• Here for the fics, thanks to all the GVF fanfic writers, because babies y'all are doing the lords work. If you're underage, go ahead and kickrocks, this page isn't for you •
*I knew how I wanted to end this revisit to Sugar months before I’d even written the first word, and then my world became chaotic, leaving this much overdue— but never overlooked, in my heart. Sugar Jake is my most beloved — nod to the actual beloved ;) — and here, though short and sweet, you will find his heart mended. Goodbye, Sugar Jake, how we have loved you ❤️
Josh
I knew it. The moment she’d gone, I mean.
It felt more concrete than when he’d taken his leave three weeks prior, though she — and likely the rest of the world — might have called me a liar.
No, I knew she’d gone because my soul felt his own breathe a sigh of relief. The feral, ancient content that radiated from his being, wherever it was, reached me loud and clear.
His great gig in the sky had fallen into place.
I, with my grief, and he, with his girl.
You see, Jacob passed on a night as still as glass. The universe was hushed. Did it understand?
Mother Earth quieted her creatures and calmed tempestuous skies for Jacob Thomas. Bowed in honor of the music man.
He, who created so much joyful noise, had earned a solemn silence.
I was there to watch Jake draw his last ragged breath, as I was witness to his first.
I told him, that still and cloudless day, that it was time to relax his fist. That he should let go of that rage for the dying of the light. “Learn to leave a room, brother. I’m sick of you.”
“Fuck you, Joshua.” Had been his response. That biting, perfect sentiment is tattooed upon my waning heart.
As the blues record spinning like a whisper in the corner skipped as though it somehow knew, she had fallen to the floor. Crumpled down against the scuffed wood like waterlogged tissue paper when the light in his eyes had gone out.
She’d been so strong for him.
When his memory failed, she was his unwavering hippocampus. She filled in the blanks happily, readily. She kept his mind whole by lending bits and pieces of her own.
Songs. She’d learned those too. Meticulized over the chords and frets of his favorites. When arthritis marched in to cruelly snatch the melodies from his hands, she’d done her best to make sure that the walls of their home always knew music from the hand of someone who knew how it craved him.
Yes, their home craved him.
Jacob’s gait had echoed the halls for decades. His voice, his laughter, tunes coaxed from strings. Sneezes muffled into the crease of his arm. Earnest timbres when he felt passionately about a subject. Murmured timbres secreted when he felt passionately about her in the night.
That house, the one he’d promised her, the one he’d built her, mourned for him like a living being. His absence hurt us all, even those inanimate. He became our collective lost limb.
But his sugar……
Every star in the sky might as well have been snuffed out. She no longer saw them. She simply closed her eyes and forgot anything beautiful that wasn’t her Jakey.
She held fast for her girls, two of them…and even faster for their third, a wild-child son who they both claimed was nearly my clone. I still think I might be the only one who sees it, how much like my twin my favorite nephew really is. He makes me feel less adrift, and there are many days when my grief is thankful for his anchor.
But yes, she had been strong for them.
They had lost their father, those babies of theirs who were so grown it was difficult to believe they were ever small to begin with….
However, as hours turned to days and they began to rediscover their rhythm, she turned desperately inward.
I tried to hold on to her. I struggled to keep her face upturned..fought to warm her cheeks with light rather than let her skin ache with the salt of tears. Tried to carry her through the way he would have.
In those moments, I know our hearts remembered the love. That seemingly endless well of devotion..the fire that once licked at the walls of anything that threatened to touch it insidiously.
She and I….
Once, it was she and I…
And how we burned.
But we loved him. We both loved him. So, so, much more. She and I never stood a chance, and maybe I knew that the moment I watched his eyes track her in that crowded bar so long ago I can’t remember when.
I miss him.
‘Miss’ feels like such a lie. A blatantly deceitful word. I don’t miss him…I lament and throb in my sorrow. I would swallow this entire world, gnash it to pieces and callously spit it out if it meant one more moment with him.
She was not alone in her grief. And she was never alone in her devotion to Jake.
I knew it wouldn’t be long. Knew she had yearned to stumble along behind him the moment he’d breathed his last.
He belongs to the ages now, I’d wanted to hush. He’d always thought those words, murmured after Lincoln had succumbed to his assassin, were reverent, and a touch pretentious in a way that he’d liked.
If anyone on this earth deserved reverent and pretentious, it was my other half.
But he didn’t belong to the ages then, and he doesn’t now…
He belonged— belongs, to her.
So yes, the night she left this world, I know he was there, watching in the shadows of the room they’d shared for so many years. He would have burned this entire universe to ashes to ensure she crossed over peacefully.
Jake’s sugar would come home to him, but she would make her way without so much as an unsure breath. Her hand was nestled within his before she could worry for a blink, I know this as well as I know the sun will rise tomorrow.
He would have died a thousand deaths in her stead if it meant she would know a gentle peace, always.
I dreamt of her the night after she’d gone to join him.
She was young again, and so was I…
The waters lapping at the shore were a strange, crystalline pink…shimmering and shifting like a cut glass held up to the light.
I reached out, tucked a salt-kissed lock of hair behind her ear, “He’s waiting for you,”
“Yes,” turning to the shimmering, shifting light were the sand disappeared, she’d sighed in the softest content, “…he is. It’s forever now, isn’t it?”
My hands cupped her face and held on gently for a breath “It is.”
I could feel her energy shifting, and I could feel his becoming, what I can only describe as tenderly impatient. So, with a brush of a kiss upon the apple of her cheek I asked one last favor of her,
“Will you tell him how much I love him?”
In return, her lips found my own cheek, “he knows, Josh. He has always known.”
Warnings: swearing, smoking, drinking, mild drug use, insinuation of traumatic events.
A/N: Oh my gosh I can't believe we are finally back! It feels so good to be writing and posting again, starting off hot with Golden Oaks. This story will have plenty of ups and downs and twists and turns that you know we love to write. As of right now there is no set posting schedule as we both have very busy lives, but rest assured we are actively writing and will be posting as frequently as we can. We hope you stick around for this one, you won't want to miss it.
A glorious collaboration with my bestie and cowriter @gretavanmoon.
Listen: Apple Music
JAKE POV
The Catskill Mountains, 1987
‘You’re back with KROQ 106.7… The Catskills hottest spot on the dial for today's biggest rock, pop, and everything in between. I’m your girl, Jojo Marigold and I’m here to make your summer not only sound, but feel like you’re livin’ in dreamland, baby.
It’s finally Friday, it’s a scorcher out there guys, 90 degrees and the temperature is only rising as the weekend approaches. So you know what that means… Gentlemen, lose the t-shirts, and ladies… Ohhhh ladies, we know you’re already out there in your bikinis ready to throw on that suntan oil and soak! It! Up!
We’ve got the phones lit up and the request lines are open for the next hour, so give me a ring at 1-800-845-KROQ…that’s 1-800-845-5765, and I’ll spin whatever gets your weekend rockin’. Don’t touch that dial… you’re riding into summer with Jojo Marigold on KROQ 106.7!’
“Shut up…” you mumble, barely loud enough to count as words. You reach over and turn the dial down without looking, keeping your other wrist loose on the wheel. The joint between your fingers has burned to almost nothing, sending a thin thread of smoke toward the cracked window.
You kick it into third as the road bends, and the sign for Golden Oaks Mountain Resort drifts into your peripheral. Hand painted and slightly sun faded, Est 1942. Same as it ever was.
Jojo Marigold was right about one thing, it is hot. Even as the day is creeping towards five o’clock, the sun still burns through your windshield as if it is ready to fry you right there on the dashboard. The Trans Am’s AC had given up somewhere around the Pennsylvania border, which meant the last three hours had been you, the open windows, and a Springsteen tape that kept threatening to eat itself.
By the time you’d crossed into the Catskills proper your shirt was half unbuttoned, your hair was doing whatever it wanted, and the tension you'd been carrying on your shoulders since February had slipped out the window somewhere along Route 17. You take one last, long, slow drag and pitch the roach out the window as you push your new wayfarers up higher on your nose.
‘What time is it, baby?! It’s quittin’ time, 5:00. And I don’t know about you, but here at KROQ, we’re ready to parrrrty! Here’s our first request, ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ buy the ever-lovely Ms. Cyndi Lauper… so enjoy this one to get the weekend rolling!’
“No no NO! Not that shit–” you slap the dial all the way down until you hear static, then silence. Good.
The staff parking lot opens up ahead, a wide patch of gravel hemmed in by a row of old pines. You check your mirrors, and back the Trans Am in clean between the lines on the first try. She's only been yours since March– a ‘79, Red on Black, with a Firebird hood decal that the previous owner almost removed. Thank God he didn't. Eleven hundred dollars and a handshake from a mechanic in Flint who'd needed rent money more than he'd needed a car. Best deal you'd made in years. Maybe ever.
You kill the engine and the quiet rushes in. The cicadas, a lawnmower somewhere far off, the faint sound of someone's radio drifting down from the cabins above.
“Damn, Jake.” You hear her before you fully register the voice. “A Trans Am? When did that happen?”
You already know it’s Joy. You’d know that bubblegum pop anywhere. She’s leaned against one of the old picnic tables near the Welcome Center, arms folded across her chest, her tan already deep and holding, and her smile thin and sly— she knows exactly what she's doing. And though your current appearance is a bit worse for wear, she has decided to do it anyway.
“Happened when you started minding your business, Joy,” you say, swinging the door open as you step out in one easy motion, letting it close behind you with a solid slam.
“Ok, jerk,” she works her gum around her finger. “You get your balls in a bunch all winter or what?”
“Every winter.” You reach back through the window for your folder of paperwork. “You should know that by now.”
“You’re the worst,” she informs you.
“You say that every year, sweetheart.”
“And every year I mean it a little more,” she huffs.
You tuck the folder under your arm and cross the gravel lot towards her, your Sperrys crunching with each step. You pull your sunglasses up to sit on top of your head, and you lean in close. Close enough to smell her perfume, something sweet and summery. You look at her, making sure she's paying attention. “But as far as your question is concerned, you wanna take a feel and settle the matter?”
Her cheeks turn a deep pink and she turns on her heel. “Get a fuckin’ life Jacob. Or I'll throw your paperwork in the garbage before you can even sign it.” She's already moving towards the Welcome Center door, but the way she's walking tells you everything. “...Be like you were never even here. Never even showed up.” She’s mumbling with one hand flipping through the air. You’ve pissed her off just enough.
“Ah, come on, Joybird–” You follow her inside, grinning at the back of her head. “Don’t give me a hard time, now. I barely just got here.”
The lobby swallows the heat the moment you step through the door. It’s never had air conditioning, and probably never will. But the ceiling fans turn slowly in every corner, and the thick plaster walls hold in the cool air from the night before, so entry always feels like a reprieve.
Nothing here has changed, nothing ever does. That is, in fact, the whole point of Golden Oaks. It exists in a deliberate stillness, slightly outside of time. The carpet is the same deep green it was the first summer you walked through those heavy white doors. Nineteen years old, with nothing but a lifeguard certification and just enough sense to keep your mouth mostly shut.
The walls are still clean, the furniture still stiff, and vased pink zinnias sit on every available surface– the desk, the tables, the window sills. The walls are lined with photographs of golf pros mid-swing, tennis players at the net, framed commendations and ribbons dating back to 1950.
Best Mountain Resort. Best Mountain Resort. Best Mountain Resort. You’ve memorized every plaque.
Joy steps behind the front desk and you settle against the counter, watching as she works through a towering stack of manila folders. You wait a beat or two, and make a show of checking your wrist, which is bare.
“Alright, alright,” she mutters, not looking up.
“Any way you can move it along, Joybird? I’ve got beer to drink… new staff to impress.” You tap the face of your nonexistent watch. “Y’know how it is.”
“Cool your jets, Kiszka. I’m lookin’.”
“Not like I haven’t worked the same job here for almost a decade. You’d think there’d be a Jake pile by now.”
“I said cool it!” she barks. “You’re the last one of your brothers to get here, ya know,” she goes on, unbothered, finally pulling your employment file.
“Oh?” You take the pen from her desk cup without asking. You never ask. “Doesn’t surprise me.” You quickly flip through and sign all the necessary paperwork, making sure to not even read a single word of your yearly contract.
“Ya,” she pops her tongue. “Wasn’t sure you were comin’ back this year.”
You take a long sigh as you push the completed paperwork to her, meeting her deep brown eyes for the first time since last season.
“I always come back here, Joybird. You know that,” you mutter, licking your lips as your eyes unapologetically scan from her face down to her chest.
She grins, her fingers slowly gripping at the stack of papers. “Good,” is all she manages.
You clear your throat, shaking away the dirty thoughts that have already made their way into your mind. She makes it easy, though, the way her chest is already slowly heaving. “You going to the Haven tonight? Heard Doyle got a few kegs, couple bottles of something expensive. Gonna be good first night…”
“Uhm, I’ll be there a little later,” she mutters as she settles back onto her stool. “Don’t get off till ten.”
“Ten, things should be uh… heating up by then.” You press your palm flat to the counter, not a goodbye, more of a to be continued. She fully notices your deliberate and direct eye contact, and with another breath, you head for the door.
“Hope they are,” she says behind you, and you feel it follow you out.
“Wait, Jake! I forgot,” you hear Joy spout just as your hand reaches the knob. “You’re gonna have a couple newbies this season, they’re first years.”
Fuck. You turn back around, a look of disgust painted all over your face. Way to ruin the good vibe you had going. “Teenagers?! You’re shitting me… Where is everyone else? Where are my guys?”
“They’ll be here, don’t get so twisted up. You’re just gonna have to train a few new kids, that’s all.”
Your fingers tap the doorknob. “Am I getting a raise for that shit? I already trained these guys, I don’t need any more green help.”
Joy’s face flattens. “Yes you do, Jake. You know you need more help. Especially after what happened last ye–”
“Don’t, Joy.” You scoff, turning the knob once again. “I’ll see you later.”
The breeze cuts through the heat of the day, but not much. You climb back into your car and start the engine, ready to race to the top of the mountain to your cabin. Out of habit you crank the radio again, letting the music carry you up the dusty, winding road.
“I can see you, your brown skin shining in the sun…”
You sing it without deciding to, half under your breath, the way you only do when you're alone and moving. And there it is, that feeling. The one that comes every summer on this exact stretch of road. Three months. Three months at the best resort in the Catskills. Three months of easy work, late nights, and the very specific pleasure of being known by the right people in a small world. The money is almost beside the point and has been for years. This has never felt like a job. It has never felt like anything except the particular and lucky thing that it is.
But there is the other thing, too. The new thing that has been sitting in your chest since you locked the door to your apartment. Whatever is coming, whatever quiet thing the universe has apparently decided is overdue, you've found yourself wanting it.
You're on the downhill slide of your twenties. Maybe that's what this is. Maybe this is just what it feels like to understand that a life you've loved, exactly as it was, cannot stay that way forever. That something is always in the process of beginning, whether you're ready for it or not. Or maybe it's going to be a good summer and you're overthinking it. You've always been good at that, too.
The gravel of the cabin lot comes up fast, dust and rocks pinging against the undercarriage as you pull in and cut the engine. The quiet is back, but then from up the hill, you hear the sounds. Music through open cabin windows, the voices carrying in the cooling air. The warm yellow glow of cabin lights turning on one by one as the mountain begins to darken. Summer frogs begin to chirp in the woods as they welcome dusk.
Suddenly, in the thrill of it all, your stomach turns over with something good. It feels like a peek of golden light on your horizon, a familiar hand on your shoulder. Old friends, old stories, old flames, maybe? The mountain has always been generous that way…
But there’s something else, too. Something that feels like it might be worth finding out about. It’s unnerving and unsettling, but you like it. Almost like that first sip of whiskey from a bottle that’s been sitting in the cabinet collecting dust. Sour and strong but so, so delicious once you let it sink in.
“Yes you do, Jake, especially after what happened last year…”
Without warning, the memory of Joy’s words creep back into your mind. Last year, last August… the fifteenth, to be exact. At six twenty-six in the evening. The single worst day of your entire life, thus far.
Good outcome, horrific circumstance. That day haunts you at nearly every corner you turn.
But you repress it. You have to. You’ve learned that reliving the negatives of the past does nothing but taint the present and spoil the future… bleeding every good experience you’ll ever have dry. You’re smart, you’re resourceful, and you’re one hell of a lifeguard. You’ll not ever forget that.
You sit for a moment with your hands still on the wheel, letting yourself feel all of it. The familiar old pull of this place, and underneath it, the sense of a door being held open, adding in the sense of something about to begin. You truly can’t tell if you want to slam the door or run full-force through it. Either way, you’re ready to savor every bit of it.
In the distance, you hear a familiar voice yell your name in question. It breaks you from your trance, bringing everything back to the here and now. You get out of your car and toss your army green duffle bag over your shoulder, listening as your name is excitedly called again. Somewhere up on this wild old mountain, without even knowing it yet, your summer is already waiting for you. With bated breath and open arms, you’re more than ready to dive in, head first.
theartofmadeline
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