Stella wasn’t buying it. She frowned a tight, disappointed frown, then swept her hair behind her ear in a businesslike manner and strode farther into the room, cutting a course straight for him. She was in casual clothing again—as she had been more often than not since the day she’d made him aware of Kilometers’s first message—and had become bolder with her makeup choices as her mastery of application had increased. Today she wore a vampy red lip color that added an edge to her usual professionalism. It gave confident, cutthroat executive vibes. Not someone to be trifled with.
And judging by the look on her face, a trifling was on the way.
“I appreciate your discretion,” she said once she was standing directly in front of him, “but respectfully, if you want to lie to me, you’re going to have to do it better.”
Stunned, Jun said nothing.
Stella had never talked back to him before.
“You aren’t okay,” she accused. “You haven’t been okay since you came back from tour heartbroken, and I cannot stand by in silence anymore. I am your personal assistant. I was hired to make your life easier. Part of my job involves knowing what you need before you need it so you’re never inconvenienced, which is why it’s so profoundly distressing to me to see you acting this way. I want to fix this”—she gestured at Jun as a whole—“but there’s nothing I can do. I thought that getting in touch with that heartbroken viewer might give you the outlet you needed to work this out of your system, but you’ve only been getting worse. What’s going on, Jun? Tell me so I can help you, if not as your assistant, then as your friend.”
The falling feeling intensified.
Unable to keep up the act, Jun slumped back into his old position against the wall and closed his eyes. “He’s pregnant.”
“What?”
“He’spregnant.” Jun covered his face with his hands and pressed down on his eyes in an effort to relieve the pressure making his head swim. “The guy I’m talking with. Kilometers. He just told me he’s pregnant, and I know it’s not my problem, but our situations are so similar that all I can think about now is how fucking terrible I’d feel if what happened to him happened to Miles.”
“Oh,” Stella said softly, and a moment later there came a shifting in the air next to him—she had come to join him on the bench. “Jun…”
“And I mean, what if itdidhappen?” Jun asked, unable to keep the thoughts to himself now that she had encouraged him to speak. “What if he’s pregnant right now, alone and afraid, feelinglike he deserves to suffer because he was the one who told me it was safe and now he doesn’t want to inconvenience me? As if I wouldn’t want it. As if it wouldn’t make me the happiest fucking man in the world to have a reason to drop everything and be with him. And it’s crazy. I feelcrazy.I don’t know this guy. I don’t know any of his hobbies, or what he does for work, or what he wants out of life, or if he even for a second felt the same way about me that I feel about him, but it feels like my soul knows him. Like I found the guy who was made for me. I shouldn’t want him the way I do, but I can’t stop, and it’s only getting worse.”
Stella patted his knee awkwardly. “There, there. You’re okay. It feels like a lot in the moment, but this isn’t anything you can’t handle. There are ways to make this right.”
“How?” Jun laughed humorlessly, voice breaking. “He won’t even text me.”
“Well, you know where he lives, don’t you? You could go get closure.”
“I couldn’t do that to him,” Jun muttered, even as his heart beat in painful want of what Stella had suggested. “I don’t want to be the asshole who shows up where he isn’t wanted. It could be that he’s too shy to reach out, but there’s no way for me to know that for sure, and I don’t want to be that guy who assumes he can have anything he wants because he’s a big deal on the internet.”
“All right. So let’s find you closure another way. It’s obvious you must feel some sort of bond with the viewer you’re currently speaking with—if him telling you he’s pregnant has you this broken up, why don’t you do something about it? Help him through it. Offer to foot the bill so he can set up a nursery and get the kid everything he needs. That way you’ll feel like you’redoing something, and with some luck, the goodwill you put out into the universe will find its way back to you.”
“You don’t think that’s weird?”
Stella issued one of her single-shoulder shrugs. “I mean, sure, but if it helps you feel better, who cares? If I were the one with a kid on the way, I wouldn’t turn down the help.”
The terrible feeling of being ejected off the face of the earth subsided, and Jun found himself back on solid ground again. “You don’t think it’s too much?”
“Mm, nah.” Stella smiled and patted his knee one more time—this time far less awkwardly—then rose. “Tell you what—while you shower and get dressed, I’ll go back to the place where I got dinner and pick you up something for dessert. There was this adorable cake in the display case that looked delicious. I’m sure it’ll help take your mind off things.”
“Uh… you didn’t even get me dessert that time I was in the hospital after breaking my leg while being a moron on stream. What gives?”
“Oh, nothing.” Stella saw herself to the door at a pace typically reserved for those wanting to evade a conversation. “It’s not like I’ve been making it a point to frequent this particular restaurant as much as I can because recently, someone started working there who caught my eye.”
“Stella!”
“What?” She laughed and came to a stop in the doorway, half in and half out. “It may surprise you to learn this, but when I am not busy running your life, I have a life of my own to tend to. I just don’t speak about it much.” She hesitated, lips thinnedin thought, then picked up from where she’d left off. “You’re the one who gave me the courage to ask her out, you know. I never would have done it if I hadn’t heard your story and seen for myself how deeply you regretted not being able to follow through with Miles even though you wanted to. I owe you for that. Which is why I’m going to make sure you get through this. Yes, it’s my job to make sure your life runs seamlessly, but you went and made it personal, too.”
Jun huffed a laugh through his nose. “Thank you, Stella.”
“I’ll be back in half an hour,” Stella said, tapping the door twice to signal her imminent departure. “Make sure not to keep me waiting. It’s late, and I’m supposed to be picking a certain someone up at the end of her shift.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Stella smiled at him with genuine warmth, then exited into the hall and disappeared. In her absence, Jun took a moment to towel himself off. It gave him the time he needed to turn the text he was about to write over in his head.
Jun:Look, it’s not my business to know what you plan to do, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to tell me, but I just want to say that if I were your guy, I’d want to know. I’ll be real—it took me this long to reply because I couldn’t stop thinking how I’d feel if I were your lover. If the guy I wanted so damn bad was pregnant with my baby but was too scared to reach out because he thought it would be a burden.
