CAMBRIA

TWENTY-TWO

Five months. It had been five months since that fateful night. Five months without Jackson in her life. Except this time wasn't like all the times before. This time, he was actually gone for good.

In the grand scheme of things, five months is not that long. Yet somehow, those five months were the longest most grueling months of her life. Not a day went by that she didn't think about him. He was once the very air she breathed. Now, she struggled to get through each day knowing he wasn't there.

She was alive, but barely.

It all came back to that night in his backyard, the thirtieth of June. Something had shifted in the air between them. Barriers were broken, realizations were made. She was besieged by a flood of emotions she had never allowed in before, and for the first time, required confronting. She couldn't go back to how things were before, tiptoeing around the truth, pretending they both didn't feel what they felt. She didn't want to pretend anymore, didn't want to hide. Yet that was exactly what Jackson did. And she could not understand it.

That night changed everything. Yet after that night, nothing changed.

She was expecting something big, a catastrophic explosive of revelations. Instead, they slipped back into a normalcy so mundane that it physically pained her to bear witness.

The first time they saw each other was two days later, on Monday. Jackson called to let her know she forgot her sweater at his house. Then proceeded to tell her to bring her bathing suit and come over for a swim.

Tentative, she made her way over, unsure of what to expect. When she arrived, his family was barbequing in the backyard. Kyle offered her a beer, Victoria asked if she had plans for the fourth of July. And there was Jackson, lounging on a pool floatie, beer in hand, waving to her.

Confounded, she got in the pool and approached him, hoping they were out of earshot from his family.

"Hey, loser," he extended his beer towards her, clinked it against hers.
"Hi."
"I hope you're hungry, dad's making steaks."
"I can see that."
"How was work?"
"Work was fine. How was your day?"
"Busy. But my boss let me leave an hour early."
"Lucky you."
"Did they already ask you about Wednesday? We're having a party."
"Victoria mentioned it."
"You in? We're going to get a keg."
She stared at him, blinked once. She wasn't following. Couldn't understand the extreme normality that was occurring between them. Could not fathom how they could surpass several forcefields yet remain in the exact same place they were before. How he could trace his fingers across her skin, stare into her eyes with such longing and desire, an ocean between them, only to not say a single word about it.

And that was how things continued on, as if it never happened, much like their kiss the year before. If Jackson wasn't going to acknowledge it, then she sure as hell wasn't going to either. The last thing she wanted was a repeat of Christmas, being accused of having feelings for him, risk losing him as a friend because Natalia thought she was trying to steal him from her.

So instead, she said nothing. And neither did he.

She spent the entirety of the fourth of July party watching him, waiting for him to get drunk and slip up; kiss her again, tell her that he hadn't stopped thinking about that night. But alas, he did not.

She questioned for the first time whether she hated him for that.

It was a recipe for disaster, the perfect storm, subsequently leading her directly down the same path she had gone down all those times before. If only Jackson had said something, acknowledged it, confirmed what she was now so convinced of.