Love Is What You Make It

10. Unexpected Transitions

          Jack still can't look him in the face, but he must have looked to Lacey, because Lacey clears shrer throat and says, "While I appreciate the sentiment, it's not my apology to accept.  That right belongs to Jack and Thomas."

          "It doesn't make us friends again," Thomas says, and he sounds bitter, sounds more bitter than Jack feels, and he's sure he is—Thomas doesn't do well with abandonment, after all.   Over something so trivial and stupid (yet so so so important), Jack can't imagine it could be paved over with an apology.  "A sorry a year and a half later doesn't really cut the cake."

          "Yeah," Alby says weakly, shuffling back a bit.  "I-I understand.  Jack?"  His voice turns hopefully up at the end, but Jack takes his time to work out what he feels and what he should do.

          It's silly to hold onto a grudge—he knows that, and he doesn't like fighting.  But this wasn't really a fight, was it?   It was all one-sided from the start, Jack and Thomas never wished Alby any ill, they loved the guy for a good threeish years.  And it hurts to have those threeish years go to waste—but it doesn't do them any good to try not to waste them if Alby hasn't changed at all, if they're just going to have to go through the same thing when they find Amanda, or when they try to get married, or if they have kids.

          "Jack?" Lacey asks, pinching his fingers.   Thomas shakes him with a foot.

          "Yo, Jack, you in there?  Albert's waiting for a response."

          Jack blinks and looks up, straight into Alby's face.  There's only one way to figure it out, he supposes, so he asks, "Are you?"

          Alby stares blankly.   "Am I... what?  Albert?  I was pretty sure you knew—"

          "Are you happy for us," Jack elaborates, and Alby locks up.  The gears stop turning, and it's a very tense moment before he breathes,

          "Yes.  I'm—very happy for you all.   Just not happy ... for myself.  And I've come to realize that there's a difference between the two.  So yeah.   Yeah, I'm happy that you guys have so much love in your lives.  Honestly, you probably deserve it a lot more than anyone else I know."

          Jack smiles a little and stands.  He offers his hand, and Alby shakes, relief spreading across his face like an egg cracked over his head.  "I forgive you," he says, and Jack's almost positive that it feels better to say than receive.   "But make sure it doesn't happen again."

          Alby holds up his left hand, setting the right over his heart.  "Swear to God," he promises.  "Never.   If it does, you can punch me right in the nose."

          "Don't tempt me," Lacey warns, and when Jack turns around shre's smiling—only slightly, but it's still a smile.  Thomas isn't.

          "We still aren't friends again," Thomas reiterates as Jack reseats himself, but he gestures to the open stool to his right and turns to face the bar again.  "That's something you gotta earn."

          Jack doesn't say as much, but he agrees.

***

          They have their fun, go to three different graduation parties, and head back east.   They drop Damara and Bradford off at home and stay a few days, enduring parental nostalgia in the afterglow of jobs well done.  It's really Lacey that enjoys it most—for Jack and Thomas, graduation was a party come months late, and the fire has died a little.

          When they return home, Thomas and Lacey pick up their jobs where they left off, and Jack keeps applying for work.

          A few weeks later Jack comes home with some of the most exciting news he's had in a long time, and instead of talking with his bedfellows, throws three plane tickets down on the kitchen table and, adopting a very Thomas-like gesture says, "Afghanistan, bitches."

          "You're a dirty fucking liar," Lacey accuses, standing with fire in shrer eyes, and having suspected this might be shrer reaction, he shoves a stack of printed emails in shrer face.

          "I got a job filming a special on the war's impact on a small town in Nuristan.  I made carry-on tickets a contingency, and when I showed them my arm they cow-towed.  Plus, I count as several diversity hires so they need me.  Also, they said they could probably use a lawyer and an anthropologist out there anyway, if only to make things look more official.   Lacey, do you speak Afganhi?"

          "I speak Pashto, but I believe that's mainly spoken as a second language in Nuristan.  I'll see if I can pick up some conversational—whatever they speak primarily where we're going."

          "Fuckin' nerd," Thomas says, getting to his feet and wrapping his arms around shrer waist from behind.  Shre glances back at him and smiles, asking, "When do we leave?"

          "Two weeks." Thomas lifts a disco-finger into the air and shouts,

          "To the library!"