36. Jack
Chapter 36
Jack
T he intensity with which girls rallied around each other had always made me a little jealous. Morgan hadn’t even known Fatima for a year, but the way she’d glued herself to Fatima’s side, one might have thought they’d shared a womb.
After eleven years together, Fatima and Jared had broken up. Or, if Morgan’s secondhand account were anything to go by, Jared had dumped Fatima out of the blue. When I’d questioned that – I’d been friends with Jared after all – the ferocity with which Morgan insisted that’s how it was had me backing down instantly.
I was glad that Fatima had the others, but I was worried about Jared, too. He’d seemed so tired when I’d seen him at Chloe’s party; if I hadn’t been so distracted, I might have followed up. I felt I owed it to him to give him the benefit of the doubt. So whilst Morgan worked on gala prep from Fatima’s a couple of days after it happened, I took advantage of a few minutes alone on my deck and called Jared.
“Hey, man,” he said as he answered, and if I’d thought he looked tired at Chloe’s party, he sounded like he had one foot in the grave.
“Hey, mate,” I said, sitting forward in my seat. “You don’t sound so great.”
“I don’t feel so great,” he said, punctuating with a sad chuckle. “It’s been a shit few days. Few months, really.”
“Was it the long distance?” I asked, beelining straight to the point. I knew I should have been a bit more subtle, maybe worked up to it, but the moment I’d heard the news, I’d made it about Morgan and me. About her job hunt, and the fact that we might soon be in the same position.
“Um, sort of,” he said. “I mean, it’s not been great. I really don’t recommend it.”
My shoulders sank, and I sat back against the rocking chair. “I can imagine.”
“I got the job I wanted,” he said. “Manager.”
“That’s great!” I said, but then I remembered what he’d told me at Chloe’s birthday. “Wait, wasn’t that the promotion that was supposed to bring you back? Did you leave the company?”
I heard him sigh on the other end of the line. “Not the company, mate. The country.”
It turned out that manager roles at smaller regional offices were super competitive; not only was he competing against other people from that office, but from others who wanted to move out of the city. His only hope of getting it would have been to commute to Birmingham and go for the role there, or to move to a different city. And when the opportunity had presented itself for him to transfer to America, he’d taken it. San Francisco, to be specific.
“Jesus, man,” I said, trying to sound supportive.
“I know. It’s been so wild.”
“I’m kind of surprised, actually,” I said, deciding to be honest. “When I talked to you a few weeks ago, you guys seemed fine. You were even talking about moving back here to be with her. What changed?”
Jared was quiet for a long time, and I was on tenterhooks waiting for his reply as if it was a portent for my own future.
“I guess I just got honest with myself,” he said. “I loved Fatima. I still do, obviously. But I didn’t want to live in a small town. That was her thing. I just wanted to be with her. And when I asked myself if I was okay giving up everything else I wanted for her, the answer was no. And I can’t be mad at myself about that.”
Well I can , I thought, but helpfully I kept that to myself, settling for “fair enough” instead. And it was fair enough, I supposed. If he didn’t love her enough that she made up for everything else, it was better that he was gone.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, quietly enough that I almost didn’t hear him.
“I don’t know, really,” I said. “Morgan’s been over there a lot, but she hasn’t told me much. Says Fatima’s being pretty stoic about it.”
“Hey, you two finally got together!” he said, and he sounded genuinely happy for a moment. “Good for you, man.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It happened the night I saw you, actually.”
“That’s awesome,” he said. “You really deserve it, man.”
We talked a bit more about where he’d be in San Francisco, and I told him that the next time he was around, we should get a drink. That he had a friend in me still. And he did; I didn’t like the idea that he was public enemy number one because of a decision he’d made for what, from the sound of it, was a perfectly valid reason.
But as I hung up the call, I didn’t feel better. I felt so much worse. Because as well as I understood Jared’s decision, I knew that, if Morgan and I went the same way, I was going to be the one heartbroken at home.
For the first time since Morgan and I had got together, I felt terrified. The weight began to pool in my stomach like it had every time she’d tried to get close to me. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the thought that Morgan and I might just have an expiry date.
* * *
No one was surprised when Fatima cancelled our session on Monday. We talked about going to the pub still, but Chloe thought it would be better to just pretend that Monday didn’t exist, and to come back swinging the next week. Fatima insisted she’d be okay by then, though I knew she wouldn’t actually be okay for a long time. I didn’t suspect it was possible to get over an eleven year relationship in a week.
We were only three days out from the gala, and I knew Morgan had freelance work to do, too, but she insisted she’d accounted for the game in her planning. She wanted to go on another little adventure – “get some last-minute XP before our trip”, she said – so I picked out a spot for us to do some stargazing. But come Monday, the classic British weather made an appearance.
“If you wanted to have the river to ourselves,” I said as we both looked out her front window at the rain, “this would actually be the perfect weather for some kayaking.”
“I think I’ll pass,” she said, screwing her face up, but not looking up from her phone, where I could see her posting some of her recent freelance work on her social media. It was my turn to pull a face; maybe it was my post-Aria prejudice, but it bothered me how obsessively she would check her “post performance” each day.
“Oh come on,” I said. “You’ve never done it before. That’s worth at least five hundred XP for sure.”
Morgan shook her head. “Nope, no thanks. You go for it, though.”
I frowned when I saw her open up a new post and start editing one of her recent designs for it. Was she really going to stay home and post promotional material when she’d been the one to ask me to plan an adventure? Sure, it wasn’t the one I’d initially thought of, but it wasn’t like I was asking to go skydiving. And honestly, I really liked the sound of the idea. I hadn’t been on a solo adventure in months; Morgan and I had been practically attached at the hip, certainly since getting together, and realistically before that, too. So the idea of having the river to myself wasn’t the worst sounding way to spend the evening.
“Yeah, okay,” I said, talking myself into it. “I think I will.”
“Wait, what?” Morgan snapped her gaze to me. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Why not?”
“Um, let’s see, because it’s raining? Because it’s not safe?”
I laughed softly. “I’ll be fine,” I said, reaching out a hand to squeeze her shoulder, but she dodged it, sliding out of her seat instead.
“Fine,” she said as she put her phone face-down on the seat, “but I don’t like being manipulated like this, Jack.”
It took me a moment to realise what she meant. “I wasn’t trying to manipulate you into coming,” I insisted. “I just wanted to push you, because you’re the one who said you wanted to do something interesting.”
“Well excuse me for having my own ideas about what I do and don’t want that to look like,” she snapped.
Unlike our little spat over the weekend after she’d met my family, there was a real bite to her words now. It sucked the air out of the room. I was trying to decide how to respond when she sighed and plopped back down onto the seat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was a bit intense.”
“Yeah, a bit,” I said. “You okay?”
She snapped her gaze up to look at me. “Why, because I must not be okay if I disagree with you about something?” Almost immediately, the intensity drained from her eyes, and she brought her hand to her forehead. “Sorry, I did it again.”
I’d learned my lesson; I stayed quiet this time. I just sat down next to her and put a hand on her knee, stroking it with my thumb.
“I’m just so stressed about the gala, and about work in general…”
“What else is going on?” I asked.
“Well, this promotion,” she said. “If everything goes well on Thursday, I’ll get Aaron’s job. But the problem is, I kind of hate his job.”
“Yeah, but didn’t you hate your job before, too?”
“That’s kind of the point,” she said, shrugging. “That’s why I’ve been trying to find a new one.”
So she had been actively applying. Maybe even interviewing. Even since we got together, from the sound of it.
“How far have you gotten with that?” I asked, trying to sound as casual as possible, but I was no longer breathing.
Morgan looked up at me, her eyebrows pressed together. I wasn’t fooling her. “Pretty far, actually,” she said. “I’ve got a final interview booked with one in a week.”
“One of the ones I sent you?” I asked, looking down at my hand on her knee to try to keep from giving myself away, but my voice was starting to shake.
Morgan nodded.
“Which one?”
It took her several seconds to answer, during which she swallowed hard and looked down as well, placing her hand over mine, lacing our fingers together.
“The software company,” she said. “The one in York.”
Whoomp, there it is.
“You’re thinking about moving to York?” I asked, and I didn’t even try to hide the disbelief in my voice. I felt my hand tense on her knee, so I yanked it away before she could feel it.
“You sent it to me,” she said, still calm, but not really answering my question. Which I guessed was a question in and of itself.
“Yeah, I know I did,” I said. I sort of hated Past Jack for basically giving her the green light to leave me, but I also knew we probably wouldn’t have got together had I not extended that olive branch. But knowing that didn’t make it sting any less.
“This doesn’t change anything between us,” she said, reaching out for my hand, but I moved it away. I wouldn’t hold her hand whilst she explained how it was okay that she was possibly moving hundreds of miles away.
“How can you say that?” I asked, running my fingers through my hair, holding my head in my hands. “Of course things will change. We’ve spent almost every night together for over a month.”
“That’s not fair,” she said, and I still didn’t look at her, but I could hear the scowl in her voice, all hard consonants and over-enunciation.
“You know what’s not fair? You not telling me about this until now.”
“I didn’t want to freak you out if it wasn’t going to happen,” she said, her voice cracking slightly.
“Oh, so you admit that you knew it would freak me out,” I said. “Which means some part of you knows that things have changed. Or at least they have for me. Have I been deluding myself about what this is?” I gestured back and forth between us.
She shook her head. “You’re the one that sent me the listing to begin with. I’m not letting you make me feel bad for following the course you laid out for me.”
“That’s not what I was doing,” I said, but she held up a hand to stop me.
“I can’t do this right now,” she said. “It’s a moot point until I know if I’ve even gotten the job.”
Morgan moved to the sofa and opened her laptop; clearly the conversation was over. I didn’t want it to be, and I knew I could push it, and the spat could turn into an all-out fight. I could feel it brewing and knew it would happen eventually, one way or another.
But as I watched her instantly lock into whatever she was doing on her laptop – probably more gala prep, or freelance work – I could tell how overloaded she felt. How one more straw might break her back in two. And as strongly as I felt about the conversation we needed to have, I didn’t want to be that straw. To risk pushing her further away. I could press pause instead.