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"I just wanted to know," Jodie began, her heart feeling as though it was about to burst out of her chest. "Is there any chance that, maybe, you and I could...I don't know, try again?"
She stared at him hopefully, only to be crushed when Shu said gently, "Jodie, I care for you very much, but..."
Jodie had known this day was coming for a long time. Perhaps she had known from the beginning, even if she had spent years hoping otherwise.
For years, she had stood by Shu's side, trying to pretend that she was fine with merely being coworkers. For years, the sharp ache in her chest had grown stronger until it was physically too painful to look at him for more than a few moments anymore. For years, her mind had replayed the moment her world was turned upside-down yet again. For years, she had wrestled with her feelings of mingled sympathy, guilt, and frustration as Shu pined for someone else.
Look at me! Jodie wanted to cry out. I'm right here. I've been here all along! Just look at me!
When he had broken up with her, a part of Jodie had hoped that his reasoning had more to do with timing than his feelings. His mission was a dangerous one, and being undercover would mean there would likely be months on end when they couldn't contact each other. Perhaps, she had told herself, their split only needed to be temporary, and once Shu had successfully completed his mission, they could be together again.
Then he came back to America after his cover was blown, and she quickly realized she had been a little too optimistic.
It wasn't that he had treated her unkindly. On the contrary, he had treated her just as he would any of his other friends and colleagues.
In a way, though, that was the problem. He had treated her just as he would any of his other friends and colleagues.
But never, not once, had he ever acknowledged that there had been anything more between them. Not in the sense that the memories of their past relationship had been too painful to talk about. Even from the beginning, it had been clear that Shu's heart still belonged to another person.
Still, she had never quite been able to bring herself to give up.
Sometimes, when Shu said the wrong thing or got a little too focused on his missions and forgot to consider his friends, she thought she might be able to move on. She would tell herself that she could do better than him, and for a short while, she was able to believe it. Then, she would catch a glimpse of Shu's smile (his real smile, not the half-smirk he often wore), and she found herself clinging to the hope that maybe, just maybe, he still felt something for her too.
He just needed more time, she always told herself. If she just gave him a little more time, he would move on, and then he might realize that she had always been there for him.
Now, however, she was forced to accept the truth. All the years of waiting, yearning, and hoping for a miracle had been for nothing.
Shu...was never going to fall back in love with her. His heart was never going to be hers again.
Perhaps it never had been, at least not completely. There was no doubt in Jodie's mind that Shu had loved her when they were together, or at least tried to. He knew how to play the part of a good boyfriend, listening to her vent about her problems, taking her out to nice restaurants (or at least as nice as they could afford on a government salary), and bringing her soup from the local deli whenever she was sick. But even then, she had always had the nagging sensation that he wasn't giving all of himself to her. There had always been an invisible gap between them, and no matter how hard she tried, she could never seem to cross it.
And instead of growing smaller, over the years, it had only gotten bigger. The gap widened into a chasm, leaving her with no way to reach him.
When he didn't object to her continuing to call him by the nickname she had given him when they started dating, she had hoped that it meant he was starting to come around. Those hopes had quickly been dashed when Furuya started calling him FBI, FBI bastard, or other similar names, and he only reacted with mild amusement. It was then that Jodie realized Shu's lack of objection to her use of her nickname for him had less to do with any lingering feelings and more to do with the fact that he didn't care what anyone called him.
She talked to him almost every day now, she got to see him more than a few times a week, and yet somehow, it felt as though he was slipping further and further away.
Jodie tried to appreciate what they had. She tried to appreciate that they could at least still be friends. It was more than a lot of other exes could say, after all.
But it hurt. It hurt knowing that he was never going to feel the same way about her again. She would never regret what they once had, but it only served to sharpen the sense of loss she felt.
If only she had been able to go undercover with him, then maybe their relationship would have survived. Then maybe he wouldn't have fallen for someone else, and maybe she wouldn't be where she was now, wondering if he had ever been as invested in their relationship as she had been.
On the other hand, maybe they had always been doomed to fall apart from the start. There was no denying that Shu had his own agenda; he had made that clear when he first showed up at the FBI as a new agent. No matter what, any sort of personal relationship was always going to come second to his mission. He cared about his friends, that was true, but whether he cared about them more than his work was another question entirely. It wasn't necessarily a flaw, and his dedication to his job was one of the things she admired so much about him, but if she was being honest, she didn't think she would be okay with never being his first priority.
And maybe that was a sign. Maybe that was the universe's way of telling her that she deserved better, that she deserved someone who was going to put her first. That she deserved someone who, even if he fell in love with someone else, was always going to choose her in the end.
And now, she had to face the reality that Shu wasn't going to be that person. It didn't matter whether he was in love with someone else or not; he wasn't going to love her back, and she had to learn to live with that now.
"Don't cling to something that isn't there," James told her, and Jodie felt a stab of mingled embarrassment and defensiveness that he had seen through her so easily. "I've seen others in your position make that mistake before, and I don't want you to go down the same path."
"How did it end for them?" she asked.
"It ended exactly how you would expect, with broken hearts and broken friendships. I know letting go of Akai-kun is going to be hard. But if he doesn't feel the same way, you won't be able to change that. It's okay to know when to stop fighting."
James was right. There was no point in fighting for something that wasn't there. If she didn't want to push Shu away for good, she had to learn to let him go.
"You know what?" Jodie spoke up finally. "It's okay. Really."
"Are you sure?" Shu asked.
"I'm sure," she replied firmly, forcing a smile onto her face. "Let's just agree to focus on finishing what we came here to do."
He nodded. "For what it's worth...I am sorry."
Jodie tried to reassure him that he had nothing to feel sorry for, but her throat was too tight to speak, so she merely nodded and walked away.
One day, she would be proud of herself for finally putting herself first, but right now, any sense of pride was overshadowed by the grief twisting itself into a knot in her stomach. She was still in love with Shu, and she knew she would be for some time.
But she would survive. She always did. And in the meantime, she had plenty of ways to distract herself. They were still in Japan on a mission, and Jodie was going to do her part to see to it that it was a success.
She hadn't spent years hunting down Rotten Apple for nothing, after all.