Stumble Forward

by Alex Jane

  Alec huffed out a laugh, “It’s Allie, Mom.” He corrected, offering and apologetic smile to Alicia but her face was white. “Allie? Allie, are you okay?”

  Alicia seemed transfixed. Slowly she stood, one hand on the counter to steady herself and said, “Alicia—my name is Alicia.”

  His mom, who had been bent over starting to unpack the groceries, paused, then slowly stood. She looked at Alicia and shook her head. “No. No, Alec said your name was Alison.”

  Alec looked between the two of them perplexed. “I never said that. I said Allie—as in Alicia. You were the one that assumed it was short for Alison.”

  His mom looked stricken. She looked from Alicia to Alec and back again, shaking her head until she said, “Why didn’t you tell me? Oh God—God, no—then Jack—Jack is—”

  Alicia swallowed. “Is Jonathon. Alicia and Jonathon Spenser.”

  Alec’s mom looked like she was about to collapse. Alec’s heart was starting to pound hard. He had no idea what was going on but from the looks on the two women’s faces it was not good in any way. He was staring between the two of them, no clue what to say when Jack appeared at the door.

  “What’s going on?’

  Alec was about to say I’ve no idea but Alicia turned to him and quietly said, “We’re leaving. Get your stuff.”

  Jack’s face hardened and he stepped towards Alec. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  Alicia sucked in a breath and held a finger out, pointing at His mom who seemed to recoil from it. “Don’t you know who that is? Don’t you know—of course not, why would you?” She paused, fighting the tears that were welling in her eyes and said through a sob, “That’s her. That’s the woman. The woman, Jack. That woman!”

  Alec watched in horror as the tension fell away from Jack’s face and he turned to stare at his mom and then Alec and then back to Alicia, mouthing no, no, no, backing away from Alec, growing paler by the second, until Alec finally yelled out, “Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on here!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alec didn’t turn around when he heard the door swing open. It was one of the quieter bars for this time of day but there had been a steady stream of traffic in and out of the dingy place since he’d arrived an hour ago. It wasn’t until a heavy form slumped onto the stool next to him, that he chanced a glance.

  Ethan pointed at his glass. “What’s in it?”

  Alec shifted uncomfortably and pushed it over without looking at him. “Just Pepsi.” Ethan picked up the glass and smelled it before pushing it back to him. Alec rubbed a hand across his brow. “How’d you find me?”

  Ethan spun on his seat, putting his back to the bar, folded his arms across his chest and looked out into the room at the crappy furniture and lunchtime drinkers huddled in the dark corners, away from the sunlight streaming in through the filthy windows.

  “Your mom called. She was nearly hysterical. Said something bad had happened. Wouldn’t say what and I figured if it was that bad—” He turned to Alec, leaned in close and hissed his ear with something close to rage, “Give it to me!”

  Alec felt himself go red all over. He leaned away from Ethan, straightening his leg so that he could get his fingers into the front pocket of his jeans. He pulled out the small bag and slid it under his fingers along the bar. Ethan covered his hand with his own and when Alec pulled his back, Ethan scrunched the baggie into his fist.

  “Did you do any?” Ethan’s voice was still low and angry. Alec shook his head. Ethan sighed, “You stupid fucking—wait here!” He poked Alec hard in the shoulder and Alec nodded, still not looking at up, even when Ethan strode off in the direction of the bathroom.

  When he returned, he seemed a little less angry, at least calm enough to sit next to Alec without punching him, and ordered a drink. “So you wanna tell me what’s going on?”

  Alec scrubbed both hands up and down his face and then turned to him. “I’ve been wracking my brains—what is the name of that Jack Nicholson movie?”

  Ethan looked blankly at him for a moment and then shook his head. “Are you sure you didn’t take any? I don’t fuckin’ know—One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. What’s going on Alec?”

  Alec shook his head. “No, it’s the one with the hats.” He held his hand up and made a circular motion around his head.

  The bartender arrived with Ethan’s drink and confirmation that Alec had not had any alcohol.

  “Christ, I don’t know—Batman? Tell me, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Oh God, no! It’s the—the Polanski one.”

  “What—Chinatown?”

  Alec clapped his hands together. “Yes! Oh thank God! That’s been eating at my brain since I walked in here.” At last he looked at Ethan, smiling but with tears welling in his eyes. “It’s just Chinatown.”

  Ethan put his hand on Alec’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’re scaring the shit out of me, man. Please talk to me.”

  Alec wiped at his wet eyes and took a deep breath. “I’ll give you the short version as I don’t think I can stomach the long one. Jack—Jack and I—” he glanced sheepishly at Ethan but Ethan just shrugged.

  “I guessed as much.” He smiled at the look of shock on Alec’s face. “I figured you’d tell me when you were ready. Is that what this is about?”

  Alec shook his head. “Yes—partly. We were together and—you know how I told you—hell, I think even Jack had talked about it at a meeting—how his dad up and left when he was a baby and they didn’t know what had happened to him?”

  Ethan nodded, looking a little confused, but relieved that Alec was talking.

  “Well, that was a lie! At least, the part about not knowing why he left or where he went.”

  Alec opened his mouth to go on, but nothing came out. All he could see was the look on his mother’s face, the sound of Jack slumping into the chair behind him, Alicia screaming and the only thing he could think about was Jack. Touching Jack’s skin, how Jack sounded when he came, the way Jack felt inside him. He could hardly breathe with the knot in his belly taking up all the room.

  “No.”

  Alec had to force the word out. It felt thick in his throat, ragged and barbed like it was trying to choke him. He tried again, but it was still barely a whisper. “No.”

  He could feel the bile rising from his stomach and swallowed hard to force it down. He needed to keep his composure, needed to be clear because nothing made sense, and he couldn’t buckle. And if he puked, he would buckle. He shook the panic away, and rasped out, “No. I don’t believe you.”

  He wouldn’t believe it. He couldn’t.

  But looking at his mother—her trembling fingers covering her mouth, her ashen face, lashes clumped with tears around her pleading wet eyes, the strong-willed woman looking as small and fragile as he’d ever seen her—maybe it was true after all.

  He heard Jack slump into one of the wooden chairs behind him, its feet screeching at the sudden heavy weight against the tiles. Jack’s voice was raspy, small like his own, the echo of his sentiment only serving to drive home the very thing they were trying to deny, when he pleaded, “No. No, it can’t be true.”

  Alec could hear Jack’s breaths—so close to sobs—and all he wanted to do was turn, and fall to his knees, and hold him, and tell him it wasn’t true, that nothing had changed. And please God, please don’t leave me. Please.

  But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Alicia.

  Standing there, her tall slender body fired with rage, white-knuckled fists swiping at the hot tears on her cheeks, her eyes burning with fury. And hate. Oh God, she hates us.

  She was shaking with it as she screamed, “You think I would make this shit up! You think I would forget the woman that ruined my fucking life?”

  Spittle and tears flew from Alicia’s lips with the words, her finger punching through the air at his mother. Alicia kept screaming, incandescent with rage and pain, and all Alec could think about was wanting to turn and fall into Jack’s arms
; kiss the tears from his face and bury himself there. To block it all out. To pretend that none of this had happened.

  Not that they never happened, but that somehow it could have been different.

  But what was the point. From the moment Alec had stepped into the bar the night met Alicia, it was always going to come to this.

  “Alec?” Ethan squeezed his shoulder again, chasing the thoughts out, and bringing Alec back to the moment.

  Alec cleared his throat. “Turns out he left them—for another woman—for—” The tears were coming again. He covered his face and took a deep breath, and composed himself long enough to say, “He left them for my mom.”

  Ethan leaned back. He kept his hand on Alec’s shoulder but Ethan distanced himself from him. Alec knew he didn’t need to say the actual words. That his father was Jack’s father and Alicia’s father. Even though they all had their mothers’ names, by rights they could all be called Cooper. Jack was his brother, and Alec knew what Jack’s come tasted like.

  He wasn’t surprised Ethan pulled away. He was surprised a minute later when Ethan’s hand moved from Alec’s shoulder to the back of his neck, and when Ethan pulled him forward, planting a rough kiss on the top of his head, and said, “Come on.”

  Alec looked up, his face wet and bemused. “Where are we going?” he asked, afraid Ethan was going to try to drag him back home.

  Ethan slid off the stool and looked at his watch. “To the meeting. We can make it if we hustle, and don’t tell me you don’t feel up to it because that’s the fuckin’ point.”

  Alec took one last swig of his horribly warm Pepsi and stepped down from the stool. As he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his Henley, Ethan asked, “So what’s with the whole Chinatown thing?”

  Alec looked blankly at him. “Seriously?”

  Ethan shrugged as they walked out. “I don’t fucking remember what it was about! I was drinking when I watched it, anything could have happened!”

  <•••>

  After the meeting, he went back to Ethan and Kate’s. Kate set the table and started to dish up some kind of chicken stew and potatoes, while Alec sat quietly looking at his hands. He excused himself and went to wash up. He threw up twice, which was quite an achievement given how much he had puked after Jack and Alicia had left that morning. It was mostly bile being that he’d eaten nothing all day. When he headed back to the kitchen, he could hear them talking in hushed voices as he walked down the hall, so he made a point of coughing before he got close enough to hear what they were saying. He couldn’t face knowing.

  The food made him feel a whole lot better and Ethan’s offer of the spare room did a lot for him too. The thought of having to go home, to stand in that kitchen, to sleep in his bed, to have to look at the shirt that Jack had left behind in his rush to dress and run, while Alec begged him, pleaded with him to look at him, just to listen to him for five minutes—he couldn’t do it.

  When he called his mom to let her know he’d be staying there a couple of days, she was upset but she didn’t try to get him to change his mind.

  Alec was worried he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but worried more that he would and his dreams would be filled with the same gut-wrenching feeling that he had tried to push away all day. Instead, he fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow and when he woke the next morning, in an unfamiliar room with fresh blue paint and floaty white lace curtains, he felt rested and peaceful after dreaming of precisely nothing. The feeling lasted for all of a second, before the bile started to rise in his throat again and the steely hand of ‘OhGodwhatdidwedo’ clamped tight in his abdomen.

  He rang Matt after breakfast. Alec had planned to complete the work on the presentation for a new contract before relocating. They talked for a while and Alec asked if it would be okay for him to make the move to Austin before starting on the project. Matt said he didn’t care one way or another as long as Alec did the work on time and as far as he was concerned, the sooner he got there the better. Matt didn’t need to ask if everything was okay. Alec made no attempt to sound it.

  Alec talked to Ethan and then called his mom to let her know that he wouldn’t be coming home after all, that he was going to stay at Ethan’s until the end of the week, and then leave for Austin. He didn’t mean to say, “For good,” with such force. She was already crying, but the words came out harshly before he could stop them.

  At some point, when the online property listings started to blur into one, he typed a bunch of random words in the search bar and somehow ended up finding an about Genetic Sexual Attraction. After the fifth story of separated family members finding each other, then falling helplessly into relationships that just about destroyed everybody in the vicinity, Alec started to feel like he couldn’t breathe. He clicked out, purged his browser history and told himself it wasn’t that. It couldn’t be that.

  He cried when he came in the shower. He was still tired and emotionally hollowed out but the feel of the water on his skin lulled him into relaxing a little and his mind wandered back to Austin.; to kissing Jack long and deep in the shower of the hotel, water pouring over both of them, the feel of Jack’s biceps flexing as he pushed his fingers into the place where his cock had been minutes before. To how safe and loved he had felt.

  Alec wasn’t sure what was worse, the knowledge that he would never feel that again or the fact that he still wanted it, whether Jack was his brother or not.

  He didn’t exactly have to force Ethan to see Jack but Alec made Ethan swear about a thousand times, all manner of things—that he should go straight to Jack’s because Jack started work at 8.30 on a Monday—that he shouldn’t mention what had happened. “Just say I told you we had a fight”—that he would make him attend the meeting, “Promise me, Ethan! Don’t let him wriggle out of it. Drag him if you have to!”—to remember to “Tell him I’m sorry, no, tell him I miss him, oh God actually no, don’t do that. Tell him—”—until Ethan gave him that please stop and listen to yourself look that he gave Kate when she started ranting about anti-vaxers.

  And when Ethan got back home, Alec made him describe every moment, every look, every single thing he did, searching for clues as to whether Jack was okay and coping, not caring that he sounded desperate and crazy.

  When Ethan said Jack agreed to go to the meetings over at St. Peters, Alec was relieved and when Ethan said he’d offered to sponsor him and he’d accepted, Alec nearly cried with relief.

  “He asked me how you were doing. I told him you were leaving Sunday after the meeting.”

  Alec nodded not expecting anything else.

  “He wants to see you. Before you go. To say goodbye.”

  Walking up the steps to Jack’s house was one of the hardest things Alec had ever done. His legs felt like jelly and with the way his heart was frantically trying to beat out of his chest, he felt certain he’d faint before he even knocked. But he stayed upright and when Jack opened the door, looking pale, his lank hair brushed flat behind his ears, somehow thinner after only three days, Alec kind of wished he had passed out.

  Jack said nothing, just swallowed and opened the door wider for Alec to come in, which he did. Neither of them actually spoke.

  Alec wasn’t sure who moved first. It didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was they were there, in the same room, then suddenly in each other’s space, and on each other, in each other, fighting to get closer, ripping at fastenings and seams, tearing aside zippers and fabric, biting and sucking and scratching at whatever flesh they could get their desperate mouths and hands on.

  They grappled each other down to the ground, right there by the front door, Alec’s knees bunched up to his chest, jeans barely halfway down his thighs. Jack’s fingers biting hard into the flesh of one of Alec’s naked hips, the other grasping the bannister behind Alec’s head so he could yank himself forward, tendons bulging along his forearm. Painfully penetrating Alec with only spit and precome to slick the way but Jack pounded into him hard with everything he had. Alec grasped
Jack’s head to his, holding so tight his knuckles were white. Panting rasping breaths and spit and pain into each other’s mouths; coming with filthy loud grunts and half-formed pleas.

  They lay there after, Jack crying angry tears, spitting out the words, “I hate you. You made him leave us. You make me like this. I’m all wrong. I ruin everything. What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?” while clinging to Alec in desperation. And Alec wanting to say I love you but carding his hands through Jack’s hair and the words coming out as, “I don’t care, I don’t care—”

  Alec sat outside in the car for a long time afterwards. He really thought there had been more to say but every word before Jack had closed the door in his face had decidedly been goodbye.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Alec’s final week in Lubbock passed quickly.

  He managed to find a small one-bed apartment online that was close to the Austin office. Phil checked it out for him and called later the same day to say he’d put down a deposit even though it was about the size of their dorm room in college.

  “We’re going to be spending all day and all night at the office until this presentation is over anyway.”

  Alec smiled. “Sounds good to me. Thanks for doing that, man.”

  “It’s no problem—how are you holding up?”

  Alec winced. He hadn’t expected Matt to keep his break-up with Jack secret but it felt weird talking to Phil about it, given their history. “I’m okay. I’ll be better once I can get out of here.”

  “Three days, man. Then you’re free and clear.” The phrase gave him an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, for reasons he couldn’t quite place, which lingered a long time after he hung up.