would call security.
Hunter:Worth it.
I laughed into my food, catching a look from my nosy coworker, but I didn’t care. It had been a long time since anyone checked in on me in the middle of the day. Since anyone wanted to make me laugh when I was drowning in routine. My mom checked on me, sure. My little brother helped when he visited. Dani teased me into surviving. But a man? That was new.
As I leaned back in my chair, images of my past came uninvited. My ex, walking out the door without looking back. My son, asking why we packed up our things and never saw him again. I never admitted to most people the truth behind our relationship, like the nights where I had to swallow my screams and wait for the storm to pass. I can still hear the slamming of doors some night. And now, I faced it alone. The exhaustion of raising babies while working double shifts, scraping money together for diapers, and begging family for childcare. I was safer, happier, but alone.
That was my history. My normal. And yet, walking next to Hunter on that mini golf course, I had felt a lightness. Not the absence of weight, but the hope that maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t always have to carry it alone.
Hunter:What do you have going
on after work?
Me:Mom duty, class, then maybe
pretendingI’m going to study before
falling asleep with my laptop
still open.
Hunter:I don’t know how you do
it all. But you make it look easy,
and I know it’s not. Kinda blows
my mind, honestly.
Heat crept into my cheeks. Compliments usually slid right off me; I never trusted them, but something about the way he said it felt different. He actually saw me. I locked my phone and stared at the pale gray wall, letting the feeling settle.
Me:Enough about me, what have you
been up to today?
That night, after my evening class, Dani came over with her usual flair: arms full of takeout bags, sunglasses still perched on her head, even though the sun was long gone.
“I brought fries!” she announced, kicking the door shut with her foot.
“God bless you,” I said, dropping the Psychology of Social Change textbook on the couch and reaching for the bag.
She flopped dramatically onto the couch next to me. “Girl, you look dead. Like, cute dead. But dead.”
I rolled my eyes, sinking down beside her. “Thanks. I feel it.”
The kids were sprawled on the rug, coloring and fighting over crayons.
Dani greeted them with kisses, setting them up with sweets that it was far too late for them to have, then turned her full focus back to me like a spotlight.
“Okay,” she said, grabbing a fry. “Tell me, how are you balancing all this? Job, school, mom life, and now Mr. Marine?”
“I’m not balancing it,” I admitted. “I’m barely hanging on.”
“You’re hanging on,” she said firmly. “That counts.”
Part of me reached for her words, craving the hope in them, but the rest of me still remembered the fall. And in the quiet hours, when the house finally stilled and the hum of the day faded, I could still feel how close I was to breaking. Like I was always one bad day from it all coming undone.
So when Hunter texted me during my break, asking about class, it shouldn’t have meant as much as it did. But it did. The idea that someone cared whether I made it through Monday felt bigger than I was ready to admit.
