9
ACTUALLY STAYING
WHERE I LEARN THAT CHOOSING IS THE EASY PART.
Two weeks.
Two weeks of actually dating Marcus Chen, and I still hadn’t screwed it up.
This was, by my calculations, approximately thirteen days longer than any relationship attempt since my divorce. Possibly a personal record. Definitely suspicious.
“You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Cassie said, watching me stare at my phone like it might explode. We were at her kitchen table, Sunday morning, coffee and pastries from the bakery downtown. Liam was somewhere in the house doing something handy—I could hear the occasional drill whir—and Luna was draped across the back of the couch, pretending not to listen. “I can see it on your face.”
“I’m not waiting for anything.”
“You’ve checked your phone six times in the last ten minutes.”
“I’m checking the time.”
“You’re checking to see if he’s texted. And then you’re checking to see if the dating app has started buzzing again. Andthen you’re checking the time so you have an excuse for why you were checking.”
I set the phone face-down on the table. “I hate that you know me.”
“I’ve known you for fifteen years. I know everything.” She pushed a croissant toward me. “So. How is it? Really?”
I thought about how to answer. How to describe the last two weeks—the strange, terrifying, wonderful experience of actually being in a relationship instead of just keeping one as an option.
Marcus and I had fallen into a routine. Morning coffee at the shop, where I’d taken over a corner of the back room and he pretended to be annoyed about it. Dinner at my place or his, though “his” so far had only meant the tiny kitchenette behind the shop, not his actual apartment. Texting like normal people—not the tentative late-night messages from before, but real conversation. Mundane things. Daily things. The kind of texts that meant someone was woven into your life instead of just passing through.
The texts were very Marcus.The tea shipment arrived. It’s substandard. I’m writing a strongly worded email.And then, twenty minutes later:I miss you. That’s annoying.And then:Ignore that. The tea situation has escalated.
“It’s good,” I said finally. “Terrifying. But good.”
“Why terrifying?”
“Because I keep waiting for the panic. The urge to run. The moment where I notice something wrong and use it as an excuse to bail.” I picked at my croissant. “It hasn’t come.”
“And that scares you.”
“It scares me that it doesn’t scare me.” I set down the pastry. “When I’m with him, I’m not cataloging his flaws or planning my escape route. I’m just… there. Present. It’s disorienting.”
Luna lifted her head. “The only red flag I’ve observed is that he drinks tea at a temperature that would scald a normal human. But that’s more concerning than disqualifying.”
“Thank you, Luna. Very helpful.”
“I try.”
Cassie reached across the table, squeezed my hand. “Di. Not everything is a disaster waiting to happen. Sometimes good things are just… good.”
“Since when?”
“Since you stopped running long enough to find out.” She smiled. “The magic’s been quiet, right?”
I nodded. It had been. No new matches since the grand gesture—the counter had frozen at zero and stayed there. My phone barely buzzed anymore. The constant, frantic energy that had been humming under my skin since this whole mess started had faded to something quieter. Almost peaceful.
“That’s not nothing,” Cassie said. “That’s the magic settling. Believing you.”
My phone buzzed. I jumped about a foot.
