"It must have been love, but it's over now."

[gingerninja]

Who: Jake Gresham and Alice King
What: "It must have been good, but I lost is somehow."
Where: Jake & Joey's apartment
When: After THIS

Jake really didn't expect Alice to come. She had no obligation to him for anything after he caused the end of their engagement by cheating on her with Joey. He had never tried to justify his actions, he had wholeheartedly admitted he screwed up. There was no way to justify it, and he wasn't sure he could truly explain it to himself. Initially, he had just convinced himself that sleeping with Joey was placating the bi side him him; he was in love with Alice but he still liked sleeping with guys too. That was stupid, though, because he had been so content with Alice for a long time before he started having the affair. Then he wondered if he was in love with both of them, but he had talked himself out of the fact he could have feelings for Joey. Yet, he couldn't quit him. He wished he had seen so much sooner what his heart was trying to tell him, and avoid all the mess he had made.

When there was a knock at the door of the apartment he had Joey had only been in for less than a week, he had been sitting on the sofa with a shirtless Joey's head in his lap. He had caught some sort of bug and Jake had been taking care of him most of the day. He had been feverish and in and out of various states of dressed and undressed all day. Jake got up to answer the door just across the room. It wasn't a huge apartment, but it suited them. Way better than the first option Jake had found when he got to New York and hated it.

Opening the door, Jake baulked when he saw Alice there, surprised she took him up on his offer. "Oh - hi," he greeted her and then stepped aside. "Come in." Joey noticed who their guest was and gingerly peeled himself up off the sofa with a mumbled, 'I'll leave you two to it.' He picked up the trash can he had spent a good part of the day hugging and disappeared up the hall and into their bedroom.

That was where it got a little awkward, with Jake closing the door over behind Alice, clearing his throat softly. "I wasn't sure if you would want to come," he admitted softly. "Do you want tea, coffee?"

Comments

[whothefckisalice]

If she were honest with herself, Alice hadn't been sure she would come, either. There was still a lot of anger and hurt in her over what had happened with Jake and Joey and it's subsequent destruction of her relationship. But in the days after the anger had led to physical violence on her part, it had slowly begun to dissolve into hurt, pain, and heartache at the realization of just what she'd lost... far beyond the romantic love she'd shared with Jake and into the friendship that had led to their relationship in the first place. She had loved Jake as a dear friend long before they had ever taken their relationship to the next level... A fact that Parker had reminded her of at their first meeting. She'd mulled it over for a really long time, and Jake's text had come just in time for her to really admit to herself just how much she'd really miss him.

"Hi," she said softly, her tone and posture both giving away just how tired she was. She missed Australia, and she missed her family, and above all of that, she missed the blissful ignorance of not knowing that Jake had cheated on her. Joey had pretty quickly disappeared when he realized it was Alice at the door. She wanted to apologize to him, too... That much was sure. But she figured it would be good to take it one person at a time and start with the one she'd been intending to marry. "Hi," she finally replied, meeting Jake's gaze with a mix of hurt and shame. "I... I didn't know Joey wasn't well... I could've come at another time." She paused, looking briefly around the apartment. "No, I don't want anything, but thank you. Honestly, I didn't necessarily want to come... But I did need to."

[gingerninja]

"I kind of expected you to tell me you had gone back to Australia," Jake told her and then hurried over to the living area to give it a good spray of Lysol. Joey had been doing a few casual shifts in the ER at the hospital, filling in for Riley's absence, so he probably just picked up some random bug that was going around. He folded the blanket up that he had tucked Joey up into early, who had just ended up kicking it off into a messy pile had his feet when he felt hot. Now he hugged the neatly folded blanket over in front of him and looked over at Alice, apology written all over his face. "I wouldn't blame you if you just wanted to hate me forever. I really wouldn't."

He put the blanket on one of the armchairs and sat down on the sofa. "I-It's okay, he just picked something up at work..." The hesitation in his words were obvious, because it felt wrong talking about Joey to her. Joey had admitted to him that he felt like Voldemort and was struggling to connect with any of the Greshams because they had all liked Alice. He felt like an outsider, like he was interloping on their family and didn't belong there. Jake had tried to reassure him, but it hadn't really worked. Joey was still avoiding basically anything other than Jake with red hair. Then there was the homesickness for Australia. Joey was riddled with it, and who could blame him? "I don't really know how much more I can apologise for what I did. It shouldn't have happened. I just... he means a lot to me."

[whothefckisalice]

"Part of me really wanted to," Alice admitted softly. "I wanted to go back there and just forget it ever happened, but I couldn't really do that, could I? It's... It's just... The life I'd be going back to wouldn't be the same life, and I don't know that I'm ready to go back and face it just yet." She paused, looking at him quietly for a long few moments. God, he was gorgeous, no doubt about that. Not so very long ago, she would've been coming to her own home to talk to Jake, welcomed with huge hugs, lots of kissing, and most nights, a long and amazing lovemaking session. She missed that, as much as it pained her to admit. Jake had been her dearest friend, first, and after that, a boyfriend and lover that she had truly adored. She'd been so looking forward to being his wife, and she was absolutely heartbroken when that ended. Finding out he'd cheated had broken her heart a million times more, but this was the point where she had the option to either deal with that and move on in a good way, or to let her anger and heartache eat her alive and keep her from at least giving Jake a chance to say his piece.

"You... you love him, don't you?" she asked softly, looking at her ex with an indescribable expression. "The reason that you're with him now... The reason you cheated... The whole thing is because you love him. Isn't it?" She paused and looked at him, not giving him time to answer before she added, "It's okay to answer. I won't thump you again."

[gingerninja]

Jake nodded quietly. "Joey's been homesick too. You leave a place as awesome as Australia for the first time, it's got to be a hard hit. Some days, I don't even feel worthy of him staying. I get it, though. I don't know why either of you would want to stick around here..." He wasn't even sure he liked New York himself. It wasn't home, but he was working on it. Life was different now. Very, very different. He wanted to tell her that he understood that part too, but he didn't feel entitled to that. His fingers were toying with one of his socks where he had crossed his leg over his knee. He wished he had words he could say to her to make it all better, but that just wasn't fair. There was no easy out. What happened happened, and Alice had to live with that.

He met her gaze guiltily but had to nod. "Yeah, I... I don't know. I think I fell in love with him months ago without realising it. Me being a complete asshole and self-centred dickhead aside, Joey is an amazing person. He's a hardworker, and I know you're friends with his wife, but she treated him terribly. He tried to make it work, but he's never been happy. He had to lie about who he was, and he didn't have to do that with me. It just turned into something else before we realised, then when it had, we couldn't switch it off."

[whothefckisalice]

"Australia's... It's home, and beyond that, no matter what you Americans say about having the greatest country in the world, it's not bloody true. The people are rude, and the food's awful, and I don't see why anyone in the world would want to live here." She stopped short, giving him a sheepish glance of apology. "I'm sorry. I know it's... I know it's your home country and all that, but I hate it. I just miss Australia... I miss..." She fell silent, turning her head away because she was going to start crying, and she didn't want to cry in front of Jake right now. "I'm still here because I felt like I... I didn't want to leave without some kind of closure on the situation.

"I thought so," she admitted softly. "I... I guess at least it's... It's not like..." She wasn't even sure what she was trying to say here, and she finally just threw her hands up, trying to get her mind to work. "Did you love me?" she finally asked. It wasn't asked with an air of challenge or accusation. She just needed to know this -- she needed to know that it hadn't all been a lie and that she wasn't stupid for loving him as much as she did. "He... He loves you, too, or he wouldn't be here." She was as much piecing things together in her own mind as she was saying them to him. She needed to work through all of this, and doing so with Jake just seemed to make sense.

[gingerninja]

"I never once said we had the greatest country in the world. I'd still be in Australia right now if it wasn't for... for..." Jake trailed off and looked down at his lap. Shit, he didn't even know how to put it in words anymore. 'The affair' cheapened what he and Joey ended up having together, and trying to inject more intimacy into it cheapened what he'd had with Alice for a long time before he started seeing Joey. "New York's not my home, Jacksonville is, and it's very different to New York. But all my siblings are here now. Even Sonny. Rosie's a mommy, and Jules is nursing her husband through cancer and taking care of his son who has health issues too, so this is where I need to be."

He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. "Yes," he replied with no hesitation. "I didn't do any of this because I thought what we had went bad. I didn't do it because I was too chicken shit to tell you I wasn't in love with you anymore. I was. We were happy. We had fun. You know what I truly believed Joey started out as? Just fulfilling some sort of bisexual need to sleep with a guy. I thought I was helping him out because he was so closeted and trapped that he didn't think he had any avenue to explore being gay. He was married, he was in the military, and despite what we did, he had a lot of values at heart. He wasn't just going to go trawling Oxford Street for a twink to get his rocks off with. He chose, instead, to bury that prominent part of him away to try to keep making his marriage work somehow when he didn't love her because he's gay. He's not bi, Alice, he's gay. A gay person trying to pretend to be straight for anyone but themselves, it's painfully hard. I felt for him. I wanted to help him. I know it sounds stupid to think, oh jumping into bed with him, what a hard way to help him... not. That night of our Christmas party when Carissa got blind drunk and embarrassed him, I could see him visibly cringing at it. I took him up to the roof for some fresh air and gave him another beer. When he started opening up to me, I realised how much in pain he was, how much he had belittled who he was for the sake of other people. We didn't just jump into bed together. We talked for hours up there, and he told me everything from his childhood to how hard he worked in the military, watching people die because they were too injured for him to save, how Carissa was spending all his hard-earned money leaving him to have to work harder to foot the bills of her spending. How he had known for years he was gay but he tried to tell himself it was just a phase. I couldn't just walk away with a 'Well, nice chatting with you, mate, catch you later and don't forget to enjoy the party pies before you leave'."

[whothefckisalice]

"I didn't mean you," Alice explained a little more. "I know you don't think America's the perfect flawless country most Americans seem to think it is. But you're not like most Americans I've met, either. You meet lots of tourists doing what I do for a living. Most of them are... well, nothing like you. My mum always said you were an Aussie deep down, just born far from where you were supposed to be." She smiled faintly... A small, sad smile for the things that she'd lost. "New York's... I don't see why there are so many songs about this place... But I do understand your wanting to be near your family when they're going through things, and growing and changing."

She paused, her eyes looking over her ex-fiance's face as he tried to explain everything that had happened, and it was heartbreaking... crushing to hear for her, but at the same time she needed to know. She needed to understand what had happened that took her engagement to the man she loved away from her. "I loved you, too," she murmured. "In fact, I still do. I think... I think that's the hardest part for me to face, because I wish I could just not love you. I'm... I'm sorry. I know this isn't helping things. I didn't come here to make you feel guilty or to treat you badly because of this. I just wanted to know why it all happened." She didn't speak again for a long few moments, letting everything that Jake had said sink in. "I knew that being married to Carissa couldn't be easy. She was a friend, but it was clear how much she spent her time living on Joey's hard work. Anyone could see that. I even spoke to her about it once, believe it or not. It wasn't my place, but I asked her about it, and she said Joey didn't mind because he loved her and that was how he showed it. She was out of touch with him, and that was easier for her... take from him but don't think about him in the process. I know it wasn't fair, Jake. None of this is fair. I get that Carissa wasn't a good wife to Joey, and I understand why he'd want to cheat, especially if he was gay all along and not even remotely attracted to her. I... I understand a lot of this. And I know that you love him and you... You used to love me, too. It's just... I don't want you to think I'm trying to make this harder or trying not to understand and to play the victim and all that, but I just... I'm having a really hard time understanding some of this, Jake. And maybe part of it is because I do still love you. It was easier when I could just hate Joey for taking you from me, but I know none of this is that simple. I'm not... I don't know what to say."

[gingerninja]

Jake sighed, his head dropping and his shoulders slumping. He threaded his fingers in through his ginger hair and was quiet for a brief while before he finally answered. "And that's why I didn't know how to tell you. That's why it was hard for me to tell you, because I knew it would be even harder for you to hear it. I'm not making excuses, but you wanted to know," he mumbled.

He honestly didn't know how else he was supposed to continue here. Short of trying to convince her Joey was a good guy and it was Jake's fault that it all got so messy, but that probably wouldn't help matters anyway. "I'm sure being married to Carissa was a whole lot more that 'not easy', like the fact she's trying to take him for everything now they're getting a divorce for one. But don't worry, I won't go on about him. I just certainly won't defend that cunt either." It was unlike him to use language like that, but there was no other appropriate term for Joey's wife. The things he had told Jake about her were in strict confidence, so he couldn't just blurt it all out here to plead his own case. She was also very much not a bearing on why Joey 'wanted' to cheat, and more the fact Joey had buried his urges down for so long that it was hard for him to resist the temptation to finally act on them. "I don't know what more I can say to help you understand this," he finally added quietly, looking down at his feet. "I can't take it away. I can't make it better for you. I can't tell you that what I had with Joey means nothing. So, I don't know. I don't know where we're supposed to go from here."