Page 7 of Safe With You

I let him hold it this time because even now, part of me still wanted to believe love could survive on potential alone.

After a while, he sighed. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He leaned over and kissed my forehead.

Tomorrow.

Another word that suddenly felt exhausting.

It was the kind of kiss that would’ve fixed everything a year ago.

When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against mine for just a second.

“I love you, Lu.”

“I know.”

He gave me the saddest smile I’d ever seen before climbing out into the rain.

I watched him disappear inside the apartment building without looking back.

And just like that, I was alone again.

The passenger seat still smelled like him. My hand still felt warm where he’d held it, and my chest still ached with the kind of sadness that didn’t arrive loudly.

There was no screaming. No slammed doors. No dramatic ending.

Just quiet disappointment settling into the spaces where hope used to live.

I finally pulled away from the curb a little after midnight, carrying the weight of a goodbye neither of us had actually said.

The streets were nearly empty now, the city washed clean beneath the storm. Water streaked across the windows while soft music continued playing low through the speakers, but even that couldn’t drown out the thoughts circling my head.

I thought about all the times I’d defended Lucas to people who loved me.

He’s trying.

He’s just busy.

That’s just how he is.

Like saying the words enough times would eventually make them hurt less.

A tear slid down my cheek before I could stop it. I wiped it away quickly, even though nobody was there to witness it.

By the time I stopped at a red light a few blocks from my apartment, my chest felt unbearably heavy.

And somewhere between the rain, the silence, and the exhaustion sitting deep in my bones, I finally realized the hardest part of loving Lucas wasn’t that he didn’t care about me.

It was that I kept falling in love with the version of us I was still waiting to get back.

5 Years Later

By thirty-one, I had learned there were worse things than being alone.

Being unsure was one of them.

I didn’t hate love. That was the part people always got wrong. I loved love. I loved the idea of slow Sunday mornings, shared grocery lists, inside jokes, forehead kisses, and somebody knowing the smallest details about you without having to be reminded. I loved romance in theory. In songs. In books. In the old couples I saw walking hand in hand outside the farmer’s market every Saturday morning like time had been kind to them.