Jay:Same thing.
Me:It's not.
I lie back on my bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars I put up there when I first moved in.
Me:She wants to meet you. Eventually. When you're ready.
Jay:That's terrifying. What if she hates me?
Me:She won't hate you.
Jay:You don't know that.
Me: I do.Because you're important to me. And she'll see that. She'll see how much you matter.
A long pause. I watch the three dots appear and disappear several times. Then:You're important to me too. More important than anything.
I press the phone against my chest, grinning like someone who's lost their mind completely.
***
The week crawls by. I go to work, I come home, I eat dinner with the family, I do all the normal things I always do. But underneath it all, running like a current beneath everything, I'm counting the hours until Friday. Until I can get in my truck and drive back to Macon. Until I can see Jay again.
We text constantly. Obsessively. In the morning when I wake up before my alarm, during my lunch break when I should be eating, at night when I'm lying in bed unable to sleep. Sometimes it's just stupid stuff—what we ate for dinner, something funny that happened at work, a picture of a motorcycle or a weird electrical panel. Sometimes it's deeper. Sometimes Jay tells me about his day in a way that makes me feel like I'm there with him, watching him work, seeing through his eyes.
Mick gave me shit today about the Triumph,he texts Tuesday afternoon.Said I'm taking too long. That the customer is getting impatient.
Are you?I type back from the break room at work.Taking too long?
Jay:Probably. I keep getting distracted.
Me:by what?
A pause.You know what.
My face heats up. I'm distracted too. I keep zoning out in the middle of jobs, thinking about Jay instead of the wiring I'm supposed to be testing. I almost cross-connected a circuit yesterday because I was replaying the parking lot kiss in my head instead of paying attention to the schematic.
I can't stop thinking about you,I type, and then I stare at the words for a full minute, my thumb hovering over send. It feels like too much. Too intense. Too honest.
I hit send anyway.
His response comes fast:Same. It's a problem.
Me:A good problem?
Jay: The best kind.
At night, when the house is quiet and I'm alone in my room with just the glow of my phone screen, the texts get different. Not explicit, exactly. Neither of us seems to know how to do that, how to put these feelings into words, but charged. Heavy with things we're not quite saying.
I keep thinking about the parking lot,Jay texts on Wednesday night. I'm already in bed, unable to sleep, staring at my phone in the dark.
Me too. I think about it constantly.
Jay:I didn't expect that. I thought I'd just stand there and watch you drive away and that would be it.
Me:I wasn't planning on it. But then I was getting in the truck and I couldn't—I stop typing, trying to find the words.I couldn't leave without doing that. Without knowing.
Jay:Knowing what?
