actually shut up. davey being an author and jack is his ex and they both know it was a right person wrong time kind of thing. they both knew they were losing each other too soon but how could they fix it? david needed his career to take off and jack needed life to slow down. david spent a lifetime stalling and jack spent a lifetime running and now david wants to go go go i need to go i need to do this i need to work need to be better need to be the best need to do this, jack, i need to do this, please support this, please. and all jack wants to do is slow down and stop and breathe and davey i cant, i need you here, you need to be here, please stay here stay with me i know you need to run with this but i need you to lay here for just another minute, please.
and they both pause. both understand. both know they need something different in life right now. david needs to experience a fast-paced world of publishing and writing a mile a minute with his ever-running mind, and jack needs to experience a slow-paced world of galleries and painting a stroke a day with hands that need a rest from always itching for more. and so they stop, they separate. they kiss one last time and wipe each other’s tears and suddenly their shared apartment is empty, so empty, leaving jack in the dust and davey in a rundown townhouse in brooklyn.
and here they are, ten years later: davey has that bestselling book series he spent so long on and jack has quite the following with his art and they’re both still hurting, still healing. as we know, creatives have their content ripped out of their chests whether they like it or not, sentences and brushstrokes, painstaking edits until the piece is exactly how they’ve imagined, how they were forced by their own minds to create it.
and give me jack, a tortured artist stereotype (he hates it he hates it why does he hate it), who wanders into a bookstore; he has some extra cash and he wants one of those nicer leatherbound sketchbooks that he knows they sell. he walks in and sees a face, davey’s face, his davey’s face, on a display of books, all brandishing the name David Jacobs at the bottom. so, he’s made it. good for him.
and give me jack, delicately picking up a book as though he may tarnish it, just as he feels he tarnished their relationship. and give me jack, opening up to the first page, and reading:
To J, for haunting my memories enough to keep me awake. Your apparition is the only reason this book is finished— what else was going to make me write until sunrise?
jack closes it. places it back down, picks up the sequel sitting right next to it.
To J, for being there when this started. Maybe you’ll see this when it’s finished. I don’t know. I still have a third book to write.
and maybe that spurs jack on. maybe he’s not J, but he rather wishes he was- he wishes david still thought of him, just like how jack has still been using david’s essence as painting inspiration all these years ago, just how he’s never been able to take another relationship seriously, just how he’s certain that he gave everything he had to david and has nothing left for anyone else.
he takes the plunge. he sends a letter. david’s third book is published later that year.
To J, for coming home. Writing this book with your head on my chest is the forever I’ve been dreaming of.