Chapter Text
Losing Drew went about as easy as losing a limb.
Jake’s a straightforward guy. He paints in simple, indelicate strokes, doesn't speak his mind when he's in the minority, ties his shoes every morning instead of sliding straight into them. He’s out of control in the most controlled possible way, always has been. It’s a thing.
All he ever wanted was to fit in. Pretty unoriginal, really, but the pill is still hard to swallow. Doesn't let up over time, doesn't smooth over that taut, electrical tension in his shoulders every time someone asks him ‘What are your hobbies?’ and he can't say ‘nothing’ so instead he just goes, like, ‘reading,’ which is lame.
Jake had all his ducks in a row. He saw the world around him in scales of black and white, knew exactly what he wanted and which parts of himself he was willing to sacrifice for it.
And then came Drew.
Drew is— he's like those elementary school kids who don't clean their watercolor palette and mix the black back in with the yellow. Ruinous. Annoying. It's clear at a first glance where he should lie on Jake's little morality spectrum. Bottom of the barrel. Never-going-to-end-up-anywhere entitled rich kid. Scumbag extraordinaire. But he's not.
He’s… intimate, deep conversations tightrope walking the line between superficial and hard-hitting, he’s staring at the stars through California smog on a Sunday night with school tomorrow morning, he’s the big, kiss-me-already eyes that Jake hasn’t done anything about– ‘not yet,’ he tells himself, ‘not now.’ Probably because he still can’t put a name on the sickness twisting inside, can’t tell which side is winning in this emotional tug-of-war, if any. He likes Drew, Drew likes him. But it’s… just really complicated.
Henry used to say that they'd either end up married with children or mortal enemies, no inbetween. Nothing good ever comes from Henry being right.
When Jake tries taking everything on its face, Drew puts solid ground through a paper shredder, turns his senses into static and chokes out all better judgement. And, you know, it's really distracting.
He didn’t expect much meeting Drew for the first time, anyways, the bar was pretty much on the floor.
It'd been Freshman year, and Jake was already a little glass-half-empty, coming off of what can only be described as the worst three years of his entire life. Middle school; you’re only in it to get out of it, Jake reasons. He applied for Rosemeadow because it was out of his district and less people would be around to recognize him. The plan was straightforward enough. Keep his head down, get in where he fits in and blend with the crowd; no drama, no gum in his hair, no flipped locks or judgemental looks. Never again. This time around, Jake had resolved, he wouldn’t touch those goddamn bullies with a fifty foot pole. Nope, not happening, he told himself. Not this guy.
So, naturally, sitting next to Drew during Freshman orientation felt like a punch the face, felt like a condemnation straight from god, telling him to just ‘give up already, fuck’s sake! quit struggling!’
He had nice shoes, nice hair, a glimmery watch with a name Jake couldn’t pronounce. Something very European, very Drew. ‘A. Lange & Söhne,’ Drew lets him know later on, getting Jake to repeat the syllables and try out the nice, flowery shapes they make on his tongue. ‘Uh-lon-guh and zo-nuh.’
He swore like a sailor back then, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t quit kicking the kid’s chair in front of him until they both started to bicker back and forth. (Zander retold the story years later, turns out that the kid was Luke. Small world.)
A parent teacher had to tell Drew off twice before the presentation even started. So, yeah, Jake had a pretty solid understanding of what kind of guy he was. The kind that he wanted, more than anything, to so desperately avoid.
Er, like, he thought so, at least. For about ten seconds.
Because then, out of the blue, Drew just turned to him, shoulders loose and carefree and light, and he said something, like, “You want to see something cool?” to which Jake went “No,” obviously, and then Drew pulled out one of those tiny, centimeter sized porcelain babies you find on Amazon. “They have ‘em hidden around the school,” he said. “Some kind of Senior class prank or whatever. I was in the bathroom, literally about to take a piss, and this thing’s in the urinal.”
Jake laughed. “Ew, gross, dude. Why would you pick it up?” and then Drew started saying, like, “Well, I washed it first, obviously. I mean, I’ve seen way weirder shit in these fucking public bathrooms. Biohazards, man.” Jake didn’t particularly feel like pulling the brakes on this conversation right now, not when he’d already gotten so far, not when Drew’s features were all soft and heart-eating and non-judgmental, totally unbecoming of the literal shithead he so often tended to come across as. “Like what?” he led with, which got Drew talking about his good friend Henry, how he accidentally brought his goldfish to school once– however the hell that happened– and how it ended up swimming in the girls’ toilet by third period.
They hit it off really quickly to say the least, love at first sight, lightning in a bottle, the whole nine yards. Jake had his discord by the end of Freshman orientation, briefly met some kids who later turned out to be Henry and Liam, and even got himself smuggled into their group chat that had him crowned one of the guys™ before September. The four out of five classes he got to share with Drew were just a cherry on top.
But from day one, Jake still had no idea what to think of him, where to place him, how to articulate the emotions brutally magmatizing his insides and slowly bubbling up to what he can only predict will be the worst volcanic eruption since dinosaurs.
The valley between Drew and any semblance of reason or virtue, good or bad, goes on for miles and miles and Jake gets lost in it more often than he means to. It's become less of a valley over time, turned into something closer to a chasm. A gaping black hole that sucks in information and turns it on its head, topsy-turvy, bottom side up.
Drew’s a mystery box, a piece in a jigsaw puzzle that Jake, try as he might, just can't find anything to fit with. He makes no sense at all. He's the only thing that ever makes sense. He’s cheap insults and a 1980's highschool bully but he's also the quiet, “Are you okay?” when Jake needs it most. He's simultaneously sharp and dull, he's the soft fingers slowly locking into Jake’s own, squeezing delicately after some girl that looks like Daisy says she doesn't feel the same. He’s a bloodthirsty, rough personality beneath disney princess fragile features; big eyes and pretty lips.
When he’s calling Hailey a freak, he's the worst person in the world. When he’s telling Jake to put away his wallet for the millionth time, ‘Oh, I got this one’ at a restaurant, he's a saint. That's Drew in a nutshell. Confusing.
The worst thing about it is the whiplash, is having to put how he feels about Drew— who Drew fundamentally is— into words. It's the toss and turn of trying to find out where exactly he falls on the black and white color spectrum Jake's so far built his entire life around. Do what you have to to fit in, cuss with the guys but never to adults, don't take cheap shots, never hit a girl, always hold the door for someone walking by. Stuff like that.
He always feels so sure that his mind's made, and then Drew does something like nudge him under the dinner table at a restaurant or keep eye contact for a forever too long, and Jake's suddenly back at square one. Stuck in the perpetual state of not knowing anymore, not sure of what to make with that overconfident stare, the invites to Hawaii over Spring break or the vulnerable, quiet quarter-breaths he takes against Jake’s shoulder after a winning fight.
Where does Drew lie in all that? There's a million miles separating okay and not okay in Jake’s brain, and somehow Drew simultaneously encapsulates both and neither at the exact same time. He’s just so… confusing. Perfectly grey amongst an entire world set to shades of exclusively black or exclusively white. A misfit who couldn’t possibly fit in more, who walks to the beat of his own drum and always just gives Jake this look. Knowing and elusive and so goddamn hard to read. What the hell is Jake supposed to do with that?
So, anyways, it’s been a shit week. A shit week in a shit month in a shit year. He wonders if the bone-crushing agony wriggling just beneath his skin right now falls under the category of withdrawal, but the implications that would raise make him want to puke his guts out, (not really helping with the whole withdrawal thing but whatever.) He decides it’s best to leave alone for now.
Codependency’s all fun and games until you have a blowout argument and can't even choke out half a confession before getting shoved out the door.
Six weeks down the drain. Since then, Jake's graduated, everybody's off for summer break, and Zander finally agreed to split an apartment next semester. Jake turned 18 earlier this month and the purple-haired chick he'd been talking to over Instagram finally decided to cut the cord. “I can't do this anymore,” she told him. Jake may or may not have called her ‘Drew' a couple times too many during sex. Big deal. It could've been a girl's name.
He still talks to Henry on occasion, usually over text. They're on a ‘only see each other at birthdays and funerals’ kind of basis. It's cool, it’s fine, whatever. Liam has Jake’s number blocked. Drew just deleted it, but on a blue moon he still gets graced with a belligerent, barely sensical voicemail that smells hard of those god-awful angry orchards Drew always used to try opening with his teeth. Jake would find it more embarrassing if he didn't do the exact same thing and probably just got too shitfaced to remember.
Four weeks in, Jake stopped borrowing Hailey’s phone to stalk through old instagram photos like some jealous ex. They split ways, they didn’t split up. It’s different. Zander tells him it’s the same thing, that if Drew were a girl, it’d be sexual harassment, and Jake’s pretty sure he was joking, but decides to lay off anyways. Until now.
Hailey rattles him awake, one in the afternoon, with the little melodic lilt of his ringtone going off.
Drew set it for him, Sophomore year. It’s this ten second snippet of a Radiohead song that sounds like something better suited for falling asleep to. Jake likes it. Even if he didn’t, he doesn’t know how to change the settings. So, it's fine. Whatever. It doesn't remind him of Drew at all, of chemistry classes spent telling Henry and Liam to knock it off or of sleeping in the same bed on field trips, legs interlocked. Waking up to his hair sprawled up against a pillow and the morning sun casting abstract shapes along the slopes of his pretty, tan skin. Watching his chest undulate, rise and fall like the low, ebbing tide. Jake wrenches his eyes shut, squeezes them tight enough to hurt.
It's better off this way, Jake tells himself, letting water heal the wound. It stings for now, sure, but it's only been a month.
Jake's voice, thick and drowsy, cracks through static. “Yeah?” he asks.
Hailey prefaces by telling him not to freak out, and Jake tells her he can’t, that he’s always freaking out, which he finds funnier than she does, obviously. Jake loves her, but she and Zander could never meet the absolute apex of comedy that is his sense of humor. Tragic, really.
“I’m serious, Jake,” Hailey insists. She's got that tone in her voice. The one she uses to lighten the blow, to tell Jake she's not messing around. He could close his eyes and believe he's got a bossy older sister. Jake made Zander promise to make him his best man already, so it's not a stretch. “I’m not past putting you on suicide watch,” she says.
Jake laughs even though it isn't funny. “Oh, come on, Hailey. You’re killing me, here.”
She sighs like a balloon with no air to give, like this hurts her to say. “Okay,” is a heavy sigh, the thunder before a storm. Once it starts, it doesn't stop. Hailey’s words rain on his head, leave him soaked and exhausted by the time she's through.
She talks for a while, talks until Jake can't listen anymore.
“Jake? You hear me?” She asks, after all was said and done. Carefully, like every word was a dollar spent.
“Yeah, I get it,” Jake swallows the wedge in his throat to tell her, breathless. “Drew’s engaged.”