The reply came a few minutes later.
Janelle: I'll tell him. Though for the record, I agree with him. *grinning face emoji*
I smiled despite myself. That was Janelle. Kind. Warm. Genuine. She never pushed. Somehow, she always seemed to know when to leave space for me to answer or not answer. Exactly the way she'd always been.
I set the phone on the coffee table.
The problem was that seeing her name had stirred something I hadn't been thinking about five minutes earlier.
A feeling I'd spent years getting very good at ignoring. The waiting. The hoping. The quiet certainty that if I could just be good enough, easy enough, lovable enough, somebody would finally decide to keep me.
My jaw tightened. I pushed the thought away immediately. It didn't go very far.
I picked up the remote and changed the channel. A Christmas movie was playing, but five minutes later, I couldn't have told anyone what had happened in a single scene. My attention kept drifting back to the photographs and the comments beneath them, and to the uncomfortable realization that people who had never met me were discussing my relationship as though it were part of a hockey debate.
My phone rang. I looked down automatically.
Thane.
For the first time all morning, I felt something that wasn't confusion or unease. It was relief. He was home.
"Hey."
"Hey, yourself." The warmth in his voice settled over me immediately. "I just got home."
"I figured."
"Figured, huh? Here I thought you'd be impressed by my incredible travel skills."
"You got on a plane."
"It was a very complicated plane."
I shook my head, smiling despite myself.
His laughter followed, familiar and easy, and for a moment, everything felt normal again.
Then he cleared his throat. "Anyway, I was wondering if I could come over."
I wanted to see him. I wanted him sitting beside me on this couch. I wanted to hear about the road trip, the games, and the flight home. I wanted to stop feeling like something had been off balance for the past two days.
The silence stretched a little longer than it should have.
"Kier?"
I closed my eyes briefly. "Yeah. Of course, you can come over."
"Good." The smile in his voice was unmistakable. "I'll be there soon."
After the call ended, I lowered the phone into my lap and stared at the dark screen. Part of me was already counting down the minutes until he arrived. And another part of me was quietly wondering whether that was a mistake.
The next forty minutes crawled.
By the time a knock sounded at the door, my nerves felt stretched tight. I opened the door. Thane stood on the other side.
The road trip had left its mark. He looked tired. There were faint shadows beneath his eyes, and his hair looked slightly longer than it had a week ago, though that was probably my imagination.
What struck me most was the expression on his face. He was smiling. The smile of somebody genuinely happy to see me.
