“He’s just a friend…” My belly twisted with my lie. I wanted to be honest. I wanted to tell him everything—but I wasn’t ready to hurl myself off the cliff and into the sea of truth.
He nodded.
“Looked like a little more than that. Friends are happy to see each other, Sydney.” He gestured between me and the door. “You two looked like far more than that.” He paused and waited for me to explain. When I didn’t, he came out and asked the question.
“What the hell is going on, Sydney?”
I didn’t answer. We were quiet for a moment, he searching for words, I searching for rescue. But there would be no rescue. There’d be no running. This time, I’d have to face the music. And I was frozen with fear over it.
“How did he know where we live?”
It was a simple question. One I hadn’t considered. Something that slipped my mind completely. In all these years, I’d only ever mentioned E’s name once. I never told Jake we stayed in touch or that I saw him on occasion. As far as Jake knew, I no longer had a friend named E and certainly wasn’t close enough with him for him to know where I lived in Austin.
“Has he been here before?”
Panic boiled inside me. I could feel the tight restriction in my chest, the collapsing of my lungs as the impending doom blanketed me in the hurt that soaked his words.
But it wasn’t impending. It was here. And it was real.
I nodded, and I closed my eyes.
“Holy shit.” He rubbed his face with his hands, and I saw the millions of questions run through his head as he scrambled to grasp one. “How long has this been going on?”
“It’s not like that—”
“Is this why you always came home so depressed? Because of him? Because you’d be with him and have to come back to me and be all screwed up over it?!” He pointedat the door, and more questions came, too fast for him to settle on one.
“Has he… Are you…” He fumbled through his words, and my heart imploded as my stomach did somersaults. Sweat pooled at every crease on my body. I wanted to explain. I felt the truth ripping its way through my body, up my throat, only to fall dead on my tongue. He released a deep breath as he tried to collect himself, his hands interlocked on top of his head. My body trembled with the anxious waves that came over me.
“How long?” he asked, but again I remained silent. I was unable to speak. Unable to answer if I tried—how could I define a time for something that never ended though it never truly began? For something that always was, even when it wasn’t?
He grabbed a stool at the island and collapsed into it, dumbfounded, lost, and completely heartbroken. Betrayed. My stomach rolled in nauseous waves as I watched him endure the agony I had inflicted on him.
“I’m so sorry,” I finally let out. “I’ve made terrible mistakes. Ones I can never come back from. I…” I sobbed. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He took a deep jagged breath. “I don’t even know what you're apologizing for. I don’t know that Iwantto know.”
My lungs quaked, begging for air, but I held my breath to quiet my cries.
“Jake—“
“Are you leaving me?”
“No,” I choked out. My voice was raspy, and my eyes burned, swollen from tears. “I don’t… I just… I didn’t mean for all this…” I looked around for an escape from my convoluted mind, but there was nothing. No door or window I could run through. No shield I could hide behind. I sank my head into my hands and cried. “I’m sorry.”
A dense silence fell on us. And then he asked the hardest question of all. The one I’d spent years avoiding. The one I tried with all my might to undo.
“Do you love him?” He looked at me with the ache of a man who had lost his life’s dream and was looking at the remains. His everything scattered on the floor as if it had never stood to begin with.
“I loveyou,” I cried.
A tear fell from his eye, and he wiped it away with the heel of his hand as he stood.
“Yeah,” he croaked. He placed his hands wide before him, pushing against the counter as he bent forward. His head hung low between his shoulders, defeated.
“I took a different flight to be here.” He sniffed. “I changed my flight to one that had a layover in Austin, just so I could be here for a few hours on your birthday.”
My heart sank at the pain I’d caused the perfect man who loved me so much, whom I loved, and could have loved better, if I were ever whole to begin with. I stood frozen, tongue-tied, and tortured. I did my best to stifle my cries as he sorted out his racing thoughts.
