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It had been about six years since Gabe had seen or talked to William. He remembered most of it, but mostly the beginning, just like the old stories his mother used to read to him in Spanish when he was a kid. He could always remember the beginnings of things--it was always how things were going to end that he had a problem figuring out or remembering.

He remembered the first few times they had met. William was still just a kid and Gabe was in Midtown, usually clad in t-shirts with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, half drunk after the shows. William had this stammer whenever Gabe would grin at him, one that caught in his throat and would grow stronger until the words fumbled out of his mouth. He remembered their first date--bowling and drinks in New York, and he remembered most of their relationship after that. And he remembered how it had ended. There was a baby, William had told him. A drunken night had ended with William becoming a father, and Gabe couldn't believe it.

Everyone, in the beginning, had been taking bets on when Gabe would break William's heart or he would be the one to get drunk and mess everything up. But as they grew as a couple, the bets went away and people would ask questions if Gabe's arm wasn't around William's waist or they weren't whispering in each other's ears in the back seats of the clubs. They just fit. They always had. William would huff and puff when he was anxious and need to eat, so Gabe would sing Spanish into his skin at night and make him breakfast every morning. Gabe would try and jump into things too quickly and push people away when he was writing something new, so William would squeeze Gabe's hand or hip when he needed to calm down, giving him his space to write, but leaving him small notes taped to his keyboard or notebook. Whatever William wasn't, Gabe was, and vice versa.

There was even a time when they had went public, breaking the news on Twitter to their followers and promising an interview with Buzznet. It was a video interview, the two of them sitting hip to hip, Gabe's arm around William's waist and William's fingers tracing patterns into the denim that stretched over Gabe's knees. They were inseparable, and then all of the sudden, things just... crumbled.

Gabe remembered when he had found out, how everything felt like slow motion as William reached for him and Gabe simply scrambled, scrambled out of his head to think clear enough to pack a suitcase. They lived together in Chicago, and Gabe remembered thanking God that Pete was visiting home that week. He had left that night, William screaming out the door after him, running down the sidewalk in just his jeans and t-shirt, stepping over subway grates and cigarette butts until Gabe got into a cab. "Wait, please, Gabey, we can fix this!" William had pleaded, knocking on the window of the cab, a slight whine in his voice as he tried not to cry. "I love you! Please just come back and we can figure something out." All of Gabe's things were moved out of the apartment the next week, the older male flying back to New York.

When Santi came out, Gabe had cried for the first time in months. Flipping through the tracks and landing on Everything We Had, he felt his eyes well and his chest hurt, like a train was pulling through his mouth and settling deep inside of his ribs until everything just forced its way out of him. He and William hadn't talked eight months. Christine had moved into William's apartment, Gabe knew that much from others, but that was all he wanted to know. He didn't want to hear any more of his songs, see his face in any more magazines, hear his name.

William was the only person that Gabe could ever love and William had forced him to go. Gabe swore he'd never forgive him, settling into a pattern of drinking and partying almost every weekend, settling into back seats of clubs with different boys or girls every other night, thankful that nobody's hands or mouths clutched Gabe's heart the same way William's had. He faked being happy, swimming easily between the booze and pills in his system.

He wrote more than he had in months, songs that had nothing to do with love and more about partying, pretending to give a damn but couldn't be bothered. His bandmates saw a clear change in Gabe, but if he refused to talk, there wasn't much they could do about it. Besides, he was fine on tour--the old Gabanti that stage flirted and treated his fans like gold. There was nothing to worry about.

Although William flashed in Gabe's mind almost every day, the swelling in his chest matching the memories, things were going as best as they could be. Even when Cobra Starship went to Chicago to do a week of press, Gabe didn't sulk back to the hotel anymore to cry, sobs choking out of his mouth. The picture he carried in his wallet of William had been tossed long ago, the CDs William sang on living in Gabe's fireplace in New York, melted and unrecognizable. He was fine.

Alex was relieved as ******** when he re-entered his house to find it abandoned and quiet, empty of all of the people who had been living there the past few weeks. Pete was home, Spencer was on a plane, and Kyle was out for a run, exploring the city. He had spent the past few hours sitting on Jack’s porch, not saying much. He didn’t know what to say that hadn’t already been repeated over and over again. He was exhausted and sick, and he had been hiding it from everything. He’d go to sleep at three, have night terrors on and off for about two hours, before he would wake back up at five, pacing the house or going out for a run with Sebastian. He’d been keeping it a secret, but his fight with Spencer was the last straw for everything.

When he entered the house, he tossed his keys lightly on the table next to the door, watching them drift across the wood before he felt his phone vibrate. He read over Spencer’s text before falling back down against the ground, breaking into heavy sobs that shook the very core of him. “Told you I was never good enough for you,” was all it said, and the very words were perfect in Alex’s mind and on Lisa’s lips when he broke up with her.

He was done with people telling him that everything was his fault. Lisa had cheated on him for five months because it was his fault he couldn’t love her the way she wanted him to, couldn’t stay home nine months out of the year and give up on the dreams that he had and she claimed to support. And this was the exact same thing. “You’re just like Nate. I can’t be who you want me to be. This entire time, I’ve been doing what you want me to.”

Alex was sick of giving himself up to someone else, only to have them take advantage of him and toss him away when things got bad like he was nothing. He couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t stay awake anymore and expect things to change. He couldn’t fight against the odds anymore and hope that things would work out for the best, because they never did, and he couldn’t think anymore.

He dragged himself to the kitchen to find his bottle of whiskey, stuffing his mouth with three pills of Oxy before finished it off with the whiskey, hoping it would help him sleep long enough to be someone else when he woke up.