Page 1 of Safe With You

Rain tapped steadily against my windshield, the wipers pushing water aside just long enough for downtown to come back into focus before disappearing behind another sheet of rain.

My phone sat face-up in the cupholder beside me. Dark.

I checked it anyway.

Nothing.

Across the street, a florist hurried to pull buckets of flowers inside before the weather got any worse. Two women ducked beneath the awning of the coffee shop next door, laughing as they shook rain from their umbrellas before disappearing inside. Life kept moving around me while I sat parked outside Lucas’s apartment building, watching the minutes slip by one at a time.

I glanced at the clock on my dashboard.

7:53 p.m.

Twenty-seven minutes.

I wasn’t counting anymore. At least that’s what I’d been telling myself for the last ten.

My phone buzzed, and I reached for it before I could stop myself.

Lucas: coming now

I stared at the screen, waiting for the rest of the message.

Sorry.

Lost track of time.

I’ll make it up to you.

Anything.

But the three little dots never came. Just two words.

Coming now.

I let out a slow breath and locked my phone before setting it back in the cupholder. I caught my reflection in the rearview mirror and frowned at the curls the humidity had already started shrinking toward my shoulders. Twenty-seven minutes sitting in a car, and apparently my hair was paying for it too. The passenger seat held the takeout I’d picked up on my way over.

We’d agreed on dinner at his place tonight.

There had been a time when staying in with Lucas meant ordering too much food, arguing over what to watch, and somehow ending up talking until two in the morning even though we’d both sworn we were tired.

The last time we’d stayed in, we’d ended up dancing in his kitchen while dinner burned on the stove. He’d pulled me close, kissed my forehead, and told me, “You know you’re my favorite person, right?”

I’d believed him then.

There had been a lot of things to believe in once.

Lucas used to call just because something reminded him of me. He remembered which candy I picked around in the bag and which songs I played until everybody around me got tired of hearing them. When I had a bad day, he didn’t always know what to say, but he stayed on the phone until I was ready to talk about it. For a long time, loving him hadn’t felt difficult. It had felt like having somebody who knew me.

Maybe that was why I’d held on so long after things changed.

Nothing between us had fallen apart all at once. There hadn’t been some single betrayal I could point to and say, There. That’s when we broke. It happened in smaller ways. Calls came later, plans changed more often, and conversations left me wondering if I’d asked for too much when all I’d asked for was him.

And every time I got close to admitting something between us wasn’t working anymore, Lucas would give me another glimpse of the man I’d fallen in love with. A good night. An unexpected call. His hand finding mine while we walked somewhere. Just enough to make me think maybe we were finding our way back.

So, I stayed. I kept chasing nights like the one in his kitchen, hoping they’d become our normal again instead of our exception.

Tonight, I’d been waiting twenty-seven minutes for dinner.