He hadn't really been expecting that Julian would cut him enough slack to not respond to that, but Alfred cringed when he did all the same, as if he expected the words to sting. And the list of reasons he rattled off did sting. It wasn't as though any of those things were news to him, or things he'd never considered before, but he had expected that he had the first two well in hand. He didn't care about propriety, and neither did Jo, and the only outsider's opinion he cared about was Zelda's. If she was willing to trust him, then that was all that mattered (although he certainly wouldn't have gone flaunting his friendship with a woman to any of the Fisks before he'd managed to secure her hand, just in case they had strong feelings on the matter). The last point, though, was a death blow. He'd never thought it would be a problem, because while he knew Jo was attractive in the abstract, he had never thought he was attracted to her. Until yesterday, when that impulse had come up out of nowhere.

That was going to be the death of their friendship, and not anything Jo had said or done during the fight yesterday. She could have fled the country while cursing his name and he might still have harbored hope that things would all be patched up sooner or later, but if something like that was going to happen again — even if there was just the slightest, smallest chance that it might — then he couldn't trust himself around her again. He had come too close to ruining things already, and he wouldn't dare risk everything he had with Zelda again. No matter how much he missed Jo.

"It might as well be hypothetical, now," he said rather miserably. Half of this was how he actually felt, but at least part of it was trying to talk his way out of the hole he'd dug himself into — he didn't want Julian to think anything had happened that Zelda needed to hear about. "We're not friends anymore. She's gone."