“River!” Jess whisper-yelled.

Fizzy leaned back and made a shooing motion with her hand, whispering, “Go!”

“What do I say?” Jess hissed.

“Make him do the talking!” She shadowboxed in her chair and forgot to whisper the rest: “Fuck him! Tell him I said so!”

River cleared his throat and offered a dry “Hi, Fizzy” through the screen door.

“Oh, great.” Growling at her, Jess stood, stomped over to the door, and jerked it open.

River stared at her face and then dropped his eyes before immediately looking back up. A hot blush crawled up his neck. Right. Pants. And as they stood facing each other, River made a valiant effort to not let his eyes drop below her shoulders again.

Or… maybe it wasn’t valiant. Maybe it wasn’t hard at all. Maybe for him, turning off feelings was like flicking the switch off at the end of an experiment.

Score over ninety: interest on.

Score unknown: interest off.

“Hi,” Jess said. Well, even if he could shut off his feelings, the same was certainly not true for her. If anything, her love for River had somehow solidified into a brick in her chest: If she wasn’t truly in love with him, then why did she cry herself to sleep every night? Why was he the first person she’d wanted to hold when she finally got home from dropping Jamie off the other night?

But at the sight of him—how Jess could immediately tell he’d gotten a haircut recently, how he was still the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen, even with the dark circles under his eyes, and how being this close to him still made a cord of longing pull tight from her throat to her stomach—the sadness melted away and she was angry. More than angry, Jess was livid. It had been eight days. Eight days of complete silence from someone who’d told her he hadn’t felt like he’d been home in forever until he met her. Who’d kissed her like he needed her to breathe. Who said “I love you” out of the blue and didn’t try to take it back. And then he left.

“What are you doing here?”

His jaw clenched and he closed his eyes, swallowing with effort. “Do you… want to go put on pants?”

Jess stared at him, mute with shock. This was the first thing he said to her? Go get dressed? Honestly, being confronted with the uppity, asshole version of River made it so much easier to dial down the love and crank up the hate.

“No.” Jess waited for him to look at her face again and then put a hand on her hip, deliberately ignoring when her shirt rose up. “What are you doing here?”

River exhaled shakily, blinking to the side and then looking back to her. “Do you mind if I come in?”

Her first instinct was to tell him that she did mind. She minded very much, in fact, because having him in her space would remind her that he’d started treating it like his space, too. She’d thrown out the deodorant he’d left in her bathroom, the socks she’d fished out of the laundry basket, the oat milk he’d kept in her fridge. But she knew they needed to have this conversation. They had to break up, officially.