Authors: Mimsy Hale
Afterward, they never spoke of it again. The matter was too big for them to make sense of, let alone address. The knock on the door had been two police officers coming to tell Jake that his father was dead. They reverted to what they had always been to one another: best friends, pillars of support, nothing more. And in the years since, Jake has learned to give up on his feelings, learned to keep people who look at him
that
way at arm’s length. It’s just easier.
Jake reaches over to his phone and hits shuffle. As he sinks into a relaxed Sun Salutation, he lets the music regulate his breathing and guide his thoughts:
I am not in love with Aiden. I don’t fall in love.
Moving through a series of simple poses, working purely on muscle memory, he doesn’t allow himself to wonder if that missed kiss should only have been a
near
miss, if they’d been supposed to revisit it soon afterward and make something of it, if what they’ve always shared is love—love that at first didn’t know it was love, and is now trying to be.
It doesn’t matter,
Jake thinks,
because it’s not love.
More than anything, he’s angry with himself for getting so caught up, for losing sight of what they actually have, for idealizing and dreaming and wishing. He dislikes the person he became while Aiden was in London, but he likes this version of himself even less. What has he become, mooning after his best friend like a love-struck teenager? There is no way he’s in love with Aiden, or that he’s been in love with Aiden all along. The very notion is laughable at best—how could one person be
that
stupid? He isn’t that person at all; Jake Valentine is nothing if not in complete control of himself. Calling it “love” when it’s just a mix of tension and sex and vacation is wrong… calling it “love” gives Aiden the power—real, terrible power—to break him.
I’m just out of my element,
he thinks.
All I need is to step back, recalibrate and remember who I am.
He can still feel the thick, crisp paper of the train ticket between his fingers, and as he moves from a high lunge to a low one, bringing his hands together in front of his chest with his eyes closed, he knows where it will happen.
Chicago.
5,780 miles
Day Forty-
nine: Illinois
During their second year of college, Aiden and Jake took the same video editing class to fulfill one of their core requirements. The final project of the semester was to create a short film using a well-known song in the style of a music video, but either flip or reinterpret the original meaning of the song.
Aiden chose “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers, an intense and electric song about jealousy, possessiveness and cheating. Within a week he had papered the college with posters headlined,
If You’ve Ever Been Cheated On, Help Out a Fellow Student by Reading This!
It was a dirty tactic, but he got an overwhelming response. His idea was to film students from all different majors and areas of the campus lip-syncing the song, and edit it to tell the story of an aftermath devoid of closure, of lingering trauma and of the fruitless wish to one day get even.
No matter how Aiden begged, Jake refused to participate in the main part of the video, insisting that Aiden retain his artistic integrity by only using subjects who had actually been cheated on. He did, however, agree to perform his fire poi routine as part of the video in order to give it the atmosphere of orchestrated yet raw chaos Aiden was hoping to achieve.
On his last day of filming, Aiden was out on the quad looking through some of his footage when Jake found him. He looked troubled, and at first Aiden thought nothing of it; Jake had been bitching about the difficulties he was having with his own film for days.
And then Jake said, “You don’t need to double up on April’s lines anymore,” and Aiden froze.
They filmed Jake’s lines that same day, and later, Aiden’s professor praised him for the surprising yet effective artistic choice of making the mesmerizing fire poi performer the last shot of the video and, therefore, the overall subject of the video’s story.
In those days, Jake talked about getting even with Max, coming up with elaborate revenge plans that, for whatever reason, he never saw through. Now, the closer they get to Chicago, where Max moved after graduation, the more nauseous Aiden feels. He knows exactly what’s going to happen, and is powerless to stop it. Momentum is building behind it, driving a wedge—however temporary—between them, and as they turn into a residential neighborhood, Aiden can’t help but think of the look in Jake’s eyes in his two close-up shots in the video. The light in them was muted, overtaken by something resigned and incommunicably sad; it was a look Aiden had hoped he would never see again.
Until they were almost hit by that wooden beam inside the train station in Gary, he hadn’t.
It has stayed there ever since, even yesterday as they pounded the pavement and toured the sights of Chicago proper. Jake was quiet. His eyes didn’t light up the way Aiden had been hoping and expecting they would when they took pictures of their distorted reflections in The Bean, and he was almost unresponsive during lunch at the top of the John Hancock building, even when Aiden attempted to start another game of
What Would We Film Here?
It was then that Aiden realized exactly what Jake was doing, and wondered if a little of the light in his own eyes had been snuffed out.
Jake cuts the engine outside a small, cozy-looking brick house with a hunter-green front door. He turns to face Aiden, but Aiden trains his gaze on a spot somewhere in the middle distance, for what can he say? What can he
do?
Nothing. There’s nothing,
he thinks.
Jake’s going to do whatever he feels like he needs to do, regardless of whether I give him a reason not to. What reason could I even come up with, anyway? It isn’t like he owes me anything—maybe in another life, he would. Maybe in another life, we wouldn’t even be here.
“I’m staying in the RV tonight,” he says gruffly, picking at a thread on his jeans.
“I thought you might,” Jake says, and then, hesitantly, “How did you know?”
Aiden snorts derisively and shakes his head. “The last time we did anything was back in Michigan. You’re warming up. I get it.”
“Dan…” Jake trails off, his voice soft and tinged with regret.
“It’s fine,” Aiden says, and unclips his seat belt. “Come on. Let’s go.”
He’s halfway to the door when Jake grabs his arm and spins him around; Jake kisses him roughly, pushing his fists into Aiden’s hair, and it feels like a preemptive apology that Aiden doesn’t have the wherewithal to brush off or turn down. Instead he kisses Jake back just as forcefully and sucks in a breath of hollow air when he pulls back. He bolts from the RV before he has the chance to do something he’ll regret, like lock the door and drive off with Jake little more than a hostage.
The front door opens before they even make it up the steps, and
god,
Aiden forgot just how intensely he dislikes everything about Max Whitley, from his overly preppy fashion sense and his too-white teeth to his perfectly styled jet black hair and the slight curl of disdain permanently tugging at his upper lip.
“Jake! Aiden! Man,
so
good to see you guys again,” he greets them, jogging down the steps and pulling them both into a semi-awkward hug. Merely being in his presence is enough to remind Aiden of how lost Jake was with Max: happy but not his happiest, trying for something like what everyone else had and ultimately being betrayed when he didn’t “measure up.” While Aiden knows Jake was never in love with Max, he might have been on his way to it—and when Jake loves, he does so fearfully, and holds on with everything he has. It isn’t something to be taken lightly or thrown away, and that is exactly what Max did.
“Good to see you, too,” Jake says.
“Let’s go catch up, huh?” Max asks, though he leaves no room for argument as he motions them both inside, and Aiden doesn’t miss the way his piercing blue eyes rake up and down Jake’s body as he passes by.
Aiden grits his teeth and says nothing—a practice he employs for the two hours Jake and Max spend catching up. He speaks only when spoken to, and just nods along the rest of the time. He knows he’s acting like a child, but can’t seem to help it. Moreover, he doesn’t particularly want to.
At least there’s beer,
he thinks upon finishing his third bottle in as many hours. The buzz in his limbs is the only pleasant thing about the evening’s rapid fade into darkness—which apparently takes with it the need for things such as personal space and decorum.
They’re sitting in Max’s living room, three walls painted a neutral cream and the other a deep red that frames the large plasma screen. Before Aiden can protest, they’re watching
The Breakfast Club—
the very movie that he and Jake decided would be their movie for Illinois. He didn’t think he could be any more pissed off, but the movies are
their
thing, not to be shared with anyone else. Especially not Max fucking Whitley, and especially not this movie, which they’ve watched so many times that Aiden has long since lost count.
He tries to focus all of his attention on it nevertheless, but his mind seems to have become a wasteland of regrets and the dozen men before him, who all took advantage of the opportunity he’s missed time and time again. He coils deeper and deeper within himself, and the more beer he sucks down, the more things feel terribly, terribly wrong. So he keeps drinking.
When he looks over, he can see Jake and Max’s fingers brushing in the ever-decreasing space between their thighs. Then Max has his arm around Jake’s shoulders, and Jake’s eyes flutter closed, and he lets out a pleased hum as Max noses along the side of his face.
Aiden squeezes his bottle so tightly he’s surprised it doesn’t shatter, and leaps up as if the couch has burned him. Max and Jake spring apart, and if it weren’t for the terrible wave of nausea coursing through him, Aiden might laugh at the way Max almost cowers behind Jake. He always has been a complete chickenshit.
“I’m leaving,” Aiden manages to grit out between clenched teeth, eyes boring into Jake, who doesn’t quite seem able to meet his gaze. “I’ll be in the RV. You can come find me when you’re done here.”
He pauses for a moment, waits for Jake to say something, to stand up and take his hand and walk right out the door with him, before turning on his heel. Head held high, he strides out of the living room, down the hall and out the front door, slamming it behind him for good measure. “Ugh,” he groans, scrubbing a hand over his face as if he can wipe a sudden rush of flashbulb imagery from his mind’s eye: Jake’s bare torso; Jake biting the very corner of his bottom lip; Jake smiling wickedly as he wraps his fingers around Aiden’s cock. Jake, Jake, Jake, doing all the things they’ve been doing together but doing them with Max instead, a person who undoubtedly knows his way around Jake’s body just as well as—if not better than—Aiden does.
The thought makes him itch, and he berates himself as he paces the length of the RV, studiously avoiding even a glimpse of the bed.
So fucking stupid, so fucking blind. You’re an idiot, Aiden Calloway. An idiot who can’t keep your best friend from doing something that’ll end up hurting you both.
Finally, he collapses onto the couch and pulls out his phone. He hits shuffle, neither knowing nor caring what song is about to start, because it’s all just noise anyway. Minutes pass—ten, sixty, Aiden loses track—and given how much he’s had to drink, he should, by rights, be far drowsier. When the song from the first time Jake fucked him begins to play, however, it shocks him back into wakefulness and West Virginia; sense memories tear their way along his body and he buries his hands in his hair just to give them something to do. It’s no use. He’s pissed off and frustrated and, with images of Jake rising unbidden on the backs of his eyelids, Jake’s moans ringing in his ears, he’s getting hard, uncomfortably so.
He hits shuffle again before giving in entirely and roughly shoving his hand into his briefs.
It doesn’t matter what he listens to—for some reason, all he can see is that stupid music video. Aiden remembers every last frame of the damned thing—by the end of the editing process, he had never wanted to listen to the song again. But right now, as he works himself into a frenzy of frustration, running after his release as if it is being dangled in front of him, it seems oddly apropos. The video cycles in his mind, Jake’s fire poi routine flashing circles behind his eyes, the faces of every single student he featured coming back to haunt him.
In less than a minute he’s panting and grunting, not caring what noise he makes because he just needs to be done. Jake’s face is the only one with any clarity amongst the blur of frame after frame, angle after angle spliced together until the video in his mind is no longer a chaotic and beautiful performance, but a nightmare.
His back arches with an almost painful snap when he comes, an abandoned cry of Jake’s name wrapped around his tongue and the final frame of the video frozen in the forefront of his mind. It’s that look he’d never wanted to see again but, for some perverse reason, suddenly can’t get enough of: the thunderous gray overtaking the usual deep green of Jake’s eyes, a look that Aiden knows he would never deliberately put there himself.
“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fucking hell,” he whispers, half-sobbing and shuddering as he grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes.
For a count of five he lets himself be lost, breathing raggedly, making no attempt to stave off the bile burning the back of his throat.
One,
he counts.
You have more with him than anyone else ever has. Two. So get it together. Three. Don’t be a slave to how you feel; today you barely stopped short of pissing all over him. Four. He has the right to do whatever the fuck he wants. Five. You still have a right to be pissed off, but he’s not yours to claim. He’s made that clear.