“Yeah.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Because of course he doesn’t switch up his daily uniform, despite its being a gorgeous summer day.
“Everything okay?”
I fully expect him to give me a standard Jack answer. Read: one without any sort of emotion or context behind it. But he surprises me.
“I don’t know if I can do it, Sade.”
I shift to my side, so my entire body is angled in his direction. “Do what?”
“Sell this house.” He flops his head back against the chair but then turns to look at me. Even though his eyes are hidden behind the lenses of his glasses, I can see the sadness, the heaviness, in them.
“Okay, I’m going to ask a rude question, which obviously never stopped me in the past, but I want you to have a heads-up because I know how this is going to sound and I’d just like you to remember I’m your friend and I care about you. You as a person.”
His lips quirk up just a tad. “Okay. I’m a bit terrified now, but please, go ahead.”
Pulling my knees up, I tuck my feet under my butt. “Do you need the money? Is that why you feel like you should sell the house? Because you need to, financially speaking?”
He doesn’t even flinch at the brazenness of it. “No. I don’t need the money. That doesn’t really have anything to do with it.”
I want to reach out and touch him, close this physical space between us in the hopes of closing the emotional divide along with it. But short of climbing up onto his chair, there’s no graceful way to do that. So I stay put, but I keep my eyes locked on his. “Then why now?”
He stays quiet for a minute, but it feels different from Jack’s normal quiet. He’s not avoiding the question, just thinking through what he wants to say. Finally, he takes in a long breath, letting it trickle out slowly before he begins speaking. “I was twenty-three. When they died. Even though I was already an adult and had been living in the brownstone for a few years, I relied on them for so much. Career guidance. Financial advice. Love and support. They were my best friends. We don’t have any other family, so after the accident, it was just me. All on my own.” He pulls his gaze from mine, like he doesn’t want to see my reaction to this next part. “And I just froze. Like I was in this block of ice, captured in this moment in time. I didn’t know what to do without them. Or how to be. How to grow. How to move on.”
Fuck it. I push myself off my chair and sit at the foot of his. He pulls his legs up so he’s sitting crisscrossed, and I do the same. Our knees press together, and I take one of his hands in mine.
“When I thawed out, I made a lot of bad decisions. I blew a lot of money, drank way too much, had a shit-ton of meaningless sex.”
Oof. Not loving hearing about that part, but I try to keep my features neutral, knowing it’s costing him something to reveal all of this to me.
“I’m not sure how I snapped out of it, honestly, but I think it was probably just the idea of how disappointed my parents would be if they could see what I was doing to myself. So after a couple of rough years,I cleaned up my act and paid off the brownstone, and while I wasn’t quite frozen again, I was living in this weird sort of fugue state. Like I was just numb all the time. The only people I talked to were online or random takeout people or service workers.” He clears his throat. “I’ve been hollow for so long.”
He picks up our joined hands, running his thumb over my knuckles.
My chest aches when I think of Jack alone and in pain, with no one to turn to for support. “Do you still feel hollow?”
He finally meets my gaze once again. “Not anymore, no.”
“How did you come out of it?”
His face breaks into my favorite smile, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes. “My therapist recommended I look for a roommate.”
“Oh.” The admission is a direct punch to the heart, and any small slice of delusion I had left about my feelings for Jack completely explodes like a balloon full of confetti.
Jack leans back a little bit, putting some space between us, though he keeps a tight hold on my hand. “I might not be hollow anymore, but I’m also nowhere near whole, Sadie. I’m still fucked up and closed off in a lot of ways. I’m still healing.”
“Oh.” His declaration connects directly with my lungs, and the single word puffs out of me like a soft sigh. Talk about shattered delusions. My chin falls to my chest, and I stare at our intertwined hands. I want to tell him that it’s okay and I understand, because it is okay and I do understand, but his words seem to carry a heavier purpose. Like he’s letting me down easy before I even have the chance to tell him how I might feel. How I definitely am feeling.
He cups my cheek in his hand, gently pulling my eyes back to his.“Our friendship means more to me than I could ever put into words, Sade. And I can’t risk it, no matter how much I might want to. I could never be enough for you.”
I swallow thickly. “Shouldn’t I get the chance to decide that for myself?”
He sighs, and for half a second, I think he might lean in and kiss me. Instead he releases me, dropping his hand from my cheek, letting go of my hand in his. “Maybe. Probably. But I’m too selfish to let you.”
I scoff at the irony of his words and want more than anything to move back to my own chair, but I don’t trust my legs to support me at the present moment. “I think we all know I’m the selfish one in this bunch.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong about that.” He holds up a hand to stop the protest he knows is coming. “Let me have this one.”
I roll my eyes, turning and pushing myself awkwardly from his chair over to mine.
