Something's Gotta Give - Original Verison

Jade's Point of View

“This is so fucked up,” I said for about the thousandth time since Jack had left. Other than actually walking in on us going at it, I couldn’t imagine a worse way for Jack to find out about Alex and me. He’d been so hurt to begin with when he’d come home, and now we’d just made everything worse. Where the hell had Jack even gone?

“If you just calm down, maybe we can figure all of this out,” Alex said, taking a seat next to me on the family room couch. He was still in his damp towel, and had I not been so distraught, I would have bitched at his wet self for messing up my couch.

“I’m sorry, you want me to calm down?” It took everything in me to not start yelling at him. “FUCK calming down, Alex. My brother’s gone and he’s mad at ALL of us. What if he does something really stupid like drink and drive and he kills himself or something?!”

“Jack may like to drink and he may be upset, but he wouldn’t do that.” Alex shook his head. “Let me call Skye and see if she’s heard from him. Maybe something’s changed since the last time you talked to her.”

Alex stood up with his phone and left the room, leaving me alone again. I figured I’d try Jack’s phone one more time, but he must’ve had it off because I immediately got his voicemail. I’d called and hung up at least a dozen times already, but decided to leave a message this time.

“Hey Jack. I’m still not sure where you are or when you’re coming back, but I hope you’re okay. Well, obviously you’re not okay, but safe.” I paused for a second, searching for something else to say, but nothing seemed to suffice except an apology. “Look, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about Alex and me. We’re not, like, back together or anything, and it’s strictly a physical thing – not that that helps, I guess. We just didn’t want to tell anyone so it wouldn’t become like a big ordeal, but then that blew up in our faces, clearly.” I was rambling now, and I needed to cut myself off before his voicemail automatically did. “Anyway, just…let me know where you are or at least that you’re okay. I hope you come home soon.”

I ended the call as Alex came back into the room, his shoulders all tensed up. He took the seat next to me again and rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. “Well, Skye knows where Jack is. But she’s not telling.”

“So he’s okay?” I checked. At least there was finally some news.

“Yeah, he’s okay,” he said impatiently. “Of course he is. But we need to find out where he is so we can bring him home and sort all of this out.”

“No,” I said very simply.

“No,” Alex repeated. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean exactly that,” I answered. “We’re not forcing him home. If he’s okay and he’s with Skye, I don’t care where he is. We can’t force him to come back and talk to us. He needs to cool off before anything happens, because otherwise everything’s going to get way worse.”

“Or everything’s going to fester and he’s going to hate us literally forever,” Alex countered. “And then things escalate and the next thing you know, poof. There’s no more All Time Low and we’ve let down all the fans down.”

“You know, your imagination’s so wild, maybe you should be the writer.” I sighed and glanced down at his towel, shaking my head. “It’s amazing the amount of trouble your dick gets us all into.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, my dick?” He looked genuinely offended. “So all the blame is on my penis and none of it is on your vagina? Who suggested having sex today?”

“Who suggested hooking up again initially?” I countered. Okay, yeah, I’d suggested having sex while Jack was out, but everything could have been fine if Alex had just stayed in the room until Jack had gone to lie down. “And who suggested being friends with benefits?”

“You’re the one that put the idea in my mind,” he argued, standing up now. “Do I need to remind you that you’re the one who made the comment that ‘the best way to get over someone is by getting under someone else?’ And it’s not like you said no. That was an enthusiastic yes.” He was starting to yell. “Besides, without my problem-causing dick, you’d fucking still be trying to write your outline!”

“Unbelievable.” There was no way I was taking this lying, or rather, sitting down. I stood up now, too, raising my voice to match the volume of his. “You’re really gonna throw that back in my face? You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve.” I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking back to what Jack had said to him earlier. “You know what? Jack was right. This really isn’t any different than Skye and Zack sleeping together again. They’re addicted to each other just like we are and all we do is hurt each other over and over and over again.”

“That’s not true, though,” he said, lowering his voice. “It’s different, it really is.”

“How?” I demanded. “How is it any fucking different? He messes with her head, same as we do to each other. It’s not healthy. For anybody. We don’t just hurt each other, we hurt other people in the process and it’s not okay.” I shook my head. “I can’t do this anymore. You should just go.”

Alex looked like he had something else he desperately wanted to say, and then his shoulders deflated. “Fine. I’ll go.”

He walked across the foyer and out the front door, which automatically locked behind him. I sighed and sat down again. I couldn’t keep doing the same old song and dance with Alex. It became abundantly clear to me that Jack was right – Alex didn’t seem capable of growing up, and apparently after that blowup and a hundred others like it, maybe I hadn’t grown up as much as I’d thought either. And that needed to change.

A knock at the door brought me out of my head and Alex’s voice rang through from the other side. “Jade? I don’t have my clothes.”

He’d left still dressed in just the towel. Oh God. I walked upstairs and collected his stuff, putting it all in a plastic bag for him. I opened the door for him, handing him the bag.

“Thanks,” he said, and then looked behind him as if searching for someone. “Can I just come in and get dressed? I don’t really want to expose my dramatic penis to the world. Or TMZ if they’re lurking out there.”

I briefly thought about telling him no, but that was what petty, high school Jade would have done. New, adult Jade would let him in, regardless of the fight we’d just had. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

I let Alex in and he thanked me before heading into the guest bathroom. I sat on the bottom step while I waited for him to come back before I let him outside again. I ran a hand through my hair. God, what a fucking day it had been. I felt so grateful that it was almost over.

“Thanks for letting me change in here,” Alex said, emerging fully dressed from the bathroom. “I put the towel in the hamper, I hope that’s okay.”

“It’s fine,” I told him tiredly.

“So…” he trailed off awkwardly. “I guess I’ll be on my way.” I walked with him to the door and opened it for him. He started to leave and then stopped and turned around as I began to close the door behind him. “Hold on a second.” He put his foot in the doorway to prevent me from closing it all the way. “You asked me before why we’re different than Zack and Skye.”

“And we’re not,” I said. “We covered that.”

“Except that we are though,” Alex replied. I didn’t say anything, waiting for him to elaborate on why we were supposedly so different than Skye and Zack. “You and I are totally different than Zack and Skye. Because I love you. And I’ve always loved you. But I’ve been a total shithead over the years and I’ve never really proved that to you.”

He stopped again, clearly wanting me to return the same sentiment. But he’d taken me totally by surprise – that was the last thing I’d been expecting him to say. I couldn’t do anything but stare at him blankly and push the door open a little more, so he kept going.

“I know we fought just now, and it was dumb and I’m sorry,” he went on. “I think I pick these stupid little fights with you because I don’t want to tell you how I really feel. Clearly, I’ve been running from it for a long, long fucking time. Every time we start to close again, I push you away, or you push me away. But I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m tired of running.” He was silent for a moment, just looking me in the eyes. “Jade, I’m tired of running from this. From you, from us. Aren’t you?”

The truth was, I was tired of running. So completely exhausted. I’d done everything I could think of over the years to distract myself from Alex, whether it was writing in my journal or dating Jay or fixating on my novel. Isabel seemed to think that Alex had never really moved on, and I’d managed to convince myself over the years through my many distractions that I was over him. And maybe for little periods of time, I was. But for fuck’s sake, I’d written my entire first novel about our relationship without even meaning to. It had taken Michael to point that out to me, that maybe there was more to our love story than I thought there was.

“Yeah, I am,” I finally admitted. “But we never seem to be able to make things work, no matter how hard we try. We just keep doing the same shit over and over. We can’t just keep this cycle going forever.”

“I get it, I do,” Alex said. “But I really honestly think that things can be different this time. We’ve both done some real soul searching and growing up.”

But had we really? Sometimes I wasn’t so sure.

“Look, Alex, this is…a lot,” I started to respond. “Today’s been totally crazy and we’ve all got a lot on our minds, so maybe we should just table this for another time so we don’t keep saying things that we don’t mean.”

“I mean everything I just said,” Alex said emphatically. “That’s what I was trying to tell you the night we put that toilet on Jay and Isabel’s lawn. But then the cops came, and I never really got the chance.”

“I just can’t do this right now, Alex,” I said, starting to close the door again. This was just way too much in one fucking day; I couldn’t deal with this until everything with Jack was resolved. “I promise we’ll talk about this, but later.” I tried to close the door further, but his foot was still there.

“Come on, Jade, please,” Alex said desperately. His eyes were pleading with me, begging me not to push him away again.

“Not right now, I’m sorry,” I told him. “I need you to move your foot.”

He hesitated but then finally moved it. “Fine.”

I shut the door and then rested my head against it. Why did everything always have to happen all at once like this? Why couldn’t things be spaced out? Like maybe one day Alex could have found out about Zack and Skye, and then a few days later Jack could have gone over to confess his love for her and get shot down, and so on and so forth. This whole day really should have been spaced out over at least a week for the sake of everyone’s mental health.

I waited for Alex to walk away, but it was several minutes before I could finally hear his footsteps retreat. He made his way to his car and then slammed the door shut before driving away.

After I was sure Alex was gone, I moved over to the couch and turned the TV on. I needed a little bit of a distraction after everything. I flipped around until I landed on the Investigation Discovery channel. Other people’s misery was a suitable distraction. After a few hours, my eyes started to get heavy and I drifted off, hoping that things would calm down soon.