“Jagger,” she pleaded. “Ben came over sometime after the party ended looking for Jag, but he wasn’t there. Ben wasn’t drunk, but he was definitely tipsy, and I let him in to make him something to eat because I didn’t want him driving like that. We started talking about random stuff while I was cooking, and I finally asked him why he’d come looking for Jagger if they’d just been together . . . and that’s when he told me he hadn’t.”
The room went silent again except for Charlie’s quiet cries. Jagger had gone just as still as I had at her last few words, and Mrs. Easton had stormed out the side door a couple minutes before. I released Jagger and stumbled past him into the living room, where I sat down roughly on one of the couches, my eyes never leaving Charlie’s—and hers never leaving mine.
“He—”
“Don’t,” Jagger ordered as he sat next to me and gripped one of my hands. “Do not finish whatever you’re about to say.”
“No, Jagger, let her,” I somehow forced out. “I need to know.”
“Grey . . .”
Glancing at him for a split second, I tightened my grip on his hand before looking back at Charlie. “It’s fine.”
After another few seconds, Charlie continued. “Ben said he’d never been more confused in his life, and when I asked him what he was confused about, he said everything. He said he was confused about what he knew others wanted and deserved, what he wanted, and how he didn’t know what to do or how to feel about what he wanted. I tried to make a joke about it, saying he thought too much when he drank and that it was probably a bad time to start thinking. He just came up next to me and turned the stove off and said, ‘You’re right, and that’s my problem, I finally start thinking about everything I normally push away. But now I can’t stop thinking about it, and now I’m here.’ Before I could say anything else, he—uh . . . h-he kissed me.”
Jagger stood from the couch and began stalking around the room, but I couldn’t look at him, and I could no longer look at Charlie.
“I didn’t know he was about to kiss me, because Ben and I had always talked, and I’d always been in love with him, but I never thought—I don’t know. But at that moment I just thought I was finally getting what I’d always wanted. He said, ‘Why do I want you so bad when I love her? And why do I love her when I know she should be with him?’ He asked if I wanted him too, and I told him how I’d always felt.” Charlie stopped when it got too hard to speak, and Jagger and I stayed silent waiting for the rest. “I gave him everything that night and the next, and I thought everything was finally going to be how it should be. Me with Ben, and Jagger with you, Grey. The day after that second night . . .”
“We got engaged,” I finished for her, and finally looked back up at her.
“Yes,” she whispered, her face full of a pain and sorrow I knew so well. “I was—I was heartbroken, I was pissed, I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t know why we were going to a party at your house that night, Grey, only that Jagger said he needed me there. When I heard you’d gotten engaged I knew why he said that. Because it was killing Jagger . . . but he had no idea it was killing me more than anyone could’ve possibly imagined. Ben came after me that night and I started screaming at him, asking how he could get engaged to you after all that had happened between him and me. He said what we’d done was a mistake.”
Her voice broke, and she took shuddering breaths to try to compose herself. “I tried everything, I asked how he could tell me that you and Jagger belonged together and then two days later ask you to marry him. I asked how he could be confused and reminded him that he hadn’t been drinking the second night we’d been together . . . I asked him how he could suddenly be so sure. He said if he were selfless, he would let you go, and let you be with the guy who’d always loved only you. But that he still loved you too much to let you go, and after everything the two of you had been through, he couldn’t risk losing his life with you for someone he loved, but wasn’t in love with.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, my head dropping into my hands as tears fell quickly down my cheeks.
It felt like I was being suffocated, and I couldn’t figure out how to breathe again. My heart was broken, but I didn’t understand the feeling. My heart had shattered when Ben died, and Jagger had pieced it back together. Years later, Jagger became my new life, and I knew he was everything I would ever need or want from there on out. To learn years after his death that Ben had cheated on me days before we got engaged was the most confusing kind of heartbreak I’d ever experienced. Like I couldn’t be upset enough, because my world had already been rocked by his death. Like I’d been betrayed, but somehow knew that my heart hurt for Charlie too. Confused. Devastated. And somehow whole because of the man behind me.
“I found out I was pregnant a few weeks later, and told Ben before you came home after that semester. I didn’t know what I’d thought would happen . . . he’d leave you to be with me? He’d be happy, scared, or confused again? I didn’t know, but nothing happened. He hung up the phone when I told him, and every day after would send me a text asking how I was feeling, but that was it. He wouldn’t answer my calls, never responded to my texts, nothing. I tried to see him when you came back, but he made sure he was never alone if I was around. Then he died, and I didn’t know how I would ever move on from him. That’s why I was so mad that you were able to, Grey. I’m so sorry for hurting you. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”