Page 39 of A Series of Rooms
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “But I need you to understand why I shut you down when you suggest trying to get me out of this.”
No matter how badly I want it, too.
Liam looked from the box of pizza on the dresser back to Jonah. There was a second in which it looked like Liamwanted desperately to find a loophole, to push just a little bit further, but he stayed quiet. Finally, he nodded.
“You should eat something,” he suggested.
Jonah let out a long breath. He was starving, but every nerve in his body felt like they’d just been scrubbed raw. He could only imagine the food would taste like sawdust in his mouth. Regardless, he didn’t have it in him to argue. He easily accepted a slice of pizza when Liam held the box out to him.
“Are you alright?” Liam asked after Jonah managed to keep down a few bites.
Jonah swallowed. “I’m okay.”
“Okay,” Liam replied, not sounding all that convinced. “Can I just...can I say one more thing about it, then I’ll let it go?”
Jonah eyed him warily.
“I’m not going to pressure you, okay? Never again. But I want you to know,” Liam said, “If the time ever does come when you change your mind, or if circumstances change enough so that you can do something, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he took another bite of pizza, hoping that at least would appease him. Liam watched him for another moment before he was struck by some idea, leaping to his feet to retrieve the hotel-branded notepad and pen from the nightstand drawer.
“What are you doing?” Jonah asked as Liam scribbled something just out of his line of sight.
The perforated edge of the stationery tore seamlessly as Liam pulled it away and handed it across the bed. Jonah took it, and when he looked down, he saw a familiar, loopy handwriting across the page:
Dear Jonah,
Call me.
Your friend,
Liam
Below was his phone number.
Jonah looked up at him.
“I know you don’t have access to a phone, so maybe this is stupid.” Liam shrugged, setting the pad and pen off to the side. “But maybe, somehow...I don’t know. It’ll just make me feel better, knowing you might be able to reach me somehow. If you ever need to. If you ever can.”
Jonah set his napkin-plate on the bed beside him and took extra care to fold the paper neatly into fourths. Wordlessly, he crossed the room to where his jeans were folded on a chair and stuffed the note inside the front pocket.
When he sat back down, Liam turned to him.
“Please, don’t do that again,” he said.
Jonah froze. “What?”
“That selfless-martyr-thing you tried to pull before,” Liam clarified. “Trying to end things like that.” Jonah resisted the urge to correct him, to say that if there was any hero to be named in this story, it certainly wasn’t him. “Next time,just...talk to me first, before you go mapping out your exit strategy, okay?”
Liam’s voice was light and accented by the tug of a kind smile at his lips, but Jonah’s brain was stuck on the ‘next time.’ The implication that Liam still wanted this thing between them—whatever it was—to continue, even after everything he’d just learned.
“None of that changes my concern for how this is affecting you,” Jonah pointed out.
“I told you, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think it was feasible.”
“Feasible, maybe,” Jonah allowed. “But for how long? At what cost to you?”
Liam fell quiet. It lasted long enough for Jonah’s stomach to drop, regret clouding the clarity that had made him fight so hard to prove his point. What if Liam listened to him? What if this was the end?
