Come Alive

The party was coming to an end. People were drifting home. The bar was closing up. Jack still hadn’t seen Alex since midnight.

Jack sighed and allowed himself outside into the freezing air. He shivered and mentally cursed himself for not taking Alex’s jacket when he offered after dinner. Jack let his legs walk on their own, not really bothering to know where he was going. Determination coursed his mind as he repeated the night’s full events over and over to himself--there was no way he’d allow this night to be forgotten.

His head had to hold onto this.

The wind caught Jack off guard and the tshirt he’d been gifted before was definitely not cutting it. He laughed, 'well it’s a really good thing i know where the fuck I’m going,’ he thought. Yeah, he was angry. Not only was Jack alone with no idea where to go or how to get back to his own home, but he had been dragged out by a man he’d only known for a few days to then be kissed by said man and then abandoned by that same man. Jack shoved his hands in his pockets and trudged forward down the deserted street, ‘kissed by a guy, Barakat, that’s a new one.’

Jack was straight. Alex was straight. Nothing more than the product of some alcohol mixed with just a little too much excitement, right? After all, it wasn’t like either of them had...enjoyed it or anything, right? Jack surely hadn’t. The accelerated heartbeat and rush of heat to his cheeks didn’t mean anything. He definitely wasn’t upset at all when Alex had pulled away. He was Jack Barakat. He was straight.

Right?

Another gust of wind forced Jack to take cover in a small archway to the entrance of a dilapidated apartment complex downtown. He stood with his arms wrapped around him and waited impatiently for a clue as to what he should do next. Where he should go. No home, no contact with friends, no Alex...

Jack was alone. And he knew his memory loss was going to kick in soon; it had been almost half a day since his last relapse and though the cycles were getting longer and longer apart, now was not the time for his brain to crap out on him.

“Alone.” Jack said it out loud. No one was around to hear it anyway and for some reason his voice cracked. He swallowed back the tears he wasn’t expecting to come; cold, tired, alone, and still a little drunk was not the best time to break his ‘No Crying’ rule. He sighed and pushed his body against the bitter brick wall beside him, tonight sucked.

What a wonderful way to bring in the new year...

Jack’s hand rubbed against something on the wall. Smooth when compared to the rough brick, warmer than the wall but still freezing... Tearing his face from the wall he noticed a large directory of all the building’s inhabitants plastered beside the door frame.

...
R. Dyer 3A
M. Shilling 4A
J. Barakat 4B
A. Felts 5A
J. Barakat 4B
M. Best 5B
J. Barakat 4B
J. Barakat 4B
...

He stared at the name for awhile before it finally registered.

J. Barakat 4H: Jack had found home. For the first time since midnight, Jack’s lips cracked into a smile. He began to bang relentlessly on the lobby doors. He didn’t have a key to get into the building’s main entrance but somebody inside must be able to hear him, right? He could sleep in the foyer until morning where he could ask the landlord for another key, he didn’t care he just needed to get inside.

After nearly five minutes of relentlessly knocking, Jack started to give up. The tears were edging their way back to the brink of escape and with his face pressed helplessly against the glass door he let out a faint plead.

“Please, somebody.”

“Jack?” The glass holding Jack’s body up gave way as the door opened from the inside. “Yo, Jack, man where have you been? Are you alright? Where’s your key? Jack?” The tall lanky blonde man helped Jack inside and to the elevators. “You look wrecked. It’s nearly 3am what the hell have you been up to?”

Jack stood in the elevator beside the stranger, “I feel like I should know who you are...” He stared blankly at the man who had just saved him from freezing to death on the side of the road.

“Are you feeling okay? Jack? Man, c’mon, it’s me, Marc?” The tall guy--Marc--forced a laugh, “Quit playin’ c’mon, you can sleep at my place tonight. I’m assuming you don’t have your keys at all?”

Jack nodded, this Marc guy felt familiar. He really felt like they knew each other yet Jack couldn’t place just who he was exactly. The elevator stopped on the fourth floor and Jack followed Marc down the hallway, past apartment 4B--past Jack’s--and to the unlocked door leading to apartment 4A. Immediately, Jack was hit with a sense of familiarity. Long nights spent drinking beer and playing poker at the kitchen table, anxious first date jitters being worked out in the mirror by the TV in the living room that took up most of the apartment, Sundays spent in front of the TV anxiously watching football games, best friends cursing different random objects as--once again--their team lost. Marc. This was Marc’s house. Marc, Jack’s best friend since he moved into this building nearly five years before.

“Marc!” The recognition in Jack’s tone caught Marc off guard as Jack wrapped his arms around his neck, “You are not going to fucking believe what I’ve been through.”

Marc nodded and yawned as Jack backed away, “Sounds cool and everything but your faggot ass just got me out of bed at three in the morning. I’ve completed my best friend requirements for the night, I’ll see you in the morning, asshole.”

Jack nodded and walked deliberately to the couch, grabbing a few blankets from where Marc kept them in the hall closet on his way, “Kay, night, sugar!” Jack called out to Marc who was already in his room.

“Fuck off!” Was the last mumbled thing Jack heard from his best friend until the morning.

Lying there that night, on a couch that had become more familiar to him than even his own bed, Jack fell asleep more peacefully than he’d slept since before the shooting. Thoughts of Alex (and the kiss) kept his already too-sleepy head way too confused and yet he held onto them because they promised the good dreams he’d been missing for awhile.

What any of this meant wasn’t important right now. What was important was that for the first time since way before he’d ever even left his apartment to get batteries and Lysol, Jack’s life was beginning to pick itself up. And that small fact alone was enough to keep his dreams happy.