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For a little while, it had felt easy again.
The weekend had left traces behind. His shirt on the floor. His vest forgotten. The warmth of him still in the bed, still in the room, still lingering in the ordinary morning-after details.
Violet found his things and texted him. He answered later that morning. “I’d rather be in bed still. Why can’t we have 2 Saturdays a week?!”
She smiled when she saw it. That sounded like him. They kept texting through the day. She asked again about the comedy show she had invited him to the next night. He had not really answered before. She told him he did not have to come if he did not want to, but she wanted to know. “I like seeing you laugh,” she wrote.
He responded hours later. “I get off tomorrow at 715ish – is that too late?”
Then, almost as if answering the softer part of what she had said, he added, “I like that you enjoy seeing me laugh.”
A moment later, he sent something else. “I enjoy hearing you moan for me.”
That was Jack, too. Or at least it felt like him by then. The mix of tenderness, intensity, humor, and sex had become familiar quickly. He could move from a joke to something intimate without much transition, and somehow it still felt like part of the same current.
Later that day, he sent her a strange video. She teased him about it. He teased back. She mentioned the show again and told him he could come straight from work.
He said he could meet her there after work, around 7:30, and asked what he owed her. “Not necessary,” she wrote. Then, because the thread still felt warm and flirtatious, she added that she was sure he could find a more creative way to compensate her.
He did not answer that directly. “I love how you hold me,” he wrote.
It was not just sexual. That was part of what made Jack difficult to sort out. He could be crude and tender in the same breath. He could say something that made her laugh, then something that made her feel needed.
Violet thought of a song from her playlist and sent it to him. “These Arms of Mine.”
“Got to listen to my playlist today at work,” she wrote, “and this reminded me of you.”
She told him she might wear a dress the next day. He answered, “Might as well. It’s Tuesday.”
“Bed feels so cold and empty,” she wrote, “you’re a lot warmer than my body pillows (except for your feet).”
The next evening, he texted that he was exhausted from Tuesday. “Come chill and laugh with me,” she wrote.
She told him she had gone with a different dress altogether and he did not want to miss it. He seemed to be coming. “Finishing up with work and then I’m heading to see that thing you wanted to show me.”
Then his answer changed. “Oh no!! Has it already started? It will be closer to 8.”
She told him it would still be going. A few minutes later, he bailed.
“I’m just going to stay here tonight – I’m beat. Will you wear the dress for me another time?”
Violet stared at the message. She was annoyed. More than annoyed, really. It was not only that he was tired. People got tired. Work ran late. Plans changed. But he had known about the show. He had known she wanted him there. He had known this was not just another casual invitation. She had made space for him in a part of her world he had not yet entered. And now, at the last minute, he was not coming.
“Nope,” she wrote. It was short. Petty maybe. But she meant it.
Over the next few days, the warmth drained out of the thread. She still had his things. His shirt. His vest. His jacket. The physical evidence of closeness was sitting in her house while he became harder to reach.
After not hearing from him all week she texted on Saturday that she could drop his stuff off if he was home. Nothing. The next day, she tried again.
“I’ll let you decide if you want to talk but please let me know when it’s a good time to return your things. Your torso must be really cold.”
Hours later, he answered. “Hi Violet – I appreciate you reaching out. Thanksgiving didn’t go the way I hoped. I’d like to talk at some point this week if you’re open it. Hope you’re doing well.”
It was strange. The words were polite. Careful. Almost distant. Not cold exactly, but not him. Not the man who had just told her he loved how she held him. Not the man sending jokes and innuendo. Not the man whose clothes were still at her house because he had been in her bed.
Violet did not have a name for what she was feeling. She only knew that something had become uneven.
When Jack was present, he was intensely present. Warm, funny, sexual, tender, strange. He could make the thread feel alive with a single line.
But when he pulled back, there was no clear way to reach him. He answered when he answered. He explained what he chose to explain. Plans stayed loose until the last possible moment. Even his forgotten clothes became a reason for her to keep the conversation open. She did not know what any of that meant.
She only knew she was asking more than she wanted to ask, waiting more than she wanted to wait, and trying to sound lighter than she felt.
She told him she was doing well. She said Thanksgiving rarely lived up to the hype, but her heart was full from time with her kids. “Call me if you want to talk,” she wrote.
Later, because part of her still wanted to soften the edge, she added, “Or anything else.” A few days passed. She missed him.
She was still frustrated, but frustration did not cancel missing. That was part of what made it confusing. She could be irritated that he had bailed. She could wonder whether he had ever really planned to come. She could feel the sting of his silence. And she could still miss being in his arms.
So she told him. “I miss being in your arms.”
“I miss that, too,” he replied.
She missed his sad songs and weird videos. She sent him a small piece of her room, the colored lights moving across the ceiling. He had loved the aura lights when he was there, and she sent him a set of his own.
The next morning, he sent her a PDF of a poem entitled “Truth Must Not.”
“Here’s a first draft poem that I wanted to share after working on it this morning. Hope you have an amazing Thursday.” That felt more like him.
“But here, outside, the air is clear
The truth speaks loud for those who hear
And in this exile, I am free
To be who God created me”
-Jack Stallings
The poem. The sudden offering. The intimacy of being shown something unfinished.
She thanked him and joked that she would settle for a Thursday that did not suck. By afternoon, he was joking back. “So far my Thursday is refusing to suck Donkey Dicks,” he wrote. “I hope the same is true for you.”
The rhythm returned in pieces, but not completely. She sent songs. She sent images from her day. He responded sometimes. Sometimes he did not.
On December 7, she asked if he still wanted to talk. “I do,” he wrote. “Can I call after work tomorrow? Around 530.” She said yes.
On December 8, they finally talked. Thanksgiving had not gone the way he hoped. He told her there had been family issues. He did not go into much detail about that part. He had picked up his younger son, and they were driving to visit family who lived a ways away. Before he left, he had one drink.
Then he was stopped. At first, it was a speeding ticket. Later, he was pulled over again. This time, it became a DUI. He said he had not handled it well. Then he told her he had punched one of the police officers in the face. His son had been there.
Violet tried to take that in. Jack had spent Thanksgiving night in jailand was bailed out the next day. He had lost his driver’s license. He was walking to and from work now, two miles each way. He had thought he might lose his job, too, but his boss had been very understanding.
The part that seemed to hurt him most was losing access to his kids. He was devastated by that. He talked about what his son had been through, and Violet believed he felt awful about it. How could he not? His child had been there. His child had likely seen the arrest, the escalation, the night break open into something frightening and confusing.
Violet could hear shame in him. She could hear fear. She could hear the grief of a father suddenly facing consequences that reached beyond himself. He told her he was going to AA. He talked about trying to get sober. That part reached her.
Violet knew recovery language. She knew the shape of shame after a crisis. She knew what it meant for someone to be afraid of what they had done and still hope they could become someone else. She had spent years around twelve-step work. She believed in accountability, but she also believed in repair. She believed people could tell the truth about themselves and begin again.
Somewhere in that long conversation, Violet told him what she knew from recovery spaces: that people newly sober were often encouraged not to date for a while. Six months, at least, was the guidance. Early recovery needed space. It needed honesty, structure, humility, and the ability to sit with discomfort without immediately reaching for another person.
She cared about him and missed him, but she also cared about whether recovery could actually hold. Jack seemed to understand. He made it sound like he was working on himself, like sobriety had to come first.
Violet made it clear that she could support him in recovery. She could talk. She could listen. She could understand the language and the spiritual work. The call was long. She told him about Al-Anon, about her own spiritual journey, about working the twelve steps and what that had meant in her life.
He seemed grateful. Appreciative. The conversation did not give them a clear answer about what they were now. But at the time, the uncertainty made sense to her. He was in crisis. He was newly trying to get sober. Of course things would feel unsettled.
A couple of days later, the aura lights arrived at his house. “Guess what arrived at my house today –”
He did not say what it was right away. That was still Jack too, making a small moment into a guessing game. The next evening, he texted that he had found a portal to an alternate reality and was thinking about walking through to see what was on the other side.
Violet sent him the song “Hope” by James Bay.
“If I fall
If I have to learn to suffer
And lose it all
If I have to let it go
When my best
Feels like a joke
Still, I have a little hope”
He sent back a selfie. Headphones on. A sad face. Listening. She told him she looked forward to seeing him smile again. “I’m sure I will once that sunshine comes out again,” he wrote.
After work Friday she stopped by to return his things. She was nervous to see him after so long. They had a bried conversation. A hug. Violet wanted to stay. Of course she did. The pull was still there, and being near him made that harder, not easier.
But she knew it was not a good idea. He said he understood.
That mattered to her. In the moment, it felt like they were both trying to honor the new reality: the DUI, the recovery, the uncertainty, the fact that whatever had been happening between them could not simply continue as if nothing had changed.
She left with more ache than clarity. But she left.