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Bill wasn’t sure what ailed him to finally leave Lafayette. He didn’t know what brought him to finally go through the hardest journey wayward, enduring more than he ever thought his old Indianian self ever could. Perhaps it was that Jeffrey had failed to escape his thoughts since the moment he left, and maybe it was just the amount of guilt that pervaded Bill since he’d made their goodbye bitter.
But now he was here at last, standing upon the doorstep of some shack, his feet planted shakily upon the creaky porch and his heart pounding louder than his own thoughts. Here he stood, with more trauma upon his shoulders than he could’ve ever anticipated.
Here he stood, wishing to meet the one person who made things better, yet only finding the door opening to reveal some lanky figure with a mob of sleek black hair splayed over his face, and cloudy hazel eyes looking over him with dilated reluctance.
Bill swallowed nervously, yet nothing could alleviate the dryness of his throat as he barely croaked out the name, “Jeffrey?”
“Not Jeffrey. Izzy Stradlin.”
And Bill couldn’t quite describe the change in his Jeffrey’s voice, the raspiness that wasn’t as lucid before was now more prominent than the softness of his tone. From his distance, he could smell the faint hint of nicotine resonating off of this Izzy’s clothing. Also from his distance, Bill was sure he could see the guy’s entire skeleton protruding through his skin.
“Who the fuck is Izzy Straddling?”
“Strad- lin, ” he grumbles in response, and the eye-roll is apparent in such a way that Bill almost feels wounded.
“You changed your name,” Bill notes, the statement just barely escaping his lips. “You’re not Jeffrey anymore,” he continues, and those words only translate that Izzy didn’t have the brown hair his Jeffrey did, and he didn’t have the clean youthful voice either, and gosh, there was a lot more missing in his physical appearance that only made Bill more hesitant to learn more about this Izzy Strad-lin.
Another thing Bill finds out quickly is that Izzy doesn’t look at him the way Jeffrey used to. There’s a cold distance in his eyes, pupils no longer expounded to where the hazel was unapparent. His lips were chapped and busted up, splotches of red covering the places that used to be of the cotton-candy color Bill was fond of. He could also define the spots of acne along Izzy’s pallid face, and disconcerting scabs all around his neck and arms, his veins blue and apparent through his skin.
And that raspy voice strikes him again as he interrogates, “Why are you here, Bill?”
Bill wants to say ‘ Because I missed you’, and he wants to release the flood of misery that’d been antagonizing him from the inside out since the very day his only serenity left Lafayette.
But this wasn’t his Jeffrey, the one who inspired all those fantasies and wishes that took over his mind.
“I got tired of letting my dreams be dreams,” he speaks frailly, the words so quiet, almost as though they were never spoken.
Bill holds back the urge to sigh with relief when Izzy finally steps aside, allowing him to enter instead of elongating the feeling of being unwanted. He doesn’t know what he expected initially, but it certainly wasn’t the unorthodox condition the apartment was in that Mama Isbell never would’ve wished for her Jeffrey. Bill looks around, his gaze particularly lingering on the syringe disregarded on the coffee table, though before he could say anything, Izzy interrupts his train of thought.
“How did you find me?”
“I searched and asked around for a week,” Bill whispers meekly, his eyes meeting Izzy’s once again. Izzy remains reticent, the environment growing more tense, if that was even possible. Bill couldn’t distinguish whether Izzy was plotting to kill him, or just surprised, and maybe that’s what hurt the most; the idea that he was a bother, rather than an acquaintance who’d be welcomed with open arms and an open heart. He was just unnecessary.
“May.. May we sit together?” He requests, watching as he obtains nothing more than a nonchalant shrug in return before Izzy plops down on the small sofa, clouds of dust arising before slowly settling within the same vicinity of them. Bill keeps a bit of distance between them as he perched himself, right knee bouncing with agitation, but what for? He couldn’t decipher whether his heart was waiting for Izzy to say anything that could help alleviate the feeling of neglect heightening within him, or if he was hoping to somehow find his Jeffrey somewhere amidst this new persona he wasn’t used to.
Though, Izzy was quiet, no longer as jubilant as he used to be, but instead meticulously analyzing the entire situation without asking any questions or saying one thing. This Izzy was different; introverted and careful, as if he’d been brutally damaged somewhere between his time in Indiana, and now. Bill wants to pry, and he wants to assess whether Izzy had endured what he did, whether he was abused like Bill, hurt repeatedly, betrayed, traumatized like Bill.
But he couldn’t even bring himself to speak of his own experience.
Instead, he averts his gaze to the Gibson guitar propped up against the crackled wall across from them, raising a brow. “Did you start writing music?”
Izzy hums softly, clearing his throat before mustering up, “Yeah, yeah... Did you?”
Bill realizes that Izzy does not give off much of his personality like Jeffrey. Rather, he’s private, as if everything within him is not worth listening to, and that’s what terrifies Bill— the idea that he would never get to know who Izzy was, especially when he had finally figured out his own identity. He looks back at the syringe for a moment, replying with a gentle, “I was looking for a place to settle first.”
“Did you find it?” Izzy asks, and the tone in his voice is vague, and Bill can no longer see emotion in those hazel eyes when he peers into them. He hesitates for a moment, unable to say that his destination all this time was right where his Jeffrey would be. But this was different. This was not what he’d anticipated.
“No,” he says before hastily speaking again, “I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t get to explore the place all that much.”
“Bill.” Izzy shifts his gaze to the coffee table, as if he’d just shatter under the intensity between them. “Why did you try finding me?”
“A part of me hoped that you wanted me to,” Bill says, and the words almost speak too loudly the things he wished he could’ve kept locked inside of him. But he can’t find it within himself to stop, to stop experiencing desires that would mean nothing to everyone but him. “I dreamt that I’d mean as much to you as you mean to me, Jeffrey—“
“Izzy,” the enigmatic man cuts off, his eyes quickly averting to Bill’s, his pupils dilating at a rapid pace. “I prefer to be called Izzy.”
“You prefer to be Izzy,” Bill sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose as distraught pressure overcomes him. “You prefer to be someone else, because that someone else doesn’t hold half as much of the emotions that Jeffrey shared with me.”
Bill believed that knowing Izzy was only another castle in the air, and a part of him understood that it was for the best. A part of him didn’t feel like Bill , and he knew that at one point or another, he’d start striving for any method that could disconnect him from the horrors of his past. Maybe just like Bill, Izzy needed to let go of what once held him back to reach those dreams he always talked about pursuing.
Bill didn’t want to be the one to ruin that path.
Izzy lets a soft sigh escape his lips, running a hand through his raven hair. “You can stay here with Tracii and I.”
“Tracii?”
“Tracii’s a guy,” Izzy answers quickly, letting a soft laugh trickle from his lips like lucid honey, and it fills Bill’s ears sweet and sincere to the point where he’s laughing too.
“I can do that,” he says, watching as Izzy stands up, grabbing a pack of cigarettes before starting towards the door. Though before he can exit, Bill recalls the words that he’d replayed in his head day by day. “Is this the ‘something better’ you’ve dreamed of, Izzy?”
Izzy tilts his head, his eyes not quite meeting Bill’s, though his body frozen in place as he lets the words register. “Not quite, but we will get there at some point, won’t we?”
Bill smiles softly, nodding before Izzy walks out, dreams fulfilling his head the way they used to as he repeats the words to himself, “We will.”