Five Percent of Truth

My iPhone was at 2% when I arrived at Jace's house for the 'study session' that everyone knew was actually just us scrolling TikTok in companionable silence. Jace was already sprawled across his bed, lights dimmed, holding out a tangle of white wires like they were holy artifacts.

"Forgot my cable," I admitted, sinking onto the beanbag chair in the corner. "Can I—"

"Yeah, yeah." Jase tossed it without looking up from his screen. "But don't go through my stuff, weirdo."

"As if," I scoffed, but my heart did this little glitch-thing. Because Jace had been acting different lately – distant, guarded, constantly shielding his phone screen like it contained state secrets instead of just texts from our friend group. And I'd been dying to know why.

So when he got up to grab snacks from the kitchen, telling me to "charge it and don't touch anything else," I may have casually slid my finger across his screen to check the notification that had just popped up.

I wasn't trying to be a spy. I was just... concerned. As a friend. That's all.

The notification was from his ex, Maya: *I miss you too. Can we talk?*

My stomach dropped. Jace had told me he was over her, that he'd moved on, that talking about her made him "literally gag." And here he was, secretly missing her back? The betrayal hit harder than it should have – we weren't dating, we weren't even flirting, but somehow this felt like he'd been lying to me about everything.

I heard his footsteps in the hallway and scrambled to disconnect my phone, heart pounding like I'd actually done something wrong instead of just witnessing someone else's secret.

"Everything cool?" Jace asked, appearing in the doorway with chips.

"Yeah," I managed, though my voice sounded tight. "Just... charging."

He studied me for a second, like he was deciding whether to believe me. Then his phone buzzed again, and I watched his face change – this soft, sad expression he'd never let me see before. He swiped it away quickly, but not quickly enough.

"Hey," I said, surprising myself. "If you wanted to talk to Maya, you could tell me. I wouldn't judge."

Jace froze. "How did you—"

"Notification popped up when you were getting snacks." I winced. "Sorry. I didn't mean to spy, I swear."

But instead of getting mad, Jace just sighed and sat on the edge of the beanbag. "I didn't tell you because I knew you'd think I'm being stupid. She broke up with me, remember? Why do I still miss her?"

"Because feelings don't have off switches," I said, and we sat there in his dim room, my iPhone finally at 100%, both of us pretending not to notice how everything had changed between us – how maybe, just maybe, this was the start of something real.