Turn 13 of 15

Tell him you'll prove it's real

You step forward, close enough to feel the heat coming off his chest through the thin fabric of the green dress. His breath catches, and you watch his jaw work, and you know him well enough to recognize the war happening behind his eyes. He wants to believe you. He wants it so badly it's tearing him apart. But six years of friendship have taught him to trust his fears over his hopes, and right now his fears are winning.

"How?" he says. It's barely a word, more exhale than voice, and his eyes search your face like he's looking for the seam in a costume.

"How would you prove something like that?"

"I don't know yet," you admit, and the honesty of it surprises you both. The old Alex would have had a quip, a deflection, something to keep the conversation at arm's length. But Mika doesn't hide.

"But I'll figure it out. And until I do, I'm not taking this necklace off. Not for you, not for anyone. This is who I am now, Jack. I need you to see that."

He swallows hard. His hand comes up, hovers near your face, and stops, trembling, like he's afraid to touch you in case you dissolve. The streetlight through the kitchen window paints half his face in amber and leaves the other half in shadow, and he looks like someone standing on the edge of a cliff deciding whether to jump.

"You said something in the car," you say quietly. "You started to say something. 'Someone I—' and then you stopped. What were you going to say?"

The question lands like a stone dropped into a deep well. Jack's face changes, something raw flickering across it before he clamps it down. His hand drops to his side. He takes a half step back, and the loss of his warmth against your skin is immediate and sharp.

"I can't," he says. "If I say it out loud, Mika, then it's real. And if it's real and this turns out to be—the necklace, or whatever this is—then I've ruined everything. You, me, six years. I can't lose you. I can't lose both versions of you in the same night."

"Jack."

"Someone I've been in love with for a long time," he says, and the words come out in a rush, like they've been sitting in his throat for months, years, maybe always, and he couldn't hold them for another second. His eyes are red and his fists are clenched at his sides and he's shaking.

"Before the necklace. Before any of this. I designed the necklace's woman, and I put in every detail, and I told myself it was about Lauren, but it wasn't. It was about you. It was always about you, and I was too much of a coward to say it when you were—you."

The room tilts. The kitchen window's amber glow seems to pulse. The necklace is hot against your skin, almost burning, and your heart is hammering so hard you can feel it in your fingertips.

"So you see," Jack says, and his voice breaks on the last word, "if I let myself fall for Mika, and she disappears, I don't just lose the girl. I lose the best friend I've been in love with since junior year. I lose both of you. I can't do that."

He's crying now, not trying to hide it, tears cutting tracks down his cheeks in the streetlight. And you understand, with a clarity that feels like a bone setting back into place, that the necklace didn't create these feelings. It unlocked a door you'd both been leaning against from opposite sides. The transformation didn't make you love him. It gave you a shape brave enough to say it. And it didn't make him want you. It gave him permission to stop pretending he didn't already.