The Edge of the Year

Month twelve. The year was closing.

He sat in his flat on a December evening and looked at the string of messages between them. Thousands of them. Months of them. A whole year of words. He scrolled back to the beginning and read the first message she had sent him and it was so small compared to everything that came after. Just a few lines. Just a hello. Just a you actually read what I wrote.

And now she was in his bones. Now she was the first thing he thought about in the morning and the last thing he thought about at night. Now she was the voice he waited for and the silence he sat in and the name he carried in his mouth like a word he was afraid to say too loud in case it broke something.

He hadn't broken anything. That was the thing. A year of patience and care and not pushing and not rushing and not demanding and they had built something. Something real. Something that existed in the space between two phones and two voices and three photos and a drawing of a window and a tattoo of soot sprites and a year of words.

It was the most real thing he had ever had. And it existed entirely in the dark.

She called him on New Year's Eve. Her time. Already the new year for her. Still the old year for him.

She said: Happy new year.

He said: It's not my new year yet.

She said: I know. But I wanted to be the first one to say it.

He said: You were.

She said: Good.

A pause. He could hear something in the background. Music. People. Her best friend's voice, far away.

She said: Can I tell you something?

He said: Always.

She said: This year was hard. It was probably the hardest year I've had in a while. And also the best. And the reason it's the best is you. I don't know how to say what I want to say so I'm just going to say that you matter to me. You matter more than I know how to handle. And I'm not ready to say everything I feel but I'm closer than I was. And I wanted you to know that.

He sat in his flat in the dark and pressed the phone against his ear and closed his eyes and breathed.

He said: That's enough. That's more than enough.

She said: Yeah?

He said: Yeah. You being close is enough. You being closer than you were is everything.

She said: Okay. Good. Okay.

She was quiet for a moment. He could hear her breathing. He could hear the party in the background. He could hear the distance.

She said: I think I want to meet you.

His heart stopped. Then started again. Faster.

He said: Yeah?

She said: Yeah. I'm scared. But I want to. I'm tired of being scared. I'm tired of holding everything at arm's length. I want to know what you feel like. I want to know what you smell like. I want to sit next to you and hear your voice without a phone between us.

He said: I want that too. More than I can say.

She said: I know. I can feel it. That's why I want to meet you. Because I can feel how much you care and I want to know what that feels like in person. I want to know if it's real.

He said: It's real.

She said: I'm starting to believe that.

He stayed up all night after that call. Not because he couldn't sleep. Because he didn't want to lose the feeling. The feeling of her saying she wanted to meet him. The feeling of the year turning and her voice in his ear saying I want to know what you feel like.

He sat at his kitchen counter in the dark and drank coffee and thought about the year. All of it. The first message. The first call. The first photo. The pumpkin pajamas. The soot sprites. The drawing of the window. The conversations at three and four in the morning. The silences that said more than words. The moments where she let him in and the moments where she pulled back and the moments where she stood at the edge of something and looked over and didn't jump but didn't walk away either.

He thought about the word she couldn't say and the word he wouldn't say and the space between those two words where something was growing. Something that had its own heartbeat. Something that was alive and patient and waiting for the right moment to arrive.

He thought about meeting her. Standing in the same room. Seeing her move. Hearing her voice without the filter of a phone. Being close enough to touch.

It terrified him. It thrilled him. It was the thing he wanted most in the world and the thing he was most afraid of losing.

He held it. All of it. The way you hold something when you know it matters and you know you might not get to keep it. And he waited for the morning.