They move into an apartment a little farther from the school, closer to Harvard, and spend a lot of time living in the present. Thomas gets a job at a CD store down the street ("Perfect," he says when he gets the news, "I won't have to talk to any people.") and Jack picks up odd jobs for local businesses looking to film commercials.
Thomas attends his first semester in the spring and gets out the same day Lacey graduates—which is three days before they have to be back at Drixel for their own delayed ceremony.
Their friends all cry, as do Damara and Bradford, and Lacey embarrasses them with shrer shouting and hooting (which they had politely refrained from doing at shrer ceremony), but it's a good time, and the boys don't mind half as much as they pretend to.
They go out drinking afterward with all their friends, promise to stay in touch as everyone talks about their plans to scatter themselves across the country—and realize only when he approaches, still wearing his gown but not his cap, that Alby's there too.
"Hey," he says, voice crunching a little, and Thomas and Jack share a glance, cautious and uncertain. Thomas looks disgusted, and Lacey sneers when Jack sets a hand on shrer shoulder, turning from a pleasant conversation with shrer (now openly) agender brother (a term, like his pronouns, which he prefers to keep).
"So he's back," shre says drily, leaning heavily on Jack to reach Thomas as shre goes for their hands. "What does he want?"
Jack can't manage the kind of open disgust his partners are capable of. He only looks at Alby with something between hurt and accusation, willing him to say his piece and leave already. It's a good night, he thinks, sending a silent prayer up to the heavens. Please let it stay a good night.
In the wake of their silence, the clatter of glasses and excited chatter acting as a backdrop, Alby squirms. "Spit it out," Thomas orders, face a blank canvas.
"I'm sorry," Alby finally says, and seems to force himself to meet their eyes. "I acted really horrible towards you guys the last time we talked, and it was really, really, stupid."
"Yeah," Thomas drawls, "it was." Alby flinches. "Glad to see you've finally figured it out."
"So I just wanted to apologize," Alby goes on, his whole body a series of twitching muscles. "I've been going through a lot of stuff, and I know that you can't help what's on your wrist any more than I can—"
"So you're sorry that we've been happily matched to several humans who love and cherish us," Lacey hisses, and Jack knows why shre's angry, but a part of him doesn't think shre really has the right to be that upset—shre never knew Alby, it didn't hurt shrer when he called them names and walked out of their lives, not the way it did himself and Thomas. Shre didn't crash in his apartment or let him into shrers when he needed a place to stay, shre didn't stay up late to help him study for tests they didn't have to take, shre wasn't the one who he punched in the goddamn face at a party thrown in shrer own goddamn dorm room!
Jack looks down at the floor. He hadn't realized until just this moment how much it had hurt him to have Alby react the way he did. Until now he'd just thought, to hell with it, who needs friends like that anyway? He doesn't need friends like that, but he could do without the burning sensation in his gut, the searing heat in his mind where all the happy memories of his and Thomas's time spent with Alby have been retroactively tainted.
"No, that's not what I meant," Alby insists, quick but not really defensive. He's standing on top of his own feet, rubbing his ankles together like a cricket. "I just meant—it was dumb of me, to see you so happy and get so mad. There's just a lot of stuff I've internalized since I was little, and the fact that I'm never going to have even half of what you guys had was really hard for me to take, and for you to have three partners, it was just—" He takes a deep breath and pinches at the sides of his robes. "I don't know what I can do to make it up to you, but I want to be happy for you, and honestly I really miss you guys. Sorry."
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!"