You Could Be My Compass

“Oh my god,” Jack whispered, eyes sliding across the end of the letter. “Oh my god.”

Alex reached over and typed a quick reply to the interviewer. It looks great! Thanks! He sent the email without watching the rest of it. This was more important, and they could always watch it later.

“Oh my god,” he said again and again, like a broken record. “Oh my god.”

Alex didn’t count how many times he said it. It was a lot. He kept repeating it over and over for at least a minute. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Finally, he stopped talking and started rereading.

But Alex was flashing back to the argument in the living room. It all made sense now…

You fucking knew the whole time!

Jack’s dad must have confessed to Alex’s parents, expecting them to offer sympathy and advice. But Alex’s dad didn’t like that, hated the fact that he had known such a huge piece of the puzzle and hadn’t contributed his knowledge sooner.

In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve seen you make a lot of poor decisions, Barakat, but this is the worst fucking thing you’ve done.

Alex didn’t know what those poor decisions were, besides the cocaine, which he didn’t even tell them about until that night. (If he even told them that part.) But yeah, he could easily see that this was, in his dad’s words, the worst fucking thing he’d ever done.

This is destroying the life of someone you’re supposed to care about!

How couldn’t Jack’s dad have seen this, though? Alex wondered why it took his father shouting about it for him to realize that he had screwed up his son’s life. What kind of parent would do that? (And what kind of parent would keep a secret like that for their spouse once they learned the truth as well?)

The time to come clean was when my son was in the hospital!

They never brought it up. When Alex was released from the hospital, they hadn’t discussed it, not once. They pushed it to the back of their minds and it was like it never happened in the first place. It was an uncomfortable, touchy, sensitive subject that nobody knew how to bring up. So they just didn’t. Unwritten, unspoken rule. But in that moment, Alex now realized, his father had been so angry at the situation that he had to say it.

In a way, it made sense. It was a long chain of events, but Jack’s dad was the first domino to fall that would eventually lead to Alex’s suicide attempt. And somehow, in the heat of the moment, Alex’s dad had made that connection. Yes, he was pissed at the man he thought he’d known, and yes, he was defending Jack, but above all, he was realizing that his son’s depressed days could have been prevented.

And as Alex came to this conclusion, he was finding himself getting pissed.

“Can you believe this?” Jack suddenly said. His voice wasn’t that loud, but after the silence, his outburst was unexpected. Almost disturbing, in a way.

Alex wanted to say no. He wanted to look at Jack, mirroring his shocked expression, and say No! He wanted to act like he’d never seen the argument, never heard his dad shouting, never heard Jack’s dad say, It would have ruined the company. But this was Jack, god damn it, and he couldn’t lie to him. So instead of pretending, he awkwardly mumbled, “Well…”

“Well what?” Jack yelped.

“I mean, I guess that I’m sort of maybe not that surprised.”

“How?”

“I…well…” What the hell was he supposed to say?

Jack was looking at him with wide, confused eyes and he couldn’t, simply couldn’t keep it from him, because that would be lying and best friends don’t lie to each other. So he took a deep breath and told him everything. About waking up and hearing his dad yelling, getting curious and checking it out. Watching him scream at Jack’s dad, how his mom had totally bitched him out in only three words—he took a brief second to allow himself to be impressed by his mother’s sudden display of badass-ness. If that was the word.

“…and then my dad told him to leave and you showed up like an hour later,” Alex finished, sucking in another breath. He’d told the story so quickly, he barely gave himself time to breathe.

He expected it to all click for Jack like it did for him, like the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place and everything was clearer. He expected to see a look of clarity on his face. Or he expected tears, figured Jack would finally break down after hearing that. And if neither of those happened, he expected him to be pissed…at his own dad. With the combination of the letter and the information Alex just revealed, surely he would be pissed.

And he was.

Just not at his dad.

“You fucking knew?!” Jack shouted.

Alex winced at the familiar words, the words his own dad had shouted at Mr. Barakat. “Yeah. I knew,” Alex mumbled, staring at the wall to the left of Jack’s face. He couldn’t look him in the eye and see the anger he’d glimpsed for a fraction of a second. Why was he mad at Alex?

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“I…” Why hadn’t he told him? “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Oh, right, but letting me find out from my mom’s letter, that doesn’t hurt me?”

“I didn’t know the full story, Jack. I wasn’t going to tell you because I didn’t have any fucking clue what was going on. I…I guess I wanted to protect you,” he finished, feeling like it was a pathetic excuse.

“You wanted to protect me?” Jack repeated angrily. “Alex, I’m not twelve years old anymore!”

“I know that,” Alex protested.

“I don’t think you do. You’re always being so careful around me, like I’m still a child or something. But I’m not! You treat me like I can’t handle things, and you’re just so scared of hurting me. And yeah, at first I appreciated it, but this is just fucking ridiculous! You kept such a huge secret from me. You keep doing that, like I’m not mature enough or like…like you don’t trust me.” Now he was mad and upset.

Fuck.

“Jack, I do trust you! You know I trust you more than—”

“No, I don’t know that. You didn’t tell me about your DUI or how self-destructive you were; Lisa did. You didn’t tell me about being in the hospital until I found the release paper. You didn’t tell me about this until I’d already ready my mom’s letter. You keep all these secrets from me, but I’ve told you everything. I don’t lie to you or hide things because you’re my fucking best friend and I can’t do that. But…but I guess it’s easier for you.”

Alex stretched a hand towards him since he couldn’t think of anything to say, but Jack recoiled and stood up. “Where are you going?” Alex asked.

“Home.”