"Amy broke her leg really badly," I tell Orion once I've calmed down.

I'm holding his hand and stroking it. I know this entire thing is going to be a blow to him. I know that's why everyone danced around it with him, and left it up to me to do the crushing. Because they also know I'm the best equipped to pick up the pieces, and I find a strange comfort in that.

"She also hit her head really badly. She needed surgery. She's in the ICU..."

I glance at my new fiancee. Because when all this is done, I'm fucking marrying this guy. Nothing will stop me, not after this.

Orion is looking at me with steely eyes.

"But she'll be alright, yeah?" he asks me. His voice is strong and I can tell he's telling himself that, assuring himself, as much as it is a question to me.

Even so, I'm not going to lie to him. If his sister dies, it would only be worse for him.

"Right?" he persists.

"We don't know."

He takes a sharp intake of breath. I wince.

"How much--how much do you want to hear?"

"Everything," he says without even blinking.

I cringe. "How much can you handle right now?"

He glares at me. "Everything."

"Love--you just had major surgery that took a few hours. You're weak--"

"Tristan."

I sigh. "They put her in a coma, medically induced. That's all I know, I swear to you."

A single tear trickles down his face, but his voice and expression stays the same.

"Has anyone informed my mother her son nearly died and her daughter might?"

Oh, fuck.

~

I haven't figured out what exactly my problem with Jake is. Yes, I understand I'm jealous, but...why?

Jake has been nothing but a wonderful friend. We didn't become close until Orio threw me out over my age the first time we dated. He found me by happenstance, crying on Orion's porch while I waited for an Uber.

Jake took me in for four days. He refused anything in return. He made me comfortable, he made me feel welcome. We talked about whatever. It wasn't always about Orion, but whenever I wanted to talk about Orion he listened. He never broached the subject and never once prodded into our relationship farther than I talked about.

He showed me nothing more than the utmost respect regarding Orion's and my relationship. He gave me his advice, telling me the amount of time to wait before we should even try to approach Orion about speaking to me again. Even once he voiced his time frame he was willing to talk to Orion sooner if it was what I wanted.

He was never pushy about anything. He never tried to act like he knew Orion better than I did. He never threw his weight around over how long they had known each other for. And not once did he bring up their old relationship. Not once did my newfound friend act happy that we had broken up.

Yet that's suddenly what I feared. And that's not fair to Jake at all. Not once has Jake shown anything but genuine support for my romantic relationship with his best friend. He wants nothing more than to see Orion happy and healthy, just as we all do. I make Orion happy, so Jake wants Orion to be with me, and I can't wrap my mind around why that's not good enough for me.

I know in my heart of hearts Jake would never steal Orion away from me. The man is too selfless for that. Even after we broke up for good, after I had searched through Orion's house and found too many beers and not enough psych meds...When days before that I had gone through his phone and called people from it...When I broke Orion's trust and he broke up with me because I confronted him that he was teetering on the edge of destruction again via his own hands...

Jake and I kept in contact. He texted me, letting me know how Orion was. He let me know that Orion had stayed in the hospital for a week after his suicide attempt. He let me know he had gone back to rehab and which facility. He let me know when Orion got out after ninety days.

Jake let me know when Orion was having a bad day. Jake let me know every week he had gone without drinking. Every time Jake wanted Orion to show him his arms and hands, he let me know there were no new marks.

I found out a lot about Jake. I found out that he's a baseball fan. I found out he skis. I found out he has a cabin up in Wisconsin. We met up there for a weekend once, catching up with each other, fishing, barbecuing, drinking.

Jake had invited my boyfriend David along. David felt weird, which I completely understand. Going along with your boyfriend to his ex's best friend's cabin in the woods in Wisconsin? Yeah, weird.

It was shortly after that David broke up with me. He said it was clear that I wasn't over Orion, and that he didn't want to spend his time trying to fill someone else's shoes. At the time I denied it. I barely talked about Orion. That wasn't fair to David.

Jake was the one who told me that while I rarely talked about Orion ever, when I did it was obvious that I still loved him. Jake's the one who told me my voice changed slightly, and I got a look in my eyes. It was clearly still bothering me and on my mind, no matter how much I downplayed it, no matter how flippant I spoke about Orion.

The fact that I did these things told everyone around me that, no, you're not over him even though your lips are saying those words. You're lying to yourself when you say that nothing about what happened between you two matters. The truth was Orion was forever imprinted on me, and that he would always be a part of me whether I liked it or not.

It was all those things that convinced me to call Jake the night of the concert in Madison Square Garden. He told me to come without any sort of hesitation. He got me a backstage pass, and I watched the entire concert stage-side, right behind the curtain. I cried when he sang me that song.

Because I knew that song was for me. And throughout that entire situation, Jake never once asked questions. He didn't ask me what I was doing. He never asked me what my intentions were. He simply got me the backstage pass and clearance, told me when and where to go so Gloria, Ben, and especially Orion never saw me, and went about his business like I wasn't there.

It was Jake's little secret. And Jake never told Orion about David, and Orion still doesn't know--he doesn't know because I've decided not to tell me, and Jake respects that. Another secret that no one keeps except Jake.

Jake was the one who had the idea about the masquerade ball. He had discovered that I performed dance the weekend we spent in the cabin, that I had at one point considered going professional. Jake knew I knew how to waltz, and of course he knew Orion now ballroom danced. Jake was the one who introduced me to Scott.

I spoke to Scott briefly on the phone before I flew out to England. Scott had assessed the situation, and was cautiously optimistic about my odds of things going right.

"He talks about you all the time," Scott had told me.

"He does?"

He had laughed. "Why does that surprise you, Tristan?"

I told him how Jake flat out told me that Orion never talked about me.

"Of course he doesn't," Scott had told me as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Not to them, anyway. 

"Orion is really broken up about how he treated you, mate. It's too raw for him. He loves Jake and Ben, but that's the thing Tristan--he loves them. The three of them are very empathetic with one another. So he'd rather cry at me--some chap he met by happenstance a year ago in rehab that he doesn't know that well--then bother his friends. Their emotions are too embroiled in all this and with him, so he leaves out the stuff about you."

Scott had paused. "Does that make any sort of sense to you?"

It did, in it's own convoluted way. In its own very Orion way. Always worried about everyone around him and not giving much of a damn about himself.

So, honestly, if it weren't for Jake, Orion and I wouldn't be together right now. And I know he was nothing but earnest and honest in his want for us to be together.

So then why was I so seethingly jealous of him?