Falling ➳ Hennig [4]

➳ 48

"What's it like?" Shelley Hennig asked Jackson Bryant in a dingy diner at nearly four o'clock in the morning, resting her elbows atop the chipped surface of the table that stood between them. "Being in love?"

          "It's different for everybody, I think." Jack shrugged, tapping his fingers on the table, his skin coming away with salt granules sticking to him. "In more ways than one. You could love someone one way and love someone else differently, you know? All romantic, in this instance, but different all the same. I think maybe it's a matter of circumstance."

          "Because of JJ?" She plucked a fry from her plate and popped it in her mouth.

          Jack nodded, wiping his fingers together to try and rid them of the salt. "I loved her under different circumstances, and I loved her differently each time. The first time, I was madly in love with her. It was real, and it was honest, and it was my first love. The second time, I was lonely. I was so lonely, Shell, and I thought that maybe she could fix me. It wasn't real love, not the love we had the first time. Same goes for the last time we dated. It was loneliness on my part and her desire to be loved. Now, I love her differently altogether. It's not romantic anymore, it's platonic, and I think this is how it was meant to be after that very first break-up."

          "Have you only ever loved her?" Shelley diverted her gaze at this, watching the waitresses giggle together behind the counter, arms wrapped around each other's waist. Newly-engaged, one of the other waitresses had told the pair earlier on, both had nothing but each other now because neither of their parents wanted the apparent shame of having a gay daughter.

          Jack hated people sometimes.

         "No," he said, now watching the young women, too. "I had a boyfriend once, years back now, and I loved him, too. He was a comforting kind of love, safe. But eventually we grew to realise that we weren't compatible, that we only strayed towards each other because we were safe and we'd been hurt too many times before. There's... the other person I loved, she's... I love her in so many ways that sometimes it actually hurts me. She's home and she's an adventure; she's the one pushing me to the edge of the cliff but she's also the one waiting for me at the bottom. I... I love her so differently from the JJ and Daniel."

         "You said love," Shelley whispered, as if it were a secret meant for herself, meant never to reach Jack's ears, but in the dead silence of this dingy diner in the middle of nowhere, of course he heard it.

       He was an idiot, and definitely one of those people he sometimes hated. "Yeah, I guess I did."

       "Who is she?" She looked at him briefly and then looked away again, this time out to the streets beyond the window. There were very few cars passing by, and even fewer people ambling past. It was like a ghost town out there.

        "I'm afraid to say," he laughed bitterly, "I'm afraid that if she ever found out, she'd freak out and not want to be near me again."

       "Jack, please." She was looking at him now, eyes wide and pleading. "Tell me."

       And how could anyone expect him to say no when she was looking at him like that? How could they expect him to keep the words from slipping past his lips when the very woman he was in love with asked him who his heart belonged to?

       "You," he said, and the air rushed from his lungs with the word. "I'm in love with you."

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only an epilogue remaining, my pals. why? because i feel ready to let go now. i feel like this series has run it's course, and i'm a whole different person than who i was when i first started this. so, i think it's time for me to let go and say goodbye to the falling for you series!