The guy stood, crushed his cigarette, and sighed before walking back inside. For some reason, I forgot my common sense and hurried in behind him.
The place was as trashy as I’d expected, and so packed it was almost impossible to move. I kept getting shoved, and everyone was so drunk they didn’t seem to care that I was trying to get somewhere. It was like Ididn’t exist. No one would move out of the way. And it stank! Of sweat, tobacco, cheap beer, and mildew. Disgusting.
The drunk guy reached a couple of tables and sofa where things looked calmer. Jack was there talking to a couple of guys. The drunk touched his arm and he turned. Then several people crowded past me, and I lost sight of him for a few seconds. When I pushed through again, Jack was looking straight at me. We were both paralyzed, then a huge smile crossed his face.
Wait a minute…a smile?
Wasn’t he supposed to be pissed at me?
He was wearing a gray T-shirt, a black jacket, and some old jeans I’d seen him in dozens of times. He rushed over and brusquely shoved away the people nearby. “Jen!” he shouted.
I was so surprised that I didn’t know how to react. That seemed to bother him, but it didn’t stop him from wrapping an arm around me and dragging me over to his friends. I felt like a rag doll as he squeezed me and said, “Guys, this is Jen!”
That was all they needed to hand me a beer and give me a place against a column where everyone would stop pushing me. Jack leaned in close and shouted into my ear, because the music was so loud, “Did you come here to see me?” He sounded like a little boy at Christmas. “Drink your beer, it’s on the house.”
I tried to talk to him, but he wasn’t listening. Someone had tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around and started babbling like crazy. I stared listlessly at my beer. I hadn’t drunk alcohol in forever, and these didn’t seem like the best circumstances to start again.
Someone moved past, knocking him into me, and I stared at his chest, just a few inches from my eyes. He stank of alcohol. I could see the spots where he’d spilled beer on his T-shirt. He asked again if I’d come to see him.
“Are you drunk?” I asked in reply.
I’d never seen him acting that way. He’d always been one of those guys who could drink and drink without ever getting drunk. Now, though, he was pretty far gone: swaying, with a dumb smile on his lips, on the verge of dropping his bottle.
“Are you not thirsty?” he asked, trying to take my beer. So this was what he was like when he was drunk: unable to shut up or stop moving. When he wrested the bottle from me, he laid it on a nearby table and asked, “What’s up? Are you OK? Is something wrong? You’re cold, right? Of course you are, why do you always go out without your jacket, Jen, you’re a disaster, but I’ll forgive you, because you’re my favorite disaster…”
He laughed, and in an instant, he was in short sleeves and I had his jacket draped around me. I couldn’t react before he’d grabbed my wrist and guided me to the couches, pulling me onto his lap, because there was nowhere else to sit. He was talking and laughing with the person next to him, and I was disoriented: the lights were flashing, the faces were unknown, the place was weird, and my head was starting to spin.
Jack pulled me in close, and I remembered how he used to do that before. But it had been tender then. Now it was rough and jerky. I didn’t like Jack when he was drunk. I felt…sorry for him. As if he were a baby I had to protect from himself. I could feel his forehead against my neck as he murmured, “I’m so, so glad you’re back.”
I wanted to be happy, I wanted to let myself go, but I couldn’t. “You didn’t seem very glad this morning.”
“Oh, Jen. Things have gotten complicated. But it doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”
“And you’re drunk on a Monday night.” I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easy. “Ross, don’t you have a job? A movie to work on or something?” I had remembered what he’d told me, and I’d respected it—I was supposed to call him Ross now.
“Fuck the movie.”
“But it’s your dream…”
“Can we not just have fun for one night? Shit, Jen, I’m just trying to have a good time with you. I missed you.”
I wanted to tell him I’d missed him too. But I wasn’t sure whether it was him or the alcohol speaking. And anyway, I couldn’t talk more because somebody grabbed me by the wrists and stood me up—a girl who wanted me to dance with her and her friends. I kept looking back at Jack, but the people on the dance floor all blocked my view. I didn’t want him to get up and disappear. But then he was back, dancing beside me. The bright, colored lights shot across his face. He laughed, took a drink, grabbed my hand and pulled me close. But I wasn’t dancing. I was desperate. I wanted to get the hell out of there. Will had to be waiting for us. How long had I been there?
Everything got confusing, and all of a sudden Jack was gone. I looked around for him, but there was no point. People were jostling me, and I didn’t know any of them, and I was starting to feel scared. I was overheating in his jacket but didn’t want to take it off. Eventually I found the girl who had dragged me onto the dance floor and asked her where Jack had gone. She shrugged and pointed toward some tables and said he’d gone to talk to a guy in a blue sweatshirt. Supposedly I couldn’t miss him. When I found the guy in question, Jack was sitting across from him.
I found something else, too: lines of white powder being cut with a credit card. Next to them was a rolled-up five-dollar bill. Jack grabbed it, cackled, and sucked one of the lines up his nose.
I don’t know what I felt then. I knew Jack had taken drugs before we met. I knew he’d done all kinds of questionable things in his past. But seeing it…seeing it happen again…made my whole world stop. He looked up and his eyes crossed mine. He stopped laughing and went pale. I guess I had done the same.
Jack was drinking. Jack was doing drugs. That’s why he had those bagsunder his eyes. That’s why he was acting so weird. Now I understood. He was the same ill-tempered Jack from before, the one they had told me about. Did his roommates know all this? Did they know that he’d relapsed? Did they know how long it had been? When had it started? If so, then why hadn’t anyone told me?
I needed to go, and I needed to get Jack out of there. He got up, people told him to stick around, they complained, but he wanted to follow me. When he reached me, he didn’t dare to touch me. His eyes were dilated, his breathing was labored, and I could tell he was afraid I’d turn and run off. When I didn’t, he tried to hold me, but then he thought better of it and let his arms drop to his sides. He was sniffling, anxious, frantic, desperate.
“Jen, it’s not…”
That was the moment when I dared to believe I still mattered to him. Maybe not as much as the year before, but still. And I used myself as an excuse.
“I don’t feel good,” I said. “I think I need some fresh air.”
