Page 95 of Ship Happens

“You’re always so . . . impulsive, ready to move on from one thing to the next, never settling anywhere or giving yourself time in any one place. You’re doing it again. Except, this time, you’re giving up something that you worked years to achieve. For me?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Jacob insists. “None of it matters.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not there with me,” he finally admits, letting his head hang low. “None of it means a thing if you’re not in my life, Owen.”

When Jacob looks up again, his deep brown eyes are unsure.

“I would come back to you,” Jacob says. “The moment you ask me to, I’d come running back.”

“You can’t put that on to me, Jacob,” Owen tells him. “I’m not going to be the one to make that choice for you.”

“Well, I can’t make it myself, Owen,” Jacob insists.

“Why not?”

Jacob opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Instead, he shuts his mouth again, ending the staring contest with Owen as he realizes that his point has been made without him saying a word.

“Because you know where you need to be right now,” Owen says plainly. “You left once,” Owen reminds him, unaware of the way his body pulls away from Jacob until it’s too late. “Who’s to say that you won’t leave again?”

“I won’t,” Jacob says. “I promise you.”

“You’ve made promises before, Jacob.”

Jacob lets out a deep sigh. “I gotta say your reaction isn’t the one I was thinking I’d get.”

“How did you want me to react?”

“I dunno, I thought . . .” he starts to say, his shoulders slouching, hand going to the back of his neck. “I don’t know what I thought, actually.”

“Which is the reason we broke up in the first place,” Owen tells him. “You don’t like to think before you act. You just . . . accept things as they come to you and expect other people to follow.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Jacob says, defensiveness obvious in his voice.

“You took that job at Duke without even telling me.” Owen swallows, pressing his thumbnail against the nail of his index finger. “I didn’t want to be mad, because it was only going to be a few months and you’d been looking for work for so long.” Owen stops himself from saying more than he means to. “I wasn’t mad, but I was heartbroken, because I didn’t feel like a priority in your life.”

“You’ve always been a priority, Owen.”

Owen can’t help the snort he lets out. “We both know that isn’t true, Jacob.”

“Well, you could’ve come with me. I think you would’ve really liked Dover, it’s peaceful.”

“Yeah, maybe I would’ve loved it.” Owen nods, scratching at the table with his nail. “But I didn’t want to leave my city.”

“So, I wasn’t a priority either,” Jacob says, coming to the conclusion at the same time that Owen does.

“No, I guess you weren’t.”

As their words falter, the music from the piano comes to a calming end, and Owen realizes that they’re the only two people left in the restaurant. Owen watches Jacob as he shuts his eyes. “I didn’t want this to go poorly,” he explains. “I’m sorry, Owen. I really am.”

“I am too,” he replies.

“Do you think there’s any way for us to pick back up where we were? Before I decided to be an idiot?”

Owen cracks a genuine smile. “Which time?” he asks, trying for a joke.

Jacob chuckles. “Fair question.”