Fear - 2

Jared departed the morning after their fight, before Shawn was even awake. He left all Shawn's belongings behind, taking only his things and the truck, although it technically belonged to both of them. Shawn didn't blame him for that. Jared needed it for his work.

But that left him with no way to get around town except on foot.

"It's probably a good thing I'm not driving," he said to himself a week later as he barely managed to make it back to the motel and his room without ending up in the gutter along the main street of the small, mountain town.

He hadn't meant to go out drinking, not after having spent so much time with Jared and seeing the effects of liquor on his lover. Well, ex-lover now. Shawn felt torn between relief and anguish.

His buddies at the garage had insisted he join them and he was lonely. So lonely.

He'd promised himself he'd have just one drink, sip it slowly, and leave. But one led to two, and then another and another as the ache in his heart seemed to disappear under a swaddling of alcohol-induced euphoria. Still, despite that, he couldn't help but think of Jared.

Jared knew that he sometimes drank too much but he'd convinced himself he wasn't an alcoholic. Not the way people thought of one. He didn't need to drink, he insisted. Someone called it being a 'situational drinker', he'd explained to Shawn one time after a bad two days of drinking during which he'd abused Shawn before sobering up again. Shawn had to agree. Put Jared in the situation and he'd drink until he was ready to fall on his face and lose all self-control in the process.

Shawn supposed Jared had been lucky in a way. He'd never been in an accident, not a real one. Yeah he'd had a few near misses, like a week ago when he'd smacked the truck into a pylon in the parking lot at the bar.

"But that was just a pylon and it shouldn't have even been there," Jared had growled before turning his anger on Shawn.

I should have left him long ago. And now I'm paying for it. Shawn stared morosely in the bathroom mirror. His hazel-green eyes were blurry and bloodshot. His stomach roiled suddenly and he made it to the toilet just in time to empty everything he'd eaten and drunk into the bowl. Not that he'd eaten much. Most of what came out was dark brown liquid. He threw up several more times, until finally all that was left was greenish bile.

He staggered to his feet, rinsed out his mouth, and made it from the bathroom to the bed where he collapsed face down and passed out.