FIFTY
JORDIE
“We’re not anything, Leith. You’re reading too much into this.”
I keep my back to him. Keep my hands busy, stacking mugs I already stacked.
“Sure,” he says, tone flattening into a blade. “That’s why you make him coffee while he paces your kitchen, speaking Mandarin, calls you sweetheart, and kisses you goodbye like it’s his morning routine.”
I shrug like it’s no big deal. Like it hasn’t been unspooling inside me for months. “People do that. It doesn’t always mean something.”
Leith goes still.
Which, on him, is never a good sign.
“God, Jordie. Do you hear yourself?” he says softly. “The man’s rearranging his whole bloody life around you, and you’re still talking like this is weather. You know what that makes you?”
I slam the cloth down, whirl to face him, “What, then?!”
“Cruel. You’re being fucking cruel.”
The word lands harder with how calmly he says it.
Worse—he’s not wrong.
I snatch the cloth back up and turn away, scrubbing again with the intensity of someone sanding a bench down to raw wood.
“This isn’t your concern,” I mutter.
“You’re right,” he says. “It’s not.”
A beat.
Then he steps closer.
“But Callum is. Because I happen to like him. And because watching you do this to him is rapidly becoming one of my least favourite hobbies.”
I flinch.
When I don’t speak, he goes on.
“I don’t give a flying fuck who you sleep with,” he says. “I care that it’s someone who actually gives a damn about you. Someone who—God help him—is already deep enough to drown while you’re too busy protecting yourself.”
I grip the cloth harder.
“Or maybe you think you’re protecting him,” he continues, eyes narrowing at me. “But you’re not. You’re keeping him close enough to hope, and far enough to never have a chance. That’s not selfless, Jordie. That’s just unfair.”
“That is not true, Leith!” I turn, bracing my palms on the counter. “Every choice I’ve made is to give him a fair chance at normalcy. I’m choosing not to let this grow roots so it’s easier for him to walk away. I’m choosing not to commit so I can spare him from a future I can’t give.”
He cants his head. His gaze on me is unrelenting. “You talk a big game of choice for someone who’s taken Callum’s right to make one.”
“That’s not—” The words snag like barbed wire in my throat. “This is me being kind.”
In the most fucked-up way I know how.
“No,” Leith says, shaking his head. “This is you deciding unilaterally that loving you would be a poor investment.”
I stare at him.
Because what do you even say to that when your best friend rightly reaches into your ribcage and comes back holding the exact ugly thing you were trying not to name?
Leith exhales through his nose, like he’s reining in six harsher things he could say.
“Fine,” he says. “You want to talk about choices? Then choose to let Callum in. All the way. Let him love you. And stop punishing yourself like you don’t deserve it.”
I swallow hard, shaking my head.
“Or,” Leith adds, “choose to let him go. End it. Stop pretending you’re doing him a favor when all you’re doing is gutting him with false hope.”
My throat burns. “Both options hurt, Leith.”
He nods as though he’s known that all along.
“I know. But not choosing is still a choice,” he says. “And it hurts just as badly.”
He doesn’t wait for a reply.
Leith picks up his coffee. Walks out the door. No glance back. No parting shot.
Only silence. And me, alone in a kitchen full of invisible crumbs and choices I don’t know how to make.
It’s been nine days of highly strategic, meticulously calibrated avoidance.Not enough to raise suspicion. Just enough to shift sideways out of theaters, off the anesthetic roster, away from the path of one very tall, very perceptive city doctor.
I told Rhonda I didn’t mind picking up afternoons in pediatrics. She looked at me as if I’d grown a halo.
The truth’s more cowardly.
I’m just buying time.
A text buzzes as I finish updating the chart on a kid hopped up on paracetamol and apple juice.
Callum
Haven’t seen you in theaters. Where are you hiding?
I stare at the screen. Thumb poised.
Jordie
Flu’s taking out peds nurses. I’ve been deployed to the snot-and-glitter trenches.
Technically true.
Just not the full syllabus.
Because if I had to write it honestly, it’d read:
“I don’t know what to do with us.”
Leith’s words keep flashing up like emotional pop-ups I can’t close: “Let him love you. Or let him go.”
So, I stay here.
Suspended.
A little lost.
A lot scared.
Still opening Callum’s texts.
And worse . . . replying.
My phone reads 1:03 a.m., 28th November.
I’m still at my desk, legs folded beneath me, cramping. A heat pack long since gone cold is tucked behind my spine.
The house is still. So quiet, the hum of my desk lamp feels louder than it should.
In front of me: a vintage copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese. The paper is soft, yellowed at the edges. A little like heartbreak, pressed into pages.
My pen hovers beside Sonnet 43. I write the time in the margin. Highlight the sonnet I’ve read more times that I can count tonight.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . .
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach—
Beside each line, I scribble my own version. My annotations line the side like I’m studying for an exam in grief. Or a love confession.
My phone dings.
CALLUM
Guess who unlocked a new track on the new Mario Kart. Consider yourself invited to lose. Come tomorrow? ????
Of course he’s awake. Probably deep in a victory lap, grinning over the new game version he pre-ordered months ago.
I stare at the screen. Thumb hovering.
Type: “can’t. sorry.”
The cursor blinks. Waiting. I can’t bring myself to hit send.
It hurts saying no. Pushing him back. Pretending I don’t want to go when every part of me does.
Still . . . he keeps showing up. Keeps texting. Keeps inviting me in like I haven’t spent the last week distancing myself from him.
“I’ll always choose you,” he said.
Maybe he meant that. Maybe I don’t believe all of it. Not yet. But maybe I believe enough to try.
I backspace the message.
Type one word instead: “yes.”
And hit send.
I tuck my lunch container into my bag, slotting it beside the vintage Sonnets from the Portuguese—the one with exactly one section annotated, the one I’m planning to give to Callum later.
I walk out of the lunchroom—and spot Callum. Freshly shaven. Navy scrubs. A chart. And a teddy bear.
I blink. “What are you doing here?”
He grins, “Pre-op consult. Eight-year-old, supracondylar fracture.” He lifts the bear. “Bribery.”
I glance at it. The thing’s got its arm bandaged, tucked in a sling fashioned out of popsicle sticks and tape.
“There’s even real suture under that,” he adds. “Figured if I’m asking her to trust me, the bear should go first.”
I hover by the counter as he steps into the room.
Through the window, I watch Callum kneel beside the bed, holding out the teddy bear.
The little girl eyes him warily, clutching the blanket to her chest—but something in his voice makes her pause.
She reaches for the bear. He offers her the strawberry-scented mask next, and she leans forward, curious now, her grip loosening on the blanket as he talks to her in that calm, steady way only he can.
My shift ends in two hours.
And suddenly, I’m undecided again.
My feet carry me down the corridor, out through the glass doors, into the soft, honey-gold light of early evening. I pull out my phone and type a quick message to Callum—on my way—thumb hovering just long enough to feel the weight of it, then hitting send before I can overthink it.
I slip my phone into my pocket and lift my head.
I see Alec and Grace.
Outside. Standing close. She’s glowing, hand resting on the swell of her belly, the other holding a bouquet of roses. He kisses her temple, then bends and presses a kiss to her stomach. She holds out a sonogram, and he cradles it with the kind of reverence I used to ache for.
It’s so unbearably beautiful, it hurts.
The world doesn’t tilt or shatter. It just goes very, very still.
And suddenly, the book in my bag feels like an anvil and heading over to Callum’s apartment feels a whole lot of wrong.
I knock once, then hear the telltale sounds of blue-shell carnage and dramatic victory fanfare through the door.
He swings it open mid-laugh, headphones askew, controller in hand.
“Jun, you need to go to sleep,” he says into the mic, grinning. “We can play on the weekend. Your ayi Jordie’s here and it’s our turn to play now.”
My heart stumbles at that—your ayi.
He winks at me, then into his headset: “Go brush your teeth or I’m telling your mum you rage-quit.”
A tinny, dramatic groan echoes before he ends the call and tosses the headset onto the couch.
“Welcome to the battlefield,” he says, smile crooked. “Hope you’re ready to lose.”
I sink into the couch, controller waiting beside me. The screen glows with the aftermath of his latest victory—Luigi in first place, confetti raining down. Jun’s name is in ninth.
“Maybe you need to cut your ten-year-old nephew some slack,” I mutter.
Callum heads to the fridge, laughing. “Please. I spoil him rotten. Once he made me be Darth Vader for school costume day. Black scrubs, a cape, and a voice-changer helmet that fogged up every time I breathed. Pretty sure I traumatized at least two kids.”
I smile despite myself. “Please tell me there are photos.”
“Phone photos are gone,” he calls. “But there’s a framed one at my cousin’s place. You can gush over it when we visit.”
When, not if.
Like he already sees me there. Beside him. Part of things. Part of them.
And suddenly it feels like every minute I stay is another layer of cement setting around us. Soft at first. Then firm. Then unmovable.
“You’re really good with kids,” I say quietly.
Callum shrugs, returning to the couch, snacks in hand. “Guess I am.” He sets the food down on the coffee table, moving through the motions with an ease that feels well-worn. “I love kids. Always have. I think it’s built in somehow.”
I look at him—this man who wears softness like armor, who spoils his nephew and sutures teddy bears and lets people in without asking for anything in return.
The longer I stay, the more I let him believe I can. The harder it’s going to be to walk away.
The cement’s already setting.
And I’m the one who’s going to have to break it.
My fingers twist in my lap. Then, barely above a whisper, “Actually, Callum . . . you’d make a great dad.”
His eyes soften. And he beams with pride. “Thank y—”
“But not while you’re with me.”