Love is Better in the Dark

CHAPTER 5

They talked for another hour. Not about work or family or the concrete details of their lives, but about smaller things that somehow felt bigger in the darkness. They talked about books—he loved historical fiction, she preferred mysteries. They laughed about their worst travel experiences. He’d gotten food poisoning in Thailand. She’d been stuck in an airport in Iceland for three days during a snowstorm.

“Three days?” he said, incredulous. “What did you do?”

“Read four books, drank terrible coffee, and seriously considered just living in the airport forever.” Eleanor found herself laughing at the memory, something she’d never done before. At the time, it had been a nightmare. Now, in the darkness with this stranger, it felt like a story worth sharing.

“Did you talk to anyone? Make any airport friends?”

“There was a couple from Germany who were also stranded. We played cards for about six hours. They taught me a game I can’t remember the name of and I taught them how to play rummy. By the end, we were like family. Then we got on our respective flights and I never saw them again.”

“That’s kind of beautiful, actually. These intense temporary connections that exist in their own bubble and then disappear.”

Eleanor paused, thinking about that. “Is that what this is? An intense temporary connection?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Do you want it to be?”

“I don’t know either.” She did know, but she wasn’t ready to say it out loud. Not yet.

They talked about the city, about how it sounded different at night. He’d noticed that too—how after midnight, you could actually hear the city breathe, hear the rhythm beneath the constant noise.

“Where do you go to hear it?” Eleanor asked.

“The Brooklyn Bridge, usually. Late at night when there’s almost no one there. You can hear the water and the traffic and sometimes, if you’re lucky, music from somewhere you can’t quite place. What about you?”

“The roof of my building. I’m high enough up that individual sounds blur together into this… hum. Like the city is singing to itself.”

“That’s poetic.”

“Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to maintain.” Eleanor said it lightly, but there was truth in it. Eleanor Black, CEO, wasn’t supposed to be poetic. She was supposed to be sharp, decisive, powerful. But in the darkness, she could be both.

He challenged her occasionally, pushing back when she said something he disagreed with. They argued good-naturedly about whether old movies were better than new ones (she said yes, he said they were just different), whether the city was more beautiful in summer or winter (he said winter, she said neither—fall was superior), whether dogs or cats made better pets.

“You don’t strike me as a cat person,” he said.

“What do I strike you as?”

“A dog person. Loyal, protective, probably has one of those expensive breeds with a pedigree longer than my arm.”

Eleanor laughed. “I’m allergic to cats, actually. And I don’t have any pets. My schedule doesn’t really allow for it.”

“That’s sad.”

“It’s practical.”

“It can be both.”

He was right, of course. It was both. One more thing she’d sacrificed to the altar of her career, her success, her position. But in the darkness, with this stranger who somehow seemed to see right through her walls, she could acknowledge that maybe the sacrifice hadn’t been worth it.

They talked about music, about art, about the small moments in life that made everything else worthwhile. He told her about watching the sunrise from a beach in Mexico, how the sky had turned colors he didn’t have words for. She told him about the first time she’d closed a major deal, how she’d sat alone in her office afterward and cried because she’d finally proven something to herself.

“What did you prove?” he asked gently.

“That I was enough. That I could do it. That I belonged in that office with that title.” She hadn’t meant to say so much, but the darkness made it easier. The darkness made everything easier.

“You’re more than enough,” he said, and something in his voice made her believe him.

When her phone finally buzzed with Ava’s subtle reminder that they’d been in there for ninety minutes, Eleanor felt a genuine pang of disappointment. She wasn’t ready for this to end. She wanted to keep talking, keep existing in this strange bubble where nothing mattered except their voices in the darkness.

“I have to go,” she said reluctantly.

“Will you come back?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I want you to come back.”

“Then I’ll come back.”

They agreed on two days from now, same time, same place. Eleanor stood carefully, feeling her way toward where she remembered the door being. Her hand found the handle.

“Goodnight,” she said into the darkness.

“Goodnight,” he replied. “Mystery woman.”

Eleanor left first, stepping out into the hallway’s dim light and closing the door behind her. She stood there for a moment, her heart racing, a smile playing at her lips. Behind that door, he was still sitting in the darkness. Thinking about her, maybe. Wondering about her the way she was wondering about him.

Then she went home and immediately called Ava.

“So?” Ava answered on the first ring, barely containing her excitement.

“He’s infuriating,” Eleanor said, pacing her apartment. “Absolutely infuriating. He called me out for being closed off and made me explain myself and didn’t just accept my rules without question.”

“And?” Ava prompted, because she could hear the smile in Eleanor’s voice.

“And I like him,” Eleanor admitted. “I don’t know his name. I don’t know what he does or where he’s from. But Ava, I really like him.”

“I told you,” Ava said smugly. “I told you my gut was reliable.”

They talked for another twenty minutes, Eleanor recounting parts of the conversation, carefully editing out the most vulnerable moments. Those were hers to keep. Hers and his. No one else needed to know about the honesty they’d shared in that dark room.

When she finally hung up and got ready for bed, Eleanor found herself staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She looked the same as always—same face, same hair, same everything. But something felt different. Something had shifted in that darkness, some wall had started to crack.

The next morning, Eleanor walked into her office still thinking about the man in the darkness. She couldn’t get his voice out of her head, or the way he’d challenged her, or the honesty in his admission of fear.

Ava appeared in her doorway with coffee. “So are you going to see him again?”

“Thursday night.” Eleanor took the coffee gratefully. “Same time, same place.”

“And you still don’t want to know anything about him?”

“No. Not yet.” Eleanor sat down at her marble desk and looked out at the city. “Right now he’s just a voice in the dark who makes me laugh. And that’s exactly what I need him to be.”

Ava smiled and left Eleanor alone with her thoughts and her coffee and the strange, fluttering feeling in her chest that felt dangerously close to hope.

In the darkness, she’d found something she’d thought was lost forever.

And she couldn’t wait to go back.