“She’s coming over.”
I turned.
Hannah was walking toward us with a coffee in one hand and a smile that looked practiced but not fake. Pleasant. The smile of someone who’d spotted an ex in public and had three seconds to decide how to handle it.
“Ellis. Oh my God, hi.” She stopped at the edge of our table. Up close she was pretty in that effortless, catalogued way. Minimal makeup, hair pulled back, small gold studs in her ears. She looked like someone’s favorite coworker. “I haven’t seen you in, what, a year?”
“About that.” Ellis stood up, which I found both charming and slightly insane, like we were at a dinner party instead of a coffee shop. They did that awkward half-hug that people do when they’ve seen each other naked but now maintain a respectful three-inch gap. “You look good.”
“You, too. You’ve been working out more.” Her eyes flicked to me, then back to him, then to me again. Quick and assessing, but not hostile.
Ellis looked at me. Something moved across his face. A decision settling.
“Hannah, this is Jett.” He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t stammer. Didn’t use “friend” or “roommate” or any of the other euphemisms he’d been deploying at work for weeks. “My boyfriend.”
The word came out steady. Almost defiant.
Hannah blinked once. Then she smiled, wider this time, genuine, and extended her hand to me. “Hi, Jett. It’s really nice to meet you.”
I shook her hand. Her grip was firm. “You, too.”
“How long have you two been together?”
“Few months.” He said it without flinching, without checking my reaction, without any of the telltale anxiety that crept into his voice when Marcus called or his gym buddies asked questions. Just saying it. In public. To the one woman who’d known him as a straight man best.
“That’s great.” Hannah looked between us, and whatever she saw there made her expression soften into something that might have been relief. “I’m happy for you. Both of you.”
She wasn’t lying. I knew when someone was performing. Hannah wasn’t performing. She was a person who’d loved Ellis once and was glad he’d found something good.
I hated how much that threw me.
They talked for a few minutes. Surface stuff. Her new job in productmanagement, his project at work, mutual friends they’d lost track of. She laughed at something he said, touching her collarbone the way women do when they’re being polite, and I sat there eating my croissant and watching the ghost of Ellis’ straight life stand in front of me in athleisure.
This was the woman he’d come closest to letting in. The one he’d let stay over more than once, then more than twice, then enough that she’d started leaving things at his place. She’d known an Ellis I’d never meet. The one who hadn’t questioned anything yet, who moved through the world on the path everyone expected, who never had to rehearse how to say “boyfriend” before letting it leave his mouth, because he’d never said it about anyone.
Hannah left after five minutes, waving goodbye with that easy smile, and Ellis sat back down across from me.
“That wasn’t so bad,” he said.
“She seems nice.”
“She is nice. She was always nice.”
I nodded. Picked at my croissant. The flaky layers had gone limp.
Ellis watched me. He was getting better at reading my silences the way I read his.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Jett.”
I looked up. “Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“The easy version. The one where you’re with someone like her and everything just works. No coming out at the office. No gym buddies getting weird. No having to introduce your boyfriend to your ex and watch her do math in her head.”
