HE SHOULD HAVE LEFT

Closer

Amara kept telling herself she didn’t mean for it to get this far. She’d lie awake most nights, staring at the ceiling, replaying excuses in her head. It began with dinners. Then it was calls — always late, when Kel had dragged himself to bed after another long day at the shop. Richard always picked up right away. She started to need that in a way she didn’t want to think about.

The first late call sort of just... happened. She meant to shoot off a text about some supplier issue, quick and easy, just work stuff. She messaged Richard about that kind of thing all the time. But instead, her thumb hit “call.” Or maybe it didn’t slip, maybe she just wanted to hear his voice and wasn’t ready to say that out loud. He answered even before the second ring.

“Hey,” he said, sounding genuinely happy to hear from her. “Everything okay?”

“Uh, yeah. I meant to text you about the linen order for Saturday, but I guess I called by mistake.”

“Nothing like a mistake.” She could hear his smile through the phone, relaxed and warm in a way that felt a little dangerous. “How’s your evening going?”

She almost said “fine,” the answer she gave everyone by default now. But his voice, easy and patient, tugged something honest out of her instead.

“Long,” she said, letting out a sigh. “Kel’s at the shop again. Probably won’t be back until late.”

A couple calls later, these late-night check-ins had become a routine she looked forward to, even if she pretended otherwise.

“You sound tired,” Richard said one night.

“I am tired.” She slipped out to the balcony — the same spot where Kel had proposed, the spot where she’d made silent promises to herself she still hadn’t kept. “Wedding planning feels like a second job.”

“You don’t have to do it alone.”

“I’m not alone. Kel’s helping.”

“That’s not what I meant.” His tone was so soft, but his words landed heavy. “I mean, you don’t need to carry all of it. Not everything has to be on you.”

She didn’t reply right away. In that quiet, she realized he was offering more than company — he was offering relief. The relief she used to get with Kel, before budgets and bills started haunting everything they did. With Richard, conversation was just conversation. Nobody had to fix anything, nobody had to compromise or cut back. It felt so easy.

“You always know what to say,” she said. Her voice surprised her — low, almost shy.

“I just say what I actually think.” He paused, longer than usual. She waited, heart racing, for whatever he’d say next. “I think about you more than I probably should, Amara.”

Her heart jolted. She should’ve cut him off, ended the call, and closed the door. Instead, she said, “Don’t say things like that,” and her voice sounded anything but firm. It sounded more like an invitation.

“Why not, if it’s true?”

And again, she had nothing. She stayed on the phone, talking for another hour about caterers and difficult clients and whatever minor headache she could think up. She laughed more than she had all week. By the end, she felt lighter, the way you feel after fresh air — almost too good, like she shouldn’t get to have it.

As soon as she hung up, guilt crashed down on her. Sharp and hot, right under her ribs. She told herself, sitting there in the dark on the balcony, that she’d stop letting the calls go on like this. She always said that, and the guilt always faded after a day or two. What stuck was the memory of how good it felt to feel light again, and how easy it was to get back there.

She told herself it was harmless. She told herself it would stop after the wedding — that the ring and the license would patch over this little c***k in her heart. She believed that in the desperate way you hang onto a hope you can’t bear to lose. She’d think later how odd it was, putting so much faith in a piece of paper, as if signing a certificate could fix what she wouldn’t admit to herself — what she didn’t want to fix, not really.

The late-night calls settled into a pattern. Not every night, but often enough that she started keeping her phone close to her side of the bed, quietly angling the screen away from where Kel slept. Alone, that choice meant nothing. With everything else, it meant plenty.

One night, Richard asked, “Do you ever think about what would have happened if we’d met before Kel?”

She stopped, heart hammering. “I don’t know. Sometimes. I try not to think about it.”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t change anything,” she said. “Kel is who I chose. This — whatever this is — doesn’t change that.”

“Doesn’t it, though?” His voice didn’t accuse, but the question hit hard just the same. “You call me more now. You tell me things I doubt you tell him. I’m not trying to mess things up, Amara. I just think we’re pretending it’s less than it is.”

She couldn’t answer him. She made an excuse about being tired, about a meeting in the morning, and ended the call. Then she stayed out on the balcony with her arms around her knees, letting reality sink in. Some shape she’d been dodging started to get clearer, and seeing it scared her.

She considered telling Kel. Really telling him — the calls, the growing closeness, the fact that sometimes she looked forward to Richard’s voice more than hearing her own fiancé come home. She ran the conversation in her head, rehearsed and revised it, then always backed down. She feared how his face would change, feared unraveling so much effort and hope, feared having to sit with the mess of her own choices and nothing left to hide behind.

So she said nothing. Instead, she slipped back into bed. Kel rolled over, half-asleep, pulled her close, murmuring something she didn’t quite catch. He had no clue about the door she was propping open by inches every night.

Kel just kept grinding away. Skipping meals, pushing through exhaustion, telling everyone he was all right. He noticed, vaguely, that Amara spent more time on her phone, took more balcony breaks, and seemed lighter than usual compared to some nights. He told himself she was just relieved the wedding plans were coming together. He didn’t look closer. Part of him probably already knew, and knew he couldn’t handle what he’d find.

They kept planning the wedding. Kept saying yes in public, kept writing guest lists and picking dates. On the surface, they looked like two people drawing closer. Underneath, in all the private corners where trust grows or slowly unravels, something had already started to fall apart — one late-night conversation at a time.