One o'clock on a Saturday night.
Normally, it would find Jacob at some bar, a crystal glass of ice and liquor before him, a smile on his face and pretty words dripping from his mouth. Normally, the woman sleeping in his bed wouldn't be the same woman who slept there the night before, wouldn't be at all familiar beyond just another blurry face in a crowd. Normally, he wasn't sitting alone at his personal bar, eyes flicking back and forth, back and forth between the lights of the city out his window and the figure sleeping under his sheets.
Hannah.
She had changed everything, smashing into his life like some kind of wrecking ball, and leaving him with a confusing mess of everything and nothing.
Except, that wasn't right, was it? His entire life had been nothing. Nothing good, nothing bad, just… nothing. And you couldn't destroy nothing. Or did the destruction simply double, then? A black hole of so much nothing that it brought more with it, emptying out everything in an incessant loop, interminable and unstoppable?
He was drunk. It was obvious by the way his thoughts were spiraling, were wheeling around and intertwining with themselves until it was a vortex of… well, of nothing.
He couldn't sleep, was the real problem. He'd tried lying there in bed, stretched out on his side, arm curled around Hannah as she sniffled in her sleep. Her quiet breaths had huffed gently against his skin as the hours passed, the bright red glow of his alarm clock lighting the room as the minutes slowly ticked by. Eventually, he'd given up and gotten up, strolling over to his liquor shelf, pouring himself three fingers and knocking it back far too quickly for such high-quality alcohol. And that didn't cut it, so he'd poured himself another cup. Another.
Eventually, he'd cut out the middleman, picking up the bottle and walking - staggering? - over to his counter, sinking down on one of the austere bar stools and resting his head in his hands. The feel of the alcohol was buzzing through his system, warmth gathering comfortably in his stomach despite the burn in his throat, movements lethargic and wild. The bottle was rapidly dropping in level, the amber liquid skating just above the bottle's bottom, and he simply couldn't bring himself to care.
He was lost and unmoored, listing from more than just the liquor because… Well, because he'd lost his identity.
Admittedly, it wasn't ever really his identity - there was nothing about him in it at all except the role he could play - and it had never made him happy, but it had been all he'd had for so long that he didn't know what to do without it.
He had known Hannah was different from the moment he'd seen her in that bar, sitting with her friend at that unassuming table. She was… well, she was happy. Even from the first - even before he walked up to her table - he had known she wasn't the same as everyone else.
The drunks at the bar, the others meandering around, even he, himself… everyone in the building was looking for something to fill the emptiness. It was that emptiness that drove them to alcohol, to flirting, to dirty bar stools and rough liquor, and it was that emptiness that made Piano Man hit just a little too close for comfort. Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone.
But this woman, this stranger was so obviously different, flickering like a flame in an abyss, standing out amid the crush of loneliness surrounding her. She had grinned, wide and genuine, so different from the restrained smiles or cocky smirks used by the other patrons. She had sat straight, unbowed by any of the miscellaneous hardships afflicting the rest of them. She had drawn attention - his attention, at the very least - without even noticing it.
He'd gone to her table, of course, drawn to her flame as would be a moth, but he hadn't actually expected her to respond. It was selfishness, really, that drew him there: a desire to be near that warm glow of happiness for a few minutes before being relegated back to the emptiness of his house, of a bed temporarily warmed by a woman he didn't know and never would. He wasn't surprised at her rebuffing his banter, wasn't shocked by her departure; it was expected.
No, that surprise had come many, many days later, when she walked into the bar with dripping hair and far too nice a dress to be as bedraggled as it was.
That surprise had come when she walked up to him and kissed him in the middle of the bar, yanking him away from that night's stranger and pulling him after her into the soaking downpour.
That surprise had marked the beginning of the end, the start of his collapse. It all came down to one irrefutable, undeniable fact: he loved her.
He loved her, and that was terrifying.
Emotions had never come into his life before. Childhood had its roots in disinterested parents and lost hopes. Adolescence came with empty peer interactions and meaningless posturing. Adulthood had simply followed suit, a life of bars and women and stuff purchased without any actual need because he needed to talk to someone.
For once in his life, he didn't know what to do. He didn't have a formula or a script, and he was completely lacking a plan. He'd heard of whirlwind romances and love that made you feel like you were flying - each and every one hazy and tinted with the rose-gold edging of a pretty lie turned widespread myth - but he'd never experienced it. If anything, he'd come to believe it never existed.
Except then Hannah swooped in, the angel he never deserved, twisting everything on its head. He didn't need the script, didn't need the easy fallback plan. Then, all those feelings about flying and romance and picture-perfect rom-com days made sense. They were real. They weren't just imaginings told by fools waiting to have their hearts broken by the one they considered, well, the One. Call him one of those very fools, but those feelings were real.
That wasn't to say he didn't reach for that script anyway, didn't find himself returning to that listen, smile, nod he'd always used. It was all too easy to return to deflecting questions and shutting down, to grab onto the old ways for dear life. He could still read people the same way, could still look at a person and know he's lonely or she's hiding something or they're having an affair. He could still tell someone's drink of choice just by looking at them, could tell if they were a whiskey drinker or a purveyor of shitty fruit drinks with ridiculous umbrellas. Sometimes, he got stuck in it, trapped in the turbulent whirlpool of what do they want, what can I give them, why aren't they happy, what now that simply spiraled down, deeper and deeper.
Once again, though, it all came back to Hannah. Hannah, who pulled him away from his thoughts. Hannah, who grounded him in the present. Hannah, whose smiles glittered, driving away whatever gloomy clouds slid forth from the past and took over the present. Hannah, who lit up the empty house. Hannah, who deserved everything he had and more. Hannah, who had changed him irrevocably. Hannah, who held his beating heart in her hand but made no move to crush it. Hannah. Hannah. Hannah.
Hannah.
Everything returned to Hannah. She had started it, and she ended it. There was something beautiful in the way his thoughts, swirling with exhaustion and whiskey and confusion, still circled back to her. It was an ouroboros spiraling in on itself, a never-ending loop with her as the focal point.
Yes, he'd lost the things that made up his life before Hannah, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He'd gained far more. He'd gained Hannah. Hannah, who fit into the emptiness within him, within his life. Hannah, who drove away the loneliness, whose smiles made everything worth it. Hannah, whose mere presence wiped away the long, hard years of what should have been privilege but never quite met the mark.
He knew he'd never deserve her, but he was damn well gonna try.