“I’ve just had… a lot,” she says carefully.
My chest tightens. “Yeah. I figured.”
“I’m sorry,” she adds quickly. “If I’ve been weird. I’m not trying to?—”
“Hey,” I cut in gently. “You don’t owe me an apology.”
She exhales. “It kind of feels like I do.”
I sit up straighter. “Faith…”
“I’m okay,” she insists, but there’s a tremor under it now. “Really. Just figuring stuff out.”
I nod even though she can’t see me. “Listen. That’s actually why I called.”
Silence.
I push on before I lose my nerve. “I was wondering if you’d want to go to dinner. Just us. Talk things through.”
Another beat. Longer this time.
My stomach sinks. I’m already recalibrating, already preparing to saynever mind, forget I asked, I didn’t mean tonight…
“Dinner,” she repeats, tasting the word.
“Yeah,” I say. “Nothing fancy. Just food. Conversation. No pressure.”
“I don’t know,” she says softly, and there it is. The anxiety, plain as day now. “I’m not sure I’m very good company right now.”
That ache in my chest deepens. “You don’t have to be.”
She laughs again, but it’s thin. “You say that, but I kind of feel like a walking storm cloud lately.”
I rub a hand over my jaw. “Faith, if tonight’s too much?—”
“No,” she says quickly. “Dinner sounds good.”
Relief rushes through me so fast it almost knocks me sideways. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she repeats.
“Great, I’ll see you at seven.”
When the call ends, I just sit there for a minute, phone still pressed to my ear, listening to the dead line hum.
Then the guilt hits.
She’s anxious. Really anxious. And here I am, asking her out to dinner, pretending everything’s normal when her life clearly isn’t.
She just got out of a relationship. A serious one. The kind that leaves marks even when you don’t see bruises. I know that territory too well.
Maybe I’m moving too fast.
Maybe I should’ve waited.
The thought needles at me as I stand and shove the phone back into my pocket. I finish up the last of the afternoon work on autopilot, my mind replaying her voice over and over, picking apart every pause.
By the time the sun starts sinking toward the trees, I’ve made a decision.
