I groaned as I stretched out my arms, patting along the mattress and coming up empty. I frowned as I remembered that Shiloh had gone home. I couldn’t help the disappointment from creeping in.
Her excuse had been that she needed to read for her book club. They had delayed their meeting by two weeks to give Shiloh the chance to finish reading the book and she really didn’t want to let them down.
The book club consisted of just her two girl friends, Lottie and her sister Hannah, so I didn’t think they would be actually upset with her if she didn’t finish the book, but she’d gone home regardless.
It wasn’t the first time she’d declined staying over. Shiloh had decided that she needed to stay at her own place after a date night nearly two weeks ago.
She’d had a panic attack during an intimate moment, and I could tell she wasn’t over it. Her claim was that she needed her own space, her independence. But it scared me.
I couldn’t help but wonder if what she really wanted was the chance to hurt herself without me knowing or hide more of her demons away from me.
I had to convince her that we didn’t need to cross anymore boundaries. She was stubborn, tried to get me to continue because she said she didn’t 'want them to win'. They weren’t winning. She just simply wasn’t ready for that kind of intimacy yet. And I had no problem keeping the boundaries as they were. I wasn’t in a rush. We had forever to get to those things.
I rubbed my eyes and unplugged my phone from the charger, rolling onto my side to unlock it. I sent off a good morning text to Shiloh before crawling out of bed.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her. I knew she had book club, I knew she hadn’t finished the book, because she’d been reading it yesterday while I had cooked us dinner, and I was happy that she was participating in hobbies and focusing on maintaining relationships instead of withdrawing, but dammit if I didn’t miss holding her as we fell asleep and waking up to her beside me knowing she was safe.
I wasn’t expecting her to respond so quickly, assuming she’d stayed up late reading and was taking some much needing time to sleep in this morning, but I still found myself checking my phone as I did a quick workout and got ready for church.
It wasn’t until I checked my phone after church that I was beginning to get a little worried. I tried calling her but then realized that she was likely with her friends already, so I texted her instead. I let her know that I was thinking about her and wished her a fun time with her friends.
I was eating lunch with Jae when my phone rang. It was my mom.
I let out a silent groan and Jae shoved me.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
I reluctantly accepted the call, putting it on speaker phone.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, honey,” she said with excitement. “I’m glad I caughtcha. I wasn’t sure if ya were still at church.”
“No, no. We’re home now. Just having some lunch.”
“Oh? Youn Emory?” she asked with interest.
“No. Just me and Jae,” I said, trying and failing not to sound disappointed about that fact.
“Everythin’ still goin’?”
“Yeah, everything’s going great with Emory and me. She’s just with her friends today. They’ve got a little book club.”
“What book?” she asked with way too much curiosity for someone who didn’t read.
“You really wanna know what book she’s reading?” I asked bewildered.
“Well, yes. I wanna have somethin’ to talk about when ya finally introduce us.”
“I’m sure you won’t need any special topics to get a conversation going, Mom. You don’t have to take an interest in her hobby to have something to talk about.”
My mom was silent for a moment and I caught Jae’s eye. His body was rigid as he waited for her to respond.
“Remind me again why ya haven’t let me meet her?”
I sighed, pushing my plate away so I could prop my elbows up.
“It’s just still new, Mom. We’ve been dating for less than two months.”
