The clock on her phone read 12:00 when it lit up.
She had not been asleep. She had been lying in the dark of her Whitmore room in that particular suspended state that precedes sleep without becoming it — and when the screen illuminated she reached for it with the instinct of someone who had been, without admitting it, waiting.
Happy birthday, Sera.
A pause. Then —
Tomorrow. Eight o’clock. Come to me.
She read it twice. Then a third time.
Her heart did something she did not have a clean name for — something warm and unwilled, the specific feeling of being thought of at the precise moment a day turned over. He had known. He had marked it. He had been awake at midnight thinking of her.
She set the phone face-down on the nightstand and stared at the ceiling.
She was smiling. She didn’t
