She’d learned from before—how quickly Jacob could swing, how easily he could burn through people’s patience. So this time, she moved carefully, like handling something fragile. They started with coffees, slow walks, phone calls that didn’t press too deep. Jacob wasn’t sure what they were to each other anymore. Friends? Something more? Something less?All he knew was that she kept showing up.
He liked that she didn’t expect him to be brilliant or tragic. She didn’t ask him for grand plans. She didn’t look at him like a project to fix. She met him exactly where he was: stumbling, medicated, cautious.
It unsettled him.
One night, as they sat in a quiet park watching streetlights flicker, Jacob asked, “Why are you still here?”
Sofia shrugged, picking at the label of her coffee cup. “You think I didn’t know who you were the first time?”
“I wasn’t honest with you,” he admitted. “About any of it.”
“You were honest in pieces. I just wasn’t ready to see all of them.”
He stared at the cracked pavement beneath their feet. “You know I could still fall apart again, right?”
She gave a small, sad smile. “I know. That’s the thing about loving you, Jake. It’s not about waiting for you to be perfect. It’s about choosing to stay, even when it’s hard.”
Her words sat heavily on his chest. He wanted to believe he was worth that kind of love. He just wasn’t sure he was.
“I don’t want to hurt you again,” he whispered.
“You might. I might hurt you too. That’s life.”
He looked at her, really looked at her, and saw the depth of what she was offering—something patient, something real, something that didn’t demand fireworks.
But it scared him, too.
Mania always made promises he couldn’t keep. Stability made him doubt whether he deserved anything at all.
“I’m not good at slow,” he confessed.
“That’s okay. I am,” she said softly.
There were still landmines between them. Sofia knew the warning signs now—the rapid speech, the impulsive ideas, the restless nights that could spiral into weeks of chaos. She didn’t try to control him. She simply stayed close, anchoring him when he drifted too far from shore.
Emily noticed the change. “She’s good for you,” she said one afternoon as they folded laundry together. “But you still have to be good for you. That’s the work.”
Jacob nodded, though he wasn’t sure what ‘good’ meant yet. Taking his meds? Going to therapy? Forgiving himself?
The old version of him would’ve tried to prove something—would’ve sprinted ahead, convinced he could shortcut the process.
But now, he started to understand that building a life wasn’t a race.
It was the slow, daily choice to stay. To keep showing up. For his sister. For Sofia. For himself.
And even though the ground still trembled under his feet, Jacob realised—for the first time in a long time—he didn’t want to run.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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