Sarah stared at the nervously expectant faces of her brother and ex-boyfriend. For the first time she could remember, they maintained a safe buffer of personal space between them. Their hands pressed unnecessarily hard into the worn cushions of the Jacobs' couch, but their fingers ended a few tense inches from each other's.
Jack's face wore the same expression he had shamelessly displayed when he told her, voice quiet but surprisingly firm, that he couldn't see her anymore. The same expression he had tried to conceal when he asked her to be his girlfriend, five years earlier. The same expression he'd sheepishly shot at her every time she surprised he and David in an intimate setting, faces close, bodies touching, breathing or speaking almost inaudibly. Each instance where Jack had worn that face marched single file through Sarah's head—each moment in the past nine years since Jack had first visited their home for dinner when he knew he was at her mercy, that she would judge him as she would, and that he was fragile as spun glass hurtling down the side of a ten story building, rushing closer and closer to the cement below.
Sarah turned her attention to David. His face was ashen and pulled tight, but blank. Every muscle in his body was tense, she could see. She knew this David, too—this was how David acted when he expected he was about to get a chastising, or a bad grade, or rejected. Sarah could remember David wearing this apprehensive costume most recently in Jack's bedroom, standing at the side of his bed with a simple gold band in his hand, held out to Jack. The door had been partway open; it wasn't her fault she saw the obviously private display. So she had known this moment on the couch was coming. She wasn't completely blindsided.
Not meaning to extend the moment needlessly, Sarah found herself sitting in the parlor working on her point-stitching. David had been due home an hour ago, and her mother was fretting in the kitchen, leaning on the counter and wringing a dry towel between her hands. The soup was slowly overcooking. Her father occasionally called reassurances to Esther. Then the door opened—Sarah's mother instantly relaxed. David handed Les over to his parents and pulled in a tan stranger, "Jack." Of course, Sarah decided on the spot that Jack would be hers. They would be together, and get married, and have three children of their own. She decided the names that first night Jack ate dinner with her family—they would have a girl named Elizabeth, and two boys, named Jack Jr. and Daniel, respectively. Every time that night that David's new friend turned his attention to her, Sarah felt warmth radiated from her stomach to her skin. She was sure everyone in the room could feel it with her.
Sarah remembered listening, enraptured, to David babbling about his "new friend," equally enthralled with the strange character. Perhaps her infatuation had masked David's odd behaviour, but now she remembered how he had rehashed tiny details of Jack's person, such as muscles moving in his arms. He memorized and repeated nearly every word Jack spoke to him. Everything her parents said caused him to launch into a new story of Jack's antics.
Her memory jumped to two weeks before Jack had broken up with her. He and David were standing on the roof, leaning over the edge of the building, talking quietly. She stood a good distance away, taking laundry off the line. Jack took David's shoulder in his hand and reassured him. Before the spirit of voyeurism overtook her, Sarah tried to look away, but before she could, they embraced. She hurried inside, and worried about what was happening on the roof. The boys stayed there long enough that she had forgotten about the hug until they came in with messy hair and untucked shirts.
Yes, Sarah had always known the boys were going to end up together. She hadn't been surprised at all when David sat Jack down to talk to her, and he heard the words before David spoke them: "We're going to spend the rest of our life together. We're… you know. We're in love."
Sarah supposed she was okay with it—nothing seemed to make David happier than Jack showing up unannounced to sweep him away to a hideout in the city. When she saw David with the ring, Jack had a face on that Sarah had never seen, and thought she would never see again—there was absolutely nothing but adoration and love in Jack's face.
Finally, Sarah spoke. "I know."
David licked his lips and said, "So do our parents, now. And I've got to leave. They don't want me around Les anymore."
Sarah nodded soberly. "Yes, I guess not. Before you go, I want you to know that I've always seen that you two were in love. I'm happy for you—proud for you, almost. Wear your love like Heaven."
Disclaimer: I don't own Newsies.