Dear Jace,
I don't know how to write this, because there's no version of this that doesn't make me a bad person.
My best friend's husband. That's who this is about. We've all been friends for almost a decade — I introduced them, actually, back when we were all in our twenties and none of this seemed possible. I stood up at their wedding. I have known her longer than I've known almost anyone alive.
I don't know when it changed. I think it was gradual, the way rooms get dark — you don't notice until you're already sitting in it. It's not that I don't love her. I do. It's that somewhere along the way I started noticing him, really noticing him, the way he listens when she talks, the way he remembers things I mention once. And now I can't be in a room with the two of them without doing this quiet, sick math about what I'm allowed to feel and what I'm not.
Nothing has happened. I need you to know that. I would never — I don't think I would ever. But I've started making excuses to be around them especially him, more, and I hate myself a little more each time I do it, and I don't know if I'm protecting anyone by staying silent or just letting this rot quietly in a place no one can see.
I don't want advice on how to have him. I want advice on how to stop, or how to live next to this without it costing me the only two people I actually can't lose.
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