The Shuddering

his silence for a long while, then pushed away from the island and stepped back toward the table. She watched him dig through one of his pockets before returning, the quiet jingle of metal hitting tile sounding when a ring tumbled from the palm of his hand. She stared at it for what felt like an eternity, knowing that ring as well as that T-shirt. It was the one he used to wear on his thumb—the one she used to spin when they held hands.
    She shook her head, not understanding what he was trying to say.
    “She gave it back,” he said “Told me to give her a real one if I still wanted to.”
    Jane bit her bottom lip, wanting to reach out and touch that old memento as though doing so would somehow bring back the past. “And are you going to?” she asked softly, afraid to meet his gaze. She pressed her lips together in a tight line, shaking her head. “Sorry, that’s none of my business.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    She blinked up at him, suddenly desperate to reach out, to grab his hand and crawl under his arm.
    “Did you want to get married?” he asked, pushing his hair behind his ears.
    She swallowed against his question, frowning at the floor. “Yeah, I mean…” She raised a single shoulder up to her ear.
    “It felt like the right thing to do,” he said. “Until it didn’t.”
    Sawyer had a way with words, always knowing what she was thinking, like magic. Ryan was Jane’s rightful duplicate, but Sawyer could decipher her like no other. He could reach inside her head and expose her innermost secrets with a phantom hand.
    “It was my idea,” he confessed. “And it may have been a mistake, but what can you do?”
    “But why?”
    “It felt like the right thing.”
    “The right thing,” she echoed, her chest suddenly feeling Tin Man hollow. Sawyer Thomas wasn’t the marrying kind. He was like Ryan in that sense—free and exuberant, with a bright future ahead of him. He was passionate about his work, and he’d worked hard to get where he was. Jane swallowed against the slow-growing realization of what “the right thing” must have meant. She had teased her own brother more than a few times, insisting that the only thing that would ever tie Ryan down was accidentally knocking someone up.
    “Please tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it does,” she whispered. Sawyer had just scored his dream job, had moved into a new apartment. From what Ryan had told her, he was happy in his new life. But now it was unclear where that happiness had come from; had it been because everything seemed to be falling into place, or had it been because of April and the promise of a family?
    She stepped closer to him, gathering enough courage to grab his hand. Her heart lurched when he squeezed her hand in response.
    “Don’t think less of me,” he told her. “This wasn’t the plan. You always told me I was good at making the right choices, remember?”
    She did. She had told him that very thing inside an airport terminal despite her breaking heart. Jane offered him a weak smile, on the verge of tears. She couldn’t decide whether she was upset because his dream had been derailed, or because her secret desire had just been rendered impossible.
    “But then I got to wondering, why not me?”
    Jane pressed her lips together, trying to keep her composure. “Why not you…?”
    “Yeah, why not? People get married, they have kids; that’s life.”
    She wanted to protest, to insist that he wasn’t regular people. Sawyer Thomas didn’t get married, didn’t have kids. He was supposed to remain eternal and perfect while everyone else moved on, got hurt, grew old with age and regret.
    “I’m happy for you, Tom,” she told him, but she could see he wasn’t convinced.
    “Yeah, I can tell.” He cracked a smile. “Overjoyed.”
    “Sorry, it’s just a lot to take in. As long as you’re happy. This is what you want?”
    “Wanting and getting aren’t the same thing,” he told her. Dipping his chin enough to catch her gaze, he offered her a brave smile. “Right?”
    “What does that mean, exactly?”
    “Are you really going to make me say it?”
    “I don’t know.” She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Maybe.”
    He shook his head and looked away. She could see it in his face: he wasn’t buying in. Despite all of his opportunities to corner her—the night in the kitchen, up on the mountain, on the chair lift where nobody would see, and now—he restrained himself. Admitting that he had held