There was nothing in her life that made as much sense to her as her friendship with Jim. She worked hard to keep it that way. Whenever things got a little unclear—when he left his hand on hers for just a moment too long, or when she caught him looking at her in a way that she couldn’t really define—she went home to Roy and made dinner and spent the whole night telling herself how lucky she was to have two guys in her life who made her feel safe. Not wanted. She was careful not to think about being wanted.

And she might have been able to keep that balance going, that careful see-saw with Roy on one side, Jim on the other, and her in the middle, trying to hold everything in its place. She had gotten good at that, and she was starting to believe that she was strong enough to hold everything forever.

But Jim made that impossible. He wanted her; he told her he wanted her. And she felt everything fall out of place.

When he walked away, she hadn’t turned around to watch him go. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to; it was because she couldn’t. Seeing Jim leaving her behind was not part of the balance. It didn’t make sense.

She heard her own words echoing around her in time with the sound of Jim’s fading footsteps. “I can’t,” she had said, and she had been telling the truth. But the question mark that she hadn’t meant to put at the end of the sentence haunted her, because it meant that there were other truths that would never quite make sense.