Get Me Out of My Mind
-
Jack wonders what he's even doing right now, striding down the street with his hands balled into fists in the pits on his pant pockets. But then he remembers, and butterflies form in his stomach. It's almost as if he's trying to block it out.
His goddamn mother.
"Get a job," she had said. "How about you go help out Mr. Gaskarth down the street?"
"The special man? The one who never leaves his house?" Jack had responded, surprised.
"Yes, him." You need money for college."
And so, Jack somehow agreed to help the mysterious, "special" man who lives in a quaint little home a few houses down from him.
Jack doesn't want to work for goddamn Mr. Gaskarth—the man is a complete nut-job. Jack has only seen him once, when he was taking out his trash. He simply dumped the black bag of garbage into the trash can, and ran back inside like a scared rabbit.
Jack stops walking once the canary yellow house surrounded by waist-length brittle grass lies in front of him. He takes a deep breath, moves the garbage can from its place directly in front of the door, and rings the doorbell.
Five minutes pass.
Jack groans.
He bangs on the door vehemently, his fist turning red and pounding with pain.
After a minute of continuous knocking, the door slowly creaks open. A man stands in its threshold, with his body stiff and his arms glued to his side; he's practically folding into himself.
"Y-you're," he stammers. He has a soft voice that's barely above a whisper. "Y-you, y-you're here t-to help?"
"Yeah, sir," Jack replies firmly. He feels silly calling him "sir" because Mr. Gaskarth can't be more than a few years older than him.
"C-call me Alex," he says, a bit louder. He awkwardly tugs on a strand of his messy brown hair. "Come in."
Jack had expected the house to be a dump cluttered with garbage and junk, at first, but once he steps onto its polished hardwood floors, he sees that it's quite the opposite. Warm golds and reds greet Jack as he passes through the entrance way. There's barely anything in the house except for furniture, and there isn't a speck of dust in sight. The house also smells like cinnamon and apples and other good things that make Jack feel oddly at home.
"I'm Jack Barakat," Jack informs him, running his fingers through his black hair streaked with platinum blonde strands. "So, what do I do first?"
"I usually order my groceries online," Alex says, "but since you're here, I can get them fresh now." He produces a small shopping list from his pocket and timidly hands it to Jack with shaking hands.
"You want me to buy your groceries?" Jack takes the list. "What else?"
"Mow the lawn."
"That jungle? Sir, there is no way—"
"Okay, it's okay," Alex sputters hurriedly. "You don't have to. Maybe tomorrow?"
Jack looks at him oddly, before proceeding to head over to the market.
***
After he finishes stashing the products in the fridge, he turns to Alex—who's inspecting him from the doorway with unsure eyes—and asks, "What next?"
"I guess that's it," Alex says, and let's out a sigh that suggests he had been holding his breath while Jack had been putting away the food.
"Really?" Jack questions excitedly, walking towards the front door again.
"B-but," Alex calls out, "could you maybe stay awhile? I made you buy cookies just for us."
Jack looks at the broken, lonely man whose eyes are filled with something that Jack can't place. "Okay," he replies quietly. "Okay. I'll stay awhile."
Jack sees a tiny smile creep onto Alex's face, and he races to the cupboard to get the cookies. Jack sits down on one of the chairs surrounding Alex's table, and he wonders why Alex has four seats positioned around the table when he lives alone.
"Oh," Alex gasps, turning to Jack. "That's Lisa's place! I'll find you another chair."
"Lisa? More people live here?"
"Yeah."
Alex sets a plate of cookies in the middle of the table and a can of pop in front of Jack, before dashing into the living room to find a chair. He comes back with a rocking chair and positions it next to Jack's original seat.
Jack reluctantly switches seats and asks, "So where is Lisa?"
"She's not here right now."
"Is she your sister or something?" Jack starts to nibble on a cookie.
"Fiancé," Alex sighs dreamily, slumping down in the seat across from Jack.
"What are the other chairs for?"
"They're for my parents," Alex explains. "They're not here right now, either."
"Oh." Jack is surprised to hear that more nut-jobs live with Alex. "So why don't you join them? You know, outside?"
"It's too dangerous," Alex says, as if the answer is evident. "You have no idea how much I envy you, Jack Barakat. You're so brave."
"It really isn't that hard." Jack can't help but laugh a little. "Hey, I'll teach you how to go outside."
"No, no! It's too scary!" Alex whimpers, sounding almost whiney.
"No, really. We'll just walk down the path, okay?"
"No!" Alex yells, and starts rocking back and forth.
"Okay, okay," Jack replies rapidly. "We won't go outside today."
Alex calms down. "Do you like the cookies?"
"They're great."
The two are draped in silence, and Jack finishes eating. "I guess I should go now."
"Okay," Alex says quietly, sadly.
He walks Jack to the door, and says goodbye as Jack skips out of the house. He watches him disappear down the street, already growing anxious for the skunk-haired boy to return.
***
Jack throws open his front door and sees his mother reading a book on the couch.
She looks up from her book and eagerly asks, "How did it go?"
"Okay," Jack says truthfully, showing her the crisp ten dollar bill that Alex had given him. "Do you know that he lives with his fiancé and parents, too?"
His mother looks down at her lap, like Jack had just uttered something offensive. "You don't know why he never comes out of the house?"
"No..."
"You were probably too young to remember. Five years ago, when you were thirteen, there was a car crash down the street. Mr. Gaskarth's family was pulling out of the driveway, during the winter, and a van skidded down the street and hit them."
A shiver runs down Jack's spine, and a pang of remorse for poor Alex ripples through him. "Oh," he quietly says, and walks up to his bedroom.
***
After mowing the lawn, Jack's eating cookies with Alex again.
"You know, nothing is going to hurt you outside," Jack tells him.
"That doesn't mean it can't."
"Alex," Jack begins awkwardly, "don't you think you should... maybe... get rid of Lisa's stuff? Your parents' stuff?"
"What do you mean?"
"They've been gone for five years, Alex, come on," Jack says harshly.
"No! Shut up!"
"I just want to help," Jack quietly says. "I think you should move on."
"Come with me," Alex abruptly asserts, and stands up from his seat. He starts to lead Jack to the back of the house, the only place he hasn't seen. There's a hallway stretching before them, and Alex brings him into one of the rooms.
It's turquoise, and has a queen sized bed against the far wall. To left, there's a table full of pictures. Jack notices that everything is coated with dust, completely untouched. He coughs and waves his hand to expel the dusty air.
Alex grasps Jack's hand, and pulls him towards the table. He points to a picture of a woman with flowing golden locks, clasped in a happy, younger Alex's embrace.
"How can you let go of someone as amazing as her?" he whispers.
"You have to," Jack says in the same tone. "This isn't healthy."
"No, I can't." And Alex Gaskarth cries into Jack’s chest.
***
“I don’t choose to be afraid, you know?” Alex tells Jack. “I don’t choose to be crazy.”
“I know,” Jack says, because he does.
“Every day, I wake up thinking that today will be the day I leave the house and go for walks like a normal person. And every day, I also wake up thinking that today will be the day Lisa and my parents are alive. But it’s not. I’m hoping for something that will never happen. And it’ll never happen because of me, my own mind.”
“Hey,” Jack says soothingly. “It’s—“
“I want a job that’s not online. I want the house Lisa and I were going to move into once we saved enough money. She lived with us because her parents were abusive, you know. I’m so ready to get out of my mind.”
***
The next day, Jack slyly produces something from inside his messenger bag and proudly holds it up for Alex.
"They're for you." He smiles at the two goldfish swimming around in a cellophane bag.
Alex watches them thwack against the clear bag. "But why?"
"I thought you might need some company. And goldfish don't need walks, so."
Alex gives him a ghost of a smile. "Thanks."
Jack helps Alex set up a tank for the fish, and Jack stays to talk to Alex until the sunsets.
***
Jack now visits Alex to talk, as opposed to work. Alex still pays him, even though Jack says that he shouldn't because he really isn't doing anything. And Jack thinks, Maybe Mr. Gaskarth isn't so crazy in the bad way, anymore.
And then Alex does something unexpected and maybe even a little strange, when he brushes a strand of hair from Jack's face and tentatively pecks his cheek. And Jack does something even more unexpected and maybe even a little stranger, when he kisses Alex on the lips and says, "I'll help you move on."
They fool around on the sofa, finding all of the right places to kiss and nip and suck and lick, before Alex guides Jack to his bedroom. And then they fumble until Alex is on top of Jack, inside of Jack.
Jack doesn’t know when or why or how he became attracted to Alex Gaskarth. There’s something so completely entrancing about him. He’s like an erotic, thrilling, cryptic novel that Jack wants to absorb every word, sentence, paragraph of, but can’t, because some of its most exciting pages are so torn apart with age that they’re unreadable. But even though parts of the story are missing, and even though it barely makes sense, Jack can’t put it down, and he keeps flipping page after page after page, anxiously waiting for the end when the missing pieces all come together.
The next day, Jack has to think of a good lie to tell his parents and his English teacher, when they confront him about never returning home that night and being late for class that morning.
***
“You make me feel normal,” Alex tells Jack, petting his hair as they sit on the porch. Jack feels proud; before, Alex wouldn’t even go past the threshold.
“Don’t be fooled by me.”
Alex playfully flicks the side of Jack’s head, and Jack whacks his thigh in response. When they first met, Jack had never expected Alex to be the type of person to joke around or smile, even. And Jack feels like he’s taking too much credit when he thinks that Alex is smiling and joking again because of him.
“I’m sorry.” Alex dips down and brushes his lips against Jack’s.
Well, when they first met, Jack had never expected Alex to be his boyfriend, either. Boyfriend? Is that the right word? Sex, kisses, and blowjobs don’t equal a relationship, do they? Jack wouldn’t be ashamed of announcing that he and Alex are boyfriends, be he doesn’t feel like jumping into things too quickly. He still doesn’t know how to feel about having sex with a 25 year-old man who has agoraphobia and who never leaves the house.
***
The kids at school, they’re talking about Jack and Alex now. Jack doesn’t know why they want to waste their breath on an affair as insignificant as him and Alex, but he guesses the gossip must be slow.
“You know that Jack Barakat guy? The one who looks like a skunk? Yeah, he’s been hanging around that crazy fucker, Alex Gaskarth. You know, the one who never leaves his house? I’ll bet he’s brainwashing Jack into becoming a nut-job like him!” he hears a girl exchange to her friend on his way to biology.
“I hear Gaskarth keeps Jack locked in his basement everyday, and pays him to be his sex slave. Helping him around the house? I don’t think so,” a boy tells a group of his snickering companions during lunch.
“Gaskarth? He’s crazy,” the boy who sits behind Jack during math whispers to the girl next to him. “I hear he only uses the whole I-never-come-out-of-my-house thing as a cover-up. He actually goes to the cemetery every night and does stuff to his girlfriend’s corpse. Gross, right?”
Out of all the nasty rumors Jack has overheard today, none of them have made his blood boil like this one. Most of them were pertaining to him, not Alex. How dare the boy behind him say something so cruel and untrue?
“What did you just say?” Jack venomously hisses at the boy.
“That the fucktard you work for is mentally unstable.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Jack raises his voice. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know more than you. You’re just so far up his ass that you can’t see it.”
And then Jack leaps up from his desk, spilling his papers across the floor, and swings a punch at the kid. Scarlet starts dripping down the boy’s nose and he jumps up from his desk and tackles Jack to the floor in response. They wrestle around, throwing uncoordinated punches, until the kid straddles Jack and relentlessly punches him repeatedly, before he’s hauled away by the math teacher.
After school, Alex blots Jack’s wounds with damp tissues.
“How did this happen?” he inquires.
“I got into a fight at school.”
“Oh?”
“This guy was talking about you,” Jack says, “so I punched him. And he beat me up.”
“I’m not worth getting beaten up for.”
“I’d do it again.”
Jack hisses as Alex swipes the dripping blood from his lip, before covering the cut with a soft kiss.
***
Alex spoons Jack on the couch, watching the passing traffic through the window of the living room.
"Are you going to come with me on a walk, tomorrow?" Jack looks up at Alex questioningly.
"Of course not."
"Alex, come on!" Jack groans. "You've come so far. We cleaned out your parents' room, yesterday. Just one little walk, okay?"
"No."
"You know what?" Jack stands up. "I'm not going to help you anymore. I'm not coming to your house anymore. You’re going to help me now. You’re going to come to my house. And that’s the only place you’ll see me."
"Jack, come on," Alex whines, as Jack heads for the front door.
As the door slams shut, Jack feels hollow, unsure. There's no way Alex will show up. He doesn’t care that much about Jack. But Jack’s willing to do whatever it takes to get Alex out of his house.
***
A week flies by, and then two more. Alex doesn't visit Jack and Jack doesn't visit Alex.
The grass on Alex's front lawn is overgrown again and he's back to ordering groceries online. He feels so alone without Jack. But not just alone—he feels empty, hopeless, helpless. And he hates himself, because he can do something to get Jack back into his arms. He just has to walk down a sidewalk.
Suddenly, there's a knock on Alex's door and his heart skips a beat. His stomach churns with anticipation as he walks towards it and flings it open. He was expecting a man with a young face, skunk hair, and big brown eyes to be staring back at him, but instead, there's no one.
Just then, Alex hears a whimper, like a puppy's cry. His eyes dart around the dark neighborhood for the noise, but he sees nothing. That is, until his eyes land on the cardboard box directly by his feet. And in the box is what Alex believes to be a golden retriever puppy. He picks up the squirming puppy by its armpits and reads its tag. It has Alex's address and phone number on it, along with LISA written in bold lettering. There's a note written in Jack's messy handwriting at the bottom of the box, and Alex picks it up.
Lisa is a golden retriever puppy. Puppies need walks. Lots and lots of walks.
Alex curses to himself. Jack is a tricky bastard.
***
Alex steps onto the porch, with Lisa on her leash. She pants eagerly, tugging towards the sidewalk. Alex takes a deep breath, and descends down the steps of his porch for the first time in five years. The sidewalk feels weird, foreign under the soles of his recently purchased shoes. He sees his neighbors staring at him from their porches, probably thinking, Is that crazy Alex Gaskarth walking a dog? I wonder what made him finally get of that house. And Alex bets they would never guess the boy with skunk hair a few houses down.
Alex reaches Jack's house and knocks on the door. He can hear the bound of excited footsteps from inside, and is greeted by Jack's thrilled face when the door opens. Alex smiles back at him—a real, genuine smile. Jack flings his arms around Alex and hugs him tightly, kissing his neck.
"I'm taking you up on that walk offer," Alex says, and Jack just smiles.
His goddamn mother.
"Get a job," she had said. "How about you go help out Mr. Gaskarth down the street?"
"The special man? The one who never leaves his house?" Jack had responded, surprised.
"Yes, him." You need money for college."
And so, Jack somehow agreed to help the mysterious, "special" man who lives in a quaint little home a few houses down from him.
Jack doesn't want to work for goddamn Mr. Gaskarth—the man is a complete nut-job. Jack has only seen him once, when he was taking out his trash. He simply dumped the black bag of garbage into the trash can, and ran back inside like a scared rabbit.
Jack stops walking once the canary yellow house surrounded by waist-length brittle grass lies in front of him. He takes a deep breath, moves the garbage can from its place directly in front of the door, and rings the doorbell.
Five minutes pass.
Jack groans.
He bangs on the door vehemently, his fist turning red and pounding with pain.
After a minute of continuous knocking, the door slowly creaks open. A man stands in its threshold, with his body stiff and his arms glued to his side; he's practically folding into himself.
"Y-you're," he stammers. He has a soft voice that's barely above a whisper. "Y-you, y-you're here t-to help?"
"Yeah, sir," Jack replies firmly. He feels silly calling him "sir" because Mr. Gaskarth can't be more than a few years older than him.
"C-call me Alex," he says, a bit louder. He awkwardly tugs on a strand of his messy brown hair. "Come in."
Jack had expected the house to be a dump cluttered with garbage and junk, at first, but once he steps onto its polished hardwood floors, he sees that it's quite the opposite. Warm golds and reds greet Jack as he passes through the entrance way. There's barely anything in the house except for furniture, and there isn't a speck of dust in sight. The house also smells like cinnamon and apples and other good things that make Jack feel oddly at home.
"I'm Jack Barakat," Jack informs him, running his fingers through his black hair streaked with platinum blonde strands. "So, what do I do first?"
"I usually order my groceries online," Alex says, "but since you're here, I can get them fresh now." He produces a small shopping list from his pocket and timidly hands it to Jack with shaking hands.
"You want me to buy your groceries?" Jack takes the list. "What else?"
"Mow the lawn."
"That jungle? Sir, there is no way—"
"Okay, it's okay," Alex sputters hurriedly. "You don't have to. Maybe tomorrow?"
Jack looks at him oddly, before proceeding to head over to the market.
***
After he finishes stashing the products in the fridge, he turns to Alex—who's inspecting him from the doorway with unsure eyes—and asks, "What next?"
"I guess that's it," Alex says, and let's out a sigh that suggests he had been holding his breath while Jack had been putting away the food.
"Really?" Jack questions excitedly, walking towards the front door again.
"B-but," Alex calls out, "could you maybe stay awhile? I made you buy cookies just for us."
Jack looks at the broken, lonely man whose eyes are filled with something that Jack can't place. "Okay," he replies quietly. "Okay. I'll stay awhile."
Jack sees a tiny smile creep onto Alex's face, and he races to the cupboard to get the cookies. Jack sits down on one of the chairs surrounding Alex's table, and he wonders why Alex has four seats positioned around the table when he lives alone.
"Oh," Alex gasps, turning to Jack. "That's Lisa's place! I'll find you another chair."
"Lisa? More people live here?"
"Yeah."
Alex sets a plate of cookies in the middle of the table and a can of pop in front of Jack, before dashing into the living room to find a chair. He comes back with a rocking chair and positions it next to Jack's original seat.
Jack reluctantly switches seats and asks, "So where is Lisa?"
"She's not here right now."
"Is she your sister or something?" Jack starts to nibble on a cookie.
"Fiancé," Alex sighs dreamily, slumping down in the seat across from Jack.
"What are the other chairs for?"
"They're for my parents," Alex explains. "They're not here right now, either."
"Oh." Jack is surprised to hear that more nut-jobs live with Alex. "So why don't you join them? You know, outside?"
"It's too dangerous," Alex says, as if the answer is evident. "You have no idea how much I envy you, Jack Barakat. You're so brave."
"It really isn't that hard." Jack can't help but laugh a little. "Hey, I'll teach you how to go outside."
"No, no! It's too scary!" Alex whimpers, sounding almost whiney.
"No, really. We'll just walk down the path, okay?"
"No!" Alex yells, and starts rocking back and forth.
"Okay, okay," Jack replies rapidly. "We won't go outside today."
Alex calms down. "Do you like the cookies?"
"They're great."
The two are draped in silence, and Jack finishes eating. "I guess I should go now."
"Okay," Alex says quietly, sadly.
He walks Jack to the door, and says goodbye as Jack skips out of the house. He watches him disappear down the street, already growing anxious for the skunk-haired boy to return.
***
Jack throws open his front door and sees his mother reading a book on the couch.
She looks up from her book and eagerly asks, "How did it go?"
"Okay," Jack says truthfully, showing her the crisp ten dollar bill that Alex had given him. "Do you know that he lives with his fiancé and parents, too?"
His mother looks down at her lap, like Jack had just uttered something offensive. "You don't know why he never comes out of the house?"
"No..."
"You were probably too young to remember. Five years ago, when you were thirteen, there was a car crash down the street. Mr. Gaskarth's family was pulling out of the driveway, during the winter, and a van skidded down the street and hit them."
A shiver runs down Jack's spine, and a pang of remorse for poor Alex ripples through him. "Oh," he quietly says, and walks up to his bedroom.
***
After mowing the lawn, Jack's eating cookies with Alex again.
"You know, nothing is going to hurt you outside," Jack tells him.
"That doesn't mean it can't."
"Alex," Jack begins awkwardly, "don't you think you should... maybe... get rid of Lisa's stuff? Your parents' stuff?"
"What do you mean?"
"They've been gone for five years, Alex, come on," Jack says harshly.
"No! Shut up!"
"I just want to help," Jack quietly says. "I think you should move on."
"Come with me," Alex abruptly asserts, and stands up from his seat. He starts to lead Jack to the back of the house, the only place he hasn't seen. There's a hallway stretching before them, and Alex brings him into one of the rooms.
It's turquoise, and has a queen sized bed against the far wall. To left, there's a table full of pictures. Jack notices that everything is coated with dust, completely untouched. He coughs and waves his hand to expel the dusty air.
Alex grasps Jack's hand, and pulls him towards the table. He points to a picture of a woman with flowing golden locks, clasped in a happy, younger Alex's embrace.
"How can you let go of someone as amazing as her?" he whispers.
"You have to," Jack says in the same tone. "This isn't healthy."
"No, I can't." And Alex Gaskarth cries into Jack’s chest.
***
“I don’t choose to be afraid, you know?” Alex tells Jack. “I don’t choose to be crazy.”
“I know,” Jack says, because he does.
“Every day, I wake up thinking that today will be the day I leave the house and go for walks like a normal person. And every day, I also wake up thinking that today will be the day Lisa and my parents are alive. But it’s not. I’m hoping for something that will never happen. And it’ll never happen because of me, my own mind.”
“Hey,” Jack says soothingly. “It’s—“
“I want a job that’s not online. I want the house Lisa and I were going to move into once we saved enough money. She lived with us because her parents were abusive, you know. I’m so ready to get out of my mind.”
***
The next day, Jack slyly produces something from inside his messenger bag and proudly holds it up for Alex.
"They're for you." He smiles at the two goldfish swimming around in a cellophane bag.
Alex watches them thwack against the clear bag. "But why?"
"I thought you might need some company. And goldfish don't need walks, so."
Alex gives him a ghost of a smile. "Thanks."
Jack helps Alex set up a tank for the fish, and Jack stays to talk to Alex until the sunsets.
***
Jack now visits Alex to talk, as opposed to work. Alex still pays him, even though Jack says that he shouldn't because he really isn't doing anything. And Jack thinks, Maybe Mr. Gaskarth isn't so crazy in the bad way, anymore.
And then Alex does something unexpected and maybe even a little strange, when he brushes a strand of hair from Jack's face and tentatively pecks his cheek. And Jack does something even more unexpected and maybe even a little stranger, when he kisses Alex on the lips and says, "I'll help you move on."
They fool around on the sofa, finding all of the right places to kiss and nip and suck and lick, before Alex guides Jack to his bedroom. And then they fumble until Alex is on top of Jack, inside of Jack.
Jack doesn’t know when or why or how he became attracted to Alex Gaskarth. There’s something so completely entrancing about him. He’s like an erotic, thrilling, cryptic novel that Jack wants to absorb every word, sentence, paragraph of, but can’t, because some of its most exciting pages are so torn apart with age that they’re unreadable. But even though parts of the story are missing, and even though it barely makes sense, Jack can’t put it down, and he keeps flipping page after page after page, anxiously waiting for the end when the missing pieces all come together.
The next day, Jack has to think of a good lie to tell his parents and his English teacher, when they confront him about never returning home that night and being late for class that morning.
***
“You make me feel normal,” Alex tells Jack, petting his hair as they sit on the porch. Jack feels proud; before, Alex wouldn’t even go past the threshold.
“Don’t be fooled by me.”
Alex playfully flicks the side of Jack’s head, and Jack whacks his thigh in response. When they first met, Jack had never expected Alex to be the type of person to joke around or smile, even. And Jack feels like he’s taking too much credit when he thinks that Alex is smiling and joking again because of him.
“I’m sorry.” Alex dips down and brushes his lips against Jack’s.
Well, when they first met, Jack had never expected Alex to be his boyfriend, either. Boyfriend? Is that the right word? Sex, kisses, and blowjobs don’t equal a relationship, do they? Jack wouldn’t be ashamed of announcing that he and Alex are boyfriends, be he doesn’t feel like jumping into things too quickly. He still doesn’t know how to feel about having sex with a 25 year-old man who has agoraphobia and who never leaves the house.
***
The kids at school, they’re talking about Jack and Alex now. Jack doesn’t know why they want to waste their breath on an affair as insignificant as him and Alex, but he guesses the gossip must be slow.
“You know that Jack Barakat guy? The one who looks like a skunk? Yeah, he’s been hanging around that crazy fucker, Alex Gaskarth. You know, the one who never leaves his house? I’ll bet he’s brainwashing Jack into becoming a nut-job like him!” he hears a girl exchange to her friend on his way to biology.
“I hear Gaskarth keeps Jack locked in his basement everyday, and pays him to be his sex slave. Helping him around the house? I don’t think so,” a boy tells a group of his snickering companions during lunch.
“Gaskarth? He’s crazy,” the boy who sits behind Jack during math whispers to the girl next to him. “I hear he only uses the whole I-never-come-out-of-my-house thing as a cover-up. He actually goes to the cemetery every night and does stuff to his girlfriend’s corpse. Gross, right?”
Out of all the nasty rumors Jack has overheard today, none of them have made his blood boil like this one. Most of them were pertaining to him, not Alex. How dare the boy behind him say something so cruel and untrue?
“What did you just say?” Jack venomously hisses at the boy.
“That the fucktard you work for is mentally unstable.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Jack raises his voice. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know more than you. You’re just so far up his ass that you can’t see it.”
And then Jack leaps up from his desk, spilling his papers across the floor, and swings a punch at the kid. Scarlet starts dripping down the boy’s nose and he jumps up from his desk and tackles Jack to the floor in response. They wrestle around, throwing uncoordinated punches, until the kid straddles Jack and relentlessly punches him repeatedly, before he’s hauled away by the math teacher.
After school, Alex blots Jack’s wounds with damp tissues.
“How did this happen?” he inquires.
“I got into a fight at school.”
“Oh?”
“This guy was talking about you,” Jack says, “so I punched him. And he beat me up.”
“I’m not worth getting beaten up for.”
“I’d do it again.”
Jack hisses as Alex swipes the dripping blood from his lip, before covering the cut with a soft kiss.
***
Alex spoons Jack on the couch, watching the passing traffic through the window of the living room.
"Are you going to come with me on a walk, tomorrow?" Jack looks up at Alex questioningly.
"Of course not."
"Alex, come on!" Jack groans. "You've come so far. We cleaned out your parents' room, yesterday. Just one little walk, okay?"
"No."
"You know what?" Jack stands up. "I'm not going to help you anymore. I'm not coming to your house anymore. You’re going to help me now. You’re going to come to my house. And that’s the only place you’ll see me."
"Jack, come on," Alex whines, as Jack heads for the front door.
As the door slams shut, Jack feels hollow, unsure. There's no way Alex will show up. He doesn’t care that much about Jack. But Jack’s willing to do whatever it takes to get Alex out of his house.
***
A week flies by, and then two more. Alex doesn't visit Jack and Jack doesn't visit Alex.
The grass on Alex's front lawn is overgrown again and he's back to ordering groceries online. He feels so alone without Jack. But not just alone—he feels empty, hopeless, helpless. And he hates himself, because he can do something to get Jack back into his arms. He just has to walk down a sidewalk.
Suddenly, there's a knock on Alex's door and his heart skips a beat. His stomach churns with anticipation as he walks towards it and flings it open. He was expecting a man with a young face, skunk hair, and big brown eyes to be staring back at him, but instead, there's no one.
Just then, Alex hears a whimper, like a puppy's cry. His eyes dart around the dark neighborhood for the noise, but he sees nothing. That is, until his eyes land on the cardboard box directly by his feet. And in the box is what Alex believes to be a golden retriever puppy. He picks up the squirming puppy by its armpits and reads its tag. It has Alex's address and phone number on it, along with LISA written in bold lettering. There's a note written in Jack's messy handwriting at the bottom of the box, and Alex picks it up.
Lisa is a golden retriever puppy. Puppies need walks. Lots and lots of walks.
Alex curses to himself. Jack is a tricky bastard.
***
Alex steps onto the porch, with Lisa on her leash. She pants eagerly, tugging towards the sidewalk. Alex takes a deep breath, and descends down the steps of his porch for the first time in five years. The sidewalk feels weird, foreign under the soles of his recently purchased shoes. He sees his neighbors staring at him from their porches, probably thinking, Is that crazy Alex Gaskarth walking a dog? I wonder what made him finally get of that house. And Alex bets they would never guess the boy with skunk hair a few houses down.
Alex reaches Jack's house and knocks on the door. He can hear the bound of excited footsteps from inside, and is greeted by Jack's thrilled face when the door opens. Alex smiles back at him—a real, genuine smile. Jack flings his arms around Alex and hugs him tightly, kissing his neck.
"I'm taking you up on that walk offer," Alex says, and Jack just smiles.