Author's Note: Thank you to everyone that reviewed. I really appreciate it. I hope more of you review in the future. I must admit that I was a little sad that so few people reviewed my last chapter. I am sorry that this chapter has been so long in coming. For some reason, this one has been really hard to write (and became very long as well). Hope the length makes up for the long wait! The good news is that the next few chapters have been started, so the time between chapters will be shorter. Sam Cdn – you finally get to find out what happened in NY!
Thanks to ML for reading this before it was posted. There are many less typos thanks to her.
On the Beach
It was around four o'clock in the afternoon when Doug noticed a lone figure sitting on the beach. It was the first week in October, and the weather had grown progressively cooler, so the beach was almost empty. It was just one of the many details that he routinely noted and filed away in the back of his brain. Two hours later, he was heading home, when some instinct prompted him to drive by the beach again. The lone figure was still sitting there, and upon closer inspection, the person looked vaguely familiar. He got out of his patrol vehicle and walked across the sand. When he got closer, he saw that the man was Jack. He continued walking until he was standing beside him.
Jack did not appear to notice his presence, so finally he cleared his throat and asked, "Jack, is everything alright?"
Jack shook his head, no. Doug sat down next to Jack, seemingly unconcerned about the effect of the sand on his uniform. "What's wrong?" he asked softly. Jack didn't answer. "I know that we don't know each other all that well, but I'm a good listener."
They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Jack remembered the words that Doug had spoken a week ago, that night when they had gone drinking together. I am so tired of being lonely. Maybe Doug is someone who would understand. He swallowed and then began to speak. "Jason called today, and immediately I was back to being the person I was when I left New York. I have tried so hard this last month to get back to being me, and with one phone call, it was all gone."
"Who's Jason?" Doug asked.
"My boyfriend," Jack replied. "Well, ex-boyfriend."
"What happened?" Doug asked.
"The short version is that things ended badly, and I escaped to Capeside."
"I've got plenty of time for the long version, if you think talking about it will help," Doug offered.
Jack sighed, and began to speak, "I met him in February when I went to a birthday party for a co-worker. I'd never seen him before, and the first thing I noticed about him was his voice. When he talked, it was like everyone was magnetically drawn to him. He was really smart and funny, and incredibly handsome. With his blond hair and green eyes, he could have easily been a model for Abercrombie and Fitch, but instead all of that gorgeousness was wasted on an architect.
"It was a large party, and I really didn't know many people there. I guess most of the faculty had other commitments that night or something. I was hanging out talking with this complete stranger when he came over and introduced himself. I couldn't believe that this amazing guy was flirting with me. We ditched the rest of the party and ended up in a coffee shop a block down the street. We talked for hours until they finally kicked us out when they closed at 2 AM.
"The next week we spent almost every free minute together. We'd talk for hours about everything—politics, art – we even liked most of the same bands. And every night, we'd end up back at his place. The sex was amazing; he had amazing equipment and knew exactly what to do with it." Suddenly Jack seemed to remember whom he was talking to. He looked over at Doug, expecting the look of revulsion that usually resulted from any discussion of non-heterosexual sex, yet in Doug's eyes he only saw kindness. "Sorry." Doug shrugged, silently indicating that Jack should continue.
"I moved into his apartment exactly two weeks after I met him. Now it sounds pretty stupid, but at the time it felt so very right. It seemed like it was inevitable, and it was such a pain wandering home every morning before work.
"The first weekend after I moved in, we had Jen and her boyfriend, David, over for dinner. I was so nervous, though there was no reason to worry. Everyone loved Jason, and Jen was no different. It was such a perfect evening; I never would have predicted that both of our relationships would implode less than six months later."
Jack paused, trying to gather his thoughts to explain the next few months, a story he had only told his father, and even then, only the bare minimum of details. He sighed, and then continued, "For the first month or so, everything was great. Every day, I looked forward to coming home to him, spending time together. Watching TV, talking. We also went out a lot of evenings as well, which was a little bit of a change for me. It was fun trying new places to eat and spending the rest of the night at various gay bars and clubs of New York City, but eventually I couldn't keep up the pace. As a teacher, I spend a lot of time prepping for classes, and there always seems to be a pile of essays to be read. I always intended to do stuff after we got back, but then we would end up in bed. Eventually it reached a point where my work started to suffer. Just to survive, I started to stay in a few nights a week, and Jason went out alone. He said he understood, but I still felt like I was letting him down. Things got a little better for a while. I was doing an OK but not great job at work, and Jason seemed fairly content. And then he found out I had signed up to teach summer school. This wasn't anything new—the only way to pay the rent in New York on a teacher's salary was to work summers. I have ever since I got my first teaching job.
"We had this huge fight and in the end I felt even more guilty than before. He asked me why I could never compromise for the sake of our relationship. I felt so selfish, and as a result, I tried even harder to make it work. I pulled back from everything. I knew I was doing a lousy job at teaching, and I hardly ever saw my friends, even Jen, my best friend. I just wanted our relationship to work, and I thought that if I tried hard enough, it would.
"When we'd go out, everyone would tell me how lucky I was to be going out with someone so handsome and successful and charming. Everyone saw us as the perfect couple, but everything just felt wrong on the inside. I was just too tired from trying to spread myself too thin, but I thought it was worth it. Even the sex wasn't very good anymore, but I kept hoping things would get better. I felt like a fraud.
"It was the beginning of August, and we had been planning a perfect evening. Dinner at our favorite restaurant and then meeting some of his friends at The Metro to party all night. We were celebrating the end of summer school, and being together for six months. About an hour before we were about to leave for dinner, Jen called. She was crying so hard that I could hardly tell who was on the phone. We cancelled our reservation and decided to meet up at the club later on that evening. We were both a little disappointed, but I knew I couldn't go to dinner without finding out what was wrong with Jen. I caught a cab and was at her place in about twenty minutes. For a long time, all she could do was cry. Eventually she calmed down enough to tell me what was wrong.
"That morning had been her sixteen week checkup, and they were going to do a sonogram. David was supposed to meet her there. He never showed up, and wasn't answering his phone. David was a stockbroker, so it wasn't completely unusual for his cell to be turned off when he was in a meeting, but he wasn't the type to miss something really important. After a few hours of worrying, she finally tracked down his work phone number. By then it was after 5 PM on a Friday, so no one was around. She was transferred to his voice mail, and there was a message saying he no longer worked at the firm and referred clients to another associate.
"She went to his apartment and the door was standing open. Inside, the place was completely empty. The manager happened to be in there. From him, she learned that David had given notice a month before, and the movers had come the day before. David hadn't even left a forwarding address to get his damage deposit back. It was like the man had completely dropped off the face of the earth. Somehow she managed to hold it together long enough to make it home and call me.
"We talked for a couple of hours and I finally got her to eat something. Once everything was under control, I went directly to The Metro to meet up with Jason. It was only 10 PM, which was pretty early for Jason and his friends. The place was pretty crowded, and it took me a while to find him. He was on the dance floor with some guy who looked like he wasn't even eighteen. It wasn't unusual to see him dancing; it was just another thing that he did really well. Guys were always flirting with him, but as I watched him and the kid together, I realized that the body language was all wrong. Someone was being persued, but it sure as hell wasn't the kid doing the chasing.
"I couldn't move. It was if my feet were cemented to the ground. I watched as they headed off to the back rooms." Jack looked up at Doug, suddenly aware of his audience for the first time in quite a while. His smile was sarcastic, "in case you are wondering, no one goes to the back rooms for a nice conversation, if you get what I mean." When Doug nodded, Jack continued, "it's strange. I didn't confront him, or try to stop him. I just watched him leave. As I stood there in the middle of the dance floor, my first instinct was to run after Jason and apologize for not being there that evening. Can you imagine? He's the one cheating, but somehow I felt like it was all my fault. I think that the only thing that kept me from running after him was that I didn't want to have the argument in front of his friends. I just left.
"When I got back to our apartment, I started packing my stuff. I couldn't continue to stay there, being half of a couple that was only perfect on the outside. I had been packing for an hour before I realized that I had no place to go, and no way to get my stuff there, even if I did. Why the hell had I purchased a convertible with a trunk barely big enough to hold a suitcase? There was no way I could call Jen, who had barely survived the defection of David, and I was too embarrassed to have any of my other friends witness my humiliation. In the end, I called my father. It was the middle of the night in London, but he didn't mind. I gave him the basic details, and then it was the most amazing thing. He was silent for a bit, and then all he said was 'keep packing. I'll take care of everything.' It was perfect, exactly what I needed: unconditional love and support. An hour later, he called back. At 8 AM the next morning, a truck would show up, and everything that didn't fit in my car would be taken and put in storage. He had also made a reservation for me at a hotel. I have no idea what kind of strings he had to pull, or how he managed to take care of everything even though he was on the other side of the world, but he did it.
"I was still packing when Jason came home at 2 AM. He was furious that I hadn't shown up at the club. I yelled back that he didn't need me when he was screwing some underage twink in the back room. We yelled at each other for a while longer, before he went to bed, saying that he was tired and we should discuss it in the morning after we had calmed down. We never did have that conversation because I was gone before he woke up. Maybe that's why it is tempting to fall back into the same old patterns of our relationship when Jason called this afternoon. I barely stopped myself from apologizing for how it all ended. He even asked me to consider coming back to New York. Thank God for an iron clad contract with Capeside High, or I might have considered it. Can you imagine?" Jack sighed, and Doug sat there, waiting for him to continue.
"Maybe it would have been better to finish the argument before I left New York. Maybe I wouldn't be so screwed up now if I had just gotten some sort of closure."
For the first time in quite a while, Doug spoke. "Closure. God, I hate that word."
Jack was surprised at the bitterness in Doug's voice. "Why?"
"When Susan dumped me, as part of 'getting closure' she felt the need to give me a list of everything wrong with me." Doug closed his eyes, and could hear the words she had thrown at him. Boring. Morose. Obsessed with work. He opened his eyes, forcing himself to ignore the voice continuing in his head. "Maybe she was right. Since then, I seem to have become the person she said I was." He sighed. "I guess she needed to justify to herself why she wanted to dump me, but what about me? Maybe it would have been better for her to just walk away after telling me she didn't love me. Maybe things would have been different." He paused, and when he spoke again, Jack could barely hear him. "Maybe I would be different."
Doug was looking across the water, so Jack could not see into his eyes. If he could, Jack was convinced that he could have seen down into Doug's soul. "When did this happen?" he asked.
And just as suddenly, it was as if a door had slammed, and Doug pulled himself back into the present. "Just after I got back from the academy. A long time ago." He sighed. "Closure. Do you think it would have worked? Forgive me if I am completely out of line here, but it seems that what you really needed from Jason was for him to acknowledge how much you had given up for your relationship, and I just don't see him giving you that. Isn't that the whole reason why things went so badly in the first place?"
"I guess. Maybe," Jack conceded, "but sometimes I wish I had really told him how I felt, for the first time."
"Maybe, but sometimes it's really hard to know where to stop, so that later you don't feel the need to apologize for the things you said. Because then the whole 'final conversation' just starts up again. Sometimes, I think that when a relationship is that toxic, it may be best to just walk away, a clean break."
Jack considered for a minute. "It makes sense, but it just seems so backwards. What about trying to be friends with your ex?"
"I guess it depends on whether you think your ex will make a good friend. Most of the time, a relationship fails for all of the same reasons why you wouldn't want to be friends with that person, and it's pretty dumb to try and live up to an unrealistic ideal."
Jack was surprised at how insightful Doug's advice was, and Jack knew that it would be a long time before he could process the many thoughts running through his head. They sat on the beach in silence for quite a while, before Doug finally suggested that they head back to the parking lot, as October was not the ideal time of year for hanging out at the beach.
As they were walking across the sand, Doug suddenly had an idea. Before he could analyze the impulse or change his mind, he made a suggestion, "hey, I just remembered that Pacey's coming over for dinner tonight. Why don't you join us?"
"I wouldn't want to intrude…"
"It's not an intrusion; it's only Monday," Doug explained.
"What's so special about Monday?" Jack asked, completely mystified.
Doug laughed, "Pacey never told you? Well, it's usually the slowest day of the week at the restaurant, so as long as there's nothing unusual happening, he doesn't go in on Monday night. If he has no other plans, he comes over and I cook dinner."
"Isn't that a little backwards? Shouldn't he be the one doing the cooking?"
"Nah. He needs a break from it occasionally. Plus, the whole Monday tradition started four years ago when he decided to force me to learn how to cook."
"So what's on tonight's menu?"
"Chicken Tikka Masala with basmati rice and chick-peas. The recipes I found sound great."
Jack was a little worried, "should I be concerned that you're trying something you've never cooked before?"
Doug grinned. "Don't worry. It's been months since Pacey has had to bail me out of culinary disaster." He turned to look at Jack. "So are your tastebuds up for an adventure?"
"Sure. Why not? Just tell me where and when. Can I bring anything?"
"Only if you want something to drink other than beer or diet coke. I've got everything else covered." He pulled out a notebook and scribbled his address on it and handed it over. "Show up here any time before 7:30 PM."
"Sure. I'll see you soon." They were now back at the parking lot. Doug watched as Jack got into his convertible and drove away. He savored the feeling of anticipation for a moment, before it was time to head home to change and starting cooking.
That night was the first of many Monday nights that Doug, Jack, and Pacey would spend together in Doug's somewhat cramped kitchen. Eventually, Doug and Jack began to hang out occasionally, even without Pacey's presence. Upon learning that they both jogged to keep in shape, they began running together, whenever their work schedules would permit. Jack even convinced Doug to go to several Capeside High football games. Even the fact that the Minutemen consistently lost couldn't dampen Doug's newfound happiness. Gradually, other people began to notice the difference in him, even though they did not know the source of that happiness. At work, Doug was much more laid-back, occasionally spending time laughing and joking with his co-workers. Pacey, more perceptive than most people would give him credit for, noticed that small amounts of disorder were allowed to creep into Doug's apartment: the occasional dish left in the sink or the stack of CDs left unalphabetized.
TBC
