Four Years

Alex's POV

I hadn't heard from Rae in a couple days. I was kinda worried. She didn't answer any of my calls or anything. She only tweeted a couple times though.

The last time she tweeted was like...two days ago.

And that was so vague. It said- @ztnewetep: Le getaway.

What the hell was that? I mean, I knew that she was drinking to take the pain away a bit. Was that her "le getaway"?

I was worried she'd done something bad to herself.

Honestly, I wouldn't put it past her. She would do something bad to herself. Scared me to death just thinking about it.

I was slumped upside down on Zack's couch. I was watching some show on ID. A weird murder show...

It was interesting while I was viewing it upside down though.

Zack walked in, staring at me. He was shirtless. He was always shirtless. I had seen Zack's naked torso more in these two weeks I'd been staying with him than I ever had while we were on tour.

And that was a lot.

"Put on a shirt," I noted from my spot upside down on the couch.

"Sit on the couch normally," He shot back, folding his arms across his naked chest. Hey, that was better.

At least his arms hid his perky little nipples.

I laughed at my thought which caused Zack to furrow his eyebrows at me. I waved my hand dismissively at him.

"You wanna go for a run?" He asked, moving on to another topic.

"Nah. I think I'm gonna stop at Pete and Rae's. Haven't heard from her in a while," I shrugged, sliding off the couch.

I laid on the floor for a minute before springing up.

"You're so weird," Zack laughed. "Why do you wanna see Rae? I thought you were over her?"

"Uh, I haven't heard from her in about three days. I'm worried. You know she's self destructive," I said, defending my wanting to see Rae.

"...She's with Pete. You don't need to worry about her, Alex."

I rolled my eyes, "Shut up. I'm going to see her and that's that."

"How're you getting there?" He smirked.

Fuck. I didn't think of that. I didn't have a car. Zack did though...

"Your car. Where are the keys?" I asked, returning the smirk.

"Alex," He sighed. He sounded like my dad. Hah. Cute.

"Zack," I mocked.

"Call her first, okay? Then talk to me about taking my car," He rolled his eyes. Fucking Zack. What an asshole.

I groaned and went to the guest room that I had made mine over the past week. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand, rolling my eyes when I noticed a missed call from Lisa.

She had been getting on my nerves lately. She would always call and want to talk for hours and hours, and, honestly, I couldn't be bothered.

I was terrible, I know.

I dialed Rae's number and waited for her to answer.

"Alex! Hey!" She exclaimed. She sounded unusually cheery. Weird.

"Hey..." I replied slowly. I was confused. The last time we talked, she wasn't happy and cheery. She was depressed about her strained relationship with Pete.

"What's up, boo?" She said. I could practically hear the smile in her voice. It was nice to hear her so happy.

But I was still so damn confused. It was like a switch had been flipped.

"I haven't heard from you in a while. Just called to see how you were?" I said, sounding unsure of myself. Damn.

"Oh, I'm fine! Super fine!" She giggled.

I furrowed my eyebrows together, "Are you drunk?"

"No!" She laughed. Her laugh was so infectious. I ended up laughing, even though I didn't believe her. "I'm just so happy, silly!"

"Why so happy?" I grinned. It was nice to hear she was happy. If she was happy, I was happy. I had to keep telling myself that.

"I'm in Paris!"

"What?" I blurted out. Holy fucking shit. Her tweet made sense. Le getaway was to le France! "No way!"

"Yes way!" She said happily. "Pete and I left two days ago. I gotta go, though. Pete's taking me to a surprise."

"A surprise, huh? Well, uh, it was nice hearing from you, babe," I smiled weakly. I was trying my best to be happy for her. I honestly was. But it was so damn hard.

I felt like I should've been the one to sweep her away to France. When we were in high school, we once talked about going to France. I promised to show her the world.

But, there Pete was, stealing my promise away from me, showing her the world. Fuck.

I did promise to remain friends with her, though. It was just so hard. It's so hard to sit back and watch the girl of your dreams being swept off her feet by another guy.

"You should bring Lisa here one day. It's so romantic!" She said. She was being sincere and everything, but goddamn, it hurt. I didn't love Lisa enough to take her to the most romantic city on earth.

"Yeah...one day..." I sighed, running my hand through my hair. "So, I'll, uh, see you when you get back?"

"Maybe we can go out to lunch or something?" She suggested.

"Yeah, sounds good," I smiled. Lunch sounded really good...

"Alright. Bye, Alex! I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"Uh, yeah. Okay, bye," I forced myself to sound as happy as I possibly could. Maybe if I forced myself to be happy, I'd eventually become happy. Yeah. That was great thinking.

Positive thinking leads to positive outcomes.

Who the fuck was I kidding? I didn't believe in that bullshit. The pain I felt didn't believe in that bullshit either. I was depressed and that was that.

The line went dead. She was in Paris with Pete. I was here in Huntington with Zack.

My life fucking sucked.

***

The phone was on the table, on speaker, and Lisa was chatting away. She barely noticed that I didn't respond to half of her questions, because she'd just move right on to the next.

She asked how California was, I said fine, and she moved right along. She asked what I was doing. I didn't respond. She asked how Zack was. Another "fine" slipped out before she asked some other pointless thing.

She was getting on my nerves.

I flipped through the channels, barely paying any attention to her talk. I grunted and nodded, even though she couldn't see me, to most of what she was saying.

"Baz did the cutest thing the other day! He was - "

"Yeah, as much as I would love to hear what Baz did, I can't. I'm going...uh, surfing...with Zack. Yeah, surfing. Okay, bye, Lis," I said quickly, ending the torture. I hung up before she could get out an "I love you" that would just make me cringe as I had to say it back.

"Why don't you just break up with her if you're so...annoyed by her?" Zack smirked, sitting down next to me on the couch.

"I don't know, dude. I guess...I guess I don't want to see her upset. You remember how upset she was the last time we broke up, right? I'm not going through that again," I sighed, rolling my eyes.

The last time Lisa and I broke up was around early last year, and she ended up throwing a toaster at me as I literally ran out of the house, carrying my bags for tour.

Ridiculous, right? She was crazy.

I mean, all I told her was that I didn't think that I was going to be faithful. I was fucking truthful. So I just suggested we take a break. Bitch went insane and started crying and throwing things.

I was surprised she didn't throw Baz.

"Oh, true," He nodded. He was a man of few words. Most of those words were smart, some of them weren't. Take his Twitter for example. Not his best moments.

"Yeah. You know Rachel told me to take Lisa to Paris? Fuck that," I scoffed, kicking my feet up onto the coffee table.

"You're not getting over Rachel by talking to her. You just need to stop obsessing. You were so good for three years, dude," He sighed, shaking his head a bit in disappointment. He had every right to be disappointed in me.

But I would've appreciated it if he didn't show the disappointment in front of me. Asshole.

"Yeah, I know. But, hey, what can I do? I'm a goddamn hopeless romantic. I'm trying to kick the damn habit," I shrugged. "I'm trying."

"There's no such thing as trying. You either do it or you don't. No middle ground," He simply said as he got up and left.

I stared after him, confused as fuck. I was trying. There was such a thing as trying! There was! There wouldn't be a word if it didn't exist. Then again, there was a name for Jack and I. Jalex. We didn't exist like that...

Nice logic, Alex. Very nice logic.

Zack came back in and threw a pen at me. It bounced off my arm and landed on the floor as I let out a little, "What the fuck was that for?"

"Try to pick up the pen," He demanded. Uh. I furrowed my eyebrows together and picked up the pen, holding it in my hands. "No, I said try to pick up the pen."

My eyebrows knitted together even more. I stared at him like he was a fucking lunatic. Which he totally was right now.

"...I can't try to pick the damn pen up. I either pick it up or I don - oh," I breathed out, my eyebrows unknitting themselves as I came to the realization. Zack was a goddamn genius. Even though he didn't seem like one.

"You either move on or you don't. You say you are, but you're not. You say you're trying, but we all know that's a fucking lie. Trying is just an excuse you make to throw us off for a while, so we don't ask how your broken heart feels," He hit it right on. He got it. He read me like a damn open book.

This just turned into a damn therapy session. Huh. "Since when did you become a shrink?" I laughed. "Do I have to pay you by the hour?"

"Nah. You can go get groceries though. Running low on some shit," He grinned.

I groaned and sank further back into the couch, "Ugh, do I have to?"

"You're living here for free right now, Alex. And I just gave you a fantastic therapy session. The least you could do is go grocery shopping."

"Fine," I grudgingly nodded and got up, grabbing the keys off the table.

"When you get back, we're talking more!" He yelled after me as I left the house.

I liked Zack's advice. It was good advice. I always needed good advice. And, let's face it, Jack didn't give good advice. Rian sought his advice from Kara, so that was a no no.

Zack was going to become my therapist whether he liked it or not.