Waiting To Be Found (Jalex)

Waiting To Be Found

Chapter Nine

Title from Afterglow by All Time Low.

I closed my eyes and when I opened my eyes again, I noticed that Jacks slightly protruding cheek bones were shining in the morning light. The whites of his eyes were a shade of pink that made the gray of his eyes look more like a pale blue that I found myself caught up in.
Then I lifted my finger to one of the few teardrops rolling down his cheek and it sat on my finger until I used my thumb to rub it in, dampening my fingers with his salty tear. I couldn't stop a pit of worry from opening within me, it was like an abyss of everything I could've missed as it passed through that beautiful mind of his.
"What is it?" I asked in a whisper that caused him to shake his head, pulling his electric eyes from mine for a moment before returning them.

"It's nothing" he whispered back, bringing a hand to my face and running his fingers romantically across the side of my face and using them to comb through a piece of my hair.

It wasn't nothing, and that was clear. I should've pressed him, but at the moment I shook it off. It wasn't for another two days before I realized what the tears had been a product of.
For years, that moment haunted me, the moment I brushed off instead of begging for an answer.

When I left his house that day, he hugged me for a very long time. His heart was pounding so hard I could feel it through the tightness of the hug. It was the most intimate, emotional embrace I've had in my entire life and I'll never forgive myself for not asking why.
That was also our very last embrace, and the kiss that followed it was beautiful, perhaps one of the most beautiful.
It was just two people in love, loving everything about the other, regardless of everything else in the world.
That was also our very last kiss.

I left him that day, thinking I would see him the next afternoon. I never saw him again, not for another thirteen years.

When he didn't show up at my house the next two days, of course I worried. I walked all the way to his grandmothers house, knocked on her door and asked for him. She was confused when she told me that he had left to go back home two days ago.

That was when I suffered my very first heartbreak.

I knew he would have to go home, but he never told me when. I didn't expect it to be so soon, I didn't expect him to leave without telling me. Pain. Pain. Pain. It was all I felt and I hated it, I hated every emotion that came with it, I hated every second that existed after that.
Jack didn't give me his number, nor did he ever ask for mine. Jack didn't tell me where he lived, aside from the fact that it was in the closest large city to us.

Jack left me with nothing, or at least I thought he did. After finding out that my great love was gone, I ran all the way to the hill where I first admitted my belonging to him.
I ran all the way there, tears unable to stop. I ran there and when I got on the hill, I screamed. I screamed into the world, that I was in pain.
Pain I couldn't rid, and didn't for thirteen years.
Pain that had no resolve.

After I collapsed into myself on that hill, I noticed something that was left just for me. Jacks silly sweatband that he wore the day that we first kissed.

It still smelled of him.
It was all I had left.

***

I tried to see anything but the blurred light of the sun desperately trying to make its way through the blinds that were covered by the dark curtain.
I tried to rest my sore eyes without seeing Jack, not the Jack thirteen years ago, but the now Jack.
The Jack that I just lost again.