Finding My Way Back To You - Part Two
Jared wakes up when Chad shoves him off the couch into a sprawled heap on the floor. Jared grunts as he lands and Chad stumbles over him, muttering, “Gotta piss, gotta piss, gotta piss.”
One of the dogs wanders over and starts licking at Jared’s face. He lets it go on for a few seconds before he pushes Sadie away and uses the couch to hoist himself up onto his feet. He can smell coffee and bacon coming from the kitchen and starts that way with his stomach rumbling.
Jensen’s at the table, one arm laid out across the wood with his head dropped down onto his forearm and the fingers of his other hand curled around a steaming coffee cup. He’s got bags under his eyes and he’s pale beneath his freckles, hair sticking up in every direction, and Jared’s sure he has to feel like shit, but he still looks fucking beautiful to Jared.
Maybe he really is in love. Or was in love. Can you love someone you don’t remember?
“Good morning, JT. You go ahead and sit down, now, and I’ll have your breakfast done in a minute.”
Jared jumps. He’d been too caught up in staring at Jensen to even realize that his mama is standing at the stove frying bacon. Jared automatically obeys her command, moving quickly to the table and sitting down opposite Jensen, who can’t meet his eyes. It hurts more than it should, Jared thinks.
“Mama, when’d you get here?”
“This morning. Jensen didn’t want to disturb you, so he drove out and picked me up.” Sherrie smiles fondly at Jensen. Jared knows that look. It’s the look she only bestows upon her children, her I’m-such-a-proud-mama-look.
“It was nothing, Sherrie.”
Sherrie flips off the stove and pulls a plate from the cabinet to her left. Jared wouldn’t have been able to find her a plate and he hates that he should be able to. He hates that his brain has decided to break on him, hates that he’s broken and ruining everything and making everyone around him sad. Making Jensen sad, because Jensen still hasn’t looked at him but his eyes are full of pain, and it makes Jared hurt to see it, to have been the one to cause it.
“Jared, I -”
“Jen, stop. I love you, okay? I’m not going to hurt you, not ever. And you’re dumber than you look if you think you’re ever gonna get rid of me now. You’re stuck with me for life, baby.”
Jensen laughs, but it sounds like a sob and Jared tugs him into his arms. He presses soft, fluttering kisses along Jensen’s cheekbone and then to that spot right behind his ear that makes him melt.
“Love you so much, Jensen. Don’t you know that, yet?”
“I love you, too, Jay.”
“-red? JARED!”
Jared jerks and falls off his chair. His mama is looking at him with worried eyes and a slightly amused smile. He blinks and eases himself back into the chair, “Sorry, I…. I spaced.”
“Are you alright, JT?”
Jared snorts because, no. No, he is so far from alright. Across the table, Jensen is having a similar reaction.
Sherrie’s lips twist, “Yes, I suppose that was a stupid question. Eat your breakfast, Jared.”
“Mrs. P!” Chad yells as he comes into the kitchen. He throws his arms around Sherrie and lifts her up off the floor. Sherrie laughs and smacks him upside the head.
“Chad Michael Murray, you put me down!”
Chad grins bright and smacks a wet kiss to her cheek before he sets her back on her feet, “When are you gonna let me take you to Vegas? You promised me I could marry you one day.”
“Just as soon as you make me an offer better than Vegas and an Elvis impersonator.”
“Who needs a fancy wedding when you’ve got love like ours?” Chad wiggles his eyebrows and Sherrie swats him on the ass with her spatula.
“Dirty boy. You still like your eggs sunny-side-up?”
“Hell, woman, I like my eggs anyway you fix ‘em for me.”
When Jensen laughs quietly and shakes his head, Jared’s once again thankful there’s no better distraction than Chad Murray.
“So, I think I should move into the spare room,” Jared decides during lunch. Jensen chokes on a mouthful of water and Sherrie slaps him on the back while she nods encouragingly at Jared.
“That would probably be the smartest thing.” She tells him, smiling encouraging.
Jensen waves Sherrie off and looks at Jared incredulously. “Wait, you’re staying? I-I thought you’d want to, to go back with your mom or with Chad.”
Jared stills, suddenly afraid. He’d never considered that Jensen wouldn’t want to deal with him, see him every day and not have his Jared looking back. Jared bites his lip and ducks his head.
“Nonsense,” Sherrie waves her hand, “You know I turned JT’s old room into my home office.”
“Hey!” Jared’s head jerks up, “You turned my room into a home office?”
“It was your idea, sweetie, so don’t get snippy.” Sherrie says mildly.
Jared doesn’t know if that’s true, but he’s not going to call his mama a liar. Jared lost his memory, not every bit of common sense he has. He falls silent.
“Anyway, Jared’s life is here. He has a good job here and I’m rather fond of that nice boyfriend of his.”
“Mama!” Jared complains as Jensen turns beat red.
Chad rolls his eyes, mouth full of Cheetos. “Oo ‘uys are fooking wetards.”
“Chad Murray, your mother raised you better than that. Don’t speak with your mouth full.”
“’Orry, Mush Pa’alecki,” Chad says, spraying spit and tiny chewed chunks of Cheetos.
Sherrie huffs and smacks him upside the head. “Jared isn’t going anywhere, Jensen. Don’t fret so much, sweetie.”
Jensen still looks unsure, and Jared suddenly realizes that Jensen wants him to stay, he’s just afraid he won’t. Jared beams and drapes his arm around Jensen’s shoulders, ignoring the way they go tense. “Yah, Jen. You’re stuck with me.”
Jensen stares at him with shock, mouth dropped open.
Sherrie only stays a few days, and then she goes home, dragging Chad away with her. Jared settles easily into the spare room, just as soon as his mother vacates it.
Monday morning, Jensen takes Jared back to the hospital for his follow-up. Jared had lost his memory on a Saturday morning, Chad had taken him home on a Tuesday afternoon, and he’s had a little over a week to start getting used to his new life.
Jared asks Jensen to stay with him to meet with Dr. Morgan and the psychiatrist Dr. Morgan had recommended. Jensen stands up to shake both of their hands when they come into the room, but Jared is too afraid that they’ll tell him he has brain cancer or something to actually do much of anything except stare at the floor.
“Jared, this is Dr. Gerard Butler, our leading psychiatrist,” Dr. Morgan introduces.
“And a good friend,” Jensen adds. He nudges Jared slightly. “You two really get along, actually. You like his dog.”
“You’ve got a dog?” Jared can’t help the eager excitement that sneaks into his voice. He really does love dogs.
“Aye,” Dr. Butler nods, voice thickly accented. Jared thinks it’s Scottish or maybe Irish. He’s always gotten the two mixed up. “A lil’ pug. The sweetest thing yah ever did see.”
Jared smiles faintly, “I don’t know about that. Sadie’s a doll.”
“Jared, before Gerry begins, I have a few questions.” Dr. Morgan states. Jared nods and he continues, “Have you been experiencing any headaches?”
“No.”
“Dizziness, blurred vision, spots before the eyes?”
“No.”
“Fainting spells, blackouts, or lapses in short-term memory?”
“No, I don’t,” Jared pauses and licks his lips, “Don’t think so.”
“No,” Jensen shakes his head. “I’ve been watching him carefully.”
“That’s good. Any loss of appetite or feelings of nausea?”
“Nope, I eat just the same as I always have. Maybe even more.”
“I want to take another MRI, just to be sure, but the last scans turned back clear, a little swelling of the brain, which is probably the result to your memory loss, and it sounds like you don’t have anything further to worry about.”
“That was the good news,” Dr. Butler grins, voice losing a little bit of the accent as he slipped into a more professional tone. Jared think he might be one of the most charming men he’s ever met, but then he mostly knows guys like Chad. “And I am here to give you the even better news. I can help you get your life back.”
Jensen grabs Jared’s hand without thinking. He immediate releases it, looking mortified. As quick as it was, the physical touch reassures Jared, and he thinks Jensen needs it. Jared smiles at him encouragingly and reclaims his hand.
“Really?”
Dr. Butler’s smile goes soft and genuine and Jared lets himself hope. “Aye. I think we can help yah.”
Jared starts going to therapy three times a week. On Mondays and Fridays he has private sessions with Dr. Butler -or, Gerry, as he keeps insisting on being called -and on Wednesdays he sits in on a support ground for people suffering from brain injuries. He hasn’t gotten up the nerve yet to speak, but he doesn’t feel so alone anymore.
Jensen goes to therapy, too, every Tuesday. Gerry gave him several emails of people he thought could help. Jensen doesn’t talk about them a lot, but Jared knows there’s a mom in Florida whose daughter was in an accident that put her in a coma and when she woke up, she remembered nothing. There’s a husband in New York, a brother in Jersey, and a best friend in Louisiana. All people who know someone suffering from amnesia, all people that were forgotten.
Jared hopes they can help.
Jared also goes back to work. It comes as a shock to learn that he has a lovely assistant named Sandy that keeps track of all his shit. She shows him around, introduces him to his cameras. Jared’s always had this thing where he names his camera. His first one was an old Polaroid thing that he called Pretty Polly. The cameras Sandy shows him are technological miracles and Jared spends a long time drooling over each and every one of them.
Every day, Jared remembers something.
It’s usually something insignificant. One day he wakes up to a song playing on the radio and he can remember Jensen teaching him how to dance, not complaining once as Jared stepped all over his feet and crushed his toes. The next day, he answers the phone without thinking and its Megan talking in his ear a mile a minute, but he misses half of what she says because all he can think about is the guy who broke her heart three years ago when he slept with her roommate because she wouldn’t put out.
Jared wakes up, a solid month after his memory up and disappeared on him, to Harley drooling on him. He laughs quietly, uses one hand to shove Harley’s huge head away and the other to wipe the drool off his chest.
“Keep your eyes closed.”
Jared grins, Jensen’s hands clasped over his eyes, and stumbles. Jensen is several inches shorter than him and he has to crouch to give Jensen access to his eyes. It makes walking difficult, especially since his legs keep getting tangled up with Jensen’s own bowing ones.
Its Christmas -or, Christmas Eve, rather -and Jared loves this time of year. He loves the cold air and he loves the snow. He loves that Mack and Megan put together intricate gingerbread houses and that Chad hits on them both but is completely denied every time. He loves that his mama argues with Jensen’s about the best way to baste a turkey and both their daddies sit slumped before the TV watching the game, the first button on their jeans undone to make room for one hell of a good meal.
Mostly, he loves that he’s spending this Christmas with Jensen. Jensen, who he loves with all his heart. Jensen, who is his heart.
Christmas in their new home, with both their families in one place, their friends joining them around a table that’s too small to fit so many people, but then Jared isn’t sure a big enough table actually exists.
Jared’s never been this happy.
Jensen has a surprise for him. It makes Jared excited and happy and eager, like most things Jensen does. He’d bounced impatiently in the car and he’d be bouncing now, if only he could.
“Such a shrimp,” Jared teases and Jensen bites sharply at his earlobe. There’s a sliding sound of wood on wood and Jared is lead somewhere warmer, somewhere that smells of hay and dirt and animals.
“Okay,” Jensen breathes, sounding excited himself, “Okay, open your eyes.”
Jared opens them, immediately gasps and falls to his knees before the basket of dogs. “Puppies!”
“Wait, here,” Jensen reaches in and carefully lifts one out. He sets the wiggling, squirming little thing in Jared’s lap and Jared watches in awe as the puppy sniffs at one of his big hands and then bites at his finger, growling playfully and tugging with sharp little teeth.
“Oh, wow.”
“He’s yours. Or, ours. We have Sadie and I love her, but you already had her when we met and. And, this one is ours.”
Jared isn’t too proud to cry. He’s sure enough in his manhood that he can wear pink and tiaras and glitter, he can sure as fuck cry.
“God, Jensen. He’s perfect. What’s his name?”
“Whatever you want it to be.” Jensen answers promptly. He looks slightly sheepish and relieved, like he was afraid of what Jared was going to say and is now embarrassed by it.
“I like Harley.” Jared says with a wicked grin. Jensen blushes, like Jared hoped he would. Jared is an evil genius.
“I’m never going to live that down.”
“You posed for me. Naked. On a motorcycle. No, you’re never living that down.” Jared pets his new puppy for a minute and then looks up at his boyfriend, suddenly serious. “I love you, Jen.”
“Love you, too, Jay.”
“Fuck,” Jared says aloud when he comes out of the memory. He thinks he should ask Sandy if she knows where his old prints are. He’d really like to see the pictures of Jensen on that motorcycle.
Jensen, Jared decides, is fucking adorable in the morning.
Jared’s always been a morning person, even in college. He likes to get up early and get shit done so that he can relax the rest of the day.
Jensen isn’t like that. The first few mornings, Jared watched him get up, struggle into the kitchen, and curse his way through his first cup of coffee. Jensen would take the dogs out on a run, get a cup of coffee from the Starbucks down the street, finish it on his way back home, take a shower, drink another cup of coffee while he had breakfast with Jared, and fill a thermos full to take to work with him. Despite the near-overdose of caffeine each morning, he still left for work looking as sleepy and exhausted as when he got up.
Finally, Jensen admitted that taking the dogs for a run had been Jared’s thing, he just didn’t want them to lose the exercise. Jared figures it explains why he has so much pent up energy. He went from daily runs and (he’s assuming) daily bouts of sex, to nothing.
So, now, Jared takes the dogs for a run, starts the coffee pot when he gets home, showers, and starts breakfast. Jensen usually stumbles in - hair mused, eyes at half-mast, face creased from his pillow, circles still under his eyes - about the time he’s finishing. He’ll grunt at Jared, which Jared finds stupidly cute, guzzle his first cup of coffee, and pull himself halfway to alive as he drinks another cup and eats.
Jared doesn’t ask about the dark circles. He’s pretty sure those are his fault. Just like it’s his fault that Jensen doesn’t sleep. Jared can hear him wandering the house, talking to the dogs and watching TV or talking on the phone to someone (Chris, Steve, Mike, or Misha. Jared hasn’t met any of them yet - he isn’t sure if they’re choosing to stay away or if Jensen made that choice for them - but Jensen talks to them all at one point or another during the day).
When he does manage to sleep, Jared knows it isn’t well. It’s almost worse when Jensen does fall asleep, because then Jared listens instead to him tossing and turning in bed, listens to his mutters and whines. Jared has to hold himself back from going to him when Jensen calls out for him, because Jared knows.
Jensen doesn’t want him. Jensen wants his Jared back. Jensen wants a man that Jared can’t remember, can’t turn himself into, no matter how badly he wants to.
Jensen’s been quiet for a few days. Jensen is always quiet, but then the only person Jared can remember living with - besides his parents and siblings - is Chad, who could make anyone appear quiet.
Jensen’s been even more quiet lately, though.
“Is something wrong?”
Jensen jumps, shifts, and looks guilty. “No? No, why would anything be wrong?”
Jared frowns, “You seem weird, is all.”
“You can’t remember, maybe this is how I normally am and I’d just been weird around you before.”
The reminder stings, even though Jared’s pretty sure Jensen was trying to tease him. Jensen curses quietly and gently touches Jared’s elbow.
“Jay, no. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just… Um, our anniversary is coming up. Six years.”
Jared’s stomach twists. “When?”
“This weekend. We’ve had a trip planned for months, to go back down to LA for the weekend.”
“LA?”
“Yah. Yah, and maybe we can’t do, do all the things we were planning, but. But, you could see Chad.”
Jared nods absently, “Yah, I’d like that. H-how did we meet?”
Jensen jerks his head sharply, “No, no. Gerry says I shouldn’t tell you, that you have to remember on your own or you’ll mind will fabricate fake memories.”
Jared turns his eyes to the floor. “Right.”
He can’t help but think that fabricated memories are better than no memories at all.
As it turns out, Chad still lives in the same apartment Jared remembers sharing with him. Seventh floor, third apartment on the left. The elevator either was never fixed or is on the fritz again, the graffiti in the stair well is pretty much the same.
Jared grins as soon as he sees the door.
“Jay bird!” Chad yells when he opens the door, “Get your giant fucking ass in here. You, too, Jenny.”
Jared’s grin widens, while Jensen rolls his eyes in annoyance, “Shut the fuck up, Murray. And I told you to stop calling me that.”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist and bitch at Chris,” Chad says with a shrug. “He’s the one that started it.”
Though there’s an absence of Jared’s things, not a lot has changed inside. The couch has gotten lumpier, there’s a 360 where Chad’s old Xbox used to sit, and the TV is at least three times bigger than the one Jared remembers, but the prints of Chad and Jared as kids still hang on the walls and Chad’s Playboys are tossed on the coffee table next to the lotion and a box of Kleenex.
Good old Chad.
There’s a baby-faced brunette sitting on the couch with a remote guitar in his lap. Chad introduced Jared to Guitar Hero that first week, but Jared pretty much sucks at it (not like Jensen who kicks his ass on expert while Jared still fumbles around on medium). The unknown guy on the couch is rocking it.
“Hey, Jen, Jared.” The guy calls, not even blinking.
Jensen plops down on the couch next to the guy. He drapes an arm over his shoulders, pulls him close and kisses the top of his head. “Hey, James.”
Jared’s stomach twists at the blatant show of affection, but he forces his eyes away. He tugs Chad into a hug instead, standing with his arms wrapped around him and his eyes closed even when Chad starts to wiggle and try and squirm away.
“Hey! You fucking octopus, let me the fuck go. Jenny! Get your wife off me.”
Jensen goes still on the couch, blushing to the very tips of his ears. Jared releases Chad as if he’s been burnt, takes a step away and hunches his shoulders in on himself. Chad scoffs.
“Don’t tell me you’re still tryin’ to be a martyr, Jenny boy. You’ve been together for, what? Six years now.”
“Exactly,” the guy next to Jensen -James -speaks up. “Six years tomorrow.”
“Six fucking years! And you’re gonna let this tear you apart? After everything?”
“Fuck you, Chad!” Jensen yells, curling up defensively. Practically into James’ lap, Jared notices.
“Jen, baby,” James murmurs, pausing his game so that he can twist and wiggle his way closer to Jensen. He glares over at Chad, “Don’t be such a douche, Murray. Jared remembers you.”
Jared bristles. He’s angry as fuck. Jared doesn’t get angry often, he’s a pretty laid back guy, but who the hell does this guy think he is? What gives him the right to treat Chad like that, to call him a douche? Yah, Chad’s an asshole, but only Jared gets to call him on it. And why does he have his hands all over Jensen?
“Who the fuck are you?” Jared knows he’s yelling, knows that the neighbors are probably as pissy and bitchy as they were when Jared was twenty and tried to remind Chad that having another party would get them evicted, so yelling is probably a bad idea, but he’s so fucking furious at this guy.
James is unimpressed. “James Roday. I moved in with Chad when you moved in with Jen.”
“James and I are really good friends,” Jensen adds. Like Jared hadn’t figured that one out on his own.
“I can tell,” Jared snaps testily. He doesn’t know why, he isn’t angry at Jensen.
Or maybe he is. Jensen’s supposed to love him, right? That’s what everyone keeps telling him, anyway. So why the fuck is he curled up in James’ lap like a fucking cat, accepting his touch with ease when any time Jared touches him, he flinches like he can’t stand it?
Jensen looks confused and he stares at Jared for a moment, “What the hell, Jared?”
Jared turns and flees because he doesn’t know.
Jared knows this part of LA like the back of his hand. He slips between the jagged, broken links of a fence, runs through a park, sees a homeless man sleeping on a bench with the Sunday funnies for a blanket. His feet echo across the blacktop of the basketball court he can remember schooling Chad’s ass on at one-on-one.
It feels like it was yesterday. Jared remembers it being only a few months ago.
Jared’s mind is fucked, though, and that was a lifetime ago.
He ends up beneath an overpass. Chad and he found the cranny a few weeks after they moved into the apartment. It lacked the usual deadbeat drug addicts one expected to find under an overpass in LA. There was a small art school a few blocks away, and one of the students had turned the whole underpass into his own private art studio. Jared had taken a lot of pictures down here.
It doesn’t take Chad long to find him. Jared’s throwing rocks at other rocks when he finally does, but Chad doesn’t call him on how pathetic he’s being, which is weird for Chad. Instead, he looks at Jared with too-serious eyes and smacks him on the knee.
“Come on.”
Jared follows Chad silently. They walk for a few city blocks, neither saying a word. Jared’s known Chad since they were just kids. Most people assume that Chad’s just this dickhead, but Jared’s always known that he could count on him, on his best friend, to always be there, to always take care of him.
Jared used to watch this show, Queer as Folk. He watched it out of boredom more than anything else, and to annoy the hell out of Chad, but he watched it. Chad’s kind of like Brian Kinney, if Brian Kinney was less successful, less hot, a whole lot straighter, and more of a dickhead. But, like Brian was always there for Michael, Chad’s always there for Jared. Chad’s always loved him, always looked out for him.
Jared knows him well enough to know that wherever Chad is taking him, it’s something Jared needs to see.
Chad shoves him into a little restaurant. Jared barely has time to read the sign on the door -Luigi’s -before he’s pushed inside and immediately swarmed.
“Pasticcino!” a tiny woman with salt-and-pepper hair twisted up into a bun exclaims as she catches Jared by one hand. Her other hand reaches up and she swiftly drags Jared’s head down to her level, making him bend nearly in half, placing a quick kiss to each cheek, “Pasticcino! It is so good to see you again! Avanti, avanti. So skinny, you must eat.”
The woman pushes Jared, who goes willingly in dumbstruck awe, into a booth. She turns her dark eyes to Chad, raking them up and down his body before she tsks and points to the opposite side bench.
“You, as well, bambino. You are skin and bone! Lorenzo! Tesoro, bring food.”
Chad grins broadly and kicks Jared under the table. “This is Luigi’s. We worked here for years, dude. You were all home sick and wantin’ your mama and I dragged you in here because food usually makes you feel better, or at least makes your whining more tolerable.”
“So sad, pasticcino, when I met you. Sad and skinny.” The woman smiles at Jared fondly and reaches out to pat his hair. “I knew. I saw you and I knew. Sad at heart.”
A teenage boy, about fifteen, sets a drink down before Jared and another before Chad. He grins at Jared and winks, “Nonna thinks she is the mother to the world.”
“Shush, Tesoro, and have David cook something hearty. And then you eat. You young people! Skinny, everyone so skinny.”
The woman walks off, shaking her head. She heads, presumably, towards the kitchen while the boy’s grin broadens. “David brought a few friends over from college for break and Nonna thinks the whole world is thin, now. Apparently she hasn’t heard that obesity is on the rise.” He holds out a hand to Jared, “By the way, I’m Lorenzo. Chad said you lost your memory?”
Jared nods. It’s obvious that he should know these people, even if he doesn’t. “Yah. I don’t have much after my twenty-first birthday.”
Lorenzo frowns. “That sucks. Look around; maybe it’ll jog something. I’ve got to get to table three, though, before they get up and leave.”
“You were a waiter and I washed dishes. Sometimes I cooked,” Chad explained, “But, I’m not real good with people, you know? Lorenzo was just a kid back then, this chubby little squirt that followed you around like you had fucking hung the moon. He’s really stepped up, though, since Luigi died. With David off at school, he’s the man of the family or some shit.”
“What was it she was calling me? Past-Ick-Cino?”
“Pasticcino. Cicely calls everyone things like that. I think it means sugar cookie or something like that.”
Jared stares, “Sugar cookie?”
“She calls Jen her ‘cute little treasure’, so it could be worse.”
Jared can’t help but laugh. He glances around and finally frowns, “Not that this isn’t cool, but. Why did you bring me here?”
Chad shrugs, not looking up as he picks up his napkin and starts shredding it into strips. “Look around, man. This is where your life started.”
Jared thought about the day he woke up in Jensen’s bed.
We met when you were twenty-two. You were working as a waiter at this small restaurant. Chad was a cook and I was always going in there with my friends.
“This is where I met Jensen.”
Chad perks up almost immediately, “You remember?”
“No, but he told me we met at a restaurant. It was here?”
“Yah.”
Jared looks around the room with more interest. His eyes fall onto a wall of pictures and he gets up to investigate.
There are a lot of pictures of Jared and Chad stuck there. In some of them, there’s a young boy that must be Lorenzo, occasionally an older teenage boy that must be the David that keeps being mentioned, Cecily and what must be her late husband, but the one that catches his eye is of him and Jensen, smiling at each other over a booth.
There are lit candles adding a soft glow to their faces, a massive plate of spaghetti shared between them, and wine in their glasses. Jared has a hold of Jensen’s hand and their feet are entangled beneath the table top. It makes Jared’s heart race, just to look at it.
So much love.
Jared’s heart feels like it might break, to see what he had and suddenly know with utter clarity that he’s lost it.
He’s lost Jensen.
Five years of Jensen. Five years of kissing his perfect lips and falling asleep in his bed, of sharing plates of spaghetti and a shower in the morning. Five years of loving Jensen, of being loved by Jensen.
And it’s all just… Gone.
“He was going to bring me here, wasn’t he? Because we met here and we fell in love here.”
“Yah.”
Jared hadn’t realized that Chad had followed him over, but he leans back into him when Chad wraps his skinny little arms around his waist. Chad rests his head on his back, too short to hook his pointed little chin over his shoulder like he had when he was trying to comfort Jared when they were kids.
“Listen, Jared. James and Jenny? They really are just good friends. James dated Jensen’s brother for a while, that’s how they met. You’ve got nothing to be worried about. Memory or not, Jensen loves you.”
Jared reaches out, lets his fingers hover over the picture, not quite touching it.
“I wish I could remember. I wish I could love him.”
Chad’s laugh vibrated through Jared, “Shit, Jay! You already do.”
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