A Tale of Outer Suburbia

[001]

They say you don't know what you have until you lose it. They say that even though it'll hurt like hell, you will eventually recover. And maybe, just maybe, you'd even get a second chance at the romance that had broken your heart in the first place.

That was the terrifying thing about dating. You'd either end up marrying the person you were dating, or breaking up with them – ultimately breaking your heart, even if you try to convince yourself that you were completely fine.

But what if you weren't even dating the person that was the reason behind your heart break? What if you had taken them for granted? What if you fucked things up so badly before you could even get a proper chance with the person that you realised you were slowly falling in love with?

Better yet, what if you were hell on bent that you'd never get your 'happily ever after' and when the person that could've given you your happy ending comes along, you use them and then when you've got the chance to stop them from walking away, you just stand there. You don't move. Your feet are rooted to the ground. Your mind is reeling, plagued with insecurity. But you want to chase after them – God, you want to chase after them so badly – but you don't because you think that you don't deserve them.

If it meant having to break their heart whilst breaking your own, for their own good, you'd do it. And you did.

And Alex Gaskarth, though he looks like he's completely fine and happy, is in the exact fucking situation.

He's still so torn up about that night in Essex, when he let Zooey walk away from him. He could've stopped her. He should've stopped her. Tell her that all he really wanted was her, all he really needed was her – which was a bit bizarre, seeing as how they'd only been friends for a little over two weeks. But he knew that he and Zooey could've been something great. He always knew that, in the back of his mind, but he pushed the thought aside because he was convinced that he'd never be able to love someone in a romantic way again because of his fucked up past relationships.

Lisa had kept her word – surprisingly. The brown-haired man never had any intention of going back to the brunette. And to his relief, Lisa hadn't come to Alex – asking for a second chance. Tay had let their summer romance go, finally accepting that it was a summer fling. Romance. Whatever.

He referred to it as a fling now, but he knew that he referred it to a romance before. The thing about Alex was that he'd always been the type of guy to fall hard and fall fast. That was what landed him in the whole situation in the first place. He'd fallen in love with Tay, even if it was literally just for the summer, and then when he'd gone back to Lisa, things felt different. It was like he finally realised that he fell in love faster than any other average person.

He wouldn't really know, though. After all, Alex had been with Lisa for a good eight/nine years of his life. What would he know about falling in love with someone, for a proper adult relationship?

Things were different now, though. Sex wasn't his coping mechanism anymore. It was, before. Look where that made him up – heartbroken over a girl he could've happily been with, but didn't because he was stupid and insecure and downright dumb.

All he's got going on for him is alcohol. Tequila, vodka, whiskey, beer. Anything. Those are his best friends now. He drinks just enough to make his brain fuzzy – when the band's on tour and they've got days off – and then he's heading to bed. He doesn't want to sleep with any random women, because he doesn't want to accidentally meet someone like Zooey again. He doesn't want to accidentally blurt out his problems to another beautiful bartender. He doesn't want that shit happening again. He's learned his lesson.

Which leads to why he's sat at the bar in a pub somewhere in Colorado. Broomfield, he reckons, but he can't be sure.

The House Party Tour's first show is the day after and everyone else was out, or maybe they were having a party inside the venue, or in the bus, and definitely taking shots and having fun. Alex was with them for about a half hour before he suddenly felt like everyone was annoying him. Every little thing everyone did was pissing him off. Zack's constant accidental bumping into his shoulder, Rian's constant loud and joyful laughter, Jack's crude and perverted comments yelled above the loud music. Things that wouldn't normally affect him all – they were all pissing him off to no end.

So he left – walked out by himself and into the first pub he saw.

Relief filled him up when he saw that there wasn't any female bartenders. It's routine for him now. If he sees a female bartender, he leaves. He just can't bring himself to be normal around them, even if Zooey could be so different in physical appearance to those bartenders.

He heaves a silent, tired sigh, long fingers that were wrapped around the glass beer bottle fiddling with it. Then he brings the mouth of the bottle to his own mouth, gulping down the liquid – tongue darting out to lick any droplets left on his lips. Alex looks up then, stretching his neck out as he did so, since his head had been ducked down almost the whole time he was in there. He takes a glance to his sides; there's no one to his left, but there's a blonde to his right.

His brown eyes go back to the bottle wrapped between his fingers before they're going back to the blonde. She's attractive, yeah, and her side-profile was pretty amazing but that wasn't the reason as to why he's staring at her. He's staring (and he isn't going to deny to it) because her body was slumped and she was playing with the beer bottle just he was with his. Her body language told him so much more than she probably ever would – if he asked.

Since she's not far from him – there's one empty stool in between them – he turns his head to look at her properly. "You okay?" He asks, voice coming out in a throaty whisper because of how he hadn't spoken much.

She turns to look at him, an eyebrow arched on her forehead as she blinks at him. "Sorry?"

"You okay?" Alex repeats his question with a small half-grin coming unto his lips as he turned away, taking a swig from his glass bottle.

"Um... Yeah," she replies after a short moment. Alex turns to look at her as she speaks and she gives him a weak smile. "What about you? You okay?"

He blinks at her, then he pulls on the best smile he can muster. He'd gotten scarily good at that in the past few months. He had to get good at it – hiding his pain. Because no one knows about Zooey. Not even Jack. All Jack knew was that he had made one friend whilst in Essex. Jack didn't even know if it was a male or female, if they were still in contact or not, and Alex was silently thanking God that his best mate had a pretty shit memory because he didn't even ask about the friend when he was asking Alex about his stay in the place in which he was born in.

"Yeah," he nods his head, eventually. "Yeah, I'm okay."

Her eyes dart across his face, her eyebrows knotted together lightly. Then her eyes are staring straight into his own, darting from the left iris to the right, and Alex starts to feel as though she's looking into his bloody soul. But he raises a thick eyebrow in response, chin titling up in silent challenge as the bottle is being brought to his lips once more.

The blonde mimics his actions. She slides off of the bar stool, pulling out a bill from her front pockets and then she's turning to face him once more. "The saddest thing about love is that it fades. It doesn't last forever. But the good part..." she trails off, smiling at him in what seemed to be like a sympathetic – maybe even empathetic – manner. "Heartbreak doesn't last forever, either."

With those words, she's offering him a small smile before she's turning on her heel and walking out of the bar, leaving him staring after her. How could she have possibly known that he was heartbroken? He hid his emotions well. He could keep his facial expression as neutral as it would ever be whenever someone mentioned his short holiday back to Essex.

So how could she have known that he drinking alone in a bar because he was heartbroken? He's still staring at the exit, in which she'd just disappeared through. His tongue darts out to run across his bottom lip and then his teeth is grazing that same lip as he just stares. Sits and stares. And the only one other thought in his mind (apart from how the fuck could see right through his mask) being: who the fuck was that woman?