to leave eventually—sooner than later according to what his mom had said—well, it wasn’t like I hadn’t known. “Do you know what you want to do?”
“I thought I did,” he answered, voice softening again. “But you gave me something to think about today.”
Yeah, that was my heart beating fast. “And what was that?”
“That most blokes would kill to have the opportunities I do, and mostly… if you and Mo will be supportive of wherever I go, then….”
I was happy for him. I really was. I wouldn’t want him to do anything else. Give up his dream. Or at least cut it off so early. But…
He’d still leave.
But that’s how shit worked sometimes. Some people had loved ones in the military who got deployed. Some people had loved ones who worked in transportation and were gone all the time. You had to do what you had to fucking do, and I wasn’t about to make him feel guilty.
“I’m calling my agent tomorrow, finally, and having a chat with him. See what can be done,” he let me know. “Makes me feel heaps better now than I did earlier.”
I squashed my dread down and got myself to ask, “What was wrong earlier?” Wait. “Noah? Or your mom?”
“Both I suppose, but that arsehole more,” Jonah replied. “Most difficult thing I’ve ever done, sitting there, watching you talk to him,” he admitted, sounding genuinely pretty put out about it.
Heh. It made me smile despite the hint of dread I felt at him leaving sooner than later. “I just gave him shit. Don’t get all butthurt.”
“What did he say?”
I crossed one leg over the other and grinned at the ceiling like I had probably never grinned before. “Well, it was more of what I told him. He showed up almost fifteen minutes late, if you didn’t see that. And I don’t know if you know, but I hate tardiness. I hate being late and having my time wasted.” Especially when we were supposed to be having a serious conversation, but I didn’t need to bring that up. “And after that….”
Was I going to tell him that I said I loved him? When he hadn’t said those words to me? When I didn’t even know what we were going to do in the near future with him leaving?
But those words clung onto my tongue, staked through my heart.
He cared about me. He got jealous. He was trying.
And according to Grandpa, he loved me.
So I had to try too if this—he—was what I wanted. And it was. There was no question there.
“He tried to bring up a bunch of old shit, and I had to remind him that he hadn’t been my friend in a long time.” I paused, knowing this was a leap and taking it. “I told him that I didn’t feel the same way about him.”
Jonah literally fucking grunted, and I could hear him breathing loudly over the line. It must have been at least a minute before he spoke up again. “What else did you tell him?”
You snooze you lose, right? And I hated losing.
So I went for it. Fuck it. “Well, I told him I was in love with your dumb ass.”
I heard him exhale.
And I definitely heard him when he said in a clear, clear voice, “Did you tell him that I love you back?” There was a pause. “Or that his time had passed, and that I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again?”
I pressed my lips together as my eyes started to sting out of nowhere. “No. I didn’t tell him that.”
His voice was a husky grumble. “You should have. Because it’s the truth. Because I love you and Mo so much, I’m going to make up the last seventeen months to you both, Len.” He paused. “If you’ll let me.”
Chapter 20
Subject: COME ON
Lenny DeMaio:
Wed 3/22/2019 1:29 p.m.
to Jonah Collins
Can you please fucking call me back?
Text me back?
Send me a fucking letter if you’re too much of a chicken to communicate with me: one on one?
You need to know something.
I’m not trying to get you to like me again, but I have to tell you something important
If I would have been the kind of girl to keep a diary, I was sure every entry for the next three weeks of my life would have been something along the lines of TODAY IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE.
And it wouldn’t have been an exaggeration.
I couldn’t remember ever being so… happy. Not in a way that I was smiling