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For someone who spends so much time hiding in shadows, Jack is unusually wary of them.
For a long time he was afraid of the dark. He slept with a night light until he was ten. And even though he’s older now, and the darkness is a tool he uses to his advantage, and the night light was sold at a yard sale, there’s still a part of him that never outgrew that kid who jumped at every shadow.
He doesn’t jump at this one. Only his heartbeat does.
"Hi," says the shadow, known better as Alex Gaskarth. He really does look like a shadow, dressed head to toe in black. The leather jacket Jack’s come to associate with his infamous frame hangs comfortably around his shoulders. Dark in the doorway of the laundry room, he contrasts the white machinery so starkly it might well be a work of art come to life.
For a moment Jack only blinks. This is the first time Alex has ever spoken to him. Honestly, it's the first time he's ever acknowledged him.
(One shadow to another, Jack thinks.)
"Hi?" he finally says, when it becomes clear Alex isn’t going to follow up.
“Drinking alone?” Alex asks, one eyebrow raised.
Jack tightens his fingers around his cup. “I’m not— I’m not drinking.” Then, “I mean, obviously I’m drinking, but. It’s Diet Coke, I don’t…I don’t really drink.”
“Really?”
Jack shrugs. “Not legal.” Also his parents would kill him.
“Neither am I,” says Alex.
Jack pauses. “Okay,” he says, unsure how, exactly, he’s supposed to answer that. What he’d really like to say is why are you talking to me? Did I offend you somehow? Can you air your shit and leave me alone?
It’s not that he doesn’t like Alex. It’s just that everyone he’s ever met doesn’t like Alex, and Jack’s a lot better at borrowing opinions than forming his own.
Alex doesn’t leave. He leans against the wall opposite the washing machine Jack’s sitting on and says, “Mind if I join you?”
Like he hasn’t already.
Jack could say he minds. Something tells him Alex would respect if he did. His parents and all of his school friends chorus in his ear, urging him to dismiss Alex, to ask him to leave, sorry but I was hoping to be alone, anything to get him to go. Because Alex is a bad influence. Alex is a bad kid. Not Jack. Jack is a good kid. And good kids don’t carry conversations with bad kids in laundry rooms at graduation parties. They just don’t.
“I guess not,” is what he says, taking a drink from his cup. There’s not actually alcohol at this party, not that Jack knows of, but he wouldn’t put it past Alex to have brought his own, or something. This is the only grad party he’s been to that’s actually felt like a party, complete with red and blue Solo cups. It’s not his usual scene. Hence the hiding in the laundry room.
Alex has a blue cup, a splash of color to his monochrome ensemble. Alex G is scribbled on it in Sharpie. It looks empty. “Why are you in here?”
“What, like in here, specifically?”
“Yeah, the laundry room,” Alex says slowly. “Funny place to spend a party.”
“Uh, it’s quiet in here,” Jack says. “And I don’t know anyone out there.”
“Anyone? You must know Danny.”
“He’s busy with all his other friends. I only kind of know him, anyway.” Jack lifts a shoulder. “Not sure why he invited me, to be honest.”
“Why’d you come, then?”
Jack shrugs again. “I dunno, he invited me. It was nice of him. I don’t go to a lot of…” Parties, he means to say, but instead admits, “anything, really. So.”
Alex hums his acknowledgement. It’s like having a conversation with a fictional character. Or a public figure. They’ve never spoken, never even interacted; Jack has only ever seen Alex in passing. His body of knowledge on Alex has come from word of mouth, whispers, rumors. Sitting here, right now, across from him — watching Alex scratch absently at the blue plastic cup in his hands — it’s hard to imagine this is the main character in all those stories.
“Are you guys friends?” Jack asks. “You and Danny?”
Alex laughs a little. “Sure, I guess you could say that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. Don’t worry about it.” He sighs. “Well, I hate to admit it, but you might have the right idea hiding in the laundry room.”
Jack’s lips twitch; he almost smiles. “Seriously?”
“What, you think I’m the life of the party?” Alex holds his cup closer to his chest, jokingly defensive. “I’m a very polarizing person. Not trying to start any fights at this lovely celebration of Danny Kurily getting accepted to college.”
“Fights,” Jack repeats, chewing his lip.
Alex raises his eyebrows. “I’m kidding.”
Jack somehow doubts that.
“Well, um, it’s not my laundry room but feel free to hang around,” Jack says, gesturing vaguely. “I am the connoisseur of other people's laundry rooms.”
As casually as if he were talking about doing laundry, Alex muses, “Good place to hook up, if you lock the door,” and Jack almost chokes on his drink. He’s obviously not subtle about it. Alex gives him a grin. “What? You don’t agree?”
Jack takes a second to collect himself. “I never thought about it?”
“But I’m right,” Alex says, glancing at the door and then back at Jack. “I mean, enough space, low chance of being interrupted…”
“Uh, I guess,” Jack says. Heat floods his cheeks.
Alex studies him for another second. His head tilts to the side, just so. An unreadable expression draws its way across his face. Finally, coolly, he says, “You want to?”
The world grows very quiet. Jack’s heartbeat is deafening. “What?”
“Hook up,” Alex says. “With me. In here.” He pauses. “Or at all.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Ouch,” Alex says. “No, I’m serious. You can say no if you don’t. It’s just an idea.”
Just an idea. Yeah, the same way electricity was just an idea. The way gravity was just an idea. Alex Gaskarth asking if Jack will hook up with him in Danny Kurily’s laundry room — or at all — is —
Well, unexpected, to say the least.
“Um,” he says, swallowing, “why?”
“Why?” Alex laughs. “You need a reason?”
“I mean like why with me,” Jack says, “specifically.”
He’s not sure what he’s expecting. Because you’re here, maybe. Because you look like you’d be fun to break in. Or maybe Alex won’t have an answer. Maybe it doesn’t have to be with Jack specifically. Maybe Jack himself doesn’t factor into the decision at all. Maybe Alex is just looking to get laid, and Jack is the first person he’s encountered.
“‘Cause you’re interesting,” Alex says, shrugging a shoulder. “And you’re alone in here.”
“So what?”
“So I thought you might want the company.”
“In the form of sex?”
“In whatever form you want,” Alex says, undeterred. “But if you want sex, then yeah. Why not?”
Easy for him to say. Alex has slept with half the school based on the things Jack has heard.
“You’re already keeping me company,” Jack manages, steadying his voice as much as he can.
Alex shakes his head, rolls his eyes. “You’re allowed to say no, dude. I’m not gonna make you do anything, I was just—”
“I’m not saying no.”
It slips out before he can bite it back. Alex breaks off and squints at him.
“It sounded like you were,” he says.
“I’m…” The words on his tongue are at odds with the ones in his brain. Not interested, says his brain, loud and staticky, like a radio station catching two different waves. Not interested in being part of your effort to corrupt the entire graduating class of Dulaney High. Not interested in being a notch on your bedpost. Not interested in adding to your body count.
Jack shuts the radio off and says carefully, “I don’t want to hook up in this laundry room.” Heartbeats like pounding footsteps rattle his ribcage. “It’s not a no. It’s just a…not now.”
“Yeah?” Alex quirks a grin, apparently oblivious to the war waging in Jack’s mind. “Cool. I can give you my number, you can just let me know when you’re free.”
The blue plastic cup in Jack’s hands is going to crack if he keeps tightening his grip. “Okay,” he says. “Sure.” And he unlocks his phone and hands it to Alex.
As he types — one-handed so the other one can hold his cup — Jack watches him. There’s an easy set to Alex’s shoulders that Jack almost doesn’t believe. Everything about this is too simple, too casual. Like Jack is just going to text Alex and — what? Say come over, let’s hook up? There’s no way. There’s no way Alex is serious about this. About any of this. It’s a dare from his asshole friends, and Jack is the unwitting victim. They’re all going to laugh at him later. No way Alex means it when he says that Jack is interesting. No way.
He’s a liar, is what Jack’s friends would say. Bad news. Nothing good can come of this. Don’t get involved. Abort mission. Quit while you still can.
Maybe that’s true. Maybe Jack is naive, too trusting for his own good; it wouldn’t be the first time his intuition had been wrong. But Alex seems sincere. More than that, he seems human, not a folk tale muttered between friends to warn them away or a myth passed around to teach a lesson.
He seems like a kid. And maybe he could use the company, too.
After all, he’d come looking for the laundry room.
“I texted myself so I’d have your number,” Alex tells him, handing back Jack’s phone. A new text conversation is open on the screen with a message from Jack’s phone that just says Jack’s name. Alex hasn’t put his whole name as his contact, just Alex, not even a last initial. Jack considers changing it, but it’s not like he knows anyone else named Alex.
“Okay,” he says, setting his phone aside. “I’ll…text you? I guess?”
“Yeah,” Alex says, slanting a smile. “Just pick a day and send me your address. I can come to you.”
“I— my family is—” Jack stammers. He clears his throat and tries again. “I live on the second floor of my house, my family is— they— um, they can’t know. If you, like, come over.”
“That’s cool,” Alex says. “I can come after they’re asleep.”
Jack feels himself nod. “There’s a tree outside my window? If you— I just— the front door is really loud. I don’t want to—”
“Yeah,” Alex interrupts, still smiling. It’s a disarmingly earnest smile. “It’s all good, man. I’m an expert tree-climber. Lots of experience climbing trees.”
To get into people’s bedrooms, probably. Because that’s the kind of person Alex is.
This is not the kind of person Jack is.
And yet.
“You’re free all summer?”
Alex’s smile grows. “Yeah. Are you?”
“Yeah.” Jack inhales, subtly. Steels himself. “So you can come over more than once, if you want.”
“Okay,” Alex says, and his smile is more of a smirk now, a glint in his eye that Jack thinks he shouldn’t trust. “Yeah. I’m down for that.”
Jack nods. The corner of his mouth tugs upward. “I’ll send you my address.”
All of a sudden, Alex is right in front of him. He gently pries Jack’s drink from his grasp and drops it in his own empty cup. “Can’t wait,” he says in a low voice, and presses the stacked cups back into Jack’s hands. The air in Jack’s lungs evaporates. Anything he might have thought to say fizzles into nothing. For one brief, fleeting moment, he considers hauling Alex in by the lapels of his stupid leather jacket, walking back his own words. The way Alex is looking at him, it wouldn’t be unwelcome.
The moment passes. Alex moves away. Jack breathes out. The muffled sounds of the party on the other side of the door grow clearer as Alex opens it. “See you later, Jack," Alex says, and Jack realizes he’s leaving.
“Yeah,” he responds, straightening up a little. The cup feels sweaty in his hands. “See you soon.”
That sly smile stretches once more across Alex’s face, and with one final nod, he ducks out of the laundry room. The door clicks shut. Jack exhales loudly and drops his head forward.
“This isn’t real this isn’t real this isn’t real,” he mutters, but when he unlocks his phone the new chat is still there, Alex’s name indisputably at the top. “Fuck.”
It could still be a dream. This whole laundry room could be a dream. Alex Gaskarth could be a figment of Jack’s imagination, built out of the shadows from which he always cowered; he could be a manifestation of everything Jack once feared. No one embodies the dark more than Alex Gaskarth.
As Jack twists the cups in his hands, he glances down at the blue plastic. Scrawled over the outside one, still smelling faintly of ink, is Alex G. Jack runs his fingers over the signature. It doesn’t smudge, doesn’t fade. Doesn’t disappear in a puff of smoke.
(21:19) Jack: how about tomorrow night?
The jarring pulse and unbearable warmth building up under his skin make him feel like he’s in a spin cycle himself, stuck on tumble dry. The cups cave in under his thumb. Alex G remains intact.
(21:20) Alex: works for me
(21:20) Alex: just tell me where
Jack inhales, exhales, closes his eyes. There’s still time to back out. Still a chance to change his mind. If he withdraws now, he can pretend it never happened. He can avoid being the latest cautionary tale in the fable of Alex Gaskarth.
He can play it safe. That’s what a good kid would do.
(21:21) Jack: 8123 sherwood rd, second floor back right window. i can tell you what time tomorrow
(21:21) Alex: cool, see u then