The weekend after the getaway debacle, John and I were hanging out in his room Saturday night. We were set to go to dinner with Devin in a couple of minutes. John was on his laptop, supposedly writing a response paper to his American Identity Aesthetics After World War II readings, but the three social media pages opened in his browser spoke a different language. I was watching him from across the room where I was sitting at John's desk finishing up my own readings. If we sat beside each other, we would only end up making out and wouldn't get anything done; we had tried. His eyes were fixed on the screen and his tongue ran along his front teeth behind his closed lips as if he were trying to get to something that was stuck in between his teeth.

I had spoken to my mom on the phone earlier that day. We were talking regularly now. A lot of trust and familiarity was lost, and I had realized only recently that it was my fault. And Dad's. I had forgiven him for lying to me, but that didn't mean that everything was fine now. Now he had to earn back my trust.

"Hey, John?" I suddenly asked.

"Mhm-hm?" he hummed, not looking up from his screen.

"Why did you and Jenna break up?"

His gaze snapped to meet mine and his eyebrows furrowed.

"Why do you ask?"

"I realized we never talked about it. And I haven't seen her around in quite a while, come to think of it."

He set aside his laptop and slid to the edge of the bed where he let his feet hit the floor. The movement seemed unusually stiff for him.

"She's abroad this semester."

What?

"Abroad! Wow. Um, where?"

"Cameroon."

Cameroon. Who on earth goes to Cameroon for their study abroad? What the heck is going on? My eyes blinked rapidly as I tried to comprehend what he was telling me.

"You guys broke up because she was going abroad?"

"Well, not really. It was part of it, but it hadn't been going well for a while." He scratched a spot behind his ear.

"You know what I'm thinking," I said in a low voice and cursed myself for how insecure I sounded.

John closed his eyes. "I'm afraid I do."

Then he looked at me, stood, and crossed the room in a few long strides until he was beside my chair, twirling a lock of my hair around his index finger.

"Tell me I'm wrong." The whisper was a genuine plea. I needed to hear it.

"Where is this coming from, babe?"

I took a breath before looking up at him.

"You know my parents are divorced, right?" He nodded. "Well, for the longest time, I thought it was because my mom had cheated on my dad, but... I found out over Christmas that they had both cheated and my dad had let me believe otherwise for seven years."

John looked at me with a hint of... disgust, maybe. Then he swiftly took my hands and pulled me to my feet. His hands ran up and down my arms as he looked into my eyes intently.

"You're wrong. You're exactly who I want, this is not second best." The golden specks in his hazel eyes exuded a warmth that was too easy to fall into.

A first wave of relief relaxed my shoulders, but I still had questions. "What happens when it becomes second best, or even less?" I asked and tried hard to lose my nerves.

You're an adult, I told myself, and this is an adult conversation. Everything was good. I was with John, he was with me, this was a routine talk in a relationship.

"When and if that happens, we'll talk about it and not go somewhere else. Look, I can't promise that we'll stay together forever and live happily ever after, because sometimes, despite people's best intentions, it doesn't work out that way." I swallowed hard and averted my eyes, but John cupped my face and pulled me off the ledge of the dreadful spiral of negative thoughts I would have descended into otherwise. "Maybe you'll meet Hugh Grant and forget all about me."

I rolled my eyes, but couldn't suppress a smirk. "I wouldn't forget you over Hugh Grant. Liam Hemsworth, on the other hand..."

Now it was John's turn to smirk before he got serious again.

"I don't know what will happen, I'd be lying if I pretended I did. The future is a pretty scary place. But it looks a little bit better with you next to me."

"It looks better with you next to me, too," I admitted and sunk my forehead against his chest. His chin grazed the hair at the top of my head.

"I know you think your dad hangs the moon and it pains me to think about how heartbroken you must be. That being said, I hope you're aware that what happened there is in no way the natural course of events. We're not your parents, Grace. We won't be."

"Okay," I replied in a whisper and hugged him tightly. I can't let this one get away.

***

Later that night, I was at Jessica's where we were having a cup of chamomile-lavender tea before bed. There were some days without snow now when the temperature throughout the day was getting more bearable, but it still snowed more days than not and the degrees dropped significantly at night, so we would close the window we had opened for fresh air in a minute. The howling of the wind sending the thick snowflakes spinning this late in March reminded me how much I loved New England, regardless of how much my Southern gal Jessica complained each year.

Right now, however, she was figuratively spilling the tea on one of her first-years whose girlfriend had broken up with her by changing her relationship status on social media—not to 'single', but to 'in a relationship with [name of her new girlfriend]'. Ugh, what more would it take for so-called adults to finally acknowledge that going to college didn't mean you instantly became more mature.

"So I sent her roommate to get dinner and bring me some in a container while I sat with her and handed her tissue after tissue until deep into the night. God, why are kids so cruel?"

The bags under Jessica's eyes spoke of her exhaustion, especially after having recently been broken up with herself.

"But what's new in your life since I last saw you for breakfast yesterday?"

"Um... I spoke to my mom this morning."

"Oh, okay."

"It's still hard, but we're both working on our relationship. Jess, where do you think cheating begins?"

"Random, but okay. Hmm." She thought for a second. "Apart from the physically observable part I'd say when you're entertaining somebody else emotionally while involved with a person. Why, what prompted this question? Your mom?"

"Not this time. I was thinking earlier—was John cheating on his girlfriend?"

She shot me a Whaddayatalkingabout look.

"With me, I mean. Like, when we had that movie night, or when we were in New York. Wasn't he emotionally entertaining me then?"

"Um... I guess so."

"Okay, and to make sure we're on the same page: he knew I liked him, right?"

"I couldn't possibly answer that." She wrapped the string around her teabag and the teaspoon she had 'borrowed' from the dining hall for the duration of the year.

"Jessica."

"Fine. Maybe not consciously at first, maybe the actual thought didn't cross his mind in verbal form until later, but yes, probably. Are you just slut-shaming him or do you have a point here?"

"No, I do have a point. Does that make him a cheater?"Getting ready for bed, she pulled her oversized PJ shirt with the smiling cat print over her head while continuing to talk.

"You're not really asking whether he cheated on her. What you're asking is: will he cheat on you?" she clarified. "And the truth is, there is no way of predicting that. You'll have to trust. Just as he trusts you."

"What do you mean?"

"Everything that you were asking about John—doesn't that apply to you the same?"

I recalled all the times I was with Liam thinking I'd rather be with John, all the times I flirted with John when we were both in relationships, the time I went to John's for the holidays when Liam had asked me to come to his family's place with him, the time I went to John's brother's wedding when I had no business being there apart from his mom or his sister-in-law trying to set us up and ended up holding his hand and slow dancing with him.

"God—you're right. I'm a cheater." I sipped my tea, but the hot infusion was still unable to cure my unease. "Wow, I'm legitimately horrible. Are he and I both legitimately horrible?"

"Gracie, that's not what I was getting at. I've told you before: Liam is not without blame in this story, but I'm too tired to dissect all of that. The message you should have gotten was: sometimes people do the wrong thing, but that doesn't mean they can't ever do the right thing. Both you and John were with other people before, but you're with each other now. Cherish what you have and talk to him about the stuff that's bothering you."

I slurped the last sip of my tea. "Can I have you as atelephone joker when I'm a licensed therapist?"