I’m here until 8:30 tonight
see you then
The nerves dance to the top of my skin, flushing it pink—I can feel the warmth and start to fan myself with a promotional postcard on my desk.
I force a slow breath and try to shut out the noise beyond my office walls. My heart is sprinting, not from fear but… anticipation? Hope? It’s wild to think that all this time I convinced myself what I felt for Tyson was ridiculous. Safe to ignore when he was a few states away, tucked neatly into the part of my life labeledoff-limits.
But now he’s here. And he’s looking at me like I’m not just in the background anymore. Like he sees me.
And when he leaned in—God, I swear he was going to kiss me. Not a friendly, ‘whoops, we were too close’ kiss. A real one. The kind you feel everywhere. The kind you don’t imagine unless the other person wants it, too.
Maybe I wasn’t the only one holding on to something invisible between us. Maybe that shift I kept secretly waiting for… wasn’t wishful thinking after all. Maybe it’s been there, quietly building, long before tonight.
I think back to one night in the library our junior year, when it was just the two of us utilizing those late night hours offered at the end of a term.
The whole campus seemed to be breathing in its sleep, the air thick with the smell of old books and the coffee left to cool beside my notebook. It started outas a group of us, but as everyone left, one by one, Tyson stayed. He should be in bed, resting for morning practice, yet here he was, slouched across from me, head buried in a book for a class I knew he had an A in.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and every turn of a page seems to echoes. My eyes burned from reading, matching the ache in my shoulders, and when a chill crept in from the window, I shivered. Tyson’s eyes flicked up from the textbook and without a word, he slid his hoodie across the table, its fabric warm and faintly scented like him. Our fingers brushed as I took it—his touch lingered just a second too long, the kind of second that makes the world hold its breath.
Right then, the way he looked at me isn’t casual. It wasn’t friendly. It was heavy, like gravity itself had shifted between us. His gaze held mine, steady and unflinching, and for a heartbeat I could feel the air swirling around us, like something inevitable was about to break open.
I could almost hear the soft scrape of his chair, imagined him leaning across the table, his breath mingling with mine. My pulse drummed in my ears, and I felt ready—ready to close the distance, to find out what that look meant. But then he blinked, the tension breaking like a wave on the shore. He smiled that small, disarming smile of his—the one that always made it hard to be angry at him—and looked back down at his open book. The moment passed quietly, like the whisper of a page turning. No kiss. No confession. Just the ghost of what could have been lingering in the air between us in an empty library.
And that’s the thing—Tyson has always been that guy. Thoughtful, steady, someone who makes everyone feel seen. I told myself I wasn’t special. That I imagined it.
But now, when I think back to that night, I can’t ignore the truth that maybe he pulled back because he was scared, too. Maybe he felt it and didn’t know what to do with it. Maybe we’ve been running from the same thing–afraid to cross theline.
I always thought I wasn’t what he wanted… the type of woman he’d see himself with. Just one of the guys and nothing more.
But at the party? The way he looked at me—like he was finally ready to close that space between us—it was like he was about to meet me halfway.
And suddenly, I’m done pretending there’s nothing there. The grin painting my lips tells me everything I need to know about my plan for tonight. Sometimes, you have to put yourself out there to get the answers you need.
Thedigitalclockblinksat me: 8:36 pm. I’ve been here since 7 AM and there’s still work I could do, but there’s somewhere else I have to be. My stomach flips at the realization—I’d rather be with Tyson than be here.
Now that’s really saying something.
Embers and Ashes is my everything—my proudest accomplishment—and the place I feel most myself. It’s an odd occurrence if I’m not here for at least a few hours each day… even If I’m not teaching a class or scheduled to work. It’s hard to pull myself away, quit knocking things off the to-do list.
But tonight? It’s Tyson.
I’m walking out the door, security making sure I safely get to my car, when my phone buzzes. When I’m in my car and the doors are locked, I pull out my phone. There’s a missed call from a number I don’t know. Probably spam.
Before I can text Ty, letting him know I’m on my way, the number comes through again. I don’t know what it is but something tells me to answer it.
“Hello?” I wait for the expected awkward silence and click of a telemarketer.
Instead, I’m met with a voice I didn’t expect. But even after all these years I’d know it in my bones.
“Hey, little bee.”
My dad.
Twelve
Blair
“Whatdidyoujustsay?”
