He Thought I Would Always Wait Novels & Stories

It felt like he was making up for every year we’d lost, every night we’d spent apart thinking about this exact moment without ever believing it would happen. “I never stopped thinking about you,” he whispered against my mouth, voice rough with emotion. “Every city I lived in. Every bed I slept in. It was always your face. Always you.” I wrapped my legs around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper until there was no space left between us. “I waited for you,” I confessed, tears stinging my eyes again, spilling over before I could stop them. “Even when I told myself I wasn’t. Even when I dated other people, and tried to move on. It was always you—always this.”

It was unlike him to be quiet and thoughtful, the man often said the first words that crossed his mind, and he released whatever thoughts rested at the tip of his tongue. "If you're going to keep on waiting for me to ask you things before you tell me, I might as well consider getting a new personal assistant, don't you think?" I asked. His round eyes looked away from the lampstand and found mine. He stood straight and folded both arms behind his back.

Sat. The fifteen minutes of his rotation gap passed in silence, and I sorted letters with steady hands and did not look up and did not speak, and the threads in my chest burned with gold warmth and patience and the long practiced certainty of someone who has been waiting since she was seven years old and has learned how. He stood to leave. Paused. I looked up.

At the man who had waited four years and had said *I'm not going anywhere* and had proven it in every way available to him. "What do we do?" I said. He was quiet for a moment. "You figure out what's true," he said. "And you tell me when you know." He held my gaze. "And I'll be here." "You always say that," I said. "Because it's always true," he said. The rain was still going outside. The kitchen was warm. I held his hand across the table. The Atlantic place food going cold between us. The question I didn't have an answer to sitting in the kitchen with everything else. Real. Unresolved. Mine to figure out.

He thought: soon. He didn't know what soon meant. He didn't know if soon was days or weeks or months. But the word was there, in his chest, in the space where the hope lived, and it felt different from the words that had come before. He closed his eyes. He slept. In the morning, he would make coffee. He would go to the bistro. He would live the life he was building. And the waiting would continue — quieter now, but present. Always present. ---

he told me. I can't believe that he would just jump into such conclusions. He was so cheeky and the worst part was that he was also full of himself acting like I've always waited all night for him to come and deep down I knew that I would have waited for him but it's just a maybe. " I'm not going to wait for you, no need to jump to conclusions," I said, stuffing my food into my mouth trying to avoid his gaze which was lingering on me like it was glued to my skin.

Hours passed and whenever a car's sound would echo in the streets, I'd rush to the window and check. I felt miserable. Waiting here, trying to reach him but failing. Guilt fluttered along the fringes of my consciousness and pressed in, torturing me even more. We'll fix this. I kept saying. We'll find a way to overcome it. I will make it work, I have to make it work. Chase...he means a lot to me. I can't just, I can't simply move on from that. I want him, even if it meant waiting. I will wait. It will be worth it.

If I hadn't lost her, I probably wouldn't be in this position right now, and I may not have met him. Good things come to those who wait is what I've always been told, and as I watch him take a bite of the sandwich he ordered, I wonder if my patience is paying off. Is it finally my turn?

I still can’t date anybody. I sort of told this perfect guy I would wait for him to come back. And I’m still waiting. I still believe that one day… I would see him again… touch him… kiss him… hear him say the words he should have said to me before he left… so I could say those words back to him. Come back to me, Hunter. It’s still you. It will always be you.

Maybe he always had. "It's strange," I said after a beat, the words hanging heavy in the cozy kitchen. "I think I keep waiting for this to be a game. Like he's going to snap his fingers and remind me I'm just… passing through." James tilted his head, his usually jovial eyes serious as he considered my words. "And if he doesn't?" I shrugged, "then I guess I'll have to figure out what it is instead." It was a flimsy answer, even to my own ears.