Page 68 of Yours, For Good

I hope you understand.

Sincerely,

Nora

Chapter 27

Javier

WARMTH AND ADMIRATION HOOKED themselves at the edges of my angst. It was Gabe's parents' 40th anniversary party, and no one had stopped smiling for hours. All of us had been moved by the speech at the start, as well as Tío Raúl’s and Tía Sonia's displays of tender emotion. Now they walked away to spend time with people who cared for them and wanted to celebrate them, leaving their kids and our core group of friends together.

"This started on point!" Vi exclaimed. Her grin exuded joy as she took Jake's face and planted a kiss on him. "This night is going to be amazing."

Several muscles twisted at once in my chest. Probably my heart. If I saw things right, they might finally be together which meant… it meant…

"Excuse me?!" Max's question resounded with shock and excitement.

Vi's laughter exploded. "Your faces! Even better than Ryan and Stephanie. They tried so hard to be professional."

If I wasn't mistaken, Jake's chest puffed up.

"Fuck professionalism! This is huge!" Eva said. "I thought I saw you two being more touchy-feely, but I wasn't sure…"

"Can you kiss again?" Max frowned. "I'm second guessing myself."

"You were not mistaken—" Vi started, but Jake interrupted her with a sweet kiss.

My heart beat fast. One beat in happiness for my friends, one calling for Nora to be by my side, one for the misery of her absence. Boom boom boom, boom boom boom.

"FINALLY!" Max hugged Jake and Vi, not caring that it meant interrupting their kiss. "I'm so happy for you two."

His joy, contagious as always, was the only thing to unglue my feet from the ground. I patted Jake on the back. My face must have been showing my inner turmoil somehow, because he raised a worried brow my way.

Max's exuberance saved me from having to say anything. "How long has this been going on, and why did no one send a telegram to Laguna Island to let me know?"

Eva laughed at her husband's joke. Vi shook her head. I gulped. I didn't know what to do with all the feelings swirling around in my gut, in my chest, in my head; I'd known for years that this would happen. Only a few months earlier, I had been looking forward to it and at peace with the fact it left me the only single person in the group. I used to think it wasn't a big deal.

Flash forward to this lovely evening in May, and the fact came with agony stabbing a few of my organs.

"Could I have texted you?" Jake said to the group, mainly Max. "No. Vi and I agreed to keep it quiet until we were ready to tell you lot. Were there secondary benefits to keeping it quiet? Absolutely. Your shock was delicious."

Wait. They had… hidden it for a while? The way I hid something from Nora? But it had evidently worked out for them…

I needed to confirm. "So you hid it for a while?"

Vi nodded. "Since the gala. We needed privacy, but it did have its costs."

I rubbed my lips with two fingers. There were costs to how things had gone between Nora and I. In one of her letters she'd talked about not wanting to pay the price of love, with the pain that comes when it ends. How to make it all fit together?

Jake's arm went around Vi. "It's good now. Everyone we care about knows. We made it work."

I found that I would gladly pay the price myself, if it meant Nora forgave me and we could follow where all these feelings led us.

Vi smiled. "It might have been different if Jake and I hadn't been together on that. But we were, and we figured it out, and we told everyone the truth."

Nora said she'd been torn and unsure how to move forward, but was closer than ever to reconnect. Except she couldn't make any real choice if I continued to keep my deceit a secret.

"Fuck," I muttered, before covering my mouth with my hand.