“Sorry,” she said quickly, shooting Sofia an apologetic smile. “Silas, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Do you think we could head home now?”
Silas frowned. “You want to leave already?”
“Already?” Jessica asked. “Do you not realize it’s after one?”
Silas stepped back from Sofia, who sullenly let her arms drop to her sides, and checked his watch. “Holy shit, it is. I’m sorry, Jess. We were talking and lost track of time.”
“It’s okay,” she said, smiling. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
They were out the door in five minutes, neither of them bothering to say goodbye to anyone. Jessica kept a lid on the words she wanted to spew the entire way home, bottling that shit up until she was a shaken bottle of champagne, one uncorking away from blowing her top.
She hadn’t even bothered to put her shoes back on, blatantly disregarding the fact that it was winter, her feet already dirty past the point of no return. She dropped them unceremoniously on the closed porch before walking inside her house.
“Roomies?” Silas asked quietly.
“Home.”
He only nodded, treading lightly up the stairs. Her house was old, and everything had a tendency to creak, but in the two years she’d lived here, they’d both gotten good at navigating around those weak spots.
Thankfully, her room was separated from either of her roommates by the fourth bedroom, which they never bothered to get a roommate for because, one, they could afford rent without it, and two, it became a sort of catchall for any overflow from their rooms.
So when Jessica stepped into her room and closed the door, she immediately whirled on Silas.
“I don’t want to overreact here, Silas, but what thefuckwas that?”
“I told you, we were just talking.”
“Why was she crying?”
“Because she was upset,” he said, looking at Jessica like that should’ve been the most obvious thing in the world.
“Why was she upset, Silas?”
Her boyfriend stared at her, the moment stretching on uncomfortably long. Jessica was almost certain he wouldn’t answer her, and she opened her mouth, prepared to ask him to leave, when he finally spoke.
So quietly she barely heard him, he said, “She told me she’s in love with me, and…”
“And what?” Jessica prompted, heart plummeting like an anchor. Somehow, some way, she knew exactly where this conversation was headed, knew precisely the words that would leave Silas’s mouth.
She braced for impact.
“I think I’m in love with her, too. I didn’t realize it until tonight, I swear. But I also think I’ve gotten really good at lying to myself, and you. And I’m so sorry for that, Jess. I think I’ve gotten comfortable with the familiarity of this relationship, and I was too afraid to risk it.”
Jessica waited for the explosion, for the ground to open and swallow her whole. Waited for the breaking of her heart to echo in her chest.
Only…nothing happened. She felt surprisingly calm, almost like she’d expected this to happen and had been waiting for this proverbial shoe to drop for ages now.
All she thought was…finally.
And notfinallyin the sense that all of her worst fears were being made a reality, like finally getting confirmation of the bad news she’d been expecting for ages. No, it wasfinallyin the way that she could finally let go of this thing that had been dragging her down for far too long.
And wasn’t Silas echoing exactly what her mother had said to her on Thanksgiving?
I think if you’re this torn, you’ve already made up your mind.
Silas was in love with someone else—and so was she.
It was useless trying to deny it. She’d been fighting it every day for the last three and a half years. Even when she’d thought with absolute certainty she’d never see him again, Jack still held her heart in his hands. It had taken him walking back into her life in the most unlikely of places to remind her that she’d never gotten it back from him, not really. The one she’d given to Silas had been a fake, a replica, never wholly his to take or hers to give.
