Who were you in school?
Why do I feel like I know you and don’t at the same time?
Delete. Delete. Delete.
The cursor blinked in the empty message box, patient and forgiving.
I turned off the screen and let it fall to the sheets beside me.
It had been a few days since I’d seen Dane.
I hadn’t texted him. I hadn’t called.
But I looked for him every day.
Sometimes in the quiet between deliveries, I’d catch myself glancing at the stairwell, expecting him to appear with that half-smile and a joke about modern hell.
He never did.
Until he appeared in the doorway late Thursday morning, hair damp from rain, mailbag slung low across his chest. His grin was crooked, his eyes shadowed by exhaustion but still soft.
“Hey, stranger,” he said, voice carrying that same lazy rhythm that had started to live rent-free in my head. “Been uber busy down there. You’d think it was Christmas the way people are rush-posting everything. Half the building’s acting like the world ends if they don’t get their invoices stamped today.”
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it light, unguarded. “Poor guy. Drowning in express deliveries and seasonal panic. Should I send a rescue team?”
He smirked, shoulders relaxing. “You volunteering?”
“Maybe,” I said, tilting my head. “I kinda missed your mail run. The routine of it.”
That earned me a quiet chuckle. “Yeah? Guess I missed the stairwell.”
His gaze flicked toward the glass wall behind me. “Cooler down there. Quieter. Feels like the only place that still remembers how to breathe.”
Something in his tone half jest, half confession, hung between us, steady and real.
“Guess we both needed that cool air,” I said softly.
He smiled, small and knowing. “Guess we did.”
And just like that, the space shifted lighter, but deeper. A breath between storms.
Still, there were traces when he left again. Small things that whispered of him.
A chocolate bar left on the bench outside my office door.
A can of peach tea on my desk, condensation still fresh.
A takeout coffee cup with my name written in looping, careful letters.
And once—
A single sprig of jasmine. My favourite vine.
I’d found it resting against my car door, delicate white blooms trembling in the morning breeze.
I didn’t need a note to know who it was from.
And even though I hadn’t seen him, hadn’t heard his voice since that day, it was enough.
