Fueling up on Heartaches and Cheap Wine

It was a simple fact.

A sad fact, but one that seemed to be proven time and time again.

Touring put stress on relationships. You’re away from them, you’re constantly gone, and you’re just not together enough. One misses the other more. There’s misunderstandings and fights and you can’t see each other face to face to work things out and it inevitably leads to heartbreak and a—sometimes nasty—breakup.

But what if you’re in a band together? What happens then?

It sounds like it would work, right? Because in addition to the being together together, you’re together in general all the time. There’s no room for miscommunications or anything. It should be the perfect relationship, dating a band member. But many things, like Communism, are better in theory.

When Alex and Jack finally admitted they liked each other and started dating, the rest of the band and crew all joined in in a chorus of finallys and I told you sos. It was Jack and Alex, after all. They were meant to be. They were the couple everyone wanted to be more like. They had a love that others could only hope to find. They were hopelessly, madly, crazy in love with each other.

But somehow, being around each other nonstop wasn’t as much of a benefit as you might think. After three years together, they started to fall apart. Nobody knew what exactly set it off. Had Jack forgotten something important? Had Alex let his gaze linger on someone else for just a second too long? Even they couldn’t explain how it happened. One day, things were fine. The next, ‘Jalex,’ as the fans and everyone else had taken to calling them, was over.

With every breakup, there’s that point of awkwardness where you don’t know how to act around each other. They had been best friends before, but could they just go back to it just like that? Or should they give themselves time to heal? They didn’t know what to do. They’d never been through this kind of thing together. With the tension building, the only possible outcome was for them to begin drifting from each other.

That was six months ago.

——

Alex was ripped from that place between wakefulness and sleep, where you’re not fully aware of your surroundings, but you’re also not dreaming, one of his favorite places to be these past few months because it was the only time when his mind was just off, to the sound of the hotel room phone ringing. He hardly had time to register this fact before a somewhat-familiar girl’s voice was saying, “He’s sleeping. Should I tell him who called?” A pause, and then the soft clicking noise an old phone makes when it’s being put back down.

He was tactless; that had happened at some point in the last half year. So he didn’t meander his way to the not-quite-burning question. He flat-out asked it. “Who are you?”

The girl sounded hurt. “I’m Lisa. We…don’t you remember? Oh my god.” She looked mortified. “Um…I’m gonna go.” She grabbed her clothes and was out of the room in a heartbeat.

Alex tried to remember. He didn’t put much effort into it, because frankly, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to know what he did with this stranger. All of them, every girl he stumbled into a hotel with, they were all temporary. They succeeded in taking his mind off Jack for an hour or two, but it never lasted. He’d wake up to somebody he’d never seen before and it wasn’t the same as waking up to Jack.

Did Jack miss it as much as he did? He hadn’t said anything, and he didn’t appear to be banging anybody who would crawl in his bed in an effort to get over it, so maybe he’d moved on. Maybe Jalex was done for good and Alex was stuck in the past, wishing he would miss him.

Screwing this many people doesn’t sound like the way to show you miss someone. And in the back of his mind, Alex knew it wasn’t. But he didn’t know what else to do with his time anymore. At night, he used to cuddle with Jack and watch movies and write music and fall more in love with the boy he slept next to. Now, he had empty spaces he had to fill so he didn’t dwell on what the hell went wrong.

He stood up shakily, planning on brushing his teeth and washing away the traces of last night. His wallet caught his eye. It was where he’d left it, laying on the nightstand, but the corner of a piece of paper was poking out, even though he always kept it in pristine order. He couldn’t resist investigated, tugging it out.

Of course.

Of fucking course.

As luck would have it, it was a picture. Not just any picture; it was his favorite photo of him and Jack, the one he kept in his wallet for luck and must have forgotten about. Jack didn’t even know he had the photograph; Jack had taken the picture on his phone, and when he wasn’t looking, Alex sent it to himself and printed it out. It wasn’t anything special; they weren’t kissing or in bed together or holding hands or doing anything remotely couple-y. They were at the mall and Jack had stopped suddenly and snapped the picture. Alex liked it so much because of what it captured: they were carefree and their faces were so happy and that was the day they’d first said I love you, only a few hours after it was taken.

He shoved it back in his wallet and leaned against the wall, slowly sinking to the floor. He rested his head on his knees and started to cry.

——

Jack made the stupid mistake of trying to call Alex’s room. Some chick answered, and he wanted to break down immediately. But why should he? Alex had every right to fuck whoever the hell he wanted to. They weren’t together. Jack had no control over him. But he couldn’t deny how much it hurt that Alex had so little respect for their relationship, that it was so easy for him to sleep with anyone he came into contact with, while Jack couldn’t even look at anyone else.

Zack and Rian gave him sympathetic looks but didn’t say anything. Ever since the break up, Alex and Jack had quit rooming together on hotel nights. At first, it was only supposed to last a few weeks, until they got over the initial breakup blues. But then Rian, who Alex was rooming with then, kept coming to stay in Jack and Zack’s room. He’d put it together soon enough: Rian was sick of hearing the noises from the bed next to his. So Alex got a room to himself, and the three of them shared the other.

He took a long swig from the bottle in front of him. The other two sighed loudly. “Jack, that’s not even good wine,” Rian pointed out. “It’s Two-Buck Chuck. You can do better.”

Zack gave a feeble attempt at wrenching it from his grasp, but Jack clung tight to it. It was his life support. “Jack, I know you think it’s helping, but in the long-run, it won’t do you any good if you drink yourself to an early grave.”

“I haven’t heard from him in three damn nights,” Jack said. Whether he was talking to himself or using it as an excuse to justify the drinking, he didn’t know. He gulped down more of the cheap wine, trying to chase away the heartache he couldn’t shake. Even when they did speak to each other, it was only in passing or on stage. They always made sure to talk on stage, just to keep the fans happy.

Zack sat next to him on the bed, unsure of what to say. They never knew what to say around Jack. He seemed so broken by it, but he put on a strong front. He was mindlessly scrolling through pictures on his phone when he accidentally stumbled across one of him and Alex.

It was from a normal day at the mall, a few months into their relationship. There was just something about that day, the spring in Alex’s step, the smile Jack just couldn’t keep off, that made him want to take a photo to preserve the perfect moment. So he did. Without warning, he’d taken the picture and he loved it so much. It was so them. So…well, Jalex. Anybody that glimpsed the photograph could see how in love they were.

What happened? How did something like that just go away? Where did they go wrong? How did they lose something so special?

Zack saw the picture and pried the phone from Jack’s hand. Neither of them said a word as Jack curled into him and sobbed.

——

It was a quarter till midnight Alex hadn’t scored with anyone tonight. It wasn’t that he couldn’t, because girls and guys alike were throwing themselves at him from all angles. It was that he couldn’t in another sense; he just couldn’t fill the void in him where Jack was. No matter how many times he got laid, none of it compared to just a hug from Jack. Hell, it didn’t even come close.

He ended up on the roof of the hotel, bottle in hand, intent on drinking away every last god damn memory.

What he found was Jack, legs dangling off the edge like he didn’t care at all. He sat next to him.

They were both vulnerable. Jack was still recovering from his meltdown over finding the picture earlier. Alex was still trying to get rid of the feelings of miserable nostalgia from missing the days of old pictures. But when they were seated next to each other again, each noticed that their worlds got a little lighter. Not the dark grey they’d become accustomed to since the breakup.

It reminded them of brighter days.

After a long silence, Jack tried to say, “I found your picture today.” At the same time, Alex mumbled, “I swear I’ll change my ways.”

It was that moment, the unforgettable, unplanned, unrehearsed moment where they said entirely different things at the exact same instant. That was the moment when Alex realized that 1) he really did want to change his ways for Jack, 2) he needed to change his ways, and 3) Jack missed him too, judging by the tone of his voice. It was the moment when Jack realized that 1) Alex had some ways he needed to change, but so did he, and maybe that’s why they didn’t work out the first time around, 2) that picture symbolized why they were so perfect together, and 3) that if Alex was really willing to change his ways, then he was serious about this.

They both realized what they’d known all along, what they’d been too afraid to admit. “I love you,” they whispered.

And then they were kissing and it was like nothing had ever changed. They hadn’t broken up. They were just a normal couple kissing on the roof of a hotel at midnight.

Alex broke the kiss first, and Jack looked hurt for a millisecond before Alex explained, “I want a picture.”

Jack smiled at that and leaned his head on his shoulder as Alex took the picture. He showed it to him. It wasn’t amazing in the same way as the mall picture, but something about it spoke to them. “Send that to me. Now,” Jack murmured, looking at it.

When he saw it on his own phone, examining it closely, he figured it out. It was all in their eyes. In the picture from the mall, their eyes had that light in them, the life-is-easy-and-we’re-in-love-and-everything’s-perfect look. But in this one, their eyes were different. Their eyes said, we’ve been through a lot together and we know everything’s not always going to be perfect, but we’re in love, so it doesn’t matter.

Jack liked this one better.

So did Alex.

Without even glancing to see what the other was doing, they both tweeted the picture, along with a simple phrase:

Jalex is back!