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Bailey:I’m not great at talking about things. I wanted to before you left, and then I chickened out.
Eli:Really? Because I wanted to before I left and I sort of chickened out. But also I’ve been trying to wait.
Bailey:Why?
Eli:I was advised that patience might be a good virtue in this particular situation.
Bailey:Patience is overrated. Any other reason?
Eli:I’ve been told I can be too much.
Bailey:You are NEVER too much for me, Eli. And I don’t want you to hold back.
Eli:Noted.
Eli:Hate to go now, but Parker needs me for a TikTok video.
Bailey:Likely excuse.
Eli:Trust me—I’d much rather talk to you. Video chat later after the game?
Bailey: Can’t wait.
Eli:Awkward together?
Bailey:Awkward together.
There’s a difference in watching Eli play hockey while in the same building and watching while at home on the couch.
Not just the lack of screaming fans and energy—Annie and Maggie have a lot of energy, and we all do a lot of screaming—but it somehow ratchets up my worry. When things got physical on the ice at the few games I went to at the Summit after the proposal, there was a comfort in knowing I was right there. Just in case anything happened. Not like I could do anything. Or that he’d necessarily want me if he got hurt. I doubt I could have even gotten to him, considering I don’t know my way around the building and security wouldn’t let me just wander around.
But we had proximity.
Watching him on the TV screen, knowing tonight he’s somewhere hours west—Arizona? Texas? Nevada?—in a whole other time zone, makes me twitchy. I can’t eat much, and I find myself spinning my rings incessantly, wishing they worked like Dorothy clicking her heels together, sending me to the no-place-like-home that is, apparently, my husband.
“What happened to little bro’s game?” Annie asks, tossing a piece of popcorn toward her mouth. Missing. Plucking it from her lap and offering it to Doris, who gobbles it up.
I choose to ignore it because a few pieces of popcorn won’t be an issue. Even if, on a whole, Annie’s insistence on feeding Doris anything she begs for could result in a long-term health crisis, namely obesity. I also ignore Annie’s question, which was probably rhetorical anyway.
“He’s just having a bad night,” Maggie says, brow furrowed. Then she points a finger at Annie. “Don’t even think about giving him a hard time. You know he’s too hard on himself already.”
“Which only makes it more fun to poke at him about it,” Annie says.
Meanwhile, I’m watching for the cameraman or whoever’s producing this livestream to pan over the bench, where Eli is currently seated. Hard on himself, huh? I guess it doesn’t surprise me that easygoing Eli wouldn’t go easy on himself. It makes me wish I were there even more.
Something is definitely off, and I can’t help but worry it’s because of our text conversation.
We’ve texted off and on every day while he’s been gone. I had to go out and buy a portable charger because my battery won’t last, and I’m more addicted than a teenager to my phone. It’s either in my hand, tucked into my bra, or in the back pocket of my jeans. Somewhere I’ll feel the buzz of an incoming text or see the screen light up.
Sometimes it’s just light things. A selfie in a Seattle coffee shop or some other city location that should be significant but I have to google. Pictures of Eli with the guys, him on a bus, him in the locker room. I’m sure he didn’t realize in one of those there was at least one guy in the process of taking off his pants. There are also memes and GIFs and jokes. He even started using punctuation for me!
We’ve also been getting to know each other better. Mostly thanks to a book I found in Book Smart, my favorite bookshop in Harvest Hollow’s cute little downtown. It’s a book of questions for couples, meant probably to be asked while sharing a meal or something. Over text works just fine too.
We’ve gone over everything from what objects we’d save from a house fire to favorite and least favorite foods, dream vacation, and biggest fears. Which led to deeper discussions in which I shared more openly than I ever have about what it was like after I lost my parents, and he talked about growing up not knowing his dad.
Honestly, the one big elephant in the text convo is our real feelings. Which … I think somehow are the frameworkunderpinning our conversations. We danced around them in our last text, and I think that means a real conversation is imminent.
I tell myself not to freak out. It’s not wishful thinking to imagine we share the same feelings. I’m not reading into Eli’s words, his near-constant communication, the way he lights up when our video chats connect and he sees my face.
