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“You like her, don’t you?”
Jonah jumps in surprise. He turns to his side to see Mateo with his eyebrows raised. He holds a glass in his hand, and something tells him that it isn’t Mateo’s first drink of the night.
“What—what are you talking about?” he asks, wiping his palms on his jeans. He touches his own glass of whiskey, but he doesn’t drink.
“Oh, please, Jonah,” Mateo says as he raises a hand over his chest. His eyes dart to someone behind Jonah, and he subtly points over there. “You’ve been staring at her all night with that dumb lovelorn look you get whenever you’re in the same room as her. Heart eyes, if you will.”
Jonah follows Mateo’s gaze, which leads him to Amy. She’s laughing, Cheyenne by her side with a smile to match. Dina is beaming, her arm slung across Amy’s shoulders.
“Amy?” he scoffs, almost too defensively. “You think I like Amy?”
Mateo rolls his eyes. “Yeah, duh. I just told you.”
“No, uh—well, you’re wrong because me and Amy? That’s never gonna happen. She’s married, remember?” Jonah states, feeling a little uncomfortable. Okay. Maybe Mateo’s a little right, but no one can know that. Especially not Amy.
“She’s getting a divorce, Jonah,” Mateo tells him, but it’s something he already knows. He has a memory of just earlier, trapped inside a minion costume, her words broken and cracked. He didn’t need to see her to know what she was feeling. “Meaning you’ve got more of a chance than you think.”
He sighs. “Fine. Let’s say you’re right—that I do have a little crush on Amy. Why do you care?”
“It’s not that I care,” he says, his tone suggesting it was obvious. “Do you know how annoying it is to watch you look at her all lovelorn and helpless all day? Very. It’s distracting. I’m trying to help you out of the goodness of my heart at this point.”
“I don’t—”
“Yes, you do,” he interrupts. “And believe it or not, but sometimes, she’s looking back.”
“What—” he says. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Mateo says smoothly, “that sometimes she looks at you the same way you look at her. If you don’t know what that means, then really, I don’t know what to tell you.”
Jonah stays silent. He’s always thought he wasn’t that obvious, but right here, with the words put before him, something feels off. He replays Mateo’s words again, and he only gets one thing out of it: he has a chance. A small one maybe, but a chance nevertheless. It’s more than he’d ever hoped for.
But there are still lines he can’t cross, and to take that jump could only end in disaster. There’s a lot on the line.
“I can’t,” he says finally. “I can’t just barge in and tell her that, not when she’s just getting out of a marriage. I want to be a good friend first, before anything else. In another universe, maybe.”
Jonah takes a glance, and finds her still smiling. She still looks breathtaking, under the red lights of the bar. Her smile lights up the entire room, and he can’t help but wish he could see it a lot more. Her laugh is something he’d want to spend his life trying to answer, something to look for. A beat, and her eyes meet his, and she waves. He waves back.
“I can’t do that to her. She deserves the world, and I can’t give that to her,” he says, and there’s a tinge of bitterness, of mourning to his words. He can’t meet Mateo’s eyes. “Maybe in another lifetime, I could. But whatever I am, it’s not enough. She deserves a lot more for being so selfless and honest. And if I can’t give that to her, it’s better that someone else does. Someone who can keep her world spinning when it’s thrown off balance.”
“Grabe makahugot ‘to,” Mateo mutters under his breath. He takes a sip of his drink.
“You know I can’t understand you, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Were you insulting me?”
“Ay, hindi” he says, and Jonah’s not entirely sure, but it sounds sarcastic. “Diyos ko, tulungan mo nga ako dito.”
“Still can’t understand you.”
“Don’t care,” Mateo deadpans. He sighs, and rubs his eyes. “Look, Jonah, you could’ve left that very first day and continued business school, right?”
“I’m not exactly sure where you’re going with this—but yeah.”
Mateo looks at him, straight in the eyes. “Why did you stay?”
For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. Why did he stay? He stayed because he didn’t want to go back. Because it was better. Because it finally felt like he was doing something, like he actually mattered to some people.
“I was never going to go back,” he says, because it’s easier to say than anything else in his head. “I stayed because it was the only option I had left, remember?”
“But you didn’t know that yet. You came back after the first day, even though you kept screwing up. Tell me why.”
Jonah drums his fingers in the table, his eyes averted. He vaguely remembers the morning of his second day at Cloud Nine—putting on the vest and getting into his car. He’d entered and everything felt normal. He’d realized Amy was right. Nothing new ever happens.
Still, he stayed.
And he knows exactly why.
“Because of Amy,” he says finally. “I stayed because of her. Because I wanted to keep showing her moments of beauty. Because I wanted to see her smile again.”
Mateo pats him on the back. “Good job, lover boy.”
“But that doesn’t mean anything,” Jonah tells him. “I still can’t—”
“It’s been over a year, Jonah. You’ve waited for a year. Don’t you think that’s enough time?”
He remembers a moment, two months ago, when she pulled him close and kissed him. It didn’t really mean anything to her, he knows that, it was a spur of the moment kind of thing—they thought they were going to die. It’s perfectly reasonable. But still, he’d been dazed for days off end, his head dizzy with the thought of her lips on his. He had felt something.
He lets out a long breath. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. I will. I’ll tell her.”
“Then what are you doing? Get up! Go talk to her!” Mateo exclaims, shoving him off the chair.
Jonah holds still. “What? No, I didn’t mean, like, right now, I meant a few months after her divorce is official.”
“Jonah, honey, we both know that’s gonna take ages.”
“Actually, I read that—”
“Ages.”
“You know what?” he says, finally standing up, much to Mateo’s pleasure. “I’m gonna talk to her. And what we talk about is none of your business.”
Mateo hums. “Fine by me.”
“You won’t tell anyone, right? About everything I just told you?”
“Please,” Mateo says, waving his hand in dismissal. “Everyone already knows.”
“That’s not very comforting,” he tells him.
“Just go!”
Jonah stumbles, and walks toward Amy, who’s sitting by herself with a glass of wine. She raises an eyebrow when he comes close, and he only shrugs loosely.
“Where’d Cheyenne go?” he asks, feeling a bit weird. He thinks back to his conversation with Mateo—yeah, no, he’s not confessing tonight.
“Bo actually came by a few minutes earlier, and drunk Cheyenne can get very—”
Jonah blinks. “Oh, you mean—”
“Exactly.”
Jonah isn’t sure what else to say.
“So, uh, how are things with you and Emma?” he asks.
She brightens up a little—and he finds that little thing about adorable, to see her so happy when her daughter is brought up. “She’s doing great, actually. Teenagers can be hard to deal with but, you know, we were all there once. She’s not getting into any drama I should be worried about, so that’s good, right?”
“Right,” he agrees. “You know, I don’t think I was actually that awful as a teenager.”
“Oh, yeah?” Amy says. “You didn’t sneak out or cut class? Was teen Jonah a saint?”
“Ha ha, very funny,” he says dryly, but there’s a smile on his face anyway. “What about you? Stole anything?”
“Definitely,” she tells him and he raises his eyebrows in surprise. “My parents threw a huge fit when they found out, and they grounded me for a month. It was only once, though. But don’t tell anyone that.”
“Promise,” he says with a grin. “You know, I’m really starting to think that in another lifetime we would’ve been really good friends.”
“I actually agree with that,” she tells him. “You were probably way dorkier than I was, though.”
“What? No—” he says, before abruptly stopping. He lowers his head. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
She laughs, a good one, and he beams. “Of course I am.”
Her phone buzzes and she looks at it for a moment before turning back to him. “Emma’s on her way home. I gotta go.”
He stands up. “I’ll—I’ll go with you. I should probably leave, too. I’ve still got a shift in the morning, and I’ll probably have a hangover.”
Amy leads them to the parking lot, and the rest of the world is silent. A couple of cars pass by, and the wind blows to follow them.
It’s silent for a while.
He thinks back to his conversation with Mateo. Despite what he wants to believe, Jonah knows he’s right. If he wants to get somewhere with Amy, he has to take a step forward. He needs to do something about it.
And maybe he will, maybe one day. But not now, not when she’s in the middle of a broken marriage. That would only be selfish of him, and he doesn’t want that. He wants to give her what he can, not take what matters away. And if being a friend for now is what it takes, then he’s fine with it.
“You’re a good friend, Jonah,” she says quietly, and if he hadn’t been standing next her, he wouldn’t have heard it. “I can’t believe I’m saying it, but you are.”
He grins. “I know.”
She rolls her eyes. “See? This is why I never say anything nice to you.”
He laughs, just to tease her.
She huffs. “I was trying to compliment you! I was being nice!” she says, with a light laugh. “Do you not how love works?”
Jonah shrugs, but he doesn’t take his eyes off her. He doesn’t let his smile leave his lips. “I guess I don’t.”
She shakes her head, but he doesn’t miss her smile. He thinks she’s still pretty, with the way the streetlights shine down on her. These are things he might never tell her, but he’ll let it stay in the privacy of his own mind. Amy’s beautiful, and he hopes he can finally get the courage to say it one day.
“Thank you,” he says after a while, honest and sincere. “You deserve at least one person who treats you right, Amy.”
She smiles. “You do, too.”
When they reach her car, she turns around. “Well, I’ll see you soon. Good night, Jonah.”
He waves. “Night, Ames.”
Jonah watches her leave, and even then, he can hear Mateo’s words lingering in the back of his mind. A part of him knows his friend is right—he needs to something. She’s the reason he stayed, and why he continuously chooses to do so. He’ll stay—for her.
In every universe out there, he stays.