Home for Christmas

"Shannon told me he loved me," Zane told Jared a few days later. They were sitting in her shabby hotel room, each with a coffee in hand.

"He told me he was going to," Jared said, no discernible expression on his face.

"Do you... have a reaction to this?" she asked him and his eyes focused on her for the first time in the last few minutes.

"I don't know," he said, and she could tell he was holding back from telling her something.

"Spill it, Leto," she told him, scooting closer to him on the couch. "Talk to me, Jay."

"He's really into you, Zane. He's not fucking with you," he said, and she nodded slightly.

"I kind of thought that might be the case."

"You can't keep fucking with him," he said, his voice serious.

"Fucking with him?" she asked, instantly a little offended.

"You can't deny that you've been messing with his head a little bit. One day acting completely uninterested, having sex with him the next, then going right back to being uninterested again the next."

"I... haven't done anything like that intentionally. I just have a lot of shit to figure out."

"I know. But so does he. As far as I know, you're the first girl he's ever used the 'L' word with and actually meant it. He's never been that guy, the 'feelings' guy. But with you, he is. With you, he's willing to be whatever the hell you want him to be."

"I don't... I don't want him to be anything but him."

"That's not the point. The point is that you need to figure your shit out because he's actually in love with you. It's not just something he said on a whim. I know my brother. I know when he actually cares about something and when he's just trying to get something to prove he can. With you, it's real," he told her, and she didn't really know how to respond. "You're hurting him, Zane. Not knowing what you're actually thinking, not knowing where your head actually is, it's killing him."

"What if I don't know those things either?"

"Figure it out."

"I'm sorry, Jay."

"Don't apologize to me. Apologize to Shannon. Or tell him about the feelings that you obviously have for him."

"Obviously?"

"I know you too, Zane. You wouldn't even be bothering with him if you didn't have feelings for him. All these years, I've never heard you talk about a guy by name. I consider you one of my best friends on the planet and you've never told me a boyfriend's name. You've told me about boyfriends and flings, but you've never really been committed to it. You've always talked about it like it didn't really matter. But when you talk about Shan, you get this look in your eye. This look like you might melt right onto the floor if he said the right thing to you. You might as well get giant cartoon hearts in your eyes."

"That's... not true," she tried to deny it, but couldn't really. When she thought about everything he was saying, it was true. She'd never felt about anyone the way she felt about Shannon, even if she didn't even exactly know what those feelings were.

"Bullshit. It's true and you need to talk to him. He's wandering around like a lost puppy these past few days."

"No, he isn't."

"He is though. He keeps asking me what I think you're going to do."

"What if-" she started, but he cut her off.

"If you ask me 'what if I don't know?' one more time I'm going to smack you," he said, and she couldn't help but laugh.

She took a moment to think about it and eventually she decided that it wasn't actually a hard decision at all. She'd definitely been making much too big of a deal out of it. She'd just wanted to be completely sure before she made any decisions. Maybe, she was realizing, the whole point was that you could never really be sure until you tried.

"I know what I'm going to do," she told him a moment later, getting up off the couch and going to the bathroom to change.