The days slipped by differently now.
Keifer wasn't around as much. When Jay asked classmates where he was, the answers were almost always the same:
"With some girl."
"At a café with someone."
"Don't know. He's with someone else."
She nodded each time, a small smile on her lips. It didn't bother her. Not at all.
She had expected it.
Keifer was dating, just as his father had instructed. Meeting girls, smiling, laughing, leaning close as if the world could bend to him. And for the first time, Jay noticed how… detached he could be. With anyone who wasn't her, he was distant in thought and gesture. Not cruel. Not harsh. Just… not present.
She didn't mind.
Sometimes she watched from a distance—the corners of her vision catching glimpses of him with a girl he barely even remembered existed. She thought of the arm he had wrapped around her in the music room. The way his gaze had always softened when he looked at her.
She felt none of the jealousy she might have expected.
Instead, she felt… calm.
Completely fine.
She laughed quietly one afternoon when a friend remarked, "Doesn't it bother you that he's with someone else?"
Jay shook her head. "Not at all. He's… him. And I'm… me."
Her friend blinked, puzzled. "But… you two—"
Jay smiled. "We've been through enough. I'm not defined by whether he's present or not. I know he's mine, in his own way. That's enough."
And it was.
Keifer didn't remember her when he was with other girls. He didn't text. Didn't check. Didn't glance her way.
But Jay didn't need him to.
She was strong. She was grounded. She was herself.
And she knew—quietly, without doubt—that no matter how far he drifted outward, the space she held in his life… no one could take that.
She had let go of expectation.
She had let go of fear.
She had let go of need.
And in that letting go, she felt… free.