Chapter Fifteen Happy Anniversary #3
“Yeah.” Owen smiles at him tenderly. “It did.”
“I think you were right, when you said that we’re bad at being exes.” Jacob leans over the table, the shadows on his face shifting when he moves. “Then again, I’m not sure I ever wanted to figure that out in the first place.”
“Can’t say I did either,” Owen admits. “Being single sucks.”
Jacob swallows, something changing in his eyes, the way that he looks at Owen. Like he wants to ask Owen a question. Something
compels Owen to reach across the table, past the small glass candle holder and the salt and pepper shakers, to wrap his hand
around Jacob’s.
“Everything okay?” Owen asks.
“Yeah, yeah. I just . . . I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.” Jacob’s gaze shifts down to the table.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Owen asks softly.
“I told myself that this wasn’t the right thing to do,” he begins to say, which is inspiring all kinds of confidence in Owen. “But I guess I can’t make a big show of this and not tell you.”
“Not unless you want me to throw myself into the ocean.” Owen forces a laugh to break the tension, only half joking. “Now
stop dragging this out. What’s going on?”
“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought . . .” Jacob starts, his eyes focused downward, like he’s so ashamed of what he has
to say that he can’t quite meet Owen’s gaze. “And I think I want to come back.”
It’s not quite an out-of-body experience, but it’s certainly close. Owen processes the words, repeating them to himself over
and over again, unsure if he’s actually heard Jacob correctly. Because he couldn’t have. Right?
“How long have you been thinking about this?” Owen’s not sure he speaks out loud, not really.
“Do you want the truth?” Jacob asks.
Owen nods.
“Since the moment I ended the call. The night we broke up.” Jacob says carefully. “I almost called Dr. Peters, almost told
him that I couldn’t take the job.”
“What stopped you?” Owen asks.
“You did.” Jacob cracks a smile, a genuine one, one that shows off those dimples. “I could just hear your voice, calling me
an idiot for giving up this chance. So I stuck with it, knowing that it’s what you’d probably want me to do.”
It was—it is what Owen wanted Jacob to do.
“Why bring this up now?” Owen asks. “What changed?”
“Seeing you again,” he says to Owen, longing heavy in his words. “It hit me just how much I missed you. And how big of a mistake
it was to leave you behind.”
“Don’t say things like that, Jacob.”
“Why not?” he asks.
“Because . . .” Owen swallows, taking his hand back reflexively. “Because it’s over, we ended things.”
“You’re telling me that if you could go back in time and undo that night, you wouldn’t?”
Owen pauses, knowing the answer. He also knows that it’s not the smart thing to say right now. “You really want to come back
to San Francisco?”
“I could,” Jacob tells him. “I mean, I don’t have a ton in savings, we might be stuck with Kaitlyn and Abigail for a little
bit. I could apply down at Stanford, try my luck at UCSF again; maybe the Academy of Sciences is hiring?”
“After everything we’ve gone through, after you’re finally getting the chance to do the thing you’ve wanted to do. You’d just . . . toss that all away?”
Jacob’s expression shifts to a careful sort of annoyance. “I’m not ‘tossing away’ anything, Owen. I . . . I don’t understand,
I thought that you’d be happy.”
Owen hesitates, guilt stirring in his stomach. “You always do this.”
“Always do what?”
“You’re always so . . . impulsive, ready to move on from one thing to the next, never settling anywhere or giving yourself
time in any one place. You’re doing it again. Except, this time, you’re giving up something that you worked years to achieve. For me?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Jacob insists. “None of it matters.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not there with me,” he finally admits, letting his head hang low. “None of it means a thing if you’re not
in my life, Owen.”
When Jacob looks up again, his deep brown eyes are unsure.
“I would come back to you,” Jacob says. “The moment you ask me to, I’d come running back.”
“You can’t put that on to me, Jacob,” Owen tells him. “I’m not going to be the one to make that choice for you.”
“Well, I can’t make it myself, Owen,” Jacob insists.
“Why not?”
Jacob opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Instead, he shuts his mouth again, ending the staring contest with Owen as he
realizes that his point has been made without him saying a word.
“Because you know where you need to be right now,” Owen says plainly. “You left once,” Owen reminds him, unaware of the way his body pulls away from Jacob until it’s too late. “Who’s to say that you won’t leave again?”
“I won’t,” Jacob says. “I promise you.”
“You’ve made promises before, Jacob.”
Jacob lets out a deep sigh. “I gotta say your reaction isn’t the one I was thinking I’d get.”
“How did you want me to react?”
“I dunno, I thought . . .” he starts to say, his shoulders slouching, hand going to the back of his neck. “I don’t know what
I thought, actually.”
“Which is the reason we broke up in the first place,” Owen tells him. “You don’t like to think before you act. You just . . .
accept things as they come to you and expect other people to follow.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Jacob says, defensiveness obvious in his voice.
“You took that job at Duke without even telling me.” Owen swallows, pressing his thumbnail against the nail of his index finger.
“I didn’t want to be mad, because it was only going to be a few months and you’d been looking for work for so long.” Owen
stops himself from saying more than he means to. “I wasn’t mad, but I was heartbroken, because I didn’t feel like a priority in your life.”
“You’ve always been a priority, Owen.”
Owen can’t help the snort he lets out. “We both know that isn’t true, Jacob.”
“Well, you could’ve come with me. I think you would’ve really liked Dover, it’s peaceful.”
“Yeah, maybe I would’ve loved it.” Owen nods, scratching at the table with his nail. “But I didn’t want to leave my city.”