The weekdays? He’s polished. Professional. Unshakable.
But the weekends—those are a different story.
They're blurred in a haze of beer and bonfires, whiskey and women. He becomes the man strangers assume he’s always been. Careless. Untethered. Charming enough to fool everyone but himself. The guy people want to be around, but not the one they truly know.
He stops saying goodnight to the women who leave his bed. Stops remembering their names. The warmth he once gave away so freely now locked behind cold eyes and louder laughter.
A month full of Sundays passes like that.
Until one morning, Jaxon wakes up alone. The sheets are half off the bed. A headache that rivals the first. And the scent of perfume he can’t name.
The house is a wreck.
Empty bottles. Half-smoked cigarettes. Forgotten heels. And silence. So much damn silence.
He sits on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face, staring at the wreckage of who he used to be.
I’ve been to the bottom of every bottle in this house, he thinks, and the one thing that always remains is me. Alone. Unchanged. Unhealed.
It hits him, hard and sobering.
The bottles weren’t a way to escape. They were a way to feel something—anything. But now? Now he doesn’t even feel that.
Not once does he blame Claire. Not once does he pretend she’s the reason he burned it all down.
Every choice—every party, every woman, every excuse—was his.
That morning, something inside Jaxon finally snaps. Not in anger. Not in bitterness.
In resolve.
He stands. Showers. Doesn’t stall. Doesn’t wallow. Instead, he heads downstairs, grabs three trash bags, and gets to work.
He starts upstairs, tearing through the mess with surgical precision. Every bottle. Every reminder. Every mistake.
Then the first floor.
Then the porch.
Then the yard.
By the time he’s finished, he stands in the driveway staring at seven bags of trash—and a house that’s starting to look like home again.
Not hers.
Not theirs.
His.
He throws the bags into the bed of his truck and heads inside to rinse off.
Over the next few weeks, he starts to come back.
Slowly. Quietly. Relentlessly.
The drinking becomes a rarity, not a reflex. He reconnects with friends. Rebuilds trust. Reclaims his name in the community. He starts showing up again—for other people, and finally, for himself.
And yeah—he even goes on a couple of dates.
