"I need space." Those were the words Jacky said to Ryan the night before they both left for separate colleges. Now, each of them will try to learn who they are without the other. Will their paths lead them back together?
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A week later, Jacky shrugged on his leather jacket and turned to look at himself in the mirror. His face was washed out and his hair was greasy. The jacket was the nicest thing he owned and he looked like a scarecrow in it. Everything he owned hung off him. Already this "date" was doomed to fail.
He couldn't quite pinpoint when this change had happened. That night of the fire drill, he'd felt a little thrill at Fox's interest. He'd had a handful of conversations with Fox during that awful survey class and in the laundry room, so he was confident a date with Fox wouldn't end up like his date with Cameron. But then Fox hadn't texted him or called, and somewhere midweek, as Jacky was getting ready to head to Art History, the anxiety had reached in and brought him to his knees. He had crawled into bed and skipped class for the first time all semester.
As he laid there, he thought about how he'd probably flunked his Statistics test earlier that day, and how he was already behind on the syllabus timeline for his final project in Foundations of Journalism. Looking around his dorm room, all he saw were signs of failure: his laundry basket overflowing, his unmade bed, his unopened textbooks. He was never going to graduate college.
And he'd thrown away the best thing in his life. He would never feel this way if he and Ryan were still together. He could call Ryan and talk to him about how he was feeling, and Ryan would make him feel better somehow. Who did he even have to talk to now? His mom? Braedyn?
He'd wallowed all night, telling Braedyn he didn't feel good when Braedyn knocked around dinner time. And Braedyn brought him a container of food, slipping in through the unlocked door and leaving it on Jacky's desk while Jacky pretended to be asleep like an absolute loser who couldn't even appreciate the one friend he had made on his own. But was Braedyn even his friend, or just a victim of circumstance? Would Braedyn have befriended anyone who lived across the hall?
Later that night, Fox had texted. Hey, you weren't in class – you ok?
Yeah, I'm fine, Jacky had texted back. Just have a big paper due tomorrow and needed to pound it out.
Then Fox had asked Jacky out for coffee Friday night and mentioned something about an open mic night. For a moment Jacky found the enthusiasm to text back, Sure!! What time?
And now he was wallowing in self-doubt again.
He should be studying, not going on a date that probably wasn't even a date. He yanked his chair out away from the desk and slumped down in it, feeling the chair leg wobble. One of these days it was going to break and dump him on the floor. He would probably deserve it.
He pulled out his phone and opened his text thread with Cody. They hadn't been texting much, just memes and funny videos from TikTok, and it made Jacky yearn for the long philosophical discussions they sometimes had when they were smoking out in Cody's camper, when they weren't playing video games. He hadn't really talked to Cody about breaking up with Ryan, because he had done it so close to leaving for college. He hadn't seen Cody in person since then.
Suddenly he wanted things to be like they were back in high school. Having a best friend who knew everything about him and a boyfriend who was probably the best person in the world, instead of a roommate who was never around and a friend who might be straight or who might be into him. Despite being surrounded by hundreds of people his own age all day every day, he had never felt more alone.
Hey man, I'm coming home next weekend – want to hang out?
He sent the text to Cody and stared at the screen until it dimmed and went black, waiting for the three little dots of an incoming response to appear. But they didn't.
As much as he was usually annoyed by Billy's banter, he suddenly missed having someone from home around. Flopping on his bed, he found himself scrolling. First through Facebook, which quickly got old, then TikTok, which quickly got annoying. Then Instagram. After he passed by post after post without liking anything, he realized what he was looking for: some sign of his old friends. He wanted to know what they were up to, if they were all happier now without him.
Then a familiar face punched him in the gut: Ryan, smiling beside a dark-haired guy. They were clearly at an aquarium, and clearly on a date.
He knew he should turn off his phone, block Ryan, at the very least scroll past and attempt to ignore it. Instead he looked hard at this guy, who was super androgynous looking, but also looked vaguely like Jacky. When he went to the profile page for poetbythesea aka "Charlie" and immediately saw their pronouns as "they/them." Now Jacky opened the pic up again and took a closer look. The more he looked at both Charlie's and Ryan's faces, the sadder each of them seemed. Maybe this Charlie was just a friend.
Finally Jacky shut off his phone and just sat there in the silence, surrounded by the muffled sounds of students in other rooms, laughing with their friends and listening to music and watching TV. Ryan had moved on. Jacky's throat felt too tight to swallow.
It took everything he had to get up from his bed and head out to meet Fox. He couldn't meet his own eyes in the mirror as he passed by.
