him, taking him in.
Running her fingers back through his tousled brown hair as she stood in front of where he sat on the couch, Joanna sighed.
"You look like death, pumpkin." She pointed out quietly.
James didn't say anything.
"When's the last time you got some sleep?"
He hesitated, looking shamefully down at the carpet, then shrugged. He figured the last good amount of sleep he had gotten was the night he had stayed at Logan's before going back to the city. Since then, he had been lucky to settle his nerves and his mind long enough to manage maybe a handful of hours here and there in the past two days.
"You need some rest, boy. You can't expect to take care of whatever else is going on if you're not taking care of yourself first." She reprimanded.
Telling her that he wasn't sure it mattered whether or not he took care of himself anymore seemed like a bad thing to do, so instead he simply gave a nod, sniffling and sipping at his water.
Joanna sighed tiredly, a seemingly melancholy expression crossing her face for just a quick second. "Get some sleep, Jamie. You need it. You can go home in the morning."
James swallowed around the lump in his throat, voice coming out a shaky croak when he finally spoke. "I'm sorry."
"Mister Diamond, I'm gonna need you to stop with that word." She huffed.
She was the only person thus far that had told him that, that he didn't need to be apologizing for anything. Somehow it made him feel worse –how that was even possible anymore, he had no idea. Instead of saying so, however, he barely gave a nod. After kicking his shoes off, he curled up on his side on the couch, chewing at his lip anxiously. The dark haired woman mumbled something under her breath that James didn't quite catch before she turned off the living room and kitchen lights then retreated back up the stairs to her bedroom.
His hazel eyes stared straight ahead into the darkness for a few moments before they began to tiredly droop shut. It still felt like everything hurt. His head was pounding, his stomach twisting, his chest felt like a boulder was permanently resting on it, and his eyes felt raw and bruised. He wondered if this was what Logan and Grace felt like at any point, if having a broken heart caused so much more pain than just what was seen on the surface.
Then, fleetingly, just before he finally started to drift into unconsciousness, he wondered if it was possible to break his own heart, because somehow it felt like he had.
