Everything I can think of to say, I say it. The recent rain and work and updates on Charlotte’s sports team, which I only know about thanks to Noah. He just listens. Yet, somehow, I can hear him in the silence. I can tell that he’s content to listen—that he wants to. He’s at ease as I desperately scramble to make it feel normal. To spout off whatever nonsense comes to mind.

When I run out of topics—and air—he takes over, telling me about the card game he played last night and what he ate for breakfast. Without prompting and without me asking. It feels like we’re a normal couple, each coming home from work and filling each other in about our days. I hoped I would one day have a relationship like this, where even the boring and mundane seem important and exciting. I fantasized that Grayson Phillips might one day treat me like an important part of his world.

Listening to the familiar cadence and rasp of his voice, I’m hit with a wave of longing powerful enough to knock me over. It’s not just that we’re separated. It’s that we feel separated. There’s a big wall between me and the happy ending he never promised—the happy ending he told me not to expect. A translucent one, so I can see everything I want, I just can’t reach it.

I’m not sure where we stand. He’s given me more mixed signals than a malfunctioning stoplight. And I suddenly need to know. This is torture, made all the more painful because parts of it are pleasure. I’ve laughed and smiled more on this call than I have in the last week. The high makes the low feel like rock bottom.

So when he announces he has to go, I call on the same reckless abandonment that made me kiss him in that hallway at Malone’s. The moment that sent this all into motion.

“Gray?”

He hesitates before clearing his throat, like he can sense the importance of what I’m about to say in the single syllable of his name. Know what I’m about to say will change us. “Yeah?”

“When we were in Beaufort, on the beach before the storm…you told me a list, remember?”

Silence, then he repeats, “Yeah.”

“Am—am I on that list? Is there a chance I will be, one day? Are you…open to adding to it?” I feel moderately ridiculous, talking in metaphorical circles. But bravery has bounds—mine, at least. I can’t force the words Do you love me? out of my mouth.

More silence. Foreboding silence. I’m grateful I can’t see his expression; the pause is painful enough. It’s not a question you should need to think through, and if you do, that says a lot in itself.