“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 wassurprised 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.
