Just Another Reason I Could Never Forget You

Twenty-Three.

“This place looks shady as shit,” I said quietly to John, looking around the diner. I mean, it was fine, but something about the dim lights gave it a sinister turn. I imagine during the day it looked perfectly reasonable but it was currently well past 11pm and it looked like the owner had gotten seriously cheap on his light bulbs. I suppose the fact it was past 11 also gave me no choice but to come here.
“Stop panicking,” he chuckled. “I’ve been here before. It’s good.” He took advantage of our intertwined hands to pull me toward a booth by the window, sitting down quickly and scanning over the menu. It was typical diner food. Nothing jumped out at me, but my stomach was telling me it was all necessary. I glanced through into the kitchen, relaxing a little when I saw it wasn’t as grimy as I anticipated. Okay, so I was being totally paranoid for nothing.
“When have you been here before?” I asked, looking up at him curiously between scanning the menu.
“We have toured without you, you know,” he chuckled.
“Well, duh, but I totally thought you were laid in your shitty van pining over me,” I joked back at him.
“I needed greasy food to fuel my pining, sweetheart.” I grinned at him widely, grateful that John understood my humour as well as he did. I’d gotten myself into shocking amounts of drama because of my jokes over the years, so the back and forth we had was the one similarity to Alex I would admit to in John.
“John! Jasey!” Marissa’s voice filled the diner and I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. I’d been so looking forward to having John to myself for an hour. Close quarters with four other guys didn’t lend itself to quality alone time. “Scoot,” she ordered, flinging herself into the seat next to my own as I shuffled over. Jack sat down across from me, the scowl he’d been wearing for days still on his face. I rolled my eyes at John when I noticed Jack’s face and he smiled reassuringly at me. I hadn’t told him about Jack’s spat with Alex yet.
“Hey, pain in my ass, what are you doing here?” I asked her. She flipped me off before picking up the menu and scanning over it.
“John’s had two years with you, the next week is all about me,” she told me, not looking up from the menu. “That and this is the only place open this late.”
“Uh huh,” I nodded, slowly and sarcastically. “I totally believe that. Stalker.”
“Bite me, Jase,” she laughed. “Butthole over there wanted food and I was more than happy to oblige.”
“I needed five minutes with you, actually,” he responded. His tone was flat and I could tell he was just as happy to be here as he had me being in his apartment the other night. “You know, because you’re only here for a handful of days and I won’t be back for a while after that.” His tone didn’t brighten and it seemed he was annoyed at Marissa for not telling him John and I would be here. I didn’t blame him.
“Well, what better way than to catch up with Jasey too,” she replied brightly. I glanced at her as she put the menu down to smile sweetly at him, before looking at John, who was frowning at Jack.
That mother fucker.
“I’m all caught up with Jasey,” he told her. I scoffed lightly, drawing Jack’s glare but ignoring it in favour of looking between the other two.
“You’re both so fucking transparent,” I told them. “’ooh, let’s go to this one place and conveniently run into people we know.’ Fuck off.” I wasn’t annoyed, but it was ridiculous. If I wanted to talk shit out with Jack, I would have done already. He was easy enough to corner but I just hadn’t had the energy to face it. Yeah, sure, I wanted to be friends again, but that was at the bottom of Jack’s list of things to do. All I needed was to focus on my friends and John. “Did you tell her?”
“No, she worked it out,” John told me, shaking his head. “We were worried about you.” I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms over my chest. I loved her, but it wasn’t her place to get involved. Jack would do Jack and I would just get on with things.
“I deliberately didn’t say anything to her, John,” I told him.
“What? So now you’re annoyed that they want us to be friends?” Jack snapped.
“Hey, you don’t get to tell me I’m not your fucking friend, that I’m an awful person, then bitch when I don’t want to have dinner with you,” I snapped back.
“You said what?!” Marissa shrieked, earning herself a glare from one of the waitresses.
“Well, she is!” I scoffed again, not sure why this had upset me so much for the last couple of days. I’d been run down by everything, sure, but Jack was being a fucking child. “She left you! She left us! What kind of person does that?”
“What kind of person falls out with someone because they were cheated on?” I retaliated. “That shit isn’t on me.”
“That’s not why I’m angry at you,” he retaliated. “I’m angry because you ignored Marissa because of something Alex did and then forgave him for it in no fucking time whatsoever.”
“Because I could have answered without the pair of you convincing me to come home,” I snapped. “All the two of you ever wanted was me and Alex to be together and I didn’t want to be with Alex.” Jack and I glared at each other, but he held his tongue. I hadn’t meant to bring Marissa into it but Jack had said her name first and I wasn’t going to lie to either of them. They both knew I didn’t want to come home, they both knew I loved Alex and would have forgiven him in a heartbeat if I had come home, so why couldn’t they understand this?
“Did you really think we didn’t just want you to talk to us?” Marissa asked quietly. I turned to her, my glare dropping when I noticed the glistening in her eyes. “We love you. We would have told you to stay in Arizona if that made you happy. Why would you think we’d make you do something you didn’t want to do?” My chest ached harder than it had done in years as I watched my best friend on the verge of tears because of me. I was so ashamed of myself. Why had I thought that? Why had I gone through years of friendship with these people and assumed they wouldn’t support the things I wanted to do? I felt John’s hand linking with my own under the table as I stared at her, not knowing what to say.
“You know what, Jack?” I said slowly. “Maybe you were right. Maybe I am a shit person and maybe I should just go home and leave you all alone before I hurt anyone else’s feelings.” I shook my head, wishing they didn’t all have me boxed in so I could have made my escape. In front of me sat the three people I cared about most, and they had all been hurt by me. I didn’t deserve any of them.
“Jase, I didn’t mean it,” he told me. He glanced between John and I and sighed before continuing. “I mean, I’m not wrong. Alex is getting sucked back into this shit but that’s not entirely on you. Things would be easier if you weren’t here, if you just hated him, but I’m glad you’re here anyway. He needs to see that you’re happy and then he might start to forget about you.”
“He knows, Jack,” I sighed. “That night you blew up at me, we’d talked about it in fucking depth.”
“You know as well as anyone, he says what you want to hear, but he doesn’t control how he feels. Seeing you with John might be helpful for him.”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “He’s known about John for years, or some idea of John.” I glanced over at him, watching the frown on my boyfriend’s face and realising just how many secrets I had kept over the years, from everyone. “He showed up one day, at the apartment,” I told them, continuing to watch John’s reaction. “You answered and he pretty much said that’s what he gave up on trying to win me back. It lasted a couple weeks before he got drunk and left me a handful of voicemails.” I decided not to let him in on the fact that if Alex had had even less willpower, I would have answered his call in the days following his visit and John and I would never have happened. I knew in my bones that that day had been my lowest point. Until I called it a day and got stupidly wasted and drunk dialled John, I’d been back and forth to my car, debating the drive home, to the airport, to wherever I could feasibly track Alex down to, anywhere.
“Well, then, what do you suggest?”
“Nothing,” I shrugged. “Just coming here showed me I’m over Alex and all of our bullshit.” I smiled over at John, that reassuring smile I couldn’t have given him a handful of days ago. I knew this had been an awkward enough conversation for him, so I was making a point to show him that this didn’t mean anything to me. Alex was my friend, I cared for him, but I didn’t—well, I did love Alex, I would continue to love him for the rest of my life, I supposed. You don’t get over your first love, especially when it ends the way Alex and I ended. However, that love didn’t affect my current situation with John. We were going to be happy, I knew that, and I knew I needed to assure John of that sometimes too. “If I know anything about Alex, I know that under it all, he’s just like me,” I continued, returning my attention to Jack and his concerns. “Talking it out like we have been, reminding him I’m happy without rubbing in his face how much he fucked up, is pretty much going to be the way forward. He’s adjusting, he’s getting there.”
Jack sighed, leaning back in his seat, the frown on his face lessening but not entirely disappearing. I knew I had at least allayed his fears about my feelings for Alex, and how I would react to him, but I had yet to give him enough to be completely reassured about his friend. For all I ignored everyone, I had listened to every voicemail I’d received, read every text, so I knew just how crushed Alex had been when I left. I was in the throes of spite at first, just happy he felt how I felt, but the longer it had gone on, the more guilt I felt. I hadn’t even been on the front line of it, just the recipient of late, lonely nights alone with his phone.
“He’s good for you, you know,” Jack told me, finally. I cocked my head to the side, not sure what I was missing. “John.” I felt myself beginning to smile, knowing much better than Jack just how good John was for me. “You’re way more mature than you used to be about this. Three years ago, all I would have gotten is ‘sucks to be Alex’ or gotten into some sort of argument about how you don’t have real feelings. Two years ago, you’d admit to the feelings, but you wouldn’t talk about them like this. I like this Jasey.”
“He’s the best influence I’ve ever had, I swear.”
“I love it when you talk about me like I’m not here,” John joked.
“You should hear the crap I say when you actually aren’t here.”
“Oh, I hear plenty, darlin’.” I snorted in response, trying not to make another joke at his expense.
The longer the four of us lingered, the easier the conversation became. Alex was dropped as a topic of conversation completely, moving on to Jack and Marissa, my childhood with the pair, John and I in Arizona, anything that kept us away from Alex.
“Does she spike your eggnog and make you sing awful Christmas songs?” Jack chuckled, an hour later, after we’d all eaten. I rolled my eyes, remembering the four of us in Marissa and I’s apartment putting up the decorations. I had been drunk to begin with, so the spiked eggnog really wasn’t a surprise. Frankly, the terrible Christmas carols weren’t surprising either, given my track record with Christmas.
“No,” he laughed back. “She doesn’t even put up a tree.”
“Jasey!” Marissa scolded me. I rolled my eyes, an amused smile on my face.
“Christmas is way less fun without Jack to bounce my excitement off, okay?”
“You were a Christmas geek?” John asked, puzzled by this new piece of information.
“It’s different in Maryland,” I grumbled. “I’d have the fire on and there’d be snow. It’s not as exciting in incessant sunshine.” I felt like I was being accused of lying to the guys for not showing them all this side of me, but I just hadn’t felt as excited about the festive period in Arizona. John wasn’t overly keen, though he at least had a proper family Christmas. I had nothing. I’d been invited to John’s once for Christmas and actively avoided the awkwardness the following year. Christmas was just another day to me out there. I simply sat in my apartment, eating whatever I had to hand and watching cheesy movies. The only difference was I had nowhere else I could go, especially with all the guys tied up in familial engagements.
Christmas sucked in Arizona.
“We’ll have to come back out east this year then,” he smiled, nudging me lightly. I smiled weakly, not even sure I wanted to come back for Christmas. I half felt like that time of my life had passed and I honestly just wanted to keep John to myself. I didn’t need to drag him across the country to obligations with my friends and family who he hardly knew. That was the entire reason I was so ambivalent about the entire thing as it was.
“Like I need a festive period with these two,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “I’ve been through the emotional wringer, I don’t need Marissa’s over-excitement adding to it, never mind Jack.”
“Oh, Maria’s fine,” Jack replied, dismissively. “She just lets me get on with it and drinks anything she can get her hands on.”
“That’s my girl.” Marissa scoffed at the pair of us.
“Oh, Maria’s an alcoholic, how funny. Jasey Rae’s best friend caught the bug before she left. Bite me, assholes.” Jack and I grinned widely at each other before laughing loudly as Marissa tried to pretend to sulk.
“Wait, so what actually is your name?” John chuckled. “Because Jack calls you five different names, Hol calls you Marissa and the rest of the guys call you Maria. I lose track because all of you guys seem to have a weird thing about your names.” I held back a laugh, realising that very few of us even went by our given names anymore. It had just been natural as a teenager that all of us played about and made stuff up.
“My name is actually Marissa,” she told him, rolling her eyes. “Asshole Rae over there has had that phone for about five years and it outright refused to type the letter s for a while. Alex and Jack latched on after she text the name Maria and I haven’t lived it down since.”
“I’m getting a new one, I swear,” I told her, eyeing up my old phone, having taped it back together a hundred times. It had been the one thing I’d allowed myself as my memory of home.
“I told you to do that a year ago,” John laughed. “It’s ancient.”
“But I didn’t want one a year ago,” I pouted. “Besides, the fucker has taken a beating this year. Even I can’t say it doesn’t need replacing now.”
“So, this is nothing to do with you flipping your shit on your birthday?” He asked, raising his eyebrows at me, a small, amused smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“What? I didn’t ‘flip my shit’ on my birthday.”
“Really?” He laughed again at my confused expression. “You screamed ‘fuck you’, threw it at the side of my house and refused to pick it up until morning.”
“I don’t remember that,” I lied smoothly. “I just remember that I had to put it back together the day after.” I shrugged, taking small sip of my coffee and refusing to meet his eye. I remembered, vividly, doing so, as well as kicking it out of my way later in the night when I’d had even more to drink. Thankfully, John didn’t seem to know that bit.
“Well, you did,” he informed me. “That phone takes a hell of a lot of shit from you.” I grinned meekly, unable to contradict him further. I would, indeed, get irrationally angry at my phone occasionally, but I always painstakingly put it back together again when I was through.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I said, I’m replacing it.”
“If you say so, darlin’.”