WHO: Leila & Ash WHEN: Evening of day 2 WHERE: Hotel bar SUMMARY: drinking and talking about the ones they’ve lost WARNINGS: language, angst, drinking as a crutch, vague suicidal thoughts
Ash studied the menu with exaggerated studiousness. It was all, essentially, nonsense to him, which had little to do with the alcohol already coursing through his veins and everything to do with the fact that he rarely drank; this menu may as well have been written in Greek with how little he understood. He still had a half finished beer in front of him, already warmed to room temperature with condensation pooling at the bottom of the glass, but something exotic and different seemed more appealing at the moment. They were, after all, currently somewhere exotic and different and when in Rome, etc. “Barkeep! Surprise us, give us your most colorful shot!” He was surprisingly jovial for someone drinking at a hotel where his boyfriend had died, but colorful drinks was as good of a distraction as anything. “So,” he turned slightly to face Leila, smile still firmly in place, as the bartender mixed juice with vodka. “Did our tour today make you forget why we are all here?”
Leila's eyebrows rose as Ash—that was the guy's name, she'd learned earlier—summoned the barkeep. Did people still use that word? Better question, she figured: Did sober people still use that word?
"Mmm," she murmured as she lifted the remnants of her French martini and downed them in one final sip. "I was overcome with…fun." Her tone said otherwise, as did her expression. "Can't wait to do it again." Sucking in a short breath, she cocked her head and eyed his beer. "You know there's a saying about that, right? It's probably BS anyway, but...I'm starting to get the feeling this isn't your usual Monday night routine."
“Well, I thought it was fun until, you know.” He shrugged. Surely she did; there was no point in naming this thing that weighed heavy on their shoulders. “It seemed like something Teddy, my-“ a pause “friend, would have enjoyed though so! Seemed worthwhile.” His smile seemed a bit more forced now before he took a sip of his beer. “You caught me. My usual Monday night routine is studying, walking my dog, studying some more, maybe sleeping if I’m lucky. Very little time for drinking.” Another sip. “You? Are you more acquainted with all of this-“ he gestured to their drinks, the bar, “than am I?”
One drink in, she couldn't even lay claim to a decent buzz yet. That meant her powers of deduction were about as sharp as ever, and Leila had always been pretty good at reading between the lines when it came to matters of the heart. "Yeah," she nodded as she exhaled, her thoughts drifting to the tour. Her entire reason for deciding to go along with it had been her inability to shake the idea that it was something Jeremiah and Jude would have done. Just seeing the cliffs…. Jude had talked about them non-stop leading up to their Spring Break plans three years ago. He'd been ridiculously excited about climbing them.
As the bartender slid their shots across the counter, Leila lifted one of the glasses and gently swirled the colorful contents. "Uh huh. We go way back. Probably the most reliable relationship I have at the moment. Never lets me down." She offered Ash a sort of devil-may-care grin and lifted her shot glass in his direction. "Cheers!"
Ash took his gingerly, not wanting to mix the perfectly poured layers of what, he couldn’t quite tell. It seemed a shame, really, to drink it at all, but that’s what they were here for, wasn’t it? “Cheers!” He downed it quickly and unceremoniously, and he was pleasantly surprised by its sweetness, the lack of a burn as the alcohol was softened by the pineapple juice. He imagined he would still feel it soon enough, his tolerance was so low, but he would settle for not tasting it. “I feel like this is the part where I should tell you that that doesn’t sound like a healthy relationship and that everything eventually lets you down, but whatever, you do you. If you found something that works, more power to you.” He shouldn’t be encouraging using alcohol as a crutch, but it was none of his business, and as long as she wasn’t endangering herself or anyone, he frankly didn’t care. Besides, he certainly wasn’t going to pass judgment on someone who had lost so much. “Another?” he nodded towards her empty glass. “Drink, shot, both?”
Leila cocked her head as Ash started in on what could have been a real downer, given the situation, but at least he rounded it off on a—well, she wouldn't exactly call it a more positive note, but she'd settle for a drinking buddy who didn't meddle in her drinking habits.
"That's pretty bleak. We definitely need both." A light laugh followed her words as she waved down the bartender again and ordered another four shots and two piña coladas. While they waited, Leila gave Ash a closer look. "Do you feel like—"
She stopped herself before she could finish. She'd been about to ask him if he felt like his friend was one of those things that had let him down, but neither one of them were intoxicated enough for that conversation. With a little sigh, she switched tracks. "What's one of the things you miss most about him?" Because that was such a better topic, right? But the people they'd lost were the reason they were all here, so why not face it head on?
Ash tilted his head back and laughed. “Other than everything?” He wasn’t entirely sure this was a conversation he was ready to have, and it seemed dangerous, somehow. But there was also something refreshing about her directness and willingness to to wade into such potentially painful territory. “I feel like I need another shot first.” He smiled amicably but it was really just a way to stall, to think about how to answer that question. “He was just so...” Teddy was like the sun, bright and warm and magnetic. “Charming and funny and fearless and optimistic. So good.” He was better than he deserved, and Ash never quite understood what Teddy saw in him but he was so grateful nonetheless. “I miss that, his energy, how he made everyone better.” How he made him happy, truly and deeply in a way he hadn’t thought possible. And now everything was a little bit darker, and he didn’t know how you could be satisfied with the moon when you had seen the sun.
Their shots came and Ash took his gratefully, relieved for a reason to look away from her. “Just in time,” he commented wryly, still looking down at the shot glass in his hands. “Definitely need this if we are going to continue down this road.” He finally looked back at her as he raised his glass. “So, cheers. Again.” He tipped the glass in her direction before he downed it.
Her question hadn't been a test, but if there had been some doubt about the depth of Ash's connection to his friend, his answer would have clarified it for anyone else who'd lost the love of their life. It was a different kind of pain, of loss and longing, that rounded out the undertones of his words. Leila knew the difference all too well. When she talked about Jeremiah, despite how keenly she felt the absence of his presence in her life, there was a warmth that crept into her voice no matter how sad she was. She couldn't think of him without smiling, at least a little. Even now, there was something about his memory that refused to let her fall into despair because of him.
With Jude, it was different. The wound was somehow so much deeper. On nights when she sought her solace in the bottom of a glass or bottle, it felt like the kind of wound that would never fully heal. Like the other half of her soul had been ripped away from her, and now her spirit was slowly bleeding out, day by day. It wasn't what he would have wanted for her, Leila knew that. She just hadn't figured out yet what her life was supposed to be without him in it.
"Sometimes 'everything' is the only answer you can give...when that person was everything to you." Leila lifted a shot glass in return and then drained the contents. She quickly followed it with the second, and then reached to chase it with a sip from the frosty piña colada, but she stopped as her fingers curled around the base of the glass. The bright red cherry perched atop an innocent pineapple chunk winked at her in the dim light of the bar. This was why she tended to stay away from mixed drinks, especially of the fruity variety. Her mistake.
"I can't remember a time in my life when they weren't there." Her voice was a lot softer than it had been previously. Her anger had been fueling her for the past 48+ hours, but beneath it all there was a vulnerability she couldn't shake. It was another thing she figured they all shared. How close were they all to breaking down?
She knew. He looked at her curiously, half wondering if she would ask, but she quickly took both shots instead. He thought he was grateful for that, for being understood without needing to spell anything out, without fear of judgment of gossip, though there was a part of him that wished to finally say the words aloud. He took his second shot instead, and his head spun. He couldn’t recall the last time he had done shots, let alone three in a row. He would regret it the next morning but right now it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sensation.
Still, despite the rush of alcohol, he gave a sympathetic hum. “I can’t even imagine how hard this must be,” he offered gently. He hadn’t lost as much as some others, he knew. He should consider himself lucky, even if at first it had been more that he thought he could bear. “Tell me about them.”
Leila shook her head at his words. "I think you can." She managed a small smile as she pulled her eyes away from the drink in front of her. "We're all here because we lost people we loved. And we're all coping in our own ways. Some are just more successful at it than others." She wouldn't exactly consider herself a success story.
When Ash invited her to tell him about her own losses, she hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to say. It had been a long time since she'd talked about Jer and Jude to anyone who hadn't known them.
"Well." A soft laugh escaped as she lifted one shoulder in a casual little shrug. "Jer—Jeremiah, my brother—would have probably gotten along great with your Teddy. He never met anyone he couldn't turn into a friend. And he was smart. He was so smart, but most people underestimated him until they got to know him. Probably because he didn't seem like the kind of guy who could be serious long enough to pick up a book and finish it." Leila grinned again and looked down. "He was my best friend. We never really fought, even when we were younger. I was just this scrawny little kid who tagged after him and his friends, and they put up with me."
She sniffled and looked away, reaching up to wipe away a trace of wetness from beneath her eye, but the hint of her smile remained.
"And Jude…." It was harder to breathe when she talked about him. Leila had to inhale a deep, shaky breath, and even then, it was a few more moments before she could continue. "He was my home. He was where I fit." Simple as that, really. "And he was also my brother's best friend, so when we started dating, things got a little tricky." She could laugh about it now. The memory of Jer tackling Jude when they'd finally come clean. "Jer and Jude and Wes and I, we all grew up together. For a while, we were our own little family. Inseparable, even when we weren't all in the same place. I thought it would always be that way. I think we all did." She stirred her drink with her straw and then pulled the pick out of the fruit and lifted the cherry by its stem.
"I called him Cherry. Because his last name was Maraschino." Cherry and pineapple. Jude would have said this was their drink. Her being Hawaiian and all. "He called me Lady. Like from Lady and the Tramp. It wasn't a romantic thing, at least not at first. It was something we started when we were kids, but...it became special."
She set the cherry down on her napkin and inhaled another deep breath before letting it out slowly and hazarded a look at her companion. "We were supposed to be here. Wes and I." It felt like a dirty secret, and it came out in a rather hushed tone. "I should have been here."
Ash listened quietly, taking in everything she was saying. It was a lot to process, but it seemed like it was something she needed to say, and he hoping that talking about them to someone she had no history with was somehow cathartic instead of painful. At her final words, he inhaled sharply, his heart aching for her. She didn’t deserve survivor’s guilt on top of losing her brother and her boyfriend. But then, none of this had ever been fair.
“I’m sorry,” was all he could manage at first. “You’re wrong though. You shouldn’t have been here. Wherever they are, I’m sure they’re relieved you were safe at home, away from whatever happened here.” He didn’t really believe in an afterlife or guardian angels or ghosts, but he did know that no one wanted to drag their loved ones down with them, not if it was a true love. “We didn’t need another dead body.”
But he doubted knowing that did anything to alleviate the pain she felt.
“They sound like great guys though. I wish I could have met them.” He thought he would have liked them, but it was too late now. He took a sip of his drink, and it tasted too sickly sweet after the shots, but it was something to busy himself with. “How did you start dating? Did Jeremiah eventually come around?” A pause. “You don’t have to tell me, if it’s too hard.” He had noticed the hint of tears in her eyes, but he didn’t know her well enough to feel like he could offer some sort of comfort. “But I think sometimes, we spent so much time focusing on their deaths and how much harder things are without them that we forget they were alive, you know? And I think that if we had been able to see into the future and knew that they would die too young, we would still choose to love them because those years of amazing memories outweigh the hurt. Or they should, I guess. I don’t know, I think you just need to hold on the good things because nothing ever lasts.” He shrugged. “So if you want to talk, I want to listen, is what I’m saying.”
It was something she'd heard over and over and over again. Her parents. Her therapists. Her friends who barely knew how to face her after everything had happened. It was better that she hadn't been here. The people she'd lost wouldn't have wanted her to be with them when it happened. Maybe that was true, but Leila couldn't quite bring herself to believe it. Not the part about Jer and Jude, no. She knew that if any part of them existed out there somewhere, a consciousness, a soul, they wouldn't want the same fate for her. No, her feelings stemmed from what she wanted...or didn't want. Depended on how you looked at it. She didn't want to be without them. She'd never been very good about staying behind when they left.
"They were," she agreed, throat constricting tightly around that word. Past tense. Always past tense these days. But Ash's following question made her laugh despite the tears that continued to gather, though they didn't fall. She nodded as he explained, understanding that while he may have some actual interest, he was also being kind. Giving her an outlet.
She smiled again, sniffled, and laughed at the memory. "We liked to blame it on Jer." They did, not that it had really been his fault. Looking back, Leila would have said it was always inevitable. She'd been in love with Jude when she was five, so why should fifteen be any different? "Um, I was a freshman. They were all seniors. If we hadn't all been friends already, I doubt they'd have paid much attention to me, but Jeremiah asked Jude to do him a solid and be my escort to the Homecoming Dance when my date backed out." She fell quiet for a while, the memories of that night coming back to her. The dress she'd bought a month before. Jude in his dress shirt. He'd always been the cutest boy she'd ever seen. The way he'd looked at her when they danced. Everything had been so new back then.
"We didn't tell Jer immediately. I didn't want to drive a wedge between them if it didn't turn out to be anything. But then…." Leila dragged her straw through the melting slush of her drink. "Yeah. He came around. He had big dreams about the three of us—well, Jude and me, Wes and—" She stopped just before saying Sydney's name. "Wes and him and their future wives all having kids and raising them together. I think he was more interested in raising sports teams than in the thought of Jude and I having kids, but...even without Jer's input, it was something we talked about a lot. The future. Getting married. Kids." They were going to have a big family. Full of kids who were wanted and loved and never had to question their place in the world.
"I know that probably sounds dumb to most people. I was only eighteen when…." She pulled her drink to her and took a long, long sip. "But it was the only future I ever wanted." And she didn't see much of a future for herself anymore. "Anyway." Rolling her shoulders back, she savored the warmth running through her despite the icy alcohol. "What about you and Teddy? How did you meet?"
Ash smiled. “That’s so sweet, like something out of a movie.” He could barely remember his high school dances but there was certainly no sweeping romance involved. “I don’t think that’s dumb at all. Youth doesn’t stop you from knowing what you want. Especially with someone you’d known for a lifetime.” In some ways he envied her for being so sure. Ash had been sure of how he felt, yes, but so worried about what could go wrong. The future had always been such a daunting prospect to Ash, and there had always been that nagging feeling that happiness was always fleeting. And yet, before Teddy had left for this trip, they had talked vaguely about finally taking the next step, about not living in complete secrecy anymore. The future had seemed less terrifying and Ash was feeling braver but then Teddy died, ultimately proving Ash right. Nothing ever lasted.
“It’s hard, to suddenly be forced to find a new future for yourself.” It was an understatement, and he paused to take a long chug of his drink. “I don’t know how you get over a ghost, not fully. They get so… I don’t know, built up, enshrined, maybe, in your head, and how does anyone ever compete with that?” He shook his head and took another drink. He didn’t want to dwell on that. He needed to stay busy, needed to keep running forward, lest he stopped and it all came catching up to him. “But yeah. Nothing as cinematic as lifelong friends. We were randomly assigned to live together freshman year, and he became my best friend.” Less romantic, maybe, but perhaps no less fated.
Forced to find a new future. That was one way of looking at it. Leila figured she'd opted out of that stage of grief. She didn't want a new future. In fact, she tried not to think about the future at all. Every day, every hour, was its own sort of accomplishment. And this...this was how she celebrated.
No one would ever be able to compete with Jude, on any level. Not in her mind. Not in her heart. Leila couldn't imagine letting herself feel for anyone else the way she had for him, and if the impossible ever happened...would it even be fair to that person? In her heart of hearts, whatever that meant, that's where Jude would live on. He was always going to be The One. Whether he was with her or not.
It was a lot easier to focus on the love lives of the people around her, even if they were also set in the past. "I think there's something about being friends, best friends, that makes everything else so much stronger. And I also think that you clearly haven't watched enough movies." Leila held up four fingers, motioning for another round of shots. "There's something wonderful about being able to look back on a moment that was perfectly ordinary, only to realize how monumental it turned out to be. A twist of fate or...maybe destiny…." She was a romantic at heart, always had been. It was too bad that heart was irreparably broken. "How long was it before you knew? Your feelings, I mean."
Ash hummed in agreement. She was right, of course, but there was also a part of him that wished that they were better at realizing they were in the middle of an important moment. There were so many things they took for granted, so many things they didn’t stop and appreciate enough. He was contemplating this as he took another sip, which he promptly choked on at her question. He looked at her thoughtfully as he considered what to say. He could lie and deny it, but it seemed so futile. Besides, he wasn’t ashamed; it was just complicated, and it had always struck him as unfair to open up about their relationship only after Teddy was gone. But here, in this place, it was hard to pretend. “I think you’re trying to kill me with all of these shots,” he teased, stalling. He idly traced patterns in the condensation on the side of his glass and sighed. “God, not long at all. Probably within the first month. It just took awhile to figure out what to do with those feelings.”
"Hey, I won't judge you if you can't keep up with a little thing like me," Leila teased in return, but it was mild and she meant it. Between the two of them and the sanctity of this bar, there was a no-judgment zone. Turning in her seat, she faced Ash more fully and propped her elbow upon the counter, resting her head in her hand as she did so. When he finally spoke, she couldn't help but smile, though it was a bittersweet expression.
"What about him? Was he always on the same page as you?"
Ash couldn’t help but chuckle at her taunt, no matter how much bite it lacked. He wasn’t sure who it reflected worse on: himself, for his embarrassingly low tolerance, or for her, for her shockingly high one despite her small frame. He didn’t really want to dwell on how much practice she must have had over these three years to build hers up. “I think he discovered- at at least accepted- his own before I did.” Ash smiled. “I think he knew how I felt before I did. And he was much...bolder than I was.” Those first few months had been the most exquisite torture. He had spent more time analyzing the way Teddy’s hand would linger on his shoulder or the way his eyes would find his at a party, as if there was no one else who mattered, than studying. He could still vividly recall every moment Teddy had sat too close, every time he would casually curl up next to him, every way he had so brazenly invaded his space and just grinned at him, confident and knowing. Ash had been terrified that Teddy could somehow hear how fast his heart pounded in those moments, and yet he still yearned to take his hand and bring it to his chest or his pulse to say look at what you to do me, I don’t think I can take much more of this when he really meant please never stop I’ve never felt so alive before please please please let’s take this further.
“He kissed me one night and it was…” There weren’t even words for it. He had forgotten how to breathe, how to think, and it had been liberating and terrifying all at once. “I don’t know, everything clicked into place.” There came their shots, and Ash took his first and then winced, immediately regretting it- he could already practically feel the hangover he would have tomorrow. “We were together for nearly three years,” he finished.
To Leila's ears, it was a sweet story, and the sound of Ash's voice when he spoke about Teddy said so much more than his words alone could. It wove a mental picture of happier, more wondrous times, and her smile turned more sad.
"Mmhmm." She nodded. "I know what you mean." She could still recall the first time Jude had kissed her. It had been shocking, electrifying on her lips. Because it had been Jude. Jude, who was her older brother's best friend. Jude, who'd dated so many girls but had never gotten too serious about any of them. Jude, who was exactly the type of guy she should have guarded her heart against, but a lifetime of knowing him, loving him, had rendered that impossible.
She followed Ash's lead, taking another shot and wiping the remnants of alcohol from her lip with the back of her thumb. That warm, drowsy feeling was starting to expand within her, daring her to defy gravity. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Why that old game fluttered through her head, Leila had no idea, but it caused a quick giggle to escape.
"What's time anyway? I could live another fifty years, and the sum of them wouldn't compare to the eighteen I had with them. To the four I had with Jude when the world finally made sense and I didn't question my place in it."
This was the kind of talk that needed more alcohol and he found himself taking his second shot, despite knowing it was a mistake. This was a dangerous road to go down, and while he perhaps should have kept his wits about him, it was too late for that now. “The world does have a way of surprising you,” he offered half-heartedly. “You never know what your future could hold, what you could make of it. We’re still young, too young to give up.” He knew that he would have a meaningful life, that he’d graduate school, become a doctor, make a difference in the world. It wasn’t a bleak prospect by any stretch of the imagination, and maybe someone would come into his life- or hers- and make it a bit fuller. It was a possibility, one he wasn’t closed to. But every one of them had lost a part of themselves in the accident, and he wasn’t sure it was a piece that they could ever recover. He was likely coping better than most, but ‘coping’ still implies having something to cope with. He suspected he would still always be haunted by his loss, not just of Teddy but of Max and Sally as well.
Too young to give up. Leila had heard other people say similar things. Maybe she would have agreed if there had been some flag to rally, some cause to fight for, if her loved ones had been taken from her because of some injustice in the world that would benefit from her voice, her experience, her memory of them. Instead, the injustice was simply that they'd been taken from her at all. After a while, the world didn't care to hear about that anymore.
“Nothing will ever be the same, but that doesn’t mean we’re destined for a miserable existence. I just...” He shook his head though the sudden moment made him dizzy. “I don’t see the point in living in the past. We’re more than what we’ve lost. We have to push forward, we have to try to make our lives better or happier or whatever because that’s the whole point of existence, isn’t it? We’re here for, what, 80, 90 years, and much of it is terrible but the parts that aren’t is what makes all of this worth it and we need to find that, those good things, even when it’s really fucking hard and we just want once we what we had, but nothing lasts and that’s life too, isn’t it?” Ash wasn’t sure if he was making sense, wasn’t even sure if his words themselves were clear, not after too many shots, but he refused to self destruct. He refused to let the grief win.
He was passionate, she'd give him that, but he was arguing a lost cause. At least in her case. Not destined for a miserable existence? Three years ago, she would have said the same. But three years ago, she hadn't yet realized that her world was about to be broken in half. "I think...that you…" Leila pointed at him, but her words remained clear and her tone was relaxed, "...are more than a little tipsy." Her eyebrows raised comically, as if she'd just granted him the kind of sage wisdom that only came along once or twice in a lifetime. Then she took another sip of her piña colada. "And I think that I...have no intention of spending another fifty, sixty years like this."
It sounded positive. The kind of thing someone would say when they were just about ready to make a change. To pick up the pieces and go live their best life, regardless of the hand they'd been dealt. Her grin, small and sweet, helped.
When she lifted her glass again, she tipped it against his. "Here's to finding the happiness we both want and deserve."
If he has been sober, perhaps he would have questioned her words, questioned what she actually meant, questioned whether her smile and tone were simply to mask her true intent. Or maybe, even sober, he didn’t know her well enough to catch what she may have been hiding or to offer her any comfort even if he could. But she was right, he was more than a little tipsy, so he simply took her words at face value.
Or maybe he was just a coward and this was easier.
He laughed. “You’re right. I am… not at all sober.” But still, he raised his glass to hers. “Cheers!”