I fold my arms and stare at the crescent moon on the table.
‘Don’t tell me it’s nothing. I just had front-row seats to the drama between you two and I can see how personal it is.’
I wet my lips. ‘A lot’s happened since you and he left the Sanctuary, you don’t think that’s got something to do with it?’
‘Oh, no doubt at all. But the day we left, you threw him through a second-storey window and forgot to let go. I know how much damage you did to each other: Zak saw you—and that was after the first shift with Micah.’ Jude sits forward. ‘Gabe, please. I need to know what it was about. I need to know why you didn’t come with us.’
I hear the whisper of pain in his voice, an echo of the hurt and confusion from that day. It crushes the air out of me. I grapple for that old, familiar anger—the one thing that’s protected me from the weight of the past—and come up empty. It’s gone. All I feel now is sad. Fractured.
‘Does it matter?’ I ask quietly.
‘Yes, Gabe, it matters.’
I pick up my coffee cup. I swirl the grounds, watch the sludge stick to the sides. ‘But it’s humiliating.’
He rests his fingers lightly on my wrist, so tentative and uncertain it breaks my heart a little more.
‘I need to know.’
I close my eyes, breathe in and out. ‘Okay.’
I tell him about me and Rafa, and Rafa and Mya. I can’t sit still. I lean forward. Sit back. Retie my hair. Cross my legs and uncross them. Play with the fork. I avoid his eyes the whole time. By the time I finish, I’ve massacred the remaining galaktoboureko. It’s now a forlorn mess and when I press the fork into the mush, I leave a deep imprint.
‘So, if you’d come to San Fran with me that night after the island and you and Rafa had never hooked up, you would’ve left with me?’ Jude’s voice is quiet.
I nod, still flattening the dessert. ‘I was always coming with you. The only reason I didn’t was because Rafa and Mya said they were going. I couldn’t face the humiliation if people found out what happened.’
‘You stayed because of your pride.’
My head comes up so fast my neck cracks. ‘What? No—’
‘What else would you call it?’
‘Self-respect?’
‘Self-respect?’ He stares at me. ‘Do you want to know the reasons I thought you stayed?’
I don’t, but he’s going to tell me anyway.
‘First, I thought it was about Mya. That you were so threatened by the fact I occasionally valued her opinion over yours—’
‘Occasionally? Jude, she was in your ear constantly—’
‘Let me finish.’ He shifts his weight. ‘I thought you were so threatened you were trying to make me choose between her and you.’ He holds up a hand before I can argue. ‘Then I thought maybe you liked life at the Sanctuary too much to leave. That even though you knew all of Nathaniel’s bullshit, you’d rather put up with it and live a lie than take a risk and walk away. Which meant you’d either lied to me or yourself every time you told me you were willing to leave if we had to. I know you didn’t want to leave Daisy and Micah—or even Taya and Malachi, for that matter—but they would’ve followed you if you left.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Yeah, I do. And so do you. And then’—he runs a hand through his hair—‘when I heard you’d hooked up with Daniel…Shit, Gabe, I thought you’d stayed for him. That you’d been on with Daniel before we’d left and you’d kept it a secret.’
I gape at him. ‘You honestly thought I’d lied to you—and I did it to be with Daniel?’
‘What else was I supposed to think? You never told me the truth, and Rafa’s never let on, so all I had to go on was assumptions. And you’d been changing that year—’
‘Not to mention a certain someone putting that idea in your head, no doubt.’ I mean Rafa. It must have been easy for him to convince himself I stayed for Daniel too.
He shrugs but doesn’t argue.
‘Jude, let’s not forget that you had some pride issues too. Once you gave Nathaniel that ultimatum you were never backing down, even if it meant leaving without me.’
Again, there’s no argument. He slumps back in his chair, drags his hand through his hair. ‘I’ve gone over that day a thousand times, Gabe. Beaten myself up over it a lot more. And if I could do it again, I’d do everything differently. All of it.’
‘Me too. But we can’t.’
‘No, we can’t.’
For a while, we don’t speak. I face the sea, watch a passenger ship cruise towards the harbour, a long trail of churning water in its wake. A weight has lifted from my chest but I honestly can’t tell if it’s made me lighter—or if it’s made me vulnerable.
‘Are you going to tell Rafa you know about what happened?’ I ask.
Jude looks at me as if I’ve suggested he take an axe to Rafa’s Kawasaki. ‘Are you insane? That’s not a conversation I ever want to have.’
‘Good.’
‘For what it’s worth, he and Mya haven’t been together for years. These days all they do is snipe at each other.’
‘Has there been anyone for you?’ I ask. I don’t want to hear about Rafa and Mya.
Jude laughs without humour. ‘It’s been a decade: there’s been plenty. But that’s not what you’re asking, is it? No, there hasn’t been anyone like that.’ He studies me for a moment. Shakes his head.
‘What?’
‘I always used to think you and Rafa were kind of inevitable. What do you think would’ve happened if he hadn’t fucked it up? Would it have gone anywhere?’
I shrug, look away. ‘I was embarrassed about anyone finding out—and that was before I knew about Mya.’
For a moment I allow myself to remember that night: the playfulness, the intensity. The sensation of being completely dismantled and put back together. And then falling asleep resting against a body as familiar as my own. Exhausted. Satisfied. I shove the memory away. It’s meaningless now.
‘It doesn’t matter, because he did fuck it up.’
Jude sits forward, looks at me seriously. ‘Yeah, but so did we, and we’re talking.’
‘Slightly different circumstances.’
‘That’s true, princess’—and I feel a comforting warmth at his use of my nickname—‘but forgiveness is forgiveness.’
I nod, but…I can forgive Jude for walking away from me—I know that now—but Rafa? What he did to me? What he said to me before I put him through that window? All the ways we’ve hurt each other since, with feet and fists and words?
I don’t know if I can ever get past that.