“What?” I shook my head vigorously. “No.”
“But you used to date him, right?”
I sighed, helpless to the way this conversation was spiraling away from what we needed to discuss. “Nathan has nothing to do with our issues. They existed long before I came here, and you know it.”
“Yeah, but fucking someone else certainly doesn’t help.”
“I’m not fucking him!” I shouted as the bar door swung open and Nathan strode outside.
There was no way he hadn’t heard me. I wanted to plunge through a crack in the sidewalk.
Jack tossed his hands in the air in exasperation. “Perfect.”
“Are you okay, Bren?” Nathan asked.
Jack glared at him with more hatred than I’d ever seen from him. It wasn’t for Nathan though. It was for me. Jack didn’t want to admit we were over and it wasourfault. No one else’s.
“We’re fine,” I replied tightly, wanting Nathan to leave. I couldn’t have this conversation with him here.
“Are you sure?”
“She said we’re fine,” Jack snapped. “Leave.”
Nathan took a step toward Jack, and I lunged for his arm, pulling his attention to me. “Please just go. I promise I’m fine.”
Nathan kept his blazing brown eyes on me. “I’m inside if you need anything, all right?”
Under his breath, Jack muttered, “How sweet.”
I nodded, encouraging Nathan to go back inside. He watched us through the window.
“You were saying…” Jack extended his arm toward the bar.
I wouldn’t convince him of the story he wanted to believe. So I took a deep, steadying breath, and pivoted to the real issue. “Our relationship hasn’t been working for a while.”
“Since you moved to California.”
My reason for moving to California was overshadowed by how it affected him. Our relationship worked when it was on his terms, when he got everything he wanted. When he was happy.
Maybe it took distance to show me what I’d been too close to realize before.
There had been times I caught myself wondering if Ishouldfeel something more than I did, even before I moved to California. I chalked it up to my favorite pastime of overthinking. There was never anythingwrongwith our relationship, but there was something that didn’t feel exactly right.
“This isn’t working,” I murmured.
“Wait, Brenna… are youbreaking upwith me?”
The question asked so plainly made me hesitate. Finality never came easy for me. Permanence flooded me with too much emotion. Jack took my momentary silence as hesitation over this decision.
And I realized in that moment, he’d never really known me. I’d never let him.
“Brenna, the distance has been hard, but when you move back to Chicago—”
“I don’t know when I’ll move back to Chicago,” I cut him off, the words stunning him into silence. “I’ve got the house and the business here, and my sister to think about. If this was right, we should be able to survive the distance.”
“We would’ve survived the distance if you prioritized our relationship,” he said. “You couldn’t even bother to make the one trip you planned, which was apparently to break up with me.”
Why had I lied to myself for so long? I knew what being desperately in love felt like. The rush of warmth and safety. The torment when I, rightly or wrongly, perceived we weren’t on the same page. But with Jack, I stopped being affected. The absenceof feeling for an HSP was glaringly and unmistakably obvious, because all we did wasfeel. It spelled the end of our relationship.
