Regretting You(70)

Jonah: I don’t think that kind of teenage boy exists in real life.

Morgan: You’re not making me feel better about this.



I wait for his response, but I don’t get one.



I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to keep Elijah awake so that he’ll sleep for Jonah tonight, but once six o’clock hits, there’s no hope left. He’s out cold. His tiny body is limp in my arms, deep in sleep as I place him in his bassinet. His fever finally broke a couple of hours ago, so I think the worst is over, but I have a feeling after Elijah sleeps for a few hours, he’ll be up all night with Jonah. Maybe I should offer to keep him for the night so Jonah can rest.

I pull out my phone to text Jonah those exact words when he knocks on the front door. I look down at Elijah, and the sound doesn’t even make him flinch. When I open the front door, I whisper, “He just fell asleep.”

Jonah is no longer wearing a tie. The top two buttons of his shirt are undone, and his hair is messier than it was this morning. He looks even better than he did this morning, despite the exhaustion consuming him. Why am I even having these thoughts?

I motion for him to come to the kitchen so I can make him a plate of food to take with him. I pull Tupperware from the cabinet.

“Have you already eaten?” Jonah asks.

“Not yet.”

“I’ll just eat here, then.” He opens the cabinet next to me, where I keep the plates, and he removes two of them. I replace the Tupperware in the cabinet and take a plate from him.

This is good. This is casual. Friends eat food together.

We both make our plates and take a seat at the table. As normal as it is for two people to eat a meal together, Jonah and I have never done so without Chris and Jenny. That part seems off. Like there are two huge gaping holes sucking the comfort out of the meal.

“This is really good,” Jonah says, taking another bite. “So were your burritos.”

“Thanks.”

“Is everything you cook this good?”

I nod confidently. “I’m a great cook. Chris hated going out to eat because he said restaurants never compared to what he got at home.”

“How was he not fat?” Jonah shakes his head. “I’d get so fat eating this every day.”

“He worked out twice a day. You know that.”

It feels weird talking about Chris like we don’t hate him, but I like it. Eventually, I’d like to remember all the good memories without the shadow of the bad ones. We had a lot of good memories together.

“Where’s Clara?”

I point my fork at him. “With that boy. All your fault.”

Jonah laughs. “He’s still one of my favorite students. I don’t care what you think of him.”

“What kind of student is Clara?”

“Great,” he says.

“No, for real. Don’t tell me what I want to hear. I want to know what she’s like when she’s not around me.”

Jonah regards me quietly for a moment. “She’s good, Morgan. Really good. Always turns her homework in on time. Makes good grades. Doesn’t act up in class. And she’s funny. I like her sarcasm.” He smiles. “She gets that from you.”

“She is a lot like I was at that age.”

“She’s a lot like you are now. You haven’t changed.”

I release a half-hearted laugh. “Okay.”

He looks at me with a little too much seriousness. “You haven’t. At all.”

I look down at my plate and mindlessly scoot food around. “I don’t know if that’s a compliment. It’s kind of pathetic that I’m still the same person I was at seventeen. No education. No work experience. Not a single thing to put on my résumé.”

Jonah stares at me a moment, then looks down at his plate, poking his fork into a carrot. “I wasn’t talking about your résumé. I’m talking about everything else. Your humor, your compassion, your levelheadedness, your confidence, your discipline.” He pauses for a quick breath, then says, “Your smile.” He shoves the bite of food into his mouth.

I look down, completely losing the smile he’s referring to, because I felt that. Everything he just said. Every compliment felt like darts stabbing at my heart. It makes me sigh. I lose my appetite. I stand up and toss the remaining food from my plate into the trash can.

I rinse the plate off in the sink. My chest is constricted. My hands are shaking. I don’t like that I’m having a physical reaction to his presence, but friends don’t say those things to friends while having the look in their eyes that Jonah just had.

He still has feelings for me.

I don’t know how to process that because it fills me with so many more questions. Jonah brings his empty plate to the sink and rinses it under the water. I pull my hands back and grip the counter, staring into the sink.

He’s standing next to me, staring at me.

I can’t look at him. I’m embarrassed that I even feel anything right now, but I do, and it’s confusing, because all I feel is jealousy. It’s a feeling that’s always been there, but it’s something I’ve never allowed myself to acknowledge. But the jealousy is there, and it’s loud, and it’s forcing me to confront it.

“Why did you sleep with her last year?”