Chapter 24 #2
Her smile forms against my lips, a pleased, satisfied thing, and I kiss her once more before I slip into the bathroom to clean up, returning to do the same to her.
A string pulls taut between us, tugging me back to her every time I step too far. I don’t know how I’m supposed to cut the cord so soon.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, finding a shirt and offering it to her. “We could get something to eat.”
The fabric hangs off her in swaths, bunching at her thighs when she crawls back into bed.
“Can I use your phone to order us food? Mine’s dead,” Sofía asks. “I don’t want to go out into the heat.”
“The code is 1419.” I drop my cell into her hand, followed by a charger. “Order whatever you want.”
The bedroom is eerily quiet as I shave, and when I return, Sofía is curled in on herself, staring blankly at the screen.
“Can’t decide?” I ask, dropping behind her on the bed and wrapping my arms around her shoulders. She tenses beneath me, and alarm bells blare in my mind. I sweep away her wet hair, kissing the column of her throat before leaning my chin on her shoulder. “What’s on your mind?”
“Who is Grace?”
The blood drains from my face.
I thought I had more time—time to work through what I wanted to say, how to say it, how to spin myself as someone desirable after she knows the truth.
“She texted you,” she continues, voice wooden as she lifts the phone in my direction. “Misses you and wants to know how you are.”
In a panic, I swat the phone out of her hand and onto the floor. Sofía’s head jerks to the left, and she stares, wide-eyed and confused.
“Too bad,” I declare.
“What?”
I slow down my words to make myself clear. “I do not care if Grace misses me. At all. RIP to her.”
Her eyebrows rise.
“She’s not dead, just dead to me.”
“So Grace is not your secret East Coast girlfriend you go to visit every two weeks when you have a business trip to New York?”
Uh…that is a specific scenario.
“No,” I confirm. “Grace was my…last girlfriend. I was with her for about five years before we broke up.”
I didn’t think Sofía’s muscles could get any tighter, but they do, and I release her to avoid the pit in my stomach from swallowing me whole. I’ve never had to do this—never gotten far enough in dating that I had to share this shameful truth.
The idea of telling her how it ended, of her seeing me in the same frame as Grace…it terrifies me. More than the plummet off the side of a plane or cage diving with great white sharks.
Power.
Sofía holds absolute power over me—to destroy me with a few dismissive words. Not even Grace had that. I was crushed, sure, but the devastation Sofía could leave in her wake would be catastrophic. And I’m too far gone to turn back now.
I slide back on the bed, leaning against the headboard, with her sitting between my outstretched legs. She doesn’t face me when she says, “Five years is a long time.”
“It is.”
“You didn’t want to marry her?”
The silence in the room is deafening. “I did. She didn’t.”
My reply snaps the tension, and Sofía whips around, shock marring her pretty features. The brown of her irises glimmers in the room’s low light, and I get lost in her subtle freckles, connecting each dot like a constellation of stars.
“You proposed to her?”
I hum, any real response caught in my throat.
“And she said no?” Sofía continues. She chuffs—loudly. “Well, that was stupid.”
For a long minute, her words don’t register. I chalk it up to shock. But then the ringing in my ears starts, and my fingertips tingle, anxiety and shame churning in my gut.
It’s one thing to daydream about scenarios—to make up hypothetical conversations in your head to prepare for a response—but it’s another to cling to hope that all of those situations are wrong, only to find out the reality is far worse than the daydream.
She’s speaking, lips moving, but the words are muted as my mind spins.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Her hand grazes my calf, and her voice becomes clear again.
“Jett?” Panic laces her voice.
With as much courage as I can muster—which, at present, is negligible—I whisper, “I don’t think it’s stupid to want to spend your life with somebody, even if they don’t feel the same.”
Sofía studies me, her head tilting before recognition flashes across her face and she crawls to me. “I think she’s stupid, not you. Foolish of her to let you go.”
A kernel of hope plants roots within my heart—a pesky thing I don’t know how to eradicate. It’s been growing, taking shape as the days pass by.
“Will you tell me more?” she asks. “About you and Grace, I mean.”
My eyelids flutter shut, and I lean my head against the headboard. Her fingers press into my thigh muscles, a reassuring touch. There’s no way out except through. This either changes her perception or it doesn’t. Resigned to that, I take a hard, deep breath.
“We started dating freshman year of high school. She was my next-door neighbor. We were inseparable, spent every waking moment together until we graduated. We went to different universities, though, and I think that’s where the differences began.
It was harder and harder to talk to her.
She was always busy. The time difference.
Classes. Always some excuse. When I came back for the holidays, she was distant.
After I dropped out and the channel started taking off, I thought it was the logical next step.
I loved her. And I thought she loved me. ”
Sofía perches on my lap, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. The look in her eyes is soft, understanding.
“But it wasn’t the denial that hurt the most, it was what followed,” I breathe.
“The brutal truth about how she had grown to perceive me. Somewhere along the way, I became the opposite of what she wanted. She wanted someone to provide for her, who had stability and security. Someone with a bright future. I was—am—none of those things.”
It’s hard to choke the words out, to present the insecurities to someone else—someone I admire and am carving room for in my heart—and allow them to lay judgment.
“Have you dated anyone since?”
The question surprises me, and from the way her head tilts, I don’t hide it well. I’ve never been great at shielding my emotions, and Sofía sees more than most, always watching, anticipating what others may need.
“Doug and Molly tried to set me up with someone from their dance class, but that date didn’t go so well.”
“Oh?”
“I took her to a sushi restaurant. She had a deadly allergy to shellfish. No one told me.”
Sofía tips her head back in loud, shocking laughter, the strength of it shaking both of our bodies. She wheezes in a long breath. “I’m so sorry,” she chokes out before another fit of giggles hits her. “Allergic to shellfish,” she yells, hitting my bicep.
It’s impossible not to join in on her infectious joy, even if it’s at my expense. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life than when she texted me from the front of the restaurant to tell me. Barely made it through the date, I was so mortified.
She did not call after.
“Do you still love Grace?” she asks.
I mull over the question, waiting for some sort of guilt or betrayal to hit at the immediate response that flashes in my brain. When I experience neither, I offer her an answer.
“I—no. I think at the time, I thought it was love. I’m not so sure now.”
“Well, for what it’s worth,” she mumbles, “I think she was wrong. I think you are all of those things and a million more.”
It’s worth a whole damn lot.
For a long while, she says nothing more, simply sits in my lap and plays with the ends of my hair, creating a loose braid. I revel in the quiet contentment, soaking in the moment before this is all gone.
It’s not a thought I allow to linger. If I do, it might crush me. I’m not ready to accept the end, not until I’m confident there’s no other option for us.
Because there’s one thing I didn’t tell her.
I’m not so sure I was in love with Grace because it doesn’t hold a candle to how I feel about Sofía.