Page 109 of Shared By my Ex's Best Friends
He’s wearing the same leather jacket I once used to borrow when I was cold, but now it looks like armor instead of comfort.
He doesn’t move when I approach. Just watches me with that unreadable expression I used to work so hard to interpret—like if I could figure it out, I could fix things.
Not anymore.
“Hey,” I say, stopping a few feet away.
He gives a single nod. “Hey.”
We start walking without saying anything else. The path curves gently past the playground—empty this time of day—and loops near the duck pond, where the water ripples lazily beneath the breeze.
Gravel crunches beneath our feet with every step, sharp and loud in the silence between us. Birds chirp overhead, and a distant dog barks, but none of it touches the tension coiling inside my chest like a spring ready to snap.
Then he says it.
“So it’s true? You’re with all three of them?”
His voice is flat, but I hear the bite under it. The disbelief. The judgment.
I don’t flinch. “Yes. I love them.”
He scoffs, like the idea of that is absurd. “I don’t get it. You were never like this before.”
I stop walking and turn to face him fully, keeping my spine straight even as my pulse hammers in my ears.
“I was neverallowedto be,” I say, my voice calm but firm. “With you, I always had to be whatyouneeded. With them… I get to be who I really am.”
He blinks, taken aback by the force behind my words. For a second, I see something flicker across his face. Guilt? Shame?
He doesn’t answer. Just shoves his hands deeper into his jacket pockets and keeps walking, slower now. When he speaks again, his voice has dropped to something low and bitter.
“You’re pregnant, too. Who’s the dad?”
That’s when I stop cold.
“Wow,” I say, taking a step back. The word cuts out of me like a whip. “That’snotyour business.”
He exhales hard, dragging a hand through his hair. His shoulders sag a little, like I’ve deflated something in him. Good. Let it deflate.
“I didn’t expect you to move on so fast,” he mutters, voice quieter now.
“I didn’t either,” I admit, watching the wind tug at the sleeve of his jacket. A few golden leaves swirl around us, catching the light as they fall. “But I’m happy now, Nick.Reallyhappy.”
I pause, letting the words settle, not just for him, but for me too.
“I hope someday you can be, too.”
His expression shifts. The stiffness in his jaw eases, the tension in his shoulders softens like air slowly leaking from a balloon.
He nods, slow and almost reluctant, like letting go of the last thread of bitterness hurts more than he expected.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “For what it’s worth.”
The words land softly, less a confession and more a release.
Maybe I don’t believe every piece of it, not completely, but… yeah. In this moment, I think he means it.
I glance back at the bench beneath the sycamore tree, where I once sat and convinced myself that love meant shrinking so someone else could stretch out. I don’t feel small now.
