His jaw tenses, his eyes gleaming with anger, but he just nods tightly, letting it go.
The tension lingers as we finish eating. Things won’t be the same between us, not for a while. Jerica’s right. David needs to find a way to heal, too. Whatever happened between him and Amelia left scars on both of them, even if she hides it better. It fucked him up more than his childhood did.
We don’t say anything until after we finish dinner and are standing outside, about to part ways.
He clears his throat and stares at me. Vulnerability flashes in his eyes for only a quick second before they’re blank again.
“You and Jerica…you’re all I got, man.”
“D, I ain’t going anywhere.”
“You will if she needs you to, though, won’t you?”
I scrub my hands over my face before dropping them and shoving them into my pockets. “She comes first.”
“I get it.” He shakes his head, letting out a bitter laugh. “Fuck, do I get it.”
“You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Always am. Look, I’m heading out.”
“Stay safe,” I reply, turning to head to my vehicle.
“Alek, what about work?”
I shrug. “Gonna be looking for somewhere else.”
He just nods and walks away, and I follow suit, a bittersweet satisfaction settling in my chest. It went better than I expected, and now I’m bracing myself for whatever comes next.
What I never saw coming was that the one person I’d been aching to see had been there all along, watching everything unfold.
Love Makes Us Stupid
Hayvin
Mypencaptapsa restless rhythm on the blank page, my thoughts wandering far from the words I should be writing.
I’m supposed to be working on my next song, but Alek and Jerica’s diner showdown keeps replaying in my head, stubborn as a catchy chorus.
It’s maddening, this inability to focus.
Of all the things I could be thinking about, those two are dead last, yet his words echo in my mind, refusing to fade.
“I have to make sure that Hayvin never has a reason to doubt what I feel for her again. I need to make sure she knows she’s my first choice. I need her to know that she’s it for me. And I can’t do that by being friends with you.”
His words jolted me, but I couldn’t quite trust them. Not at first. Then Jerica said he was choosing me over her. I thought I heard jealousy in her voice, but the longer I sat with it, the clearer it became.
It wasn’t jealousy or anger at all. It was curiosity, and a hint of ‘finally’ in her tone that caught me completely off guard.
I nearly missed his reply that day, but the world seemed to hush around us, as if fate wanted me to hear every word.
“And I always will. I’ll choose her over anyone.”
For the first time since he entered my life, he’s actually ended things with her. That’s no small thing. Still, why did he wait until I was gone to finally act?
We’re just friends is all I ever heard.
Maybe they really were just friends, but he never missed a chance to use her as a shield, keeping me at arm’s length even while pretending I was his oxygen.
