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His parents name him Donald and, when he's older, he figures this was the first sign that they didn't care for him as much as they should have. (He's almost grateful that people call him Jared. It's easier to stop correcting them but, also, it's a much better name. Sometimes, though, when talking to himself or signing something, he uses 'Jared' instead and it's disconcerting.)
When Jared is seven, his mother loses him in a shopping mall for the third time. It takes her almost three hours before she finally claims him as he sits in a manager's office with a security guard at his side. At the time, he had cried about it but, a few years later, he found himself wondering if it had anything to do with the way she would always pick him up and smell overpoweringly like boozy perfume.
When he's twelve, he wakes up one morning with a fever of one-hundred but goes to school anyway, since he figures his parents won't believe him, no matter how many times he shoves the thermometer in their faces. Not only does he pass out during recess, but he manages to get his one and only friend sick, too. His friend's mother won't let them even so much as look at one another again after that.
At sixteen, Jared is walking home from the library when he finds a stray cat on the side of the road. He brings her home in the bottom of his bag, names her Hester because they just finished reading The Scarlet Letter (he can't think of anything better) and then makes the mistake of telling his father about her. Hester lives in his closet for three days until one afternoon Jared walks into his room to find she's disappeared. He convinces himself that she ran away by accident or that his father did the right thing and found her original owner. Jared learns that day that he's not very good at convincing himself of things that weren't true.
One year later he finds himself standing in the kitchen attempting to make a Thanksgiving dinner entirely on his own because he made the mistake of offering to help. They tell him it's fine, even if the turkey is sort of dry and the potatoes are a little too hard and it's the wrong kind of cranberry sauce, don't they usually have the jelly-like stuff from the can? His uncle shouts at him that he looks like someone starved a virgin to death and the table erupts with laughter. Jared laughs, too.
He dates a girl for three days during his senior year of high school and it's remarkable that it even happened in the first place, he can't believe his luck, but then she tells him that he's too clingy and she can't handle him anymore. Jared figured he should have seen it coming but he's still stuck on the fact that, at some point, somebody wanted to kiss him (the kiss, of course, never occurred but it was a possibility, which was enough for him) so he's not as sad as he should be. It doesn't hit him until a week later when his father asks where his girlfriend went and listens to him laugh when Jared explains what happened. There are no other girls after that. He thinks, maybe, there's someone in his chemistry class until he realizes that it's her lab partner, a boy named Ben, that he likes instead. It's very confusing and he doesn't explore it. Maybe he should have.
During his first semester of college, he and his roommate (who's loud and extroverted and very small) get along better than Jared expected. He let's Jared follow him places around campus and eats meals with him but, eventually, Jared starts to have trouble acclimating and his roommate discovers they don't have as much in common as he thought. He becomes best friends with a guy from another building and, soon, Jared finds himself sitting on his bed where, right outside the room on the other side of a slightly closed door, he listens as his roommate has a discussion with his group of friends about how to approach the situation. In the end, they gang up on him and he has no choice but to agree to switching rooms the day before winter break. His new roommate greets him by glaring and never bothers to learn Jared's name. The friends he had made in his old building forget he existed, except for a tall girl with glasses who he used to live down the hall from and the nephew of a man who works with Jared's father. Jared watches over one hundred movies during his second semester for lack of anything else to do and, to this day, it remains one of his greatest accomplishments.
At twenty-years-old, he sits down one night and works through a complicated chart that winds up proving that—taking into account all of the things that have happened in his life so far—nothing will ever improve for him (at least, nothing socially). He's reached a sort of plateau where, if he expects the disappointment, it won't bother him anymore. He gets a decent job where people listen to him but still call him the wrong name and he spends his nights at home ordering takeout he never got when he was a kid and watching documentaries. He can deal with that.
That's when, of course, Richard decides to show up.
It's as if he's getting punched in the chest (something Jared has experience with) and then, just like that, Richard walks away, not just from millions of dollars but also from him and he sort of feels like, not only has somebody punched him, but now he's stuck in a lifeboat that's slowly losing air out in the middle of the ocean. It's completely overdramatic, he realizes, but it's also unequivocally the truth. He thinks back to the girl he dated for three days in high school and then he thinks of Ben. It gives him indigestion but, somehow, he finds out about the launch party for Pied Piper and there he is, standing in line at the nearest liquor store with a bottle of champagne clutched in his hands.
He's nervous (more nervous than he usually is) and he drops his credit card three times while trying to pay for the champagne. The cashier snorts and the man behind Jared tells him that he was just like this when he proposed to his wife, that it'll be fine and she'll probably say yes. He drops his card for a fourth time.
The house is small and the lights from inside give it a warm sort of orange glow as Jared pulls carefully into the driveway. He leaves his jacket on and then takes it off but, a few seconds after he locks the vehicle, he changes his mind, unlocking it to get his jacket. He's almost past the hood of his car when he thinks that the jacket is too much for a party so he turns back around to put it back and that's when he realizes he left the champagne in the passenger seat.
Jared waves through the window and Richard's the one to open the door, the one who's standing there, waiting to hear what Jared wants and why he's on his doorstep so Jared makes a comment about his own appearance, brings up his uncle but it doesn't seem to do much so he coughs anxiously and tries again. He gives Richard the benefit of the doubt, suggests that maybe there were more people coming, but he only winds up making the situation more awkward. There's a looming figure suddenly approaching them and, instead of being welcomed into the house, Jared is sent staggering backwards and being explicitly told to get lost.
He's never been much of a fighter so he hands the champagne to Richard and watches as the door is slammed in his face.
- -
He tries to watch television when he gets home but it doesn't make him feel better so he resigns himself to crawling into bed, laying on his back and staring at the cracked ceiling, barely blinking. He counts to fifteen, then thirty, and then all the way to one-hundred but there he is, eyes still open, thinking about how he could have done better, or said the right thing. It wasn't his fault, he feels as if he should know that, but he can't help it, can't have anything else but the thoughts of how he should have been more assertive or maybe bought beer or showed up just a few minutes earlier, as if any of that would have made a difference.
There was an invitation to a party once when he was eight, one of those things where the kid's parents made him invite the entire class because it was the right thing to do, even if he didn't want a handful of them to be there. Jared hadn't wanted to go at first but his mother had insisted, said that he wasn't going to ruin anymore opportunities at being normal, so he went but, upon arrival, he was banished to the corner of every room he walked into. This moment should have made him swear off any possible future party but, somehow, it made him want to go to another even more, just to prove to someone that he knew how to handle it, that he could be a really fun guy if somebody just allowed it to happen. Of course, after that, he was rarely invited to another party, as if he was marked or put on some sort of “don't allow these people into your home” list he didn't know about. If he wanted to go to one, he had to make sure he felt good enough about himself to walk into one completely unannounced and the only times that happened was on Halloween during his sophomore year of college and tonight (neither of those experiences went very well).
Sometime around two in the morning, Jared thinks that he might be able to finally sleep when he hears his phone ringing and he nearly gives himself a concussion as he stumbles from under his blankets, feet sliding on the floor as he goes to find it. A number he doesn't recognize right away shines brightly on the large screen and he ponders it for a moment, wonders if his mother had gotten another cheap new phone and it's another easily fixable emergency or possibly his father drunk dialing him again but, when he answers, he's surprised to hear Richard's voice on the other end.
Richard asks for his help and Jared is practically dressed and behind the wheel by the time Richard adds the question mark to the end of his sentence.
- -
“I really appreciate this.” Richard speaks quietly when he opens the door and Jared just nods, smiles back at him because his mouth is suddenly dry, his hands damp as he clutches the strap of the bag he had tucked his laptop into before rushing out of his apartment. It's warm and smells like smoke and an unidentifiable sort of staleness inside the house, the wooden floor worn down and littered with different colored cables that are plugged into snaking extension cords that he nearly trips over as they walk. Richard leads him around a corner and down a short hallway and Jared doesn't realize that they're going to Richard's room until they're both standing inside it and Richard's carefully closing his door behind them.
Richard says something about how everything about the whole business plan ordeal is flying way over his head and that he feels like Jared really does know what he's talking about and to not listen to Erlich (the guy, Jared reminds himself, who told him to fuck off earlier) and then he asks if it bothers him that they probably won't get much sleep that night. He's rambling and Jared listens intently to every word, has no inclination to stop him, waits for Richard to trail off on his own and then they're left there in only a somewhat awkward silence. There's a lot that Jared wants to say, he can feel it bubbling deep in his stomach like carbonation in a can of soda just waiting for the tab to be popped but, instead, he gets right down to business because he figures that's really all he's there for in the end.
They sit close and the chair Richard had gotten for Jared is a bit too small but he doesn't complain. He speaks quickly and carefully and goes through it step-by-step and Richard slowly begins to understand. Jared assumes that, once the night is over (despite the astonishing amount of work they have left), he'll be asked to go home and leave behind a simple document of helpful notes for Richard and his friends to follow but, as he starts to feel the numbness of exhaustion creeping into the tips of his fingers and along his shoulders, he hears Richard say:
“Could you stick around?”
“For a few more hours? Of course.” (He'd stay forever if Richard wanted him.)
“No, I mean...” Richard hesitates, rubs a hand tiredly over his face. “I just mean, there'll be more stuff like this, more business-type stuff that I don't know how to deal with, no matter how easy everyone insists that it is.” Jared wants to tell him that it's not easy, that he didn't go to college for this because it was easy and that anyone telling him that it was easy was lying to him, but he doesn't because it's obvious Richard already knows. “You really seem to have a handle on it. I've made more progress since you've been here than I have in the past few days combined.” Jared taps his fingers against the keyboard.
“I really do think you have a great vision here,” Jared says eventually.
“You do?” Richard sounds astonished and Jared turns to look at him, nodding.
“You took a big risk for what you thought was right for your company.”
“Yeah, well, so far everyone just likes reminding me that I walked away from ten million dollars, as if I wasn't totally aware of that every single second of the day,” Richard says through clenched teeth and his feet kick absent-mindedly at the desk they're sitting at, tucked under the space of the loft bed Richard sleeps in. (Jared had always wanted one when he was little but his mother was convinced he would fall out of it and crack his skull open, something she explained to him in explicit and excruciating detail until he was terrified of even the smallest of heights.)
“You did—”
“Thanks.”
“—But this is a good idea. I know you'll be successful with it.” Jared says it so matter-of-factly because he completely believes it and Richard just stares at him for what feels like hours, as if he hasn't heard this before or, at least, not said this simply or kindly and he clears his throat.
“I definitely will if you stay.”
Jared feels that punch to his chest again and he swallows hard, wants nothing more than to reach out and grab Richard's hand, just hold it in his own for a couple of seconds and he moves his fingers towards him but he falters, pretends that he was just going to stretch instead.
- -
Jared stays.
He turns his back on his decent job and his comfortable paycheck and his boss that thought his name was Jared just so he gets a chance to be closer to Richard. He really did feel like he could be an asset, that they all needed him (Richard especially) but, the truth was, he was also there because every time he looks at Richard he feels like he's suffocating a little and he didn't want to lose that.
- -
He walks on stage, still slightly manic, and discovers that they've won. Without thinking, he rushes to Richard, wrapping his arms around him and Richard laughs nervously but hugs him back.
Later, in the hotel room after they've all agreed to attempt to sleep for another few hours, Jared finds himself wide awake on the couch, not looking at anything in particular, listening to the chorus of snoring around him. There's movement out of the corner of his eye and he watches as Richard sits down next to him but doesn't speak. Jared wants to tell him that he told him so, to mention that first night when they hid in Richard's room and stayed awake working on his business plan, when Jared told him that he would be successful and that he knew (he just knew) everything would work out because Richard was amazing, even if he didn't believe it most of the time.
It's all on the tip of his tongue but then Richard is reaching out to hold his hand and everything Jared had planned to say goes crashing out the window and he finds himself utterly speechless.
- -
When Jared is fourteen, he announces one night at the dinner table that he was going to do something important when he was older and, not only that, but he wasn't going to do it alone. His parents hesitate, forks hovering over their plates and then they laugh.
“Sure,” his father says before they continue to shovel food in their mouths, “Whatever you say, Donald.”
Jared believes it for awhile until he doesn't but then Richard comes flailing into his life and he finally starts to think that maybe his fourteen-year-old self was onto something after all.