Me
I’ll see you then.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, and then appeared again.
Holly
Luke?
Me
Yes?
Holly
I’m not running away.
I just had some things I needed to figure out.
Okay?
The knot of worry that had been sitting in my gut all day loosened just enough for me to breathe properly again.
Me
Okay.
Holly
See you tomorrow.
I stared at the phone for a long time after she stopped responding, reading and rereading those messages, trying to parse meaning from every word choice.
I’m not running away.
That was good. That was something.
But it also wasn’t a promise to stay.
Tomorrow, I’d find out which way this was going to go—whether the woman I’d fallen in love with was going to give me a chance to prove that what we had was real or whether I was about to lose the only person who’d ever made me feel like I might actually be capable of love, of partnership, of building something that lasted.
I sat down on the couch, in the spot where Holly had been just last night, and pulled one of the blankets that still smelled like her over my lap and waited for tomorrow to come.
nine
. . .
Holly
I stoodin the entryway of my sad little house and watched through the window as Luke’s SUV disappeared down the street. Part of me wanted to run after him, to tell him to come back, that we could figure this out together.
But I didn’t.
I needed time to think without Luke watching me with that quiet, unwavering attention, without the memory of his hands on my body, his mouth on my skin, or the way he’d whispered my name like the answer to every question he’d ever pondered, clouding my judgment.
I gathered all the blankets I’d piled on my bed the day before and dragged them to the couch and burrowed in until only my face was exposed while I tried to process everything.
Luke had built me a profile—without asking. He’d combed through my life online and fed what he’d curated into his app like I was a data set instead of a person, and then ran it againsthis own to determine our compatibility, which was, by his own admission, completely off the charts.
