My fingers hovered over the keyboard. Glancing at the time on the phone, noting he was now twenty minutes late, I quickly sent a snap.

ME

I’m at the restaurant. Are you running late?

A few anxious minutes passed, and then I saw he’d opened it.

Relief filled me.

But as a minute turned into five and there was no sign of a reply, a sick feeling rose within me. Five minutes turned into ten.

What an idiot I’d been.

Yet, even as I sat there, I did that thing people do when they turn over all the other possibilities in their head.

Someone had stolen his phone and it wasn’t him opening the messages.

Maybe he’d been in an accident.

He was already in love with me and it was all just a little overwhelming.

I gave a bark of laughter at that one and ignored the bemused look the couple at the next table gave me.

It was then I sensed the hovering waiter. I glanced to my left and gave him a forced smile. “You need the table back, don’t you?”

He shook his head. “No, you’re fine. I just wondered if you wanted to order anything?”

“Do you have an alternate-reality special on the menu? You know, the kind where I don’t get stood up?”

The waiter gave me a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, we don’t. If it makes you feel better, a lot of people would order it if we did.”

I laughed. “Yeah? See a lot of this, do you? I wonder what his excuse will be. If he offers an excuse, that is.”

“Maybe his dog died.”

“Or his dog ate his goldfish and he had to do the Heimlich maneuver.”

The waiter chuckled. “I once got stood up and he texted me to tell me that his visa had expired, and he’d left the country that day. I saw him in Andersonville two weeks later.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

Feeling a little better at the reminder I wasn’t the only person to have ever been stood up, I told the friendly waiter I was going to head home, and he offered me a bolstering smile as I left the restaurant.

Despite joking around about it, I felt stupid for making myself vulnerable to someone who would stand me up.

As I strode toward the L, I kept checking my phone to see if Aaron had replied, but nothing. I tried to figure out how the guy I’d spent hours talking to for four weeks could do this. If he’d changed his mind, why hadn’t he just said so? He’d seemed like the kind of guy who would just be brutally honest with me.

Not a coward.

Not a dick.

I winced.

Well, he had warned me he could be a dick.