Not Alone
Chapter 1 – Drink
Disclaimer: ((holds up blank sheet of paper)) I don't even own this. Lyrics are from "Drowning," by Dashboard Confessional.
A/N: If there are any mistakes or incorrect details about drinking or otherwise, I apologize. I have zero experience. I'm fifteen, lol. "Research" was from other fiction… So if anything is wrong I am really sorry. I can't say I'm qualified in any way to write this but…I'm giving it a shot. It's probably gonna be a short multi-parter. Feedback is always very much appreciated.
To EFW, because she is so awesome. To Lia, to Steph, and to Mai because they rock and I miss talking to them. To Leigh, because she read this over for me, and because she's Leigh.
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Truth is in a tall beer.
Are you drowning your fears
In a glass of deception?
---
Faces and light are reflected in the amber liquid, but as the level lessens and the beer disappears down his throat, they become fuzzier and fuzzier, less and less clear.
He doesn't recognize a single one.
People punch his arm awkwardly in greeting and he shrugs it off, mumbling things that he hopes sound somewhat like 'go away'. He's well aware that he's totally wasted and he doesn't even hate himself for it this time.
It used to be that nothing mattered until everything had happened. It was never anything, it was no big deal, until he woke up in an unfamiliar bed and felt sicker than sick. That always hurt him most, and he'd try to get himself up and going and gone before he could be faced with someone he didn't recognize. Hurt or expectant or eager, it was all the same. It was always disappointing.
It was the only thing that ever hurt him. He tells himself it hurts, because he believes that it should, but really the pain is all dulled now, all insignificant.
Magic, this is.
The whole room is pulsating around him, flashing lights and loud music and people dancing every which way. Loud laughter and downing mugs and a few sounds of breaking glasses on the counter as they are slammed down too hard. It's an assembly line, a vicious circle that never stops. Hurt, drunk, mistake, and to the beginning yet again.
All he has to do is lie back and relax.
The glass is cool on his lips and he tilts it back, expecting another long swallow. Leftover drops slide down the sides and to his face, and he shakes his head, setting the glass down himself.
He hasn't broken one yet.
"Drew?"
The bartender walks slowly up to Jess, looking placid and calm and superior. He's never drunk. He's never high. He looks almost like an angel all grown up in the middle of purgatory, while Jess floats atop the river Styx, begging Charon for some direction. It annoys the hell out of him, this unwavering angelic look, taunting him: he can't be that, he gave that up long ago. Where does this guy get off being a bartender, staring at people like him and making clear exactly what he thinks without a word? He has no idea what it's like. Like hell he's better than everyone here; at least most of them know life isn't always perfect.
"You're back," Drew states.
And Jess hopes to god he's said nothing in a drunken frenzy—nothing about the past, nothing he doesn't want anyone to know—'cause if he did, he shouldn't be here. He's ashamed of both who he—Jess—is himself, as well as the fact that he doesn't know who he wants to be.
But then, who cares.
"That I am."
Drew has always been impressed with Jess' ability to keep up what could pass as intelligent conversation, long after he's pretty much gone. "Man, you don't need anything else." He meets Jess' stare with a smirk reminiscent of his own, in some twisted way.
"C'mon."
"What is with all these people and glitter?" Drew asks, expertly changing the subject. "Gives me a headache."
"It's part of the experience," Jess replies offhandedly. "Bit like the beer. All blurs together. Nice visual."
"Huh, I bet. You seeing anything clear right now?"
"This glass. It's sharp and neat and empty."
"Nice observation, Mariano."
"How in hell do you know my last name?"
"Elementary, my dear Watson. Go the hell home. Now."
"Nah, she's there." She isn't there, at least, he's pretty sure she's not, but it's a damn good enough excuse. She wouldn't know where he lives, she couldn't, but he wouldn't put it past her to be there when he finally makes it home.
"What, is there a reason for the hangover today?"
"Quit trying, you win."
"Trying?" Drew answers, acting innocent. Jess stands up and slips on his jacket, shoving one hand into his pocket and slamming the mug down with the other, on purpose. A chip breaks off the base and skitters across the counter.
"Man, nice one."
Jess ignores him and slams the door of the bar, shocked at the sudden silence after roaring of sports games and blaring music. It's quiet in the city and he doesn't fucking like it at all.
The concrete is smooth and reassuringly hard under his feet. He hears the tapping of shoes on sidewalk, when he listens, and after awhile it transfers itself to his head. Tap, tap, tap. It gets louder and louder until he can barely stand it, and he keeps walking. His head is splitting with pain, but it all gets better from here.
She'd tasted good.
He doesn't remember where he'd met her, where they'd found one another again. There was something about ohmygod it's you, just another person on a street corner but it's you, and something about a hideaway near the street she'd dragged him into just to make sure she was right about it being him, and that is all the residue of this flash of a reunion left over from the shower of beer and smoke that's been poured through his head tonight.
He does recall that her eyes were glittering with a ferocity he'd never seen, and that her hair was shorter—with his hand on her cheek, it barely brushed his wrist. The expression on her face had told him that with her hair had gone her innocence, and with a soft kiss he had welcomed her to the world.
And he had discovered that she'd brushed up on her glare; that it was twice as strong and twice as meaningful and elicited a reaction as painful as always. A sharp, quick dash of pain and then instinct took over and he muttered things and took off.
And the next thing he knew was strobe lights and people moving everywhere, indefatigable, no taste in music whatsoever.
His feet take him there automatically.
He always heads straight for the path to forgetting, and usually he makes it on alright.
-
The pattern never ends, and cool drinks slipping down his throat are a nice release from everything that somehow accumulates on top of him during the day. He has taken pretty much no responsibilities and makes no promises anymore, so he has no idea how it gets there, but always it does.
Perhaps it is that very fact, that he doesn't do anything, that makes him feel so guilty. The guilt is unexplainable but a constant by now, and he makes room easily enough for the ache.
There's plenty of space in his rhythm for something new.
-
Drew leaves the bar months later, giving Jess a friendly clap on the shoulder as he walks out after his last shift. The fact that he has seen a bartender's whole career come and go depresses him, and Drew is replaced by some idiot who Jess harbors even more of a hatred for, if that were possible. He is carded almost every night he's there to throw himself into nothing for the fun of it, and he wonders what it is about the haggard look, circles under his eyes, and dirty jacket that makes him look ten years younger than he actually is.
It's a few weeks later when he pulls the ID out the wrong way, and his picture flashes back at him; the letters that spell out his information blurry in the lighting and his own dizziness. When it's passed back and he's sliding it into his wallet, he notices his date of birth and suddenly feels sick.
He's twenty-six next month and his life is a disaster; it's everything he always dreamed of and everything everyone always hoped he wouldn't be.
Being a disappointment isn't a difficult goal and he's so damn glad.
-
He has a job but never mentions it nor thinks of it because it's nothing. Most days, he's late, and most days, no one notices. The fact that he has to go halfway to the suburbs to work is bad enough; the fact that he never spent energy in order to get here makes it worse. Sometimes, walking through Manhattan, he wants to hand his job to someone on the streets, and watch his or her life explode in possibility while he sits and stretches out and rests there on the sidewalk.
He knows, though, he would never do that; there is some spark in him that keeps him going and keeps him appearing, ten minutes late or otherwise. He has no one to wake up and no one to stay up late for, but nevertheless he does. Just for the hell of it.
He makes enough money to live and survive and be okay, and the rest he blows off on drinks and things he doesn't remember paying for.
He can't stand the Reader's Digest Condensed Books in his apartment, but he swallows his pride.
He never thinks of her and how she's finishing grad school and how back when they were eighteen he promised he'd be proud of her.
He lied.
He's not.
He isn't even jealous.
-
A man comes out of a jewelry store one day as Jess passes by, stumbling into him. Jess smells smoke on him from a foot away, and as the guy coughs he can tell there is alcohol there too. He almost wants to be—kind?—and to tell him to get the hell home and lie down and drink water, but instead he shoves the guy away and continues down the street. It is fifteen minutes later that the face he barely saw strikes a memory in his head, and he feels some sick, mild sense of satisfaction that, like him, most people never really move on; that no one is perfect, particularly not those who pretend to be. That a job doesn't define a person in the least.
It's Drew.
He begins to think he recognizes people, randomly, on the streets, not that he ever says anything. He knows them from the bar, from their secret lives. Just once he's seen them, but once is enough. He is not the only one who does things wrong.
It makes him angry that he's not the only one, he's never the only one, but at the same time there is an unexplainable rush of almost-joy at the realization.
-
Ideas swirl in his head of fitting the puzzle pieces of his life back together, but in seconds they are dismissed and ignored. Various things bring these unlikely questions to his mind. They lead him to uncertain conclusions and lessen his stability by half, and this all again lands him somewhere, drowning himself in uncertainty.
He isn't scared of anything, but he doesn't give a damn about anything he should care about either.
The phone at his apartment inexplicably begins to ring more often—or else he just notices it more—but he will not buy an answering machine, and he celebrates his birthday watching his face reflect in liquor and half-listening to an old bartender in a leather vest threatening to cut him off.
It's the best party he could ever have asked for.