It’s 3:50 pm.  

I have until 4:00 pm.   Thats ten minutes.  Thats 600 seconds.  How many moments can we create in that time?  How many smiles or words or looks can be exchanged?

My brain frantically searches it’s highs and lows to come up with a game plan for the time I have left.  What can I say to possibly keep him talking to me until 4:03?  That’s three extra minutes that I didn’t have.  Or 180 seconds that were never ours to begin with.  Or an infinite number of stolen moments for smiles, words, and looks.

4:00 comes and goes.  

4:01 

4:04

I watch him tell me this story about his day.   I see his eyes light up as he tangents to another tale that I know is gonna be really, really funny.   I hear his laugh and I get kinda hectic inside.  I watch and memorize every word, every punchline and every movement. I burn it into my brain to hold me over until the next time, whenever that might be.   I don’t want to miss a thing. 

4:08 and we’re saying our goodbyes.   He leans in for a hug and I close my eyes and inhale his scent.  My insides are dancing.  He calls me by my nickname — a name only my friends use – and I replay the sound in my brain a thousand times.  

I hold onto that sound as I watch him get into a car I don’t recognize.   I assume its hers.   I can only assume because I don’t know for sure…  Don’t know if it IS hers, or if there’s even a HER to begin with.    But there has to be…. 

4:12 and I’m in the car on my way home.   I’m imagining him coming home to her.  I wonder what she looks like, if she’s as funny as I am or if she cooks as well as I do.   I convince myself that maybe she doesn’t exist.   Cuz, I mean,  he would tell me right?   He had 8 extra minutes to tell me today.   He could have told me in between smiles.  Or looks.  Or stolen moments.  But he said nothing. 

He said nothing because I didn’t ask.  I didn’t ask because I don’t want to know.  

It’s 6:27 and I get a text.  “He’s here.  And he brought HER.”