“Alex! Do you have any Starburst?”
Alex gave me a strange look as he adjusted the notebooks he’d just plopped down on the desk next to me, absently riffling through his pencil case and glancing at the clock that was three minutes away from the bell ringing. “No? Why would I have Starburst?”
“I don’t know, but you should,” I responded, sinking into my impressively uncomfortable seat in disappointment. I’d been throwing that question at everybody I’d seen so far that day, desperately hoping that I’d be able to put an end to my intense craving for the candy. May had given me one after getting home yesterday, apparently taken from one of her friends during school, and the citrus sting hadn’t left my tongue since. I wanted more.
The brunette threw me another baffled glance as he shuffled through papers, searching for the homework that was due. I shrugged, spinning a pen through my fingers as the bell shrieked.
___
“You get four downs, and we’re playing touch football, not tackle, ok? So, if you get tagged, that’s one down, and-“ DeGironimo was giving us a chalk talk on football, the next unit we were starting.
I wasn’t listening. It was Friday, lunch was next, I was too exhausted to offer up any energy to listen adequately, I did not care about the logistics of football at all, and Alex was pressed against my side. Which was only a bit distracting, obviously.
There was one of those blue foam mats leaning against the wall of the PE room we were in, and Alex and I immediately plopped down in front of it after our teacher commanded the class to ‘take a seat’. The brunette was, as it seemed, far less concerned with the fact that there was very much only room for one person to lean on it than I was, considering that he simply huffed, pushed at my arm, and scooted right next to me after determining that I had taken up too much of the space.
So he was pressed flat against my side, totally relaxed and peaceful, occasionally tilting his head towards me to whisper something offensive about DeGironimo or make a stupid joke. I, being the totally awkward person that I was, had my muscles uncomfortably locked stiff, completely oblivious to anything besides the body next to me. There was something comforting about it, really, knowing that there was another person right there, someone else who was alive, living in the same fucked up world.
But I was a freak, and had to make a big deal out of everything, huddling in on myself and clasping my fingers tightly around my knees.
Twelve minutes and some basic explanation of the rules of football that I failed to take in later, I finally managed to somewhat relax and let my back slip down the mat, arms falling out of their strict stance to rest more at my sides, left one half on top of Alex’s. Said boy was chuckling at how Josh managed to get hit in the face witha ball had been thrown at him in order to demonstrate proper form as the dressing bell rang, everyone in our class stumbling to their feet at once.
I tried to shake the fuzz out of my legs acquired from sitting still for so long, barely noticing that Alex was still on the floor before attempting to trip my way to the locker room through the slippery snow. He was continuously there, though, ass planted firmly on the fake wood floor, hands held out in front of him as he grinned at me with that dopey smile, head slanted partially to the side, honey hair flopping into his eyes. I sighed, grabbing his hands and hauling him to his feet, spinning around and assuming he’d follow. Alex just giggled, falling into his usual step next to me and fixing his hair. Weird ass, fucking adorable boy.
___
I was stuffing notebooks into my locker three hours later, mumbling to myself about what I’d need to do my weekend homework under my breath. Both my class and homework math notebooks would need to be taken home with me to study for the test we had on Monday, since I could not make getting Fs a thing. I refused to actually fail out of high school, and, wait, the middle of a Dulaney hallway was not to the right place to be thinking about that, but-
“Hey, Jack!” I looked up from where I’d been scowling at the litter scattered bottom of my old backpack, eyes meeting being confronted with Alex’s everlasting grin. I’d think that boy was the happiest person I’d ever meet, did I not know better.
I wished that I was still blissfully ignorant.
“’Ello?” I said, question clear in my voice. I assumed that he had a point for showing up, and really just wanted to get home, listen to music, eat some food – I hadn’t really consumed anything since, like, four o’clock yesterday, and wasn’t actually all that hungry, but I figured skipping meals for any longer would be a whole new level of unhealthy – and relax for a while, maybe get some work done. As always, fun filled Friday night in my life. It wasn’t like I had friends to party with.
“You’ve got Boxnit for Math, right?” Alex asked, waiting for my nod of confirmation before continuing, “alright, so, I don’t really know anybody in my class, and you know that we have the test coming up, so I was wondering if you wanted to study with me today? I mean, unless you’re busy, or…”
I smiled as he trailed off, figuring that it’d probably be far more effective to get that over with today, as well as, you know, ten times more enjoyable than studying on my own. Plus, having someone else to focus my attention on actually learning math might promote my getting a semi-decent grade on the upcoming test. And wasn’t Alex actually good at math? He could help me.
Also, he was really cute, I totally had this pathetically giant crush on that boy, and would happily accept any excuse to hang out with him.
“Yeah, sure, that sounds great. Do you wanna go to mine…?” I questioned, my over thinking starting to kick in, thoughts screeching about how my room was covered in underwear, and the blood-stained boxers hanging out of my hamper had been spilling onto my closet floor, and those doors were almost always open, and what about the rest of our house, May’s shit was everywhere, and, wait, would May be home? What about dad? Jesus fucking Christ.
“Yeah! Can you – wait, actually, how about you give me your address and I’ll be there in, like, half an hour?” Alex rambled, cutting himself off right after he started, expression turning thoughtful. I raised an eyebrow at him, briefly turning back to the locker before me to swing it shut and click the lock closed, zipping up my backpack.
“You’re not going to Home Depot to get tools to murder me or something, right?” I teased, adjusting a strap over one shoulder and starting to unravel the ear bud wires from around my phone.
“Nope! You’re too cute to murder,” he responded, grinning cheekily as I blushed. Fucker.
I ducked my head towards the floor, doing my best to ignore the part of my mind that was calling that statement as a lie, starting to relay my address instead, declaring him trustworthy enough, “Damn right. Ok, it’s-“
___
I bustled around my kitchen, scratching idly at my hips, fingers tucked under the waistband of my jeans as I itched. I still didn’t understand the whole ‘cuts tingle when they’re healing’ thing, but it happened, and it was really fucking annoying.
You know, all those anti-self harm campaigns preach about how you should love yourself, there are better solutions, there’s always someone to talk to, hurting yourself is a last resort that never needs to be taken, blah blah blah, but, seriously, they should really just point out the dirty truths of cutting. That would be a sure way to turn people off of it.
Like, how come no one ever talks about how if you wear anything over new cuts, they'll heal to your clothes, you will need to rip the barely formed scabs off, it will hurt like hell, and the resulting blood blotch will never come completely clean? Also, I was out of tissues since I’d used them all to wipe up blood, our bathroom was completely bare of band aids, and I couldn’t exactly start needing tons of shit to help heal wounds that no one could know existed. I could only imagine how well it would go if I started asking my parents for new packs of bandages every other week. Even they weren’t that clueless.
Additionaly, I ended up with these terrible, annoying itches at the worst possible times. There is absolutely no inconspicuous way to scratch your hips in a school full of highly curious kids who are constantly rabidly starving for news and gossip. I ended up sticking my hands in my pockets and tugging at the skin with my nails through the pocket lining and my underwear. Extremely unsatisfying and ineffective, but mre beneficial than shoving my hands down my pants in the middle of class, or nothing, I supposed.
Honestly, cutting was an annoying pain, but I loved it. Fuck, nothing made sense anymore.
I was pouring a cup of ice water while my plate of freezer taquitos spun around in the microwave when the doorbell rang. Gulping, I half jogged out of the kitchen and down the family-picture hall, glancing through the frosted front window to confirm that I had not gone deaf and missed my dad’s truck pulling into our cracked driveway sometime within the last thirty minutes.
I was not yet completely insane; it hadn’t, and I pulled the old door open, coming face to face with Alex, sporting his trademark, stretched out grin, dark blue backpack dangling precariously off once shoulder, and something citrus bright gripped in his fist. Wait, was that…?
“I brought Starbust!” he exclaimed, pushing past me into the house. A smile split my face as I turned around, knocking the door loudly closed and instantly following Alex as he seemed to make himself completely at comfortable in my house, pack already shrugged off onto the deflated couch and kitchen sought out.
I pulled the candy away from him upon reaching the kitchen again, ignoring the incessant beeps from the microwave signaling that my shitty food was ready, instead inspecting the bundled up stick of Starburst that I now possessed and hoping happily onto the counter, legs dangling and heels kicking against the wood as I turned it over in my hands.
“This isn’t poisoned?” I questioned, unable to flatten my ridiculous grin because, as pathetic as it was, that was probably the nicest thing anyone had done for me since I began attending the Hell hole that was high school. And, wow, not helping the huge crush situation.
“Didn’t we already go over how I am not trying to murder you?” Alex replied, laughing and rolling his sparkling eyes at me. I shrugged noncomitally, aware that that was not an adequate reply and also not caring as I tore wrecklessly into the candy, three of the cubes clattering noisily onto the granite countertop next to me. A pink, yellow, and red. The sour, citrus-bite yellows had always been my favorite.
I popped it cheerfully in my mouth, chewing through the sticky square and wondering how I’d ended up in that position. Actually, why would Alex spend his time – and money, apparently – on me? I was just another fucked up, band obsessed, sarcastic asshole teenager. I wasn’t special or talented.
That wasn’t even me being depressed and self pitying, like usual, I seriously literally did not understand. But I was ecstatic that he saw something in me, nonetheless.
It was when I was quietly considering searching out some actual food in our oak cabinets that we could eat when I realized that out of all the colors in the quite abundant pack of Starbust, Alex was eating a red. Really? Red?
“You like the red ones? Everyone knows those are the worst,” I stated, mindlessly folding the bright yellow wrapper between my spindly fingers. I'd half expected myself to be completely, obnoxiously freaking out with someone in the house who was neither related to me nor had been there a dozen times already, but situations are often at least minorly less stressful while they’re happening than I'd percieved them to be, as I’d been learning. Of course, the opposite was also relatively frequently true, and, yeah, the blood rushing through my system was being pumped abnormally quick, but my mind wasn’t trying to self destruct. Yet.
“You cannot actually be a Starbust snob,” Alex retorted, leaning on the grease-stained stove across from me and licking the candy’s flavoring off of his thin lips, “red’s my favorite.”
I hummed in reply, sliding off the counter with a bang in order to go find some nourishment that was not ninety percent sugar right as Alex moved to get another Starburst, ending up with me thumping loudly onto the floor, straight into his chest, and, wow, fuck, I’d never noticed how many different shades of caramel were flecked through his eyes.
One of Alex’s hands was stilled on the counter beside me as as he stared at me with those exposing eyes, looking unsure about something as I carefuly studied his features in the stuck silence. His chin had a trace of stubble, and the jumbled blond section of his hair was tangled through with the rest of the uniform caramel, barely brushing over the top of his dark eyelashes, and his lips, fuck, they were wet and pink and plump and I realized that I kind of really wanted to kiss him.
But I was not a first move kind of guy, and even though it may seem to be at times, my life was not a movie. Time didn’t stand remarkably still, Alex wasn't all I spotlight saw, my mouth didn’t go cotton dry. Some dude was yelling irritatingly in the distance, I was pretty sure my breathing could be eaily made out from upstairs, and I was about to resign myself to the inevitable fact that Alex did not want to make out with me and embarrassingly slip out of that awkward position to get on with my life: messy and awkward and as real as anything I’d ever experience.
Here’s the thing about my confidence – I was really all show. The only reason I believed I wasn’t a completely hideous orc was because people had convinced me otherwise. I bothered making jokes because they always prompted amused laughs. I flirted with Alex because he eagerly returned the favor, but I never expected it to go anywhere; there was no punch behind my silly teases or come ons hiding in my sexual digs. I was a big idiot who would talk and talk but never really own up to the persona I projected when push came to shove, which it quite literally did when I found myself pressed back against the creaking wodden cabinets, a pair of lips pressing on my own and hands in my sprayed hair.
Reality is never anywhere near perfect, and those who state that romance novels and chick flicks set people up for unrealistic expectations are dead on. I’d always thought that it was the imperfections that made things impeccably beautiful, though; proved that they weren’t something I’d dreamed up with my muddled mind in the moonlit dark. It is faults that create flawlessness, so even though I somewhat panicked upon being kissed by none other than Alex Gaskarth, and I had no idea what the fuck I was supposed to do with my hands – or mouth, for that matter – it was still really incredibly amazing.
I quickly crushed down the screeching voice in the back of my mind trying to figure out what the fuck was happening, and why, instead flashing back to all those middle school fictions I’d read, mind clearly zooming in on how the main characters got through their awkward first kisses. It wasn’t like I’d never been kissed before, but it had too long, and I could never be considered actually experienced in the first place, so I did my best to go with it, relaxing against Alex’s body, curling my too-long fingers around the hot back of his neck, threading through his honey short hairs as my other hand rested on the small of his back. My eyes had flickered shut on their own accord, mouth pressing softly against Alex’s, lips moving in bare slides as I tried to adjust.
One of the things that romances accurately portray, at least, is how fucking amazing it is. That, and, hello, Alex was kissing me, which was some sort of dream come true on its own. I’d have to high-five myself later.
But I really was smart enough to know that that would be intesnly frowned upon at the moment, instead gasping in a stumbled breath when Alex pulled back, looking at me with ecstatic puppy dog eyes. I beamed right back at him, unable to hold back the idiotic jokes even in that moment, spitting out, “I take it back.”
The boy in front of me furrowed his eyebrows, tilting his head like some sort of adorable confused dog, smile tugging at the sides of his lips. I linked my fingers behind his warm back, practically purring as I felt his fingers pull through my hair, clarifying, “Red Starburst is my new favorite taste.”
___
“You know, I have this general rule against liking people who are good at math, and you’re making it kind of hard to stick to that,” I whined, burying my head hopelessly in my arms, cheek against my unforgiving math textbook, yearning for numbers to not exist.
Defying my putrid hatred for math, I, for once on my life, was not totally focused on how much I despised it. I literally spent my annoyingly early morning math classes repeatedly muttering ‘I hate this class’ every five seconds, usually causing Josh – who was next to me - to either chuckle or viciously threaten to punch me in the face. That wasn’t really surprising; I mean, I wanted to smack myself sometimes, and I was me. You’d think I’d be the biggest candidate for my self preservation, but the world is remarkably screwed up.
But that one particular study session was going surprisingly well. My phone was in the middle of the mahogany dining room table that my family failed to ever eat off of, blasting Infinity On High. I was fairly sure that I’d heard Alex whisper a silly prayer to the music Gods for Fall Out Boy to come back some time soon after I’d turned that on, and I completely understood where that was coming from. Seriously, those four guys needed to stop being idiots and make me some more goddamn music to for me to cry over.
The heat was cranked up, my jacket carelessly draped over the back of my chair even though it was the middle of December, and snow frosted the windows in front of us with a spiderweb of white. Alex and I had four scratched up math notebooks and two heavy text books in all, scattered around the table in various states of dishevelment, pencil sharpeners and erasers hiding somehwere, lost in the mess. My calculator had managed to end up on the complete opposite side of the room – I think we accidently knocked it off the table when I was jokingly threatening to hit Alex with my textbook if he didn’t stop drawing on me. There were three dopey smiley faces and what was either a dick or an elephant, depending on how you saw it, scribbled on my right arm. It was somewhere between irritating and cute.
And, of course, the best part of the situation was that Alex was leaning on me, head a few inches next to mine as he excitedly tried to explain how to solve square root functions. I was possibly starting to get it, which, in my case, only inspired more complaining.
“You like me?” Alex giggled in reply, doodling a flower in the margin of my class work notebook as we got off topic again, the equation we were halfway though riddling out left unfinished. It was bit difficult, working through this shit together, considering that we could barely decipher each other’s handwriting and ending up talking about how hot Pete Wentz’s tattoos were or how strange it was that ‘it is not’ could be abbreviated two different ways every five minutes intead of actually doing math. Maybe not the most productive learning, but certainly the most fun, in my opinion. And the last time I’d enjoyed anything when math was involved was… never. That boy had to be some sort of magic.
I rolled my eyes, elbowing him weakly in the side to attempt to get his dull pencil away from my work, deadpanning, “No, I was totally making out with you earlier because I hate you.”
And, about that, I had no freaking idea what was going on with us. But I’d been trying really, really hard to stop over thinking everything while it was in the process of happening, and, you know, live in the moments as they flashed by instead of uselessly obessesing over those sprinting up. Go with it more. That would probably only benefit my psych, right? Or maybe I’d accidently end up totally addicted to heroin because I ‘went with it’ when some shady homeless guy offered me a sketchy hit. Okay, trust the current in moderation, maybe. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.
“Shut up. Ok, look, you so you just square both sides, right? And then isolate the variable. It’s not that hard, Jay.”
It was when I was grinning over the fact that Alex had apparently deiced it was unnecessary to call me by my full name that I started to remember what actual happiness was like.
____________________
I have concluded from last chapter's comments that you guys are just as clueless about what it means to be alive and all that as I am. I think I'll talk about that a bit more later, so maybe we can figure it out eventually. Anyways, this is probably the happiest and most Jalex-y chapter yet, I hope you liked it! Please comment and vote <3
xoxo
Rose