Three Days

It had been three days. Still no call.

Maybe he was playing it cool. Maybe he was playing hard to get.

Leave it for two days – that was the rule if you were keen, right? But everyone knew that, so maybe he was leaving it another day, so as not to look obvious. Like not emailing someone at 11am, but waiting until an insouciant 11.02am.

And why should he call? Would she call him? She hardly knew him. He seemed nice enough but it wasn’t like he was the one or anything. He may have been a one, of several, but certainly not the one. How did the poem go? Keep looking, or something.

So why did she feel like every second since he’d left her bed her entire body had been asking a question still unanswered? Or like there was a gap in her chest that she couldn’t fill?

She sometimes imagined a string of fairy lights wrapped around her heart. Why did it feel like one of them had gone out?