The officiant was Marcos’ friend, a woman with kind eyes and the good sense not to make this about herself. She started with the vows, and this was where it usually got generic. Love was patient. Love was kind. Love was a fucking greeting card.
But Daniel stepped up and his voice shook. He was about to be honest.
“I can’t promise this will be easy,” he said. “I’ve been married before. I know what easy looks like. I know what the first year feels like when you’re in it. And I know what the fifth year feels like when you’re realizing you built something on a foundation of assumptions instead of truth. I can’t promise I’ll never get scared. I can’t promise I won’t want to run sometimes. But I promise that when you’re unlovable, and we all havethose weeks, those months, I’ll love you anyway. I promise to stay when staying is harder than leaving. I promise that you won’t have to be perfect for me to choose you.”
He was crying now, which made Marcos cry, which set off a domino effect through the audience. And I was standing in the back, clipboard against my chest, and something was cracking open in my ribs.
That wasn’t about love. That was about choosing. About the voluntary nature of staying. About the fact that it wasn’t the highs that mattered. It was the commitment during the lows. It wasn’t the moments when you were easy to love. It was the moments when you weren’t, and someone looked at you and said yes, anyway.
It was what it looked like when they grew up. When they stopped running. When they understood that freedom wasn’t the absence of connection. Freedom was staying even when leaving would be cleaner.
Marcos’ vows were shorter. He talked about work, about the two years of pretending, about how Daniel was the first person he didn’t have to translate himself for. “You let me be a mess,” Marcos said. “And you didn’t ask me to be smaller. You just asked me to stay.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Everything crystallized at once. The groom’s fidget with his ring, the way he looked at Daniel like he was both terrified and certain. That was Ellis. And standing in the back with a clipboard and a professional smile and a heart that was hemorrhaging quietly, that was me. That was exactly what I looked like when I was watching the thing I destroyed walk forward without me.
They exchanged rings. They kissed. It was brief and real. Nobody was performing.
I got through the rest of the event on pure muscle memory. Timing the first dance, moving the gift table, managing the timeline, making sure the DJ didn’t play “Celebration” because the explicit instruction was “no bullshit celebration songs.” I was good at this part. Practicedat making beautiful things happen while my own life imploded.
The officiant thanked me when she left. Hugged me. Told me I was the best event planner in Brooklyn. Told me to go find someone who looked at me the way Marcos looked at Daniel.
Like I didn’t already know. Like I hadn’t already had him and let him go because I was scared of what wanting something meant.
The drive home blurred. Red lights. My hands tight on the wheel. The BQE at night blazed beautiful and devastating, the city glittering across the water like something earned.
I pulled over. The hazards blinked. The city moved around me. I finally understood. I couldn’t wait for him to reach out. I couldn’t keep my phone in my pocket and hope he noticed the silence I was keeping. Showing up for people meant being brave first. Being stupid first. Being the one who risked rejection.
It meant doing the thing that the old Jett would never have done. It meant needing something so badly that the need superseded safety.
I reached for my phone.
Chapter thirty-four
The text stared back at me: “Can we talk?”
Three words. I deleted them. Retyped them. Deleted again. Added“Please”—too desperate. Removed it. Add “I miss you”—too obvious. Delete that, too.
Just the three words. Simple. Honest.
My thumb hovered.
This was the moment, wasn’t it? The place where I committed to the vulnerability, or I backed out. Where I sent this into the void and accepted that Ellis might not answer. That he might have moved on, decided the pause was good enough, decided that the distance was easier than the closeness. That he might be with someone else right now, or he might be alone but happy about it, unburdened by me.
Three weeks and two days since he walked out. I’d counted. I was a person who counted.
My thumb hovered for another second. Then I sent it.
Nothing.
The phone sat there, dark and alive with possibility. I set it on thecounter. The seconds counted. Each one a chance for him to respond or to keep not responding, for the pause to either bend toward me or away from me entirely. I made tea. The tea got cold. I didn’t drink it.
Five minutes. Ten. My heart was doing the thing it did when I panicked about events. Sharp, urgent. The sense that everything important was happening outside my control. Except this time the event was my relationship, and the attendees were just me and the person I couldn’t stop loving.
My phone buzzed.
“Yes. When?”
