“Hi, Liam. I’m Becky and I have a question,” she says. “There’s a man. He doesn’t really know me. Not yet. But I know him. I know him better than anyone in his life knows him. And I know we’re supposed to be together. I feel it every single day. I just don’t know how to make him see it.”
“You can’t make anybody see it,” I tell her. “Love that only runs one way isn’t love yet. It’s hope. Hope’s fine, but it’s not the same as somebody choosing you back. If this man’s meant to know you, he’ll know you because you’re in his life as yourself, out in the open. Not because you decided it for him. The right person doesn’t need convincing.”
The line stays quiet long enough that I glance at the screen to see if I lost her.
“You don’t understand,” she says, and the soft is gone out of it. “It isn’t one direction. He knows me. He just hasn’t let himself feel it yet.”
She hangs up before I can answer.
“Poor thing,” I say, mostly to myself. It sits with me a moment, then it’s gone. I’ve talked a hundred lonely callers through worse.
After we’re off, Bex comes out of the booth with her arms crossed. Ember’s already gone for the night. It’s just us.
“That last one,” Bex says. “Becky.”
“The one-way-love one.”
“That was Harley.”
I stop halfway into my coat. “You’re sure.”
“I have listened to that voice more times than I want to admit. New name, same woman. She figured out the screen catches her real one, so she gave us a fake and it cleared.” Bex doesn’t blink. “She’s not going to stop. She’s just gotten better at it.”
She opens the folder between us. It isn’t just Becky. Three other names, all in the same small, even handwriting, spreadacross the last few weeks. “I only caught it because she closed two of them with the exact same line,” she says, and turns one so I can read it. Pages of it, and it never once asks me for a thing. It talks about a future between us that’s already decided, a whole life she’s planned down to the details, waiting on me to show up for it.
I read for a while. I’ve gotten letters that scared me and letters that broke my heart. This one is different, and the difference is she isn’t upset. She isn’t angry that I don’t know she exists. She’s patient. Patient is worse than angry, and I don’t have a word for why.
“I thought she was done,” I say. It’s a stupid thing to say and I hear it on the way out.
“They’re never done.” Bex sets a hand flat on the folder. “I want to take this to somebody who can actually do something with it. Will you let me?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Do it.”
“Should I be worried?” I ask, and I hate the question the second it’s out, because asking it means I already am.
“I don’t know yet,” Bex says, which from her is as close to a yes as I’m going to get. “That’s why I want somebody who does. Don’t forget to tell your security team.”
Bex is it, there is no one else.
Josie and Katelyn are sharing a glass of wine when I come in. They congratulate me on the news, letting me know Paige broadcasted a message to my socials.
“National,” I say. She comes to me and wraps both arms around me. I hold on a moment longer than the news is worth. She feels it.
“You okay?”
“Long night.”
She doesn’t push. “Want something to soothe the worries?”
I nod. Katelyn finishes her wine and goes up to bed. Not before she tells me that Harrison passed out hours ago with Oliver in his toddler bed.
“We’re old,” I say.
Josie laughs as she put the kettle on. Tea for a good night, tea for a bad one. She brings two mugs over after the water has boiled and tells me to give the tea a minute. I do, mostly because it’s hot and I don’t want to burn my tongue.
But also, I need to tell the women in my life that I don’t like tea.
I don’t tell her about Becky. Worrying her makes things worse. I tell myself there’s nothing to tell yet, that Bex has it handled. I make a mental note to talk to Harrison about security and figure out what to do there.
