Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~7 min read
Chapter 9: What he couldn’t say
JAKE
He thought about her for three days.
This was not, he told himself, unusual. She had been his best friend since childhood. He had been living next to her for two months, spending most afternoons at the kitchen table or walking the fence line or driving to the VA together when their schedules aligned. It would have been strange not to think about her.
What was unusual was the specific way he was thinking about her.
He was thinking about the hand on her waist.
He was thinking about the way her cheek had felt against his shoulder, the particular weight of it, and the way she’d said: *you were showing off for who* and he’d said *you* before he’d had a chance to stop himself.
He was thinking about the one extra second.
He had held her hand for one extra second before he let it go.
He knew what the one extra second meant. He’d known it at eighteen, when he’d decided that leaving was easier than saying the true thing, and he’d known it in Kandahar on the second deployment when he’d looked at the stars over the desert and thought: *the stars are different here than they are anywhere else in the world,* and had heard his own voice saying that from a truck tailgate in a different life.
He had been in love with Amy Brooks since he was seventeen years old.
He had been managing it for twelve years.
He had gotten extremely good at the management.
He went to the VA on Thursday. Dr. Okafor said: *How has the week been.* He said: *The episodes are decreasing.* Dr. Okafor said: *Good. What else.* He said: *I went to the festival on Saturday.* Dr. Okafor said: *How was it.* He said: *Better than I expected.* Dr. Okafor said: *What made it better.*
He did not say: *Amy Brooks in a blue dress.*
He said: *Having someone I knew there. The familiar context.*
Dr. Okafor said: *You mentioned someone named Amy in the intake.*
He said: *We grew up next door. She’s a teacher. She’s been — around, since I got back.*
Dr. Okafor said: *In what way.*
He said: *In the neighbor way.* He paused. *She brings things over. She comes by in the afternoons.*
Dr. Okafor said: *Does that feel supportive.*
He said: *Yes.*
Dr. Okafor said: *Does it feel like anything else.*
He said nothing.
Dr. Okafor said: *You don’t have to answer that.*
Jake said: *I don’t want to put anything on her.*
Dr. Okafor said: *What do you mean.*
He said: *She’s doing a kind thing. She’s been doing a kind thing for two months.* He looked at the parking lot. *I’m not going to mistake kindness for something else.*
Dr. Okafor said: *Are you certain it’s kindness and not something else on her end.*
Jake said: *Yes.*
Dr. Okafor said: *How certain.*
Jake looked at the window.
He said: *She’s my best friend. She’s being a good friend.*
Dr. Okafor said: *You said you didn’t want to put anything on her. That’s different from saying you don’t feel anything for her.*
Jake said nothing.
Dr. Okafor said: *It’s all right not to answer.*
He drove home in the specific silence of a person who had been asked the right question and was not ready for the right answer.
He thought: *I feel everything for her.*
He thought: *that’s the problem.*
He thought about the timeline. He had been home for two months. He had been in therapy for five weeks. He was still having nightmares — less frequent, the grounding exercises working, the forty-five-second disorientation episodes down to zero in the last three weeks — but still present. He was still having the hardware store version of events, the protocol-running, the involuntary assessment of every room he entered.
He was better. He was measurably better.
He was not recovered.
He thought: *what does recovered look like.*
He thought: *it looks like a person who can be in a relationship without being a liability.*
He thought: *Dr. Okafor said that word landed somewhere.*
He went back to the farm.
Amy came by at five.
She had the tomato seedlings in a tray — they were finally big enough to transplant, she said, the heirlooms took longer than the commercial varieties. She was wearing the jeans and the blue shirt she wore when she wasn’t teaching and her hair was in the braid she wore when she’d been outside all day and she set the tray on the porch railing and said: *I thought we’d put them along the south wall. It gets afternoon sun.*
He said: *I know where the south wall is.*
She said: *I wasn’t sure you’d thought about where to put them.*
He said: *I hadn’t.*
She said: *Then I was right to specify.*
They planted the tomatoes along the south wall.
It took an hour, which was longer than it should have taken because she wanted to space them properly and he had opinions about the spacing that she disagreed with, and the disagreement was comfortable in the specific way of two people who had been disagreeing about things for twenty years and had no anxiety about the disagreement.
She said: *You’re spacing them too close.*
He said: *I’m spacing them at eighteen inches, which is the standard.*
She said: *These are heirlooms. They spread. Twenty-four.*
He said: *You should have told me that before we started.*
She said: *I assumed you’d ask.*
He said: *I didn’t know I needed to ask.*
She said: *Jake. They’re heirlooms.*
He moved the stakes to twenty-four inches.
She was right. He knew she was right. He just liked the arguing.
He looked at her crouched over the garden bed with dirt on her forearms and the specific concentration she gave to everything she did, and he thought: *I have been watching her do things since we were eight years old.*
He thought: *I have never gotten tired of it.*
He thought: *that’s not the thing you feel about your best friend.*
She looked up and found him looking at her.
She said: *What.*
He said: *Nothing.*
She said: *You were thinking something.*
He said: *I was thinking you were right about the spacing.*
She said: *I know I was.* She looked back at the tomatoes. *I’m always right about plants.*
He said: *I know.*
She said: *And you know this.* She smiled at the garden bed. *That’s what makes the arguing worth it.*
He helped her water the seedlings in.
She stayed until six, when Linda came out to admire the tomatoes and declared them exactly right, which was Linda’s way of ending the conversation without ending the visit, and they all went inside and Linda made cornbread and they ate dinner with the screen door open to the evening air.
After dinner, Amy helped wash up and then said she had papers to grade and said goodnight to Linda and then to Jake, and when she said goodnight to Jake she looked at him for just a moment longer than the goodnight required.
He said: *Drive safe.*
She said: *Always.* She smiled.
He stood at the screen door and watched her headlights go down the road.
His mother said, from the kitchen: *You should tell her.*
He said: *Tell her what.*
His mother was quiet for a long time.
She said: *You’ve been watching her go down that road since you were seventeen years old, Jake. The watching is the same.* She paused. *The not-telling isn’t serving either of you.*
He said: *Mom.*
She said: *I’m just noting what I see.*
He said: *I know what you’re noting.*
She said: *Good night, sweetheart.* She turned the kitchen light off. *Think about what I said.*
He stood at the dark screen door for a long time.
He thought: *I know what I feel.*
He thought: *I know what she deserves.*
He thought: *those two things are not the same problem.*
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