Jess winced, squirming in his seat like a teenager being interrogated. He knew Lila meant nothing by it, she genuinely did care, but he didn't exactly know how to describe it, nor did he want to sound ungrateful, but...

"It's... complicated." He settled on. Lila knew him better than most people, better than Fallon probably did these days, which was a damn shame and probably all his fault, but he still hadn't any idea how to make it work any better. "It's not exactly what I had envisioned. You know like we used to talk about?" They had, as foolish teenagers were wont to do, projected into the future what it would look like if they had gotten married. A little house on the outskirts of town, with a big yard full of dogs and kids. That was what he wanted, still did, but it seemed so far off. Worse yet, what he wanted in life was something that would inevitably make Fallon miserable. "But she's so focused on her career. Which I knew, I knew it going in and we came to an agreement, but we're still sort of miserable." In reality it wasn't working and it was crushing them both somehow.

"I love her, I do. We went through so much shit to get here, but we cannot get on a the same page. Half the time I think we're in different books altogether." He had probably said too much, but Gabe was the only other one he had spoken to about it and his brother was less than sympathetic. Molly could do it, be somewhat happily married to an auror, why couldn't Jess?