Jordan #3
“Maybe you should be.”
He blinks at me.
“What?” he says.
“This is my home. I’ve never lived anywhere else.
Same city, same street, same house. My whole life.
I raise my son. I have a dead-end job. I’ve barely left the state.
I don’t even have a fucking passport. You’re…
You jump between places on a whim and have adventures and freedom, so why would you ever give that up? ”
He looks downright perplexed now.
“Do you… Is that what you want to do? Travel? Because we can. We’ll get you a passport tomorrow if that’s what you want.”
“Not me! You!”
He drags his hand through his hair, whirls around, then turns back to face me. “You need to help me out a bit now, because I have to be honest, I’m not following at all anymore.”
“I want you to be happy!” I snap.
“I am! Job well done.”
“No. What makes you happy is not being here. And I want you to be happy, so you have to do what makes you happy, which means you have to leave.”
He’s staring at me again.
“Oh my fucking God,” he eventually mutters. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No.”
“Then you want me to stay?”
“No!”
I’m aware all sanity has left the building. I am aware.
“Jordy,” he says, and he’s starting to sound just a bit frustrated with me, and I get it.
I watch him push the feelings down.
“Then what do you want?” he asks, far more gently than I deserve.
“I…”
I want to say it.
Stay. Stay with me. Don’t go. Don’t leave. Be with me.
I can’t get the words out, and even if I did, what would be the point? I don’t want him to stay because I want him to stay. I want him to stay because he wants to stay.
“Jordy,” he says, gently again, “what do you want?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. It never does.”
“Jordy—” he says again.
“I’m going home!” I snap. “I… I can’t do this right now.”
It’s the only possible thing to do, because with every word I keep making it worse and worse, and there’s no rain falling, and I’m dangerously close to crying.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, we’ll go home, yeah? And we’ll—”
“No. I’m going home.”
He looks hurt. Sounds hurt. It barely registers, concealed by the ugly pettiness inside me that says it’s his fault anyway.
“I’ll get you a cab.” He’s already raising his arm.
“I’ll walk.”
Still petty.
“Jordy…” He sighs.
“I’ll see you,” I bite out, then I turn around, and walk away.
By the time I make it home, the pettiness is gone. Instead, I’m just cold, miserable, and ashamed about losing my shit so epically.
It’s late, but all the lights are still on, and voices carry toward the hallway from the living room. It’s as sharp a contrast as can be to the minutes I spent losing my shit in the cold at Milán.
The undercurrent of panic is still there, but it’s overshadowed by the intense guilt and shame of unloading all my insecurities on Milán and then running away.
I handled it all as if I was deliberately picking the absolute worst way to do it.
I make my way toward the living room, where Theo and Rory are sitting on the floor, controllers in hand, battling it out with Sutton, who’s lounging on the couch. Wren is tucked in next to Sutton with his sketchpad.
No one else notices me, but Wren lifts his head. He starts to smile, but then whatever he sees on my face makes his brows knit into a frown while he slowly tilts his head to the side. He gets up in the middle of some intense battle scene on the screen and comes to me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Still up?”
Wren glances back before he rolls his eyes. “They’ve been at it for hours. Just a bunch of nerds.”
“I heard that,” Sutton says without taking his eyes off the screen.
“I didn’t say it that quietly, so I don’t know if that’s something to brag about,” Wren says over his shoulder before he concentrates back on me. This time he lowers his voice. “What’s with the long face?”
“Genetics?”
“Uh-huh.”
The next moment, I find myself being escorted to the hallway and pushed down to sit on the stairs.
“Where’s your sidekick?” Wren asks.
“My what?”
He gives me a look and waits.
I sigh.
“I,” I say in my most measured tone, “said some things.” That’s about as long as my composure lasts before I lean forward and press my fingertips to my eyes. Wren sits down next to me, his shoulder pressed against mine, and waits.
“Did you?”
I groan and squeeze my eyes shut even tighter before I blow out a breath and lean my elbows on my knees.
“I have no clue what the fuck I’m doing.”
“That’s rare,” Wren says.
“It sucks.” I rub my hand over my mouth and glance at him. “I don’t know how you regular people manage on a day-to-day basis.”
“You get used to it and then really good at dealing with it?” Wren offers with a barely hidden smirk.
“Clearly I missed that step, because I just lost my shit on Milán in a pretty epic way.”
“Because…?”
I clutch the back of my neck.
“Turns out I might have a few issues with abandonment.”
He snorts. “Yeah, no shit.”
I stare at my hands.
“He’s leaving.”
“Milán?”
I nod.
“How come?”
I shrug. “Getting back to his old life. Aiden told me. It’s a deal they had. He’d stay for a year, and then he’s free.”
Wren frowns.
“Why would—”
A sudden clatter makes me whip my head around. Rory’s standing behind us, a startled look on his face. He’s backed straight into a narrow console table that stands by the wall, right underneath a mirror.
“Sorry,” he says, just a bit flustered. “Sorry. I was… Milán didn’t come back with you?”
“No.” I wonder how much he heard. I hope not too much. I put on a smile. “He’s still at the bar with Aiden. Keeping an eye on him. Aiden’s in a celebratory mood.”
Rory stays very still for a bit.
“And you?”
I’m pretty sure he heard what I said, but if I squint hard enough, I can pretend he didn’t. I’m sure of it. That’s how it works, isn’t it? Can I just have something that’s under control in this miserable-ass day?
“Was getting too tired to keep my eyes open,” I say. “You two should be getting off to bed, too. It’s getting late.”
“Yeah, probably,” Rory says. “Plus, Dog always gets up early.”
“Crack of dawn.” I nod and smile.
He sends me a small smile of his own before he goes back to the living room. My eyes stay on him until he disappears around the corner. There’s a tickling sensation in the back of my brain, but why that is stays behind a hazy wall of exhaustion.
Wren and I are both silent well after the boys have barreled past us to their room and all the lights have been turned off.
Sutton stops next to us, surveying the situation for a second before he lowers his head and gives Wren a quick, soft kiss on the lips.
“I’ll be upstairs,” he murmurs.
Then it’s just me and Wren again. I’ve always seen Wren as my brother, ever since I met Kira and him all those years ago. All things considered, he’s more mine than Kira’s at this point.
“I remember that day you found out about Kira leaving. The email?” Wren says.
I turn my head to look at him, blinking slowly. “Are we reliving my greatest hits or something?”
His lips tilt up in the corners, and his eyes shine in the darkness of the hallway.
“You were increasingly reasonable. All these rational conversations about how you two were going to make it work… All very sensible.”
I clutch the back of my neck. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t this time. Not even close to rational.”
Do you want me to leave?
No.
Then you want me to stay?
No!
Safe to say rational is not a word that could ever be used to describe that conversation. I don’t think sane applies either.
Wren nods like he hears my thoughts.
“Maybe there’s a reason?” he says it gently. So, so gently. Like he’s not sure how the insinuation will go down.
I close my eyes and let out a tired snort of laughter. “Maybe,” I whisper.
When I look around, Milán’s absence is everywhere. I want him here. Even if he’s probably pissed at me. Annoyed, at the very least.
Way to make yourself look like an even halfway enticing option.
“Go to bed,” Wren tells me. “Things have a habit of looking better in the morning.”
I nod.
Even though I don’t believe him.
I go to bed and listen to the house and the city settle all around me.
I count flashes of light from the headlights of the cars passing outside my window like they’re sheep, but sleep doesn’t come.
It’s quiet enough that I start to imagine sounds.
There’s a point when I’m sure somebody’s walking on the stairs, but when I go to look, heart beating loudly, impossible hope raging in my chest, there’s nothing.
At four in the morning, eyes gritty, brain fuzzy, I give up. I go to my closet and dig out the T-shirt Milán sometimes wears when he stays the night and pull it over my head.
A few minutes later, I pull the collar over my nose.
I lie very still and inhale the faint scent of him that clings to the fabric.
Maybe he can just occasionally mail me one of his shirts after he’s gone, so I can continue being pathetic in the middle of the night?
I wish he was here. I wish he was here so desperately it hurts. If he was here we could figure this out. Think of something. Some way to make us work.
There’s an annoying voice in the back of my head that scoffs with derision. A compromise, it says snidely. God knows those make people happy. And maybe it’s better to end it now anyway. A sharp cut instead of a dull blade. Because eventually Milán is going to leave anyway.
Only… a year is a long time. And I’m not looking for plane tickets.
He’s happy.
I don’t know how I know it. Maybe I’m projecting. Maybe it’s just me who’s happy. I don’t know. I never asked him.
But then… isn’t it worth finding it out?
For the thousandth time, I pick up my phone from the nightstand. For the thousandth time, I open my messages and start to type. For the thousandth time, I delete the words.
I drop the phone on my chest.
Stare at the ceiling some more.
When the phone starts buzzing on my chest. I nearly drop it from sheer surprise and then scramble to pick it up when I see Milán’s name on the screen.
“Hello?” My heart is so loud I feel it beating in my mouth.
There’s a beat of silence. The second stretches, terrifyingly long.
“Hey.”
I close my eyes from sheer relief.
“Hey,” I say because my head is empty of words. I have so many, but they’re trapped somewhere out of my reach.
“You’re up,” Milán says.
“Yeah.”
He blows out a breath. “I know you might not want to see me right now, and maybe you need more space or more—”
“I don’t.” The words rush out. “I don’t want any of that.”
There’s a soft chuckle on the other end of the line, and I close my eyes and let the sound move through me.
“I’m getting dressed.” I’m already halfway to my closet. “I’m coming to you. Give me twenty.”
“Jordy,” he says with another soft chuckle, “I’m already here.”
My hoodie dangles from my fingers while I whirl around because I’m stupid enough to expect him to somehow appear in my bedroom out of thin air.
“Where?” I ask, frantically looking around.
“Outside.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I toss my phone onto the bed. I make too much noise sprinting down the stairs, but I don’t care. I pull the front door open and hurry outside.
He’s standing right outside my door, dressed in last night’s clothes, a careful look in his eyes when he watches me.
He holds his arms out and gives a helpless shrug.
There are so many things I have to say. So many things I want to say. Instead, I go to him and wrap myself around him as tightly as I can. We stand outside my house, impossibly early in the morning, and hug.
The soles of my bare feet are cold on the concrete, and I’m wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs and a T-shirt.
He pushes his face into my neck. Lips whisper over my skin, and I slump against him.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I should’ve told you.”
“There’s a chance I wouldn’t have taken it well anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I say. “I missed you.”
There’s so much to say. So much to talk about and discuss and figure out.
I step back and take his hand.
“Come inside,” I tell him.
He squeezes my hand and follows me.