Not only had she checked in with me weekly, she’d insisted that I stay at Briggs Farm for the past two weeks as Mia and I worked like crazy in the editing bay to get the final edit of the film.
It was strange being at the farm, and in Wishing Well in general, without Jackson, but we’d been talking every day, so that helped. Over the past month, the dynamic of our relationship had shifted from friendship to something…more. I didn’t know what had inspired the change, but I wasn’t complaining.
After Hope Falls, we’d kept in touch. He’d texted me nearly every day, and even called a few times. Our conversations had been friendly but not personal. There was no flirting, no acknowledgement that we’d ever been intimate, nothing.
I’d tried to convince myself that being friends with him was better than not having him in my life at all, but I couldn’t help the fact that I missed him. I missed the more intimate side of our relationship.
But then one day—right after Willow was born, in fact—he changed. He’d started saying that he missed me. And not just in the generic sense of the word. He got very specific. Body parts were named. Things he wanted to do to those body parts and things he wanted me to do to his were described.
I couldn’t think about it while standing next to his mother.
The intimacy in our conversations didn’t stop there. We’d spent hours and hours talking about everything from our childhoods, our biggest fears, favorite foods, music, television, religion, political views. We’d both talked about wanting a family and that we’d hoped to have at least two children but would cap it at three.
I’d asked him about the time I overheard him telling JJ that he didn’t want to settle down, and he’d said that was before me. He also said that he’d lied when his brother had asked him that, because in truth, he’d already imagined those things with me.
I fell in lust with Jackson during the week we’d spent together, then I fell in like with him over the two months that we built our friendship, but I’d fallen in love with Jackson over the past month.
It was so strange to be in love with someone and have no idea when you’d see them. We hadn’t made anything official. So technically he wasn’t my boyfriend. But he was doing all the boyfriend things.
He’d sent me a huge bouquet of flowers to celebrate the screening. And he’d had them sent to his parents’ house, since that’s where I was staying. He wasn’t trying to hide the fact that we were…whatever we were.
“It’s time!” Mia clapped her hands as the lights flickered.
Jade O’Sullivan, who was handling all of our marketing for the film, stepped up and took the mic. We’d nominated her to speak for us because I hated public speaking and Mia wasn’t feeling like getting up in front of two hundred people after giving birth to a baby four weeks ago.
“Welcome to the cast and crew screening of What is Love?!”
As Jade asked everyone to take their seats and went through all the acknowledgements, I glanced down at my phone.
Jackson normally texted me when he woke up, and with the time difference he should’ve been up for at least an hour now. I didn’t like not hearing from him. I’d gotten very accustomed to our unofficial schedule.
“Is everything okay?” Dolly asked as she burped Willow.
“Yeah, it’s fine.” I just wish your son would’ve messaged me.
I pushed the disappointment aside as the lights went out and the film came on. It was a task that was made easier by the distraction from the butterflies having a party in my stomach. I realized that the film wasn’t an actual baby, but it did sort of feel like that. Even Mia, who’d just given birth to her own baby, said that was what it felt like to her, so I didn’t feel like a crazy person for thinking that.
I’d thought I’d be the most nervous about my hosting, but I’d gotten used to seeing the footage after spending hundreds of hours with it in post-production. I’d grown to tolerate seeing and hearing myself, to the point where it didn’t cause me to be sick to my stomach with worry.
That was the other development in my life. After I’d made my statement, and the world had a reference for my side of the story, I’d been able to just let it go