He closed his eyes. He focused hard. On good things: rain, her.

Eventually, he slept.

It was raining when Adam woke up. It had been so long since it rained.

My mother was right, he thought. Good things come to good people.

He squeezed through the hedge and nearly lost his balance on the other side. The ground was wet. He’d brought lattes today. She might like something hot.

It was raining hard; Adam may have focused too much. Everything that had been dry and dusty was wet and running. Even the river had come back to life, a muddy stream rushing under the bridge.

“Hello!” Adam shouted. “I’m here!”

He looked out to the center of the channel, where she liked to wait for him. The last place to dry out, the first place to get wet.

“I’m here,” he called out again. “I’ve got a Peppermint Mocha and a Chestnut Praline. Not only would I choose the mint, but I actually hate the chestnut. That’s a full-on aggression!”

She didn’t answer. He couldn’t see her. It was raining too hard. And the wind was blowing.

Adam sat down at the edge of the riverbed and waited. The coffee got cold.

“Hello!” he shouted.

He was standing on the bridge, leaning over the railing. The rain was still coming down. The river was so high it had devoured his path along the bank.

The Starbucks closest to Adam’s house was closed. But the one down the road was open. He’d brought her hot coffee with cream and sugar.

“Hello!” he shouted.

Had she been swept away? Or drowned? Had she left to find a different bridge?

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. For a second he thought it might be her.

It wasn’t. It was an older woman, wearing a fashionable raincoat. “What are you doing?” she asked him, her eyes wide and fearful. “It’s slippery—you’ll fall!”

Adam smiled at her. “Thank you. I’ll be careful.”

He turned back to the river and stopped smiling. He leaned farther over the rail. “Are you there?”

He didn’t bring coffee today.

The river was lapping at the edge of the bridge. Adam was alone there. Everyone else had taken shelter or was looking for higher ground; his mother said she’d found some. He held on to the railing.

“I’m here!” he shouted.

And then he held his phone out over the side and let it go. (This wasn’t a very big sacrifice; it had been days since he’d had service.) (He would have dropped it anyway.)

She wasn’t there.

His phone was gone.

Once upon a time, in a land that was losing, a man sat at the edge of a river.

It’s Adam. Adam is the man. He sat by the river, and he couldn’t see the bridge. The bridge was gone. The road was gone.