She stays quiet for another beat. “I miss you,” she says. “I’m ready to be back.”
“Is it weird that all I’ve thought about since I left campus is going back?” I ask like I’m really just admitting it to her.
“If you’re weird, I’m weird too,” she says back, laughing quietly.
“I think I owe you a couple of coffees by now, too.”
She laughs. “I’ll be waiting for them with a fake eye roll and an appreciative smile.”
After a while, we both go quiet because neither of us wants to hang up first. I stare at the ceiling and decide to risk it a little.
“Hey,” I say. “Can I read you something? A verse. It just…made me think about you the other day.”
There’s a silent beat. “A verse, like…from the Bible?” she asks, half-teasing, half-bracing.
“Yeah. Promise it’s nothing lecturey,” I say. “It just…sounded like poetry to me.”
“Okay,” she says, softer. “Read it.”
I flip through the page where I tabbed it and find the lines I’ve underlined several times now.
“It’s from Isaiah 43,” I start. “It says—
‘Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name—you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.
When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned.
And the flame shall not consume you.’”
Lydia exhales. “I…didn’t know the Bible sounded like that,” she says. “I thought it was just…a big rule book…and God yelling at all the bad people.”
I smile. “There are some rules, but not like you’d think. Most of it is rescue stories, people way messier than us getting found. Love that keeps wading into rivers and fires.”
She’s quiet for a second longer. “Could you read it again?” she asks, voice small.
I do, slower this time. When I finish, I hear her sniffle a little and then laugh at herself for getting emotional.
“It’s sweet,” she says. “And…weirdly kinda healing. Can you text it to me?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks,” she whispers. “For the poem that isn’t a poem.”
“For you, it can be a poem,” I say.
She laughs, softer now. “Okay. Night, Bible Boy.”
“Night, miracle girl,” I say, and we hang up, smiling up at the same night sky, six states apart.
71
Lydia
