Post by JOEL ABRAMS on Dec 7, 2019 10:45:20 GMT -5
There had been a time, not so long ago, when Joel had spent most of his nights inside a bar. Whether he was serving drunks, lugging music equipment around, or just enjoying a drink himself, they’d become a home from home over the years. The sort of place where Joel always felt like he belonged. It was helpful, really, that bar culture didn’t really change much from place to place. Given all the moving around he’d done, settling in one city for a few months before moving on, Joel had been thankful that he had something, some common thread, tying it all together. It was easier to find his footing when something, just one thing, stayed the same. Since he’d been back in England, he’d barely set foot inside one. He wasn’t sure whether it was out of choice or necessity. Whether he was trying to rebuild a better Joel from the ground up or he simply wanted to put distance between his past and his future. As he sat at the bar, fingers idly drawing patterns in the condensation on the side of his pint glass, Joel thought it might be both. It was hard to be there and not remember everything that came before – the good and the bad, the laughs and the tears. It wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed. He hated being caught between nostalgia and heartache. But Joel had come to some recent revelations that were playing on his mind. The first was that he hadn't been living since he’d returned home. He hadn't been doing much of anything, just working and sleeping with a lot of heavy drinking in between when the hollowness inside him became too much to bear. That worried him. It was a path Joel had seen a lot of people take and he knew it led nowhere good. The other was realising that the heaviness he carried with him everywhere wasn’t just the weight of the last four years, it was also loneliness. Though this place was his home, Joel still felt like an outsider. He still felt adrift, with nothing tethering him to this new life and no way back to his old one. Joel knew it would take time to find peace with everything, to work through it all and make sense of it. But the loneliness was so deep and so wide that sometimes he feared it would consume him. He needed to find some way to ease the ache if only for a little while. This wasn’t his first attempt – there’d been several that came before it, each as disastrous as the one before. Mostly he felt too out of place or overwhelmed to last for longer than an hour, and on the rare occasion he had, he’d been too afraid to strike up a conversation with anyone. He wasn’t used to that. Joel had always prided himself on his ability to talk to just about anyone. But a lot had changed since then and nothing felt like it used to anymore. He wished for it though. For that familiarity. For the simple pleasure of small talk and getting to know someone. For some faint echo of the man he used to be. As his eyes slid to one of the booths, to a man with a dazzling smile and dark blonde curls laughing with his friends, Joel thought that it wasn’t just small talk he missed. It was soft hands and warm lips and whispered words. It was the racing of his heart knowing that someone craved him, if only for the night. It was feeling connected to someone else, however temporarily. It was not feeling completely alone, unloved and unwanted, discarded and broken. Joel looked back to his drink and tried to ignore the voice in the back of his mind telling him that he’d always be this way. That some broken things can never be fixed. That loneliness is what he deserves. A familiar weight pressed down on Joel’s chest as he lifted his glass and took a long sip. As he lowered it, he was surprised to see the blonde man waiting at the bar. His heart skipped a beat. He was even prettier up close. Joel swallowed, forcing his eyes away from the man and back to his glass, but not for long. His eyes wanted to look, and as they slid back to the man, he found the man looking back at him. Joel smiled, a warm smile that came easily, his lips moving before he really knew what he was going to say. ”Seems like you’re having a good night,” he said, gesturing with his head to the booth where his friends were waiting – a sea of laughter and bright smiles. His heart thudded nervously as he tried to find the line between friendly and forward, looking and staring. ”Celebrating?” |