A Daydream Away

Alex’s POV

‘Let’s take a moment to reflect on the past few years of my life…’ I scribbled away furiously on paper, forcing the thoughts in my head to make sense on paper. What I didn’t expect to happen was that the past ten years would come flooding into my life.
Of course, the only thing that I thought about was that Jack wasn’t a part of it.
I sighed, running my fingers through my hair and blowing out a breath of air. Why did it always come back to this?
I checked my phone, noting the time. I had about a half an hour before I went on stage to perform.
I’d been getting a handle on my music for a while, performing local venues for a few years and putting my music out on Itunes and other music websites. The Baltimore punk scene knew my name, but no one else did. I was a hometown hero and a national nobody, but that was okay.
I flipped through my music notebook, trying to decide what the hell I was going to sing.
There was too many to choose from, but my mind wouldn’t focus. All I could think about were the last ten years that I’d been stuck in this town.
10 years flew by slowly when you spent it thinking about one person. Especially when that one person was nowhere to be found.
10 years.
Half way through our senior year, Jack’s mom and dad had finally settled on an agreement for their divorce. His mom got the kids and half of the furniture, but his dad got the house. Instead of finding somewhere else to live in Baltimore, she decided that she wanted to live closer to her sister… who was in St. Louis, Missouri. Exactly 837.14 miles away. 13 hours and 42 minutes.
He’d begged her to stay. I’d begged her to stay. She didn’t want to stay just so her son could stay in a relationship, no matter how happy he was here.
We broke up the night before he left because we both agreed that a long distance relationship was something that would drive both of us crazy. We called each other every night and spoke for hours on end. We texted 24/7… so much that I rarely ever put my phone down.
Soon, the calls became less and less frequent. Once a week for fifteen minutes. 30 texts a day. I no longer got yelled at for texting in class. There was rarely an ‘I love you’; typed, said, or felt. And then one day, they stopped. No matter how many times I texted, called, cried, or apologized for whatever I’d done to make him go away, he wouldn’t come back. Some days, I had to convince myself that he’d even been real. The only way I was sure was because of the pictures in my phone and the sweatshirt he’d given me to wear on a rainy day. Sometimes, I swear, it still smelled like him.
I also knew because of the moments I wrote about in songs.
The night before he left, he met be at 3 ‘o clock in the morning on Thames Street. We tried to sneak into clubs and drank Jager until 7, when the moving vans came.
‘Pass me another bottle, honey
The Jager's so sweet
But if it keeps you around, then I'm down
Meet me on Thames Street, I'll take you out
Though I'm hardly worth your time
In the cold you look so fierce
But I'm warming up because the tension's like a fire’

I read over my words, my fingers sliding under the words I’d written that
day ten years ago. I so plainly remembered watching his staggering composer walk away into the sun rise. The last thing he said to me was that no matter what, he’d never forget the way my eyes sparkled when I looked at him.
I wondered if he remembered that now.

8 years ago, Vic told me that he was in love with me. In my heartbroken sorrow, I thought I’d loved him too. After a year of pulling away too soon when he kissed me and staring at everything but him when he was around, I told him I couldn’t love him the way he wanted me to.
After a month of sitting in my room alone filled with guilt, he’d found someone new and lived out the rest of high school with him. Now, Vic was away at school, living the life I could never stand to dream of.
Rian and Cassadee got married 2 years ago. I was the best man. It was beautiful, but it loosened the stitches in my heart that hadn’t even been fully tightened yet. Zack had even settled down with a girl, which was something he never thought he’d do. They lived together and spoke of tying the knot soon, just like Jack and I had done. Not a day went by without thinking about him. I couldn’t walk out on the street without thinking I saw him standing on a street corner. Not a month could pass without me breaking down, screaming over my mistakes and whatever I did wrong.
Not a year snuck by without me falling out of love, in love, out of love, in love, out of love, and in love all over again. All these rollercoaster emotions over a ghost that’d been hanging over my bed for 10 years.

It seemed as though every song was about him, or trying to forget about him, or trying to remember him.
‘I don't wanna say goodnight
The city comes alive, when we're together
Why can't Thursday last forever
I don't wanna say goodnight
I've never been so sure
Just do it for the memories
Do it for Baltimore
And do it for me’

The day he told me that he was leaving. We were at a Ravens game and I’d
collapsed on the way out of the stadium in a fit of tears. I walked back to the stadium and wrote the song at 2 in the morning, not caring if I was mugged or not.
‘When it all comes down
To a sunrise on the east side
Will you be there to carry home?
The remains of my wasted youth
This wasted time on you has left me
Shaking in waiting for something more’

The time I had a one night stand with a married man on the 5 year
anniversary of the day Jack left. All I wanted to do was forget, all I could do was remember.
So I was sitting alone in a coffee shop, begging my pencil to scribble down something that would make sense.
I took in the sounds around me. The clinking of coffee cups, small talk between friends, the quiet strumming of the guitar someone had picked up, and Jack’s laugh.
My head shot up so fast that I thought it was going to fall off.
Jack’s laugh. Where did it come from?
I searched the coffee shop, my eyes scanning for the body I knew so well.
Finally, his back was all my eyes saw. It had filled out more, and his style had changed, instead of a band tee, he had on a nice button down with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Suddenly, my Blink 182 shirt seemed stupid.
He was talking to the guy working at the counter, who used to be a friend of his. I wanted to make him disappear. I wanted to make Jack disappear. I wanted to disappear.
He laughed again, and then I faintly heard my name leave his lips. The worker smiled and nodded his head in my direction.
I snapped my head back down to look at my notebook, debating whether or not I should get up and leave. What the hell what I supposed to do? What the hell was I supposed to say?
I sucked in a deep breath to keep myself from shaking. I could feel a panic attack coming on, and I just wanted to melt into my chair.
“Is anyone sitting here?”
I didn’t respond, not when his voice sounded just like it used to.
“Alex? Remember me?”
I slowly forced myself to look up. His face wasn’t as bony and he’d grown into his nose. He figured out how to do his hair better and his eyes didn’t seem as sad as they used to.
I stayed silent.
“I… I didn’t talk to you because I shattered my phone and I couldn’t get your number back. I tried so hard to get it. I looked as hard as I could. I just couldn’t find it.”
I watched him with wide eyes as he slid into the seat across from me. He was wearing the bracelet I’d bought him at the zoo on our 5 month anniversary.
“I’ve been saving up money to come here forever. I’ve only had minimum wage jobs since I got there, I’ve been trying so hard. Do you remember me?”
Did I remember him?
The curve of his hips under my bed sheets?
How he danced to Green Day in his kitchen?
The way he smiled when he held my hand?
How he tells bad jokes when he’s drunk?
How his stomach is ticklish?
How my heart still stops when I look at him?

He glanced down at the carvings past customers had implanted into the table and sucked in a shaking breath.
“Your expression is so blank. You’ve either forgotten me or you’re too stunned to think. I remember how you look when you get like this. I hope you remember me. The last think I said to you was that I’d always remember how your eyes sparkled when you look at me, and they still do. Even if you’ve forgotten, you know something’s right. Please.” He looked back up at me, his eyes cracking like glass under the weight of the ocean “Please remember.”
And right there in that coffee shop, even though I was already 2 minutes late for my set, even though it’d been 10 years and 837.14 miles, I reached out my hand and grabbed his, lacing my fingers through his, even though they were shaking.
They still fit together perfectly.
“How could I forget?”

Notes