Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Jay
As my feet thud against the concrete, I try to run off the tightness in my shoulders, the leftover sting from the rejection email. Not even for my dream job, but I applied on a whim last week, and it would be something better than the purgatory I’m stuck in now.
I cut around the park, breath puffing out in uneven bursts, when my music cuts off mid-verse. A call flashes across my watch screen. Mom.
Slowing my pace, I tap my earbud. “Olá.”
“Meu filho!” she says, her voice warm enough to cut through the damp chill in the air. “Finalmente atendes o telefone.” You finally answer the phone.
I grin despite myself. “M?e, I spoke to you last week.”
“Dois dias é muito tempo,” two days is a long time, she insists. “Tell me, what are you doing for Thanksgiving this year?”
“Hudson and Daphne will probably have something going on. Liv too,” I say before thinking, and there’s a pause on the other end.
“Liv?” she repeats, her tone immediately changing to that high, suspicious lilt I know too well. “The roommate, yes?”
“She’s also… a friend.” The hesitation in my voice earns me a quiet, knowing mhmm.
“I see. And for Christmas?” she presses. “Vais voltar para casa?” Are you coming home?
I rub the back of my neck, eyes on the wet sidewalk. “I don’t know yet. It’s a nightmare to get time off in December.”
“Natal é família.” Christmas is family. Her voice softens. “Even if you are busy, you make time.”
Homesickness creeps in, uninvited, the memory of noise and overlapping voices, the smell of roasted chestnuts, my mom’s cooking as she hums along to old records while she cooks.
My dad, my siblings, and my nieces and nephews.
A pit forms low in my stomach. Normally, that ache is enough to make me drive there.
But this year feels… different. I feel different.
And I know if I go home, my family will sniff that change out in under five minutes and start asking questions I’m not ready to answer.
“I’ll figure it out,” I tell her, even though I’m not sure what that means yet.
She sighs but lets it go. “Está bem. Just… don’t spend it alone.”
“I won’t.”
“And don’t forget about our anniversary dinner the weekend after.”
I swallow a sigh, knowing I can’t stay away forever. “I haven’t forgotten.”
She says her usual love yous, and when she hangs up, my music continues playing, but I’ve lost the rhythm of the pace in my run now, and I slow to a walk, pull out my phone, and fire off a text to Hudson:
Jay
Hey man, what’s your schedule Thanksgiving week? You playing or can we do a friends thing?
The NFL season’s still in full swing, and his team is doing well. He could be travelling, which would kill the idea before it starts, but I’m almost positive he’s not… maybe we can pull everyone together.
I slip my phone away and start toward home, already running through a mental list of who’d come—Hudson and Daphne, obviously, maybe Quinn and Miles if they aren’t going to Virginia.
Probably not Seb and Indie. Would Liv come?
I tell myself that’s just part of the list, not the reason I’m picturing her sitting next to me.
But I can’t deny that I want to spend more time with her.
My phone buzzes.
Hudson
I’m home this year, we have a game day after, what are you thinking? I can ask Daphne, she’s home from a meeting with her professor in like thirty.
I fire off some ideas I have floating around for a Friendsgiving and wait for him to talk to Daph about it.
Halfway down the block, I remember Liv saying she had a Pilates class tonight in the local sports center.
Without really thinking about it, I veer off my usual route, cut across two streets, and push through the door at Mug Life.
The smell of coffee and cinnamon rolls hits instantly.
I order her a decaf version of her favorite peach tea and step back outside into the cool air.
The cup is cool between my hands, ice melting by the second, as I lean against the wall, eyes flicking to the glass-fronted studio across the street, waiting for her to come out.
When Liv finally steps outside, she’s in an oversized sweatshirt, hair tied in two braids resting on her shoulders, cheeks flushed from the class. She spots me almost immediately, brows lifting in surprise as she crosses the street.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, tucking her mat under one arm.
I hold out the drink. “Figured you might want this.”
She takes it, looking at the label. “Decaf peach iced tea?”
I nod. “You said you were cutting caffeine.”
Her mouth twitches, and she shakes her head. “You remembered. That’s...”
She trails off, eyes flicking away for half a second before she pulls them back to me. There’s something in her face, a tiny crease between her brows, and the pause feels less like surprise and more like she’s not sure what to do with the information.
I shrug, looking down the street as if the traffic suddenly needs my attention, which is ridiculous because I want to be here for her, so I reconnect my eyes with hers.
“I was running by anyway, and this is only your second class, right? Thought you might need a refresher on the best route home since I know Daphne couldn’t make it tonight. ”
She studies me for a beat longer than necessary, and then that guarded flicker is gone, replaced by a half-smile. “Should I be scared that you know my schedule and you’re stalking me now? Am I living with a stalker? This isn’t the first time you’ve known where I am.”
Laughter bubbles out of my throat. “Pretty sure actual stalkers don’t buy their victims tea.”
She grins over the cup as we continue our walk home. “Hmm, maybe you’re just easing me into it. Lulling me into a false sense of security.”
“Right,” I say, deadpan. “Step one: know her caffeine habits. Step two: attend her Pilates classes to walk her home to the apartment we share.”
That earns me a laugh that tickles something just right in my brain.
She looks down at the cup, twisting it lightly in her hand.
“Step three,” she says slowly, still looking at the cup, “make it weirdly hard for me to remember the last time someone did something nice without wanting something in return.”
My steps falter at her words, but I can tell her walls are shooting up after that because her eyes are everywhere but on mine. She waves her hand in front of her face. “Forget I said that, I’m just… tired, I guess, after class.”
“We don’t have to forget it. If you need to talk, I’ve been told I’m a good listener.”
She huffs a quiet laugh, but it’s not dismissive this time. “It’s just… do you really want to listen?”
“I’ve got time,” I say, holding her eye contact.
She takes it all in, and something resolute crosses her face as she nods.
“I don’t want to go full download on you, but I’ve been stuck in this mess where someone made a lot of promises and turned out to be nothing like who they said they were.
I don’t even have feelings for the person anymore, but when you’re in that mindset, it kind of rewires your brain.
Makes you second-guess when someone’s just…
being decent, and I hate second-guessing myself. ”
I glance at her, but she’s still looking ahead, the tea cradled in both hands, her hair curling damply at her temples from the efforts of her Pilates class.
“I’m trying not to be that person who assumes everyone is going to hurt me, but it’s a hard habit to break when I have so much guilt over the situation.”
My mind catches on that last bit. “What do you mean?”
“It’s complicated…” she says and takes a deep inhale. “I kind of accidentally dated a guy who was married, only, I had no idea.”
Secondhand guilt for her twists my gut. “Ah, shit.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up. I was the other woman, the home wrecker, and the one who,” she pauses, inhaling sharply, “hurt a family.”
Her voice trembles on the last word, and it takes every ounce of control I have not to reach for her. She looks ahead instead of at me, jaw tight, eyes somewhere far away.
I want to tell her she doesn’t have to keep looking backward, that she deserves more than the version of herself that man left behind. That she’s coming back to who she thinks she lost without even realizing it.
“Liv, you don’t owe him anything. Not then. Not now. Not ever.”
“You really believe that?”
“I do,” I say. “If he lied, that’s on him. You were honest about what you knew. That doesn’t make you the villain.”
Her shoulders drop a little. “I wish it felt that simple.”
We walk in silence for a while. The streetlights flick on, stretching the shadows along the pavement. She keeps her hands wrapped around the cup, her voice quiet when she speaks again. “You don’t think less of me, do you?”
I shake my head. “No. You got blindsided. You trusted someone who didn’t deserve it. That’s not on you.”
A small smile tugs at her mouth. “You’re making it hard to keep up my ‘men are trash’ streak.”
I huff a laugh. “I’ll take the hit.”
Her mouth twists, but she sips her drink.
“Sometimes my life felt like I was grabbing a pack of Twinkies. You think you know exactly what you’re getting, and then you open it, and it’s Pop-Tarts.
And not even a flavor you like. Suddenly you’re stuck with something you didn’t ask for, and you feel stupid for being excited in the first place.
” The laugh she lets out is brittle. “Is that a stupid analogy?”
There’s a tightness in her jaw that makes me want to say something, or fix this, except I know this isn’t mine to fix. I can listen, though.
“That sounds like hell, I hate Pop-Tarts.” I go for ease instead, but my own jaw flexes at the thought that someone is making her feel this way.
Her mouth curves, but it’s not a smile. “Yeah, me too.”
Pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together, and it’s lodged something uneasy in my chest. Liv doesn’t deserve to uproot her whole life, only to still be haunted by the asshole who treated her like this.
“For what it's worth,” I start and wait until her eyes meet mine. “I’ll never ask for anything in return for your friendship, Liv.”
Her eyes hold mine a beat too long, like she’s weighing whether I’m safe to hand something to, some small, fragile piece of herself she doesn’t pass around freely.
Whatever she finds, it relaxes the edges of her expression enough to make my heart squeeze, before she tucks it away again like it was never there.
Then she bumps my arm with her elbow. “Come on, stalker. Walk me home.”