Page 12 of Seven Minutes
The reel blinked, then sharpened into his own white coat ceremony. The auditorium smelled of flowers and nervous sweat, and the applause thundered like rain. I clapped until my palms stung. When his eyes found mine through the crowd, he mouthed,We did it.Tears stung my eyes. We had.
The light wavered—too fast and bright—and suddenly, we were years ahead. I was waiting up for him again. An empty dinner plate sat on the table. The clock ticked loudly in the quiet. The apartment hummed with a low, restless silence that comes when you love someone who’s never home.
But the reel didn’t linger there. It spun toward something gentler.
The smell of fresh paint. Dust floating in the air. Our laughter echoed through rooms that weren’t ours yet. Adrian opened cabinets and checked the plumbing. Me trailing behind him, half-dizzy with hope.
A blue door on Decatur Street. Ivy climbing one wall. The porch sagging just slightly.
Adrian trailed his fingers over the wrought-iron house numbers.
“This one’s different. I can feel it,” he said with as much excitement as I felt. Late afternoon sun poured through thewindows, catching on him, turning everything soft and magical. “Can you see it?”
I could. Not the house—us. Morning light on the kitchen floor. A cup of tea on the porch. Laughter settling into the walls.
“This could work.”
His voice was quiet. Certain. “It’s ours. Even if it’s just for now.”
The feeling lingered, taking root before we even knew what we were planting.
Time spun forward several weeks,stopping on cardboard moving boxes and takeout pizza boxes. His head in my lap, scrubs still on, half-asleep. One arm draped over me as if he didn’t plan to move. Warm skin under my hand. His familiar scent surrounding me. The quiet kind of happiness that slips in and makes itself at home.
We talked about later. After residency. After loans.
Eating out again. Buying things we didn’t need. Maybe adopting a dog. The future felt wide open then. Untouched. Like nothing could reach us.
We didn’t see the cracks. Not yet.
The reel lingered there. It wanted me to feel it all again—the ache, the awe, the impossible tenderness of realizing that someone had become my whole compass. That no matterwhere I went, no matter how far I drifted, the pull would always lead me back to him.
And I felt it.
God, I felt it.
Then came the other memories, the quiet ones that build a life.
Sunday mornings with sunlight spilling across the counter, batter on his cheek, and pancakes that were supposed to be animals. His mouth was warm on mine. A true-crime podcast playing softly in the background.
Renovating the house. Gray-blue paint on our hands, on his jaw, on my shirt where he pulled me too close. Followed by a hot shower and steamy kisses.
The rented fixer-upper slowly became ours. Our shoes by the door, his scent in the couch cushions, something of us lingering in every room.
Movies playing on the TV while we slept through them. Half-watched documentaries, and dinners that ended with him reading me court case trivia just to see me roll my eyes. My hand finding his without looking.
A crooked Christmas tree leaning left no matter what we did.
The dent in the hallway from the bookshelf we swore would fit.
Books piling up beside the bed as if we had all the time in the world.
It all blurred together—small, ordinary moments stacking up until they felt like something permanent.
It wasn’t perfect, just ours.
We made love in every room. Forgiveness floated in the quiet spaces. It was the kind of ordinary that felt like it might last forever.
Until it didn’t.
