Because maybe I'm just being insecure again.
I text him good morning every day.
Sometimes he responds right away.
Sometimes an hour later.
Sometimes not at all and then the next morning he does, like the gap didn't happen.
But I'm tracking it.
I am always tracking it.
I let myself believe he's just tired.
Because I want to believe it.
Because the alternative is a pattern I've been watching my whole life and I cannot watch it from this far away when there's nothing I can do.
• • •
December — he comes home for winter break and it all evaporates. He’s so present with me. His hand in mine in the dark, his voice filling all the space it used to fill, sleeping over without explanation the way he always has.
Two weeks that feel like an exhale.
He's mine.
We're fine.
I convince myself the calls were just an adjustment.
Distance. The newness of everything finding its level.
• • •
I go back in January with his hoodie in my bag. I didn’t ask. I just took it.
He texts a week later.
“Did you steal my hoodie?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Just that. Good. I wear it every night. It still smells like him.
• • •
February.
The calls get shorter again.
Shorter than November.
And the math I was doing quietly in my head starts doing itself louder, at worse hours, whether I want it to or not.
I tell myself it has nothing to do with me.
