Soundtrack
The MiddleâJimmy Eat World
I Miss Youâblink-182
Best of MeâThe Starting Line
3
Jack
Jack had no idea Mia was going to be at that bar. Really. If you had asked him, he would have sworn so on his father's life, and that meant something. Just as he had no idea she was going to be at the Bean and some shit last weekend. Jack hoped that she took their second run in as yet another sign that they should get back together.
Once again, the world stopped when Jack laid eyes on Mia. She was his constant, the center of his universe, his stability; how did he always find ways to royally fuck things up with her? He wanted to be better for her, knew that he had to be better for her, but he didn't even know where to start; all he knew for certain was that he had to make it work.
The world slowly started to materialize back around him. The bar was loud, maybe too loud, and the only scents he could pick up were stale sweat and well drinks. Someone nudged Jack's shoulder, and the rest of his senses realigned.
"Hey man, you good?" Logan looked at him with raised eyebrows, eyes just slightly red.
Jack shook him off and moved so he'd stop blocking the entrance. "Yeah, sorry. I'll catch up with you later."
"We just got here." But Logan's voice was distant as Jack was already halfway to Mia, closing the distance between them as smoothly as possible.
She was beautiful as ever. Jack trailed his eyes over the hair that flowed past her shoulders, and the soft dress she was wearing begged to be pooled around her ankânoâhe stopped himself: those kinds of thoughts weren't going to help him. He just wanted her to come home.
Her eyes finally met his, and he'd missed the way she looked at him. He'd be lying if he claimed it didn't sting when her chest rose and fell with a sigh as he approached her. Jack's brain shot off a mantra in his head: no more lies.
"Hey."
She had a bubbly drink in her hand: a vodka with club soda and a twist of lemon. In the early days of their relationship, Mia rarely drank, or swore, or partied, or, frankly, did anything even remotely fun. Her overly serious facade had been Jack's challenge; he didn't want to break her, only free her. Jack often felt like he didn't quite get things right in that regard.
But now he was being given yet another chance to reconnect with her, and he was determined not to fuck things up again.
"Why do you keep doing this?" Mia asked.
Jack didn't want everyone to see the side of him that would crawl across the floor for her, would beg her on his hands and knees to leave with him. Jack could never show that side to anyoneânot even to her. "I'm not doing anything, Mia. There are two bars worth visiting on this side of town."
He could see that she was biting at the inside of her cheeks; she was nervousâwhy is she nervous around me? That cut Jack deeply, and a cold shiver invisibly worked its way through his chest as shame bubbled in his throat. "Can we sit and talk? Just talk, not yell, or argue, or bicker."
She looked behind him, an apologetic tint in her eyes, and somehow Jack knew that meant her brother must have been there with her. He rubbed at the clear patch on his arm, hoping against all hope that the night wouldn't end in an altercation between him and her brother. Somewhere in the recesses of his brain, he knew the easy way to get Mia back would be to win over her brother, but Jack was far too prideful to even let the thought of such a thing fully form.
Mia's eyes came back to him. "Okay. Do you want something to drink before we sit?"
Jack shook his head at her, and she turned on her heels towards an unoccupied booth in the corner of the bar. It was reflexive for his hand to come to rest on the small of her back; he felt the smallest jump from her as his body made contact with hers, and that let him know how far they'd fallen. Jack removed his touch from her, an icy frost coating his fingers and palm.
Mia slid into the booth and moved all the way in, setting her drink between them. Jack sat opposite of her, taking a moment to really look at her; he wondered if it were possible for someone to look differently after one week. Mia was somehow even more beautiful than the last time he'd seen her, but Jack couldn't pinpoint exactly what was different about her, only that the difference was there, and she was everything he had ever wanted.
Mia gestured towards her cup. "It's only seltzer and lemon. No vodka."
Jack gave her a grateful smile before grasping the drink in his hand and taking a sip; he could taste her vanilla lip balm on the edge of the glass, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He hoped it wasn't the closest he were going to get to kissing her again.
"How's work?" Jack asked, pushing the glass back towards her; she relaxed just a bit into the cushioned seat of the booth, the cracks in the faux red leather of it stretching.
"Can't complain. I had my annual review a few weeks ago, and everything went well, so that was good. You?" She lifted her glass for another sip.
Jack shrugged his shoulders. "Same as it's always been. Rearranging wires, undeleting entire inboxes when someone clicks one of those spam links, fixing mundane tech issues that seem to pop up every hour."
"You haven't purposely sabotaged anyone's desktop so they need to keep calling you?" Mia was trying desperately not to let a small smile creep onto her face, but Jack could see it there, tugging at her lips, for he had studied every centimeter of her face for the last two years, and so little was able to escape him.
"Not since you, Mia." When Jack was called in as tech support to fix Mia's computer and he first laid eyes on her, seeing her again became a nonnegotiable, so he mostly fixed her computer. He made sure she'd have another issue crop up, another reason to call the IT office he worked for, another reason for him to see her again. Running back through it in his head made it seem less romantic and more psychopathic; what the fuck was wrong with me? "That was weird, wasn't it?"
"It would have been easier to just ask for my number."
"I'd never seen a girl like you before; I was too nervous to ask for your personal number."
It happened; her lips cracked a small smile. "I find that hard to believe, Jack Moreno. I don't think you've ever had a problem getting the girl." And as suddenly as that smile had appeared, it was gone.
He knew what she was thinking about, and Jack wanted so badly for that night to be wiped from the world. There was no way they were going to go anywhere without talking about it, and he rubbed more vigorously at his upper arm. "Who told you?"
Mia squirmed in her seat. "We were together for two years, Jack. We have mutual friends. I...I was hoping it was nothing more than a rumor. I wanted it to be a rumor."
Jack's gaze shifted from her eyes to the small puddle of water the condensation of her glass was making on the table. "How long have you known?"
"Since the morning after."
Fuck. She'd been sitting on that for nearly two months, and Jack felt his chances of her coming home gradually slipping away. There was nothing for him to say to fix this; his sole hope would be for them to be able to work through it, for him to somehow prove to her it meant nothing and that she could trust him again, in time.
"Was it someone I knew?" she asked.
Fuck. Again. Jack figured this meant they were really going to talk about it. "No. One of Adam's friends from his hometown."
Mia couldn't seem to bring herself to look at him; she was absently stirring her drink with the small cocktail straw that stuck out of it, the ice almost completely melted.
"I told you I'm not going to lie to you anymore, Mia. If you want to know something, I'm going to tell you the truth, evenâeven if I know will only do more damage. I promise you that I'm really trying here, even if it's making things worse."
She thought on that for a moment; how much did she really want to know? A moment of rage seeped through Jack's brain as he considered how he would feel if the situation were reversed, and the cycle of hating himself started afresh.
"Did you bring her to our place?"
Jack shook his head.
"Where were you?"
Jack scanned the bar, focusing in on Logan. He jabbed his thumb in his direction. "Logan's. He was having a party. It was the night after you left."
She still wouldn't meet his eyes. "What did you do?"
"Are you sure you want a play-by-play?" It came out more harshly than he wanted it to. "Sorry. This is awkward, and I know it's my own fault, but I hate this, Mia. I can't take it back, but there was nothing emotional about it at all, it was purely physical, and I was high out of my mind." Jack considered it nothing short of miraculous that things even worked at all that night, but he also knew he was offering the last bit as a lame excuse.
Mia picked up her glance to meet his; he was surprised to see that her eyes were dry. "How far did you get with her?"
"Miaâ"
"Tell me. I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me what you did with her. I want you to see how this makes me feel." Her composure was slipping, her voice faltering, and he wanted to tell her it was nothing more than the rumor she thought it was; his father raised him better than this; his father taught him to love a woman unconditionally, and there he was constantly letting her, and him, down.
Jack let his lungs fill before starting, hoping the influx of oxygen to his brain would make him sound less like a complete douchebag. "I was sitting on the couch in Logan's basementâangry, upset, frustrated that we weren't able to make things work yet againâas people moved in and out of conversations. Logan handed me the joint he'd had between his fingers, and I took it all too eagerly. I meant what I said the other day, Mia: I wasn't trying to forget you; I was trying to forget about all the shit I was feeling because you were gone. Adam walked in with a group of people, one of them being this chick I'd never met before. I don't know how it happened; it just did. One minute I was taking another hit, the next she was sitting beside me, and I was taking another, and then I was passing it to her. At some point, she..." Jack ran a hand through the thick shock of hair on his head, "she leaned into me, and one thing led to another and then we were up in one of the bedrooms. We didn't have sex, Mia. I stopped it beforeâ"
A waiter appeared at their table; Mia broke eye contact with him, something he was grateful for after watching her break through her eyes.
"Vodka, club, and lemon."
The waiter turned to Jack, but he just waved his hand. Mia's eyes were back on his.
"How far did you get with her?"
Jack tried to calm the elevated rate of his heart; he hadn't been that close to a panic attack since he was a teenager, and that scared the shit out of him. He'd have given anything for a cigarette or a joint or an edible in that moment. "I touched her. She went down on me. I knew it was wrong, Mia. I knew that; it was why I left before things went any further. Iâ"
She waited, face expectant.
"I didn't finish. I don't know if that makes things better or worse. I'm sorry."
Her eyes were so incredibly sad, and Jack hated that he'd caused that sadness; but he couldn't let her goâJack wasn't going to survive without her.
"What am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to do? If I'd done this to youâ" she stopped, her face fell into her hands, and she breathed deeply.
Jack slid out of his side of the booth and into hers; the fact that she didn't recoil when he put his arm around her and pulled her into him, told him that he had permission to hold her. "If it were reversed, I'd never want to speak to you again; I'd beat the shit out of whoever you'd been with. You're better than I am, Mia. That's always been true."
Jack felt a minuscule wetness seep through his shirt and onto his chest.
"Why do you make this so hard?"
He'd been asking himself that since the day he met her. "I'm sorry."
Her new drink came down between them, and Jack pushed it in her direction as she peeled herself away from him. She took a long sip, seemingly collecting herself as she did so.
"Your clothes don't smell like smoke."
"Because I haven't been smoking. Just once since the last time I saw you."
She made to say something, but the DJ came over the sound system, interrupting her. "It's that time of the night, ladies and gentleman. Grab that special someone you've been chatting with and head on over. You get one slowed down song to really seal the deal." And then some shitty country love song started playing through the speakers.
Jack kissed the top of her forehead before sliding out of the booth, holding his hand out to her. She didn't smile, but she did take his hand, and that was progress. He led them to the edge of the dance floor, wrapped one arm around the small of her back, and took her other hand in his. She let her head rest against his shoulder, and Jack tried to ignore the sappy lovesick smiles all the other couples wore on their faces.
Jack leaned a little closer into Mia; his heart felt like it would explode, and his chest was uncomfortably warm and tight. "I need you," he whispered.
The hand that wasn't holding his gripped the fabric of his T-shirt harder. "I know," she whispered back.
The weight of it all was crushing him, his bones impacting on one another as the air he was breathing grew thick and heavy. "Please come back. I'll be better. I'll be good for you."
Mia was crying. She wouldn't lift her face to his, but he knew she was crying by the way her back moved under his hand. So Jack held her there, even after the shitty love song stopped and a pop-rap remix replaced it, for he wasn't sure how much longer he would get to hold her like this.
When she finally looked at him, he wanted to kiss her so badly, more than anything else he'd ever wanted. She was trying to communicate with him through her eyes: I love you, but I don't trust you. But then it happened: Jack felt her perch up, reach towards him as if she were going to kiss him and he could hardly contain the adrenaline coursing through his blood, though the crescendo never came.
Mia was ripped away from him in an instant, and Jack found himself locking eyes with her brother.
Mia peered at him, her back to Jack, waiting for Andy to say something.
"Ben wants to head to a different bar. Are you ready to go?"
Her voice stammered out. "Oh, well...hang on a second." She turned back to Jack. "I need to talk to Andy."
So Jack walked away, not another word coming from his mouth for fear of it offending her or him or both of them. He sat back in the booth they'd been sitting in and watched Mia and her brother.
Andy's face was drawn with concern, and he was gesturing with his hands while Mia shifted her weight from foot to foot; she was conflicted, torn, and in a sick way that gave Jack hope, but he knew what he had to do.
Jack strolled over to them, putting his hands up in complete surrender and deference to Andy. "One sec." He pulled Mia away just enough that her brother was out of earshot. "I'm not going to be upset if you leave. I'll stay here." It hurt Jack to think of her choosing anyone other than him, but he'd put her through enough.
"Are you sure?"
Ouch. "Yes."
"Okay. Um, here." She bent down and started pulling bills out of the wallet in her purse.
Jack pushed her hand back down. "Don't worry about it, Mia."
"Butâ"
"It's fine."
She hesitated. "Okay. Thanks."
There was then this uncomfortable space of a few seconds between them where they weren't sure if they should kiss or hug or, fuck, shake hands? She settled on smiling at him, but there was less joy in it than he'd hoped.
Jack watched her walk away from him, watched her join her brother as a stupid smirk took over his face. He watched her stop as the rest of them turned to leave, her brother turning back, a questioning look on his face. He watched Mia shake her head, he watched Andy roll his eyes, and he saw Andy stare him down as Mia walked back towards him.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I have no idea."
Jack smiled. "Andy wants to kill me."
Mia shook her head. "He always has."
A/N: My goal is for you to constantly question whose side you're on. Is that evil? Maybe ð
So whose side are you on right now? Jack? Mia? Andy? Dare I say, Carter? He'll be back soon ð
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. If you did, will you vote by tapping that star and comment so we can chat and share this with your friends?
I hope you have a great weekend and week ahead,
L