Chapter Text
My favorite thing about waking up has always been those first few seconds, the seconds where I don’t know anything.
I think we all know the feeling—the shift from unconsciousness to consciousness, where you’re still half-asleep and have to remember once again where you are and who you are and what it is that you’re waking up to. I always like to avoid those things for as long as possible, burying myself back into the covers and closing my still-tired eyes in the hopes of at least just lying there, knowing in the back of my mind that I’m only postponing the inevitable.
To be quite honest, these particular feelings had been leaving me alone for a while, because for a while, I had something to look forward to waking up to. Today, though? Today I am alone…except I’m not.
I notice it when I roll over, brushing against a somewhat larger body in the bed. I rub my eyes and let them slowly open, then take in the still-sleeping form of none other than Craig Owens. That’s when I notice the slightly different color of the walls, the way the bed looks and feels a bit different, now that I’m actually focused on it. And then I realize something else: I’m half-naked, and so is Craig.
And here it comes, the inevitable reality as I remember everything that happened just yesterday. Was it really yesterday already? Has time sped up? It feels like the world should’ve at least paused. But of course it didn’t. Time has passed, and more time will pass, because that’s the way it works.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, I broke up with Kellin Quinn and let him drive back home to Oregon, and then I cried on the front porch swing, wondering why I had to fuck everything up by thinking I’d fallen for him.
Craig found me and took me to a club with him, promising that a night out would make me feel better. And so I went along with it, and I got really fucking drunk just like I always do, and then…
It takes me a bit longer to remember that piece of information, but after struggling a bit with my slow, hungover mind, I manage to recall the dripping sweat, the roaming hands, the feeling of bodies pressed together.
That memory makes me cringe; I can’t help but feel like I’m betraying somebody—specifically Kellin—by having sex with Craig. I start to search for my shirt, which is when Craig himself stirs, reaching out and running a hand across my chest. “Hmm? Vic?” he says groggily, rubbing his eyes. “What the hell? What are you doing here?”
I grimace, finding my shirt on the floor next to the bed and pulling it over my head. “Uh, you brought me to your house,” I say, my voice coming out rough and scratchy.
"Did I say you could sleep in my bed?" he asks, raising an eyebrow at me condescendingly. Either it’s a trick question, or he really doesn’t remember.
"Um…you didn’t say I couldn’t," I say slowly, climbing out of the bed and pushing some hair out of my face. "We, uh…we had sex." I grimace again as I say it out loud. I might’ve consented last night, but now it’s the next day, and I regret it. Not that it’s the first time I’ve done something while drunk that I regretted in the morning.
"I have a boyfriend, Vic," Craig states. "I don’t want to see you."
That stings, but I can’t stop myself from pointing out, “You’re the one who initiated it.”
Craig glares at me—shit. Bad idea. “Honey, like I’d ever want you back.”
"Last night, that’s exactly what you were saying to me." Fuck. Shut up, Vic.
"I was drunk," he says. "I don’t even remember why the hell I was with you in the first place. It was a mistake. You know it was."
He’s right—I do know that. I nod slowly. “I’ll…I’ll go, then.”
Craig nods, making a shooing motion with his hands. “Yeah. Go.”
Without another word, I turn around and make my way out of the room and then out the front door. His words don’t faze me as much as they used to; he gets like this a lot. It’s just confusing me, because one minute he’s making out with me and trying to win me back, but the next, he’s telling me he never wants to see me again. I don’t know where we stand anymore. I don’t even know where I want us to stand anymore.
When I get back home, I find Jaime eating cereal at the table in the kitchen. He looks up at me when I walk in, digging through the pantry before eventually settling on just a PopTart and sitting down across from him. The silence is awkward, because both of us have things that we need to say but that neither of us are willing to actually say. I’m not really willing to eat somewhere else, though; this is a conversation that we need to get over with.
So, once Jaime has finished and put his bowl in the sink, he finally turns to me and says, “So, I guess you did it, then.”
I stand up. “Did what?”
He shrugs. “You know. Broke up. With, uh, with Kellin.”
I nod slowly, biting my lip. “Yeah.”
It wasn’t Jaime that told me to break up with Kellin. He didn’t even suggest it in the first place. That was all me. It was my mind that said those things. Jaime was just the last person I talked to before it happened; he was the one I ranted to, and even though I’m pretty sure at least half of the shit I said made absolutely no sense to him—some of it didn’t even make much sense to me, to be honest—he kept a level head and just gave me some advice.
"So…why did you do it?" he asks. "Y’know, in the end…what did you decide for yourself that led to that?"
I sigh, leaning against the kitchen counter. “I just couldn’t do it.”
Jaime narrows his eyes. “Couldn’t do what?”
"I couldn’t keep dating him," I explain. "I couldn’t keep leading him on like that. That’s what it felt like. It felt like, even if I did love him, it wasn’t reallove. It wasn’t him. I didn’t really love him. I was just taking all that love for someone else and I was giving it to him and saying that I loved him. But I didn’t. I just needed to give that love to someone, because if I didn’t, I’d choke on it.” I look away from him, thinking of Kellin, thinking of the guilty ache in my chest whenever I looked at him yesterday, thinking of the stars in his eyes. Those eyes glimmered with absolute adoration every time they locked with mine, and that scared me to death.
"Do you understand?" I ask softly, because I just want to know that I’m not completely crazy.
Jaime nods. “I think so.” Then he makes a face, as if he’s thinking about something. “But to be honest, I think you’re even worse off with Craig than you were with Kellin. And I don’t like the thought of you going back to him.”
"He wants me back," I blurt without thinking.
Jaime raises an eyebrow. “He does?”
I nod. “At least, he says he does. Sometimes. And then other times he pushes me away. But then he comes back to me. I don’t know. He’d do this sometimes when we were dating. He’d be hostile and ignore me for a little while, but then he’d always end up coming back to me.” I shrug. “He’s confusing.”
"I think he’s manipulative."
Deep down, I think I know he’s manipulative, but that doesn’t stop me from getting angry. It’s more of a natural reflex than anything else. “What do you mean? You think he’s playing with me or something?”
"Well, yeah," Jaime says bluntly. "And I think you’re in denial about it."
Deep down, I think I’m aware of that, too, but the denial rises up inside of me anyways. “He’s just confused. He doesn’t know what he wants.” Even I can taste the bullshit on my tongue, but I push that thought away. I don’t want to believe it.
"Come on, Vic. Are you really still so wrapped around his finger that you’d deal with him picking you up and then pushing you back down, over and over and over again? That’s not you. Or, at least, it didn’t used to be."
I don’t want to listen to what he’s saying, so instead, I turn away. “Shut up, Jaime. You don’t know him.”
"I know him well enough to see what’s going on, and I’m not biased like you are."
"You’re seeing it all wrong. You don’t know him like I do." With that, I storm out of the kitchen and up to my room, where I lock the door and grab my guitar. Jaime knocks multiple times, telling me that I can’t just ignore all this forever, and I know he’s right about that, but I don’t want to admit it. I just want to hide away for a few hours, and I guess eventually he finally gets that, because he leaves me alone.
So for a while I’m just absentmindedly playing, even singing softly to myself, and everything is good until my hands start to strum a familiar progression without my consent. I can hear the words in my head, but I don’t sing them because it feels like someone else should be.
The song is “Alone Together”, and the “someone else” is Kellin Quinn.
I stop abruptly, letting the sudden silence fill the air. I’m thinking of his insecurities, how he never thought that he could sing. I’m thinking of the day we sang this song together just for the hell of it.
Without thought, I find myself reaching for my phone and searching for the recording we made. Then I close my eyes and just listen.
I don’t know why I’m doing this, exactly. Maybe it’s just because the wound from breaking up is still so fresh and new, and it doesn’t help that I’m the one who made it in the first place. But I know I can’t have him back, so I’m just going to have to let it fade.
At the very end, there’s a long pause before the recording stops, and I remember why: I forgot to shut it off at first because I was too busy staring at him in awe, feeling myself falling in love—or what I thought was love.
—
Tonight, I’m planning on getting drunk. Again.
I know from experience that this is an amazingly bad idea, but reasoning is not my friend right now, so I find myself going out anyways. The sky is darkening, and somehow, I can tell that it’s going to be a long night. Does this faze me? No. Not at all.
It’s not too hard to find a club. I’m not really picky; I just need a place that serves alcohol, which is pretty much every place. I take my familiar position on one of the barstools and start off with something strong. I think the bartender can see it in my face, can hear it in the tone of my voice: I’m not fucking around tonight.
The thought of Kellin disappears more and more with every shot. That’s what has triggered this, just like it did last night. That’s what I want to forget, the way his voice shook yesterday as he cried into my shoulder, as he begged me to let him stay, as I pushed through the pain and told him it would be best for him to forget me.
At some point, a random guy starts talking to me. He’s probably about as wasted as I am, but neither of us cares; we just talk about things I can’t remember and things that probably don’t matter. He tells me his name, but in the next five minutes, I’ve already forgotten it.
For a while, everything is good, but I was stupid to think that it would last. The guy leaves after a while, and at around that same time, I start to feel like shit. That’s a gradual feeling, but before I know it I’m downing even more shots in an attempt to get rid of the feeling. It doesn’t work, of course. It just gets worse, a twist in my stomach, a blurring of my vision, a tightening of my chest, a spinning and pounding in my head.
I’ve gotten drunk like this so often that I feel like I should be used to these feelings by now.
I’m not, though, so I find myself climbing off of the barstool and heading out of the club, unsteady and feeling sick. I end up sitting down right outside and resting my back against the wall, hugging my knees to my chest and groaning. I feel like the world is falling apart around me.
This makes me think of those drunken nights with Kellin, when he’d take me back to our hotel every time I lost control of myself. It made me feel horrible, because I wanted to help him and protect him and make him feel safe, not the other way around. I wanted to worry about him and hush his cries and wrap my arms around him to calm him. I didn’t want to feel useless. I didn’t want to feel like I was dragging yet another person down with all my issues.
Fuck. I’m thinking about him. I’m nowhere near as sober as I was a few hours ago, and I’m still thinking about him.
I rest my head in my knees, and a few seconds later, a hand softly takes my wrist. “Hey, Vic,” says a familiar voice. “What are you doing out here all alone?”
For a crazy, delusional moment, I think that it’s Kellin, but a split second later, I realize who it really is and look up. Craig is standing in front of me, holding my wrist in his hand and staring at me with what looks like concern.
"I—um…" I stammer, because I don’t know what to say. "I was…thinking about someone."
"And you got drunk?" he concludes, sitting down next to me. I nod. "Well," he says, "I’m worried about you, you know."
I just nod again, making a small whimpering noise. “I think I miss him.” I can barely get the words out.
Craig wraps an arm around me. “Who is it?”
"K-Kellin," I stutter. "My ex…ex-boyfriend."
"Well, I want to help you forget about him," Craig says. "I don’t like seeing you like this."
I nod for a third time, because I’m not sure what else to do. “Um…okay.”
"I’m gonna take you home," he adds, standing and helping me up. I just go along with it.
The longer he’s with me, the better I feel. Kellin gets pushed to the back of my mind. Craig’s affection feels nice, and I can’t help but smile and think that I was right—he wants me back. Or, even if he doesn’t necessarily want to date me, at least he cares about me.
I’m too intoxicated to question anything. All I know is that I like Craig by my side as he helps me back to my house, and I like the things he says to me, and I like the way that everything he does makes me feel so much better.
This whole moment just serves as a reminder: Craig is here and Kellin isn’t. You broke up with Kellin. Forget about him. Just forget about him.