A Story to Tell Your Friends

Christmas had continued without a hitch. Marky and Jack seemed to be getting along much better than they had at first, though I could still see it was very begrudgingly on Marky’s part. He wanted to hate Jack (most likely half because I was his little sister and half because he didn’t want me to be right), but the more they spoke, the more they got along. Thankfully, Jack was beginning to loosen up the more he got along with Marky, meaning we got to be our usual, mocking selves before the end of Christmas Day.
A couple of days had passed since Christmas, and it was beginning to look like we’d be staying over the New Year too. Kayla had text once or twice, checking in and trying to figure out if we were staying. Having not yet discussed it with Jack, I hadn’t given her a straight answer. Unfortunately, this morning her questioning took a more pointed stance and she invited us out for the night with a couple of other people we knew from High School. Jack had, surprisingly, leapt at the chance to get to know more of my friends, including Kayla. It was sweet. I’d expected him to still be wary after our chance encounter the other day but, now that he was more relaxed, he seemed to be eager to get to know these people. Either that or being cooped up in a house for three days with me and Marky bickering was taking its toll on him.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked for perhaps the hundredth time that day, and at least the tenth time since we got in the cab. “We could always turn around.” So I was worried about how my friends would react, sue me. We all loved these guys in the first part of our high school years and, so far, I had been the only one to react reasonably to Alex and Jack upon first meeting.
“Are you deliberately trying to worry me?” He chuckled, glancing over at me. “Yes, I want to do this. You’ve met all my friends, it’s time I started to meet yours.”
“Well, okay, yeah, but you introduced me to your friends in a sober way and I aren’t fucking famous.” I pretended to scowl at him and he chuckled, grabbing my hand.
“If they’re as weird as you, I’ll just get really drunk, okay?” I snorted but nodded at him, grinning. That was by far the best way to get through any sort of encounter with my friends.
It took only a few more minutes to arrive at the bar, something I had all but forgotten was possible since moving to LA. The fact we had made it from home to a bar in less than twenty minutes absolutely astounded me. I took a breath as I faced the doorway, knowing that while Jack thought he was prepared for the craziness of my friends, he wasn’t nearly as prepared as he thought he was.
“Clara!” A scream came as soon as I opened the door, a head of blonde hair pouncing on me within seconds and I rolled my eyes, laughing all the same. “Oh my God, Clar-Clar, we missed you!”
“Back off, Kay,” I laughed again. “You’re too drunk and I just cannot cope right now.”
“Boo, you whore,” she pouted, letting go of me, swaying a little as she backed off. “Hey, Rockstar, it’s nice to see you again,” she said as she noticed Jack, who had come in behind me only seconds later. She wasn’t exactly shy on the day-to-day, but she was definitely much more confident around Jack with however many drinks she’d already consumed.
“You too, Kayla,” he smiled. I noticed a slight hesitation, but it seemed mostly like a standard on-edge-because-my-girlfriend’s-friends-are-crazy-people hesitation.
“Come on, Nel is desperate to see you again,” she told me, pulling me by the waist toward a loud group by the bar. I spied a handful of old friends in the group and a few of their partners I’d met way back when, along with more faces I didn’t know.
“You coming, cutie?” I grinned at Jack, still being pulled along toward our friends. He nodded his head to the bar and I flashed another grin at him, before being engulfed by my friends, who all seemed at least a little tipsy and I became grateful that Jack was already planning on bringing me alcohol. Did I have issues with social situations in that they all descended into alcohol and bad decisions? Maybe. Did I actually care? Definitely not.
My friends all cheered as they saw me, a few pulling me in for hugs, another few asking for news of LA and Tammy and work and I hardly had time to splutter out a ‘good’ or ‘amazing’, let alone a full response, before someone else asked something. It felt great to be home, realising that I neglected all these people I’d known for so long for the past few months, but none of them skipped a beat in welcoming me back and it felt fucking fantastic. I had the new faces introduced to me in no time and I was beyond happy to know a few of my old friends had found someone since I’d left. I felt a tap on my shoulder in no time, Jack passing my drink over and I pulled him into the group.
“Oh, hey, I heard you’d gotten a sugar daddy,” Nel joked as she noticed Jack, before I’d even had chance to introduce him. “When Kayla said famous musician, we expected some beat up fifty-year-old with some sort of substance problem.”
“Nel!” I half scolded, laughing loudly. If Kayla had said anything to them about Jack, it had definitely been ‘dibs’. “This is Jack. Yes, musician, no not nearly famous, in fact nobody knows him at all anywhere.” Nel raised an eyebrow at me and I laughed again. “Okay, he might be Tammy’s favourite guitarist ever, but he’s no Joe Strummer.”
“I mean, is he better at guitar than Sid was at bass?” She half joked. I hummed lightly, looking Jack over, pretending to ponder if he could play his instrument, unlike Sid I-Can’t-Play-Bass Vicious. Nel, of course, knew my unending distaste for Sid Vicious’s notoriety and held him up as the bar to which everyone had to surpass to be happy with my opinion of them.
“I mean, I guess you can kind of play guitar, right Jack?” He raised an eyebrow at my question, thankfully having never been on the receiving end of one of my Sid rants (I backed away from them unless confronted with his idolisation when really drunk, or I did now I wasn’t a teenager).
“You’d have to ask Alex,” he shrugged. “Though I’m pretty sure he’d say no because his ego can’t take it.”
“Damn,” I sighed. “I guess he’s no better at guitar than Sid was at bass.”
“That’s a shame,” Nel sighed along with me, refusing to crack into a smile. “I was really looking forward to meeting someone who surpassed Sid.”
“I mean, I know how to look pretty and make dick jokes, does that help?” He asked. Nel and I looked at each other, scrunching our noses as we pretended to mull it over. “Okay, how about I can buy you a lot of vodka.”
“Ding ding, we have a winner!” She called. “Welcome to the family, Jack.” I snorted loudly as she grinned at him. If there was one thing Jack knew about me, it was how easily all my friends were won over by alcohol. I couldn’t think of a single exception.
“Your friends are way too easy to manipulate,” Jack laughed at me.
“We should dance,” Nel told me, ignoring Jack’s remark.
“Two minutes, I need alcohol first,” I replied. She raised an eyebrow at me and I shrugged, throwing back a disgustingly large amount of the drink Jack had bought me. “No shots until 10,” I told Jack. “Let me pace myself.” He shook his head, a mildly mischievous smile on his face, though I chose to ignore it, finishing the rest of my drink in another quick motion.
“Now, come on and dance with me, dammit,” Nel laughed, grabbing my hand and dragging me toward the small dance floor. I waved to Jack as we left, allowing myself to move to the music. This was Nel and I’s thing: we got rip-roaringly drunk, danced like complete weirdos, then rolled to one of our homes and woke up at two in the afternoon. No one handled (or enabled) drunk me like Nel did. Not even Tammy. Like I said, Tammy was the mother hen of the group, she was the reason Nel and I managed to roll home at all and not into another bar or some sort of dangerous situation. One of the many reasons Tammy was my best friend and not Nel: we would honestly have died before we hit 18 if Nel and I didn’t have someone else to look after us.
I felt an arm wrap itself around my waist and I leaned back into Jack immediately, though still making some strange sort of attempt to continue dancing. I felt him chuckling as he handed me another drink and passed another along to Nel.
“He’s my favourite of all your boyfriends,” she called to me. I rolled my eyes, grinning anyway.
“Don’t worry, he’s my favourite too.”
I felt myself beginning to laugh as Jack span me around a few minutes later. It felt weird going from our goofy dancing to almost slow dancing to John Mayer as Love on the Weekend started, but Jack made it work. Nel had abandoned us during the previous song, claiming the need for more booze and a bathroom break.
“It reminds me of you,” he muttered softly, still swaying to the song as my friends continued on in their own worlds. “I mean, if I could actually stay away from you for five days. It reminds me of when Alex would barge into my hotel room and call me disgusting, or when we would spend the entire weekend in my bedroom playing video games and eating anything we could get delivered.” My heart fluttered and I could feel the blush rising to my cheeks as my smile widened. If you’d told me six months ago that Jack Barakat, the goof of All Time Low, would be this honestly sweet, I didn’t know what I would have told you. He had such a reputation for being the wild card, the over-exaggerated goofball, that this sweet, caring side of him got overlooked. Instead of hiding my reddening cheeks, I looked up at him.
“I love you.” I watched as his smile turned to a grin before he pressed a tender kiss to my lips.
“I love you, too.” I felt his grip on my waist tighten briefly and I leaned my head against his chest once more. I had honestly never felt this before, to be so happy, so content in another’s arms. I’d told Jack this a hundred times, that I’d never really had a long-term relationship, never really been all that concerned before, but he continued to be the person I ached to be with. It had been less than six months, a measly amount of time in the grand scheme of things, and yet it felt like forever. Every second seemed like my favourite second.