Track 17: Side A

Photographs with Faded Edges

 

Jace

I glare at my phone, trying to decide who to call and yell at. It might feel good to tell Wyatt or Joel off for suggesting I talk to Lincoln to get closure. Or I could call Amanda and bitch at her for her words that encouraged me to give Lincoln a chance. My heart feels like it’s teetering on a dangerous ledge—certain doom lies in one direction, safety in the other. For ten years, I’ve kept my damaged heart carefully cocooned in bubble wrap. Every person I dated posed no risk of stealing and harming my heart further, and all the painful memories were locked away where they couldn’t do any more damage. Then Linc waltzes back into my life like he belongs here and fucks up the system.

With a frustrated groan, I toss my phone on the table and rub my hands over my face, pushing my glasses up out of my way. What do I do now? Do I retreat to safety? To do that, I’ll have to walk away from Linc completely, go home, and add the memories of the last week to the box in my mind that’s never allowed to be opened. Or, I can remove the bubble wrap and see where things go. That would mean stepping off the ledge into the unknown, to possibly have my heart broken beyond repair this time around.

I replace my glasses and stand up, feeling the need to move or burst. I wander around the cabin, eventually finding myself in my parent’s closet. I turn on the light, and on the top shelf, I see the photo albums. With unsteady fingers, I reach up and pull a few down. Brushing dust off the covers, I smile. My mom loved taking pictures, and she loved looking at them even more. She could spend hours pouring over old photo albums, reminiscing about summers, days, years past.

I use my forearm to wipe away a rogue tear, and I take the albums to the kitchen. I open the first one, labeled 2006 and start to flip through it. 2006 was the first summer Linc and I confessed our feelings for each other. Aside from our frequent secret make-out sessions, the summer wasn’t that different from any other. We were inseparable as always, our parents spent long nights together drinking and playing cards, and Linc and I sat on the pier wishing on stars.

My heart is in my throat as my eyes linger on pictures of my parents, smiling and happy together. They were so in love. I wipe another tear away and chuckle at a picture where Joel has me in a headlock. Why on earth would my mother take a picture of that instead of stopping our constant bickering?

I pick up my phone and dial Joel. It rings at least six times, and I’m about to hang up when he finally answers.

“’Lo?” he answers in a raspy voice.

“Oh shit, I didn’t mean to wake you,” I apologize. “I’ll call you back another time. Or you can call me once you’re awake.”

“No, it’s cool. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I assure him. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Thailand on a layover. I have a little time to catch up on sleep and see the sights before I’m scheduled to fly back.”

“I hear Thailand is fun. Try not to get into too much trouble,” I tease.

“What’s the fun without a little trouble?”

“Just be safe.”

“Always. Enough about me, how’s your vacation?” he asks in a rapid change of subject. “Did you get the closure you needed with Lincoln?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?” he asks with concern.

“I feel like things are going off the rails. He’s not the asshole I thought he was; he’s still the same boy I fell in love with,” I confess, the words weighing on me as they hang in the air.

“Are you serious? Are you getting back together with him or something?” Joel’s incredulity gets my hackles up.

“I don’t know. No, I guess not considering we live on opposite sides of the country.”

“What are you saying then? I thought you were over him; this was just getting the apology he owed you and moving on once and for all.”

“I thought so too. I don’t know, Joel, maybe I shouldn’t have called you.”

“You can always call me,” he says, his tone softening. “You just have me worried now. You were wrecked after what Lincoln did to you. I don’t want to see you like that again.”

“Believe me, I don’t want that either,” I agree. “It’s just…I don’t know what to think. He’s showing up here in the middle of the night and making me look at the stars with him. He invited me to spend Christmas with him, and in some ways, it feels so right letting him in again. I have no self-preservation instinct, do I?” I sigh at myself.

“I’d have to go with no on that one. Honestly, it sounds like this is something you need to see through at this point.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, I do. And when he breaks your heart again, I’ll be there with a bottle of scotch and an I told you so.”

I laugh and shake my head.

“Gee thanks,” I grumble.

“It’s what brothers are for,” he assures me cheekily.

“I love you, man. I’ll let you get back to sleep. And, enjoy Thailand.”

I set it down and flip to the next page in the album, my breath catching when I see pictures of me and Lincoln. We’re sitting at the picnic table between our houses, and our hands are covertly linked under the table.

When I came out to my parents, at the end of the following summer, my mom pulled out this photo album and opened to this picture. She pointed at our joined hands and smiled at me. She told me she knew even before that, but this confirmed it for her. Then she told me she’d always love me no matter what and that she could see how much I loved Lincoln.

I spent too many hours crying to my mom after Lincoln left. I wonder how she’d feel now about me giving him the chance to hurt me again. She’d tell me to trust my heart and believe that fate has something in store for me. That’s where I get all my silly ideas about fate from. My mom was an avid believer that everything happens for a reason.

I sigh again and close the album. It seems all signs are pointing to jump, so I guess I’ll see where this thing takes me.

 

 

Lincoln

After Jace ran out after our night at the bar, I decided to give him a little space. Much like pushing him never has good results, chasing him only makes him run. He needs a day or two to figure out how he’s feeling, and then I’ll go over there and drag him over for Christmas if I have to.

While I wait for Jace to come around, I don’t sleep. How can I sleep with the fate of my future hanging in the balance? Knowing everything rests on the next few days, there’s a strange feeling of adrenaline coursing through me that keeps me from settling. I can’t decide if the hazy, hyper feeling is better or worse than the dark cloud that blankets me on occasion, making waking and sleeping feel so much the same.

And while I wait, without sleeping, I write. I sit on my bed, playing my guitar until my fingers are sore. It’s obvious my fingers forgot what it was like to play at such length. This used to be my normal. From the minute I got home from school until I went to bed, I’d play. Sometimes, I’d play by myself, in my room. But when my dad was home, I’d go to Lando’s or Benji’s, and we’d all play together.

You’d think being in a band, we’d have been the cool kids at school. But nope, we were the nerds in marching band and elective music theory. I wonder what everyone from school thought when they started hearing us on the radio. I wonder what everyone thinks when they see the headlines about Jude getting caught with prostitutes or going to rehab. What do they think when we go on bullshit late night talk shows and talk about how close we are. It was true once; we were best friends. I don’t know what we are now or what’s going to happen to us.

I shake off the moment of melancholy and focus on the music. There are so many things I want to write about Jace, but there’s no way I’m going down that road again. So instead, I write a song about the darkness I can never seem to quite shake. Describing the feeling of living in a nightmare, unable to decide if numbness or agony is better, is cathartic.

When I’m finished, I play it again, this time recording it and texting the clip to Archer and Lando. They’ll probably have a heart attack when they realize I wrote something again. I’m sure Lando will be relieved.

When we started this, we agreed we’d both write songs for the albums. We didn’t want to use songs written by someone else; that was a hard limit for us when we signed our first contract, and every contract after that. But over the past seven years, I haven’t held up my end of the bargain, and Lando has struggled more and more to write every song. He probably needed this vacation as much as I did.

If Downward Spiral makes it—and, at this point, it’s a big if—I need to start pulling my weight again. Maybe if I have Jace to come home to, I can be the person I was always supposed to be.