Purposefully Accidental

Chapter Fifty-four

Jonah guides me through the cooking process of our breakfast for today: spinach frittata with cheese and sun-dried tomato (and, yes—I don't know how he managed to find time for it, but he sun-dried his tomatoes on his own, the overachiever). He's patiently helping me build my confidence to cook by feeling instead of carefully following a written recipe like I normally do. I'm slowly learning what it truly means to "eyeball" your ingredients, which I think should be life-changing. The food comes out looking gorgeously delicious, and hopefully tastes almost as good as it looks. Progress.

He brewed coffee as I cooked, and now on the dining table in front of me is a cup of hot caffè latte, complete with his latte art creation on the thin layer of frothed milk on top of the coffee. He presents it to me with a small grin, his coffee in exchange for my frittata.

Drawn with his re-improving latte art skills is a smiling sun. I throw him a confused look, to which he answers with, "Because you're my sunshine."

"Oh, shut up." I punch his shoulder while he laughs. I've missed this rare cheeky side of him. "Trying to butter me up before the ex-talk, huh?"

"Is it working?" he asks hopefully as we dig into our breakfast.

"Hmm." I narrow my eyes at him, fighting a smile. "Maybe."

It's not until I finish my latte and he finishes his espresso that I finally begin the talk. "So."

"So." Jonah shrugs a little. "I did say I'd tell you all about her."

"Mm-hm."

He rubs the back of his neck. "Did you watch the finale of The Spice Games, by any chance? I mean, like. The full thing. To the end."

I look down at my now empty cup of coffee. "I did."

"So you saw the part... where she kissed me," his voice is strangely quiet. There's a long pause that prompts me to look up at him, and when I do, I see a troubled look on his face. He notices his own long pause and shakes his head. "Sorry. It's just... kind of hard to describe what our relationship was like."

I reach for his hand on the dining table. "It's okay. I don't need to know. You're not with her anymore and that's all that matters."

"I want you to know. It's only fair," Jonah says. "It's just... hard. I've never really talked about this to anybody else—well, except my therapist."

That brings a frown to my face. "You talk about her with your therapist?"

"Oh, I talk about you with my therapist, too. I talk about everything with him," he says with a wave of his hand.

"... Fair. My therapist also heard a lot about you," I confess with a grimace. Poor Alice. "Alright. Moving on."

He takes a deep breath. "Okay. You saw the... kiss, on the show. But did you ever notice, before the camera cuts out, what my face looked like during the kiss?"

"I can't say I did. I... only watched it once," I say.

He smiles a little at my expression. "Understandable."

"You did tell me that the kiss caught you off-guard."

"I did. Yeah. I didn't... I had no idea she was gonna do that. We never... I mean, looking back now, I can see that she might have been interested in me, from weeks before... during our stay at the dormitory. But I never showed any interest back. I didn't really... see her that way."

I have this creeping feeling of my stomach dropping at the quiet tone of his voice, and how he keeps playing with my fingers on the table.

"You need to understand. My heart was only ever for you, Hannah," he tells me, softly, something aching coating the quietness of his voice. "Part of me was waiting to be eliminated so I could go home and see you again, so I could apologize for the proposal and how I'd treated you weeks leading up to that. There was no space left in my heart for me to even... think about being with someone else."