After Before and After

Phase 4: Chapter 123

It was ever surprising, how fast each night changed the days that followed them. How they were just kids one night, and growing up the next. How everyday the world felt like it was spinning faster than it was the day before, like it was picking up in speed so slowly and subtly that it was easy to miss if you weren't paying attention.

But that night, Ralph Langley and Jack Merridew were paying attention.

The darkness of the cold December night was heated by its intensity. It was a pregant night, filled with hot breaths and pounding hearts. Georgia very rarely got snowy or cold, so 53°F even with no wind felt chilled to the two boys. They laid there together, always together, on a fuzzy blanket in the field behind the hotel, the field Jeffery and Laurie could see from the window in their family hotel room.

Tomorrow would be their last day in court.

Ralph nuzzled the back of his head further into the crook of Jack's neck. Jack tightened the grip of his arm around and underneath Ralph's shoulders. It was cold, and impossible to ignore the fact that it was cold. They didn't bring a second blanket to cover themselves up with. The heat of their bodies huddled close together, always together, never failed to keep them warm.

The silence was kept between the boys now, just as it had been for the last ninety minutes or so. Tonight, words lacked any purpose. They didn't need to talk about tomorrow. Everything that needed to be said about tomorrow had already been said over the course of the last year. And it was too soon, and they were too fearful, to talk about any day that would come after tomorrow.

Even though he wasn't asleep, Jack Merridew dreamed. So often, he dreamed of the island at night. He dreamed of what it would've been like to live there forever, in an alternate universe where there was no rescue. He dreamed of him and Ralph, united and in love, free of the rules and demands of the world they left behind. He dreamed of them growing up and growing old just the two of them, products of their new environment. So often, he dreamed different variations of that. And less often, he dreamed of his mother. And even less often than that, he dreamed of his father. Evan Merridew; everything Jack needed him to be. It was a very rare dream though, simply because Jack struggled to conjure even a fictitious image of his father smiling at him, beaming with love and pride. It was too far from real to even envision clearly, like the idea of unicorns and monsters living happily together.

Jack and Evan's happiness was a fairytale, one Jack couldn't really picture even in his sleep.

Tonight wasn't like any other night. Jack was awake, and even words in dream form lacked any purpose. So without words, Jack dreamed of the future.

He marched triumphantly across the stage, in full cap and gown, his high school diploma at his fingertips. Ralph went wild with pride among the spectating crowd. Jeffery and Laurie and Paige clapped with passion. His future was beginning.

He passed box after box from the moving truck to the hands of whoever was there to take them: Paige, Ralph, Jeffery, Laurie. Any one of them would've done. They'd all be there somewhere anyhow. They wouldn't have missed moving him and Ralph into their first apartment.

Jobs, first ones with shitty managers, schedules that came out the night before, and an hourly rate of $4.25 an hour. And then real, adult jobs with annual salaries, important work involving improving other people's lives, and years of dedication to work their way up the ladder. And at the end of each work day, he and Ralph eating ramen noodles and ice cream in front of the TV before a night of real and experimental adult sex, the kind that would've scared even Jack in their youth.

Dare he even dream of kids for the possibility that he might grow up to be everything his own father was, and nothing he wanted to be. To be the parent they hated, while Ralph was the one they went to when they were in trouble, the parent who was raised to be loving and understanding. He wouldn't be Evan. He would be Ralph; loving and understanding. His kids would come to him too. They'd never know what he really was underneath the surface. A terrible secret.

Family gatherings with relatives you only saw on big holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Vacations during the winter and summer breaks to places like Hawaii and Greece.

How he would love to escape the world for Hawaii or Greece. Perhaps, he'd never want to leave. Like he never wanted to leave the island. He, Ralph, their family: a tropical vacation turned into a permanent life.

"Are you ready for tomorrow?" Ralph broke Jack from his dream, reminding him of how young and far away it all was, whether or not it looked anything like he wanted it to.

"Yeah, I'm ready" Jack confessed, possibly the most honest he'd been throughout this trial. He was ready for tomorrow, he really was. It was everyday after that he wasn't sure he was ready to face.

He wasn't afraid of anything he dreamed of that night. It was the knowledge that none of it was realistic that scared him, a truth he wouldn't ever be ready to face. It's possible Ralph's future did look the way it did in Jack's dream, but if it did, it would be someone else living it with him.

Jack had never been lucky in that way. The kind of luck that you didn't know was luck because it was just normal for you. Like it was for Ralph.

Perhaps, Jack wasn't ready for tomorrow after all.