January, 2019. New York.
«I'm doing good, I'm on some new shit, been saying yes instead of no...»
—We're on in ten minutes!
Kevin's voice flew through the door, waking me up from the million thoughts I had been going over for the past few weeks. I looked at my reflection, then at the scribbled rugged pages in front of me, and then at my reflection again. I couldn't quite recognize the face infront of me, but for the first time in a while, it didn't feel like a problem.
I was sitting backstage at a New Year's show in Times Square, my best friend was in the dressing room next to mine. Even with closed doors and Kevin's warming excercises, the opaque screams from the people outside were enough to drown my ears. Though this has been going on for a while, I still asked myself for the exact moment this started to be my life again.
Six months ago, I decided to give things a 360° turn, without stopping to think whether it'd take me somewhere or just leave me stranded. Six months ago, I was asked to participate on a project with no real structure, just an idea, just two boys who were looking for healing and distraction getting together in a studio. It took a couple up-all-nights, many shots and many tries, and before we knew we had a whole album. I can't lie and say it was as easy as retaking where I left off. In some way, I was forced out of my comfort zone, I was put in situations where I had to process all the things my brain repressed in the year I hid from everything and everyone. I learned how everyday is never ending progress.
Luckily, I had a mentor, and friends by my side. I grew even closer to Kevin, the architect of it all. Rian was the first person to hear about it, and Zack didn't take his time to call and give his best wishes. So many things happened in the same month I decided to jump head first and say "yes" to new-found opportunities. Seeing my name on socials again at times felt like a fever dream. To this day, it's hard to think of it as something I deserve. It's an on-going battle with everything in me to learn and accept that things change, and I'm driven to change with them. Having old friendly faces close did help to relieve that tension.
But sometimes, those old faces are also a reminder of what brought me to this scenario in the first place.
Six months ago was also the time Alex Gaskarth walked into my life again, granting answers and posing questions, but unable to place an ending dot to what he started. I never talked about that moment with anyone, I keep it fresh in my memory like something that needs to be fixed, forgiven, but not forgotten. There's always an attempt lock the past six years of my life in a safe at the back of my brain, but after going over that possibility time and time again, I realized that's erasure to the progress I have painfully been working on.
«And if you never bleed you're never gonna grow, and it's alright now»
Last summer wasn't the last time I saw him. He spent a couple more months in Los Angeles, and despite it being the big city it was, we still frequented the same places. I ran into him at Zakk's studio a couple times. I saw him at the coffeeshop down the street, at the same bar on saturday nights, in parking lots looking for our cars, I even saw him with Kevin a couple times, and it went as far as being glad they were starting to be as close as they once were. Even with that, he never approached me once. He didn't say hi, I didn't say sorry if we happened to stumble upon each other. We just limited to exchange a couple looks from across the room. Sometimes a weak smile would leave my lips and make its way to him, sometimes it went the other way around.
It didn't feel quite right to write songs and see the person they're about almost everyday at the same workplace. It didn't feel right, either, to be at the same place, each of us with different projects. Even when most of my life I lived without much of a plan other than being in a band until my dying day, I couldn't help but think how I would've felt if I had been told this is what my life was going to become the night before Alex stepped on that last train.
Part of me is happy that he did. Part of me is still hesitant and confused as to why he did. Part of me just doesn't care anymore. I couldn't be sure about how he was feeling, but something I was sure of is that whatever happened, led me to accept that, even if I wasn't at total peace with Alex, I was at peace with myself. The only existent thing between him and I was a drowning silence filled with memories, but free of grudges. I had one and a million reasons to change that, if it wasn't because I saw him cry for the same reasons I cried more than once. After everything that happened, I still didn't believe Alex was a bad person. He was just... a person, with many demons and self-defeating behaviors just like the rest of us. It's all on me if at some point in time I saw him as something other than a human trying to do his best. We're all learning now. And he knows he'll always have a shoulder to take out his distress on.
«We never painted by the numbers, baby, but we were making it count»
Letting the events from last year define me as a person or my career was not an option, not even if it was the biggest reason I decided to start over. Not even if sometimes I still allowed myself to look back and resist the desire to ask if things could've been different. Of course they could have. But tossing pennies doesn't necessarily mean the wish is gonna come true.
However, in the cold of the East Coast, missing him wasn't so bad. I figured some day the feeling was going to fade, but for now, it was good to feel something.
—Jacky –I lifted my head up as Kevin opened the dressing room door–, we're on.
—I'll be out in a sec –I responded, guiding my eyes to the notebook in my hands.
For the hundredth time, I read the first words I wrote a few months ago to keep me going: "I take it as a lesson in letting go"
-----------------------------------------------------------
A/N: Longass title for a shortass chapter lmao. Thank you for reading and I'm sorry this is obnoxiously corny<3 this is not the end yet, we have a lot more in store, teehe.
YOU ARE READING
illicit affairs | jalex
Fanfiction"Everything started spinning around me. It felt like I was back to that cold hallway from a year and a half ago, where everything was just a giant void, and the only thing I could hear was his voice asking me to leave, and my sobs begging for him to...
