Chapter 2

2 I hung up, and my phone immediately started buzzing again.

It was Liam's secret Twitter account.

I didn't even know he had one.

I checked it out, and he posted on it all the time.

What he ate, where he went, what books he read.

Emily commented on every single post.

Liam: All done with this. Knitting a scarf for my sweetheart.

Emily: Scarf received, but she's at home, can't grab it.

Liam: Fine, don't!

It was a pink scarf, the birthday present Liam gave me last year.

I thought it was so sweet at the time.

Looks like it was just Emily's reject.

I scrolled down and found something that hit me even harder.

Valentine's Day the year of the pandemic.

I was stuck in a hotel.

He got all sulky.

But on his Twitter, he posted a mirror selfie of him and Emily making out.

In the background, it was clearly a hotel room.

Ding-dong

Twitter notification.

Liam posted something new.

The caption said: Goodbye to my youth.

Emily commented: Hope she treats you well.

I closed my phone and rubbed my temples.

Eleven PM, and Liam finally called.

He was loud, all excited. "Hey, baby! Don't wait up tonight!"

I didn't say anything. He got all defensive and added, "My friends know I'm getting married. They wanna throw me a bachelor party."

I'd heard that one before.

After his friend's wedding, he used that line seven times.

Meaning, he spent a whole week out partying for his "last night of freedom."

The noise of the music and people cheering came through the phone, cutting through the silence.

Since I wasn't saying anything, he asked, "Baby, what's wrong? Are you mad?"

He was being super careful, like he was testing the waters.

He was waiting for me to say something, and I looked at my watch.

I randomly blurted out, "It's eleven o'clock."

Nobody else would know what that meant.

But it was our own weird thing.

I knew.

And he knew.

It was a rule he made when we first started dating.

He had just started his new job. I was trying to get a promotion, so I was working late every night.

One night it was almost midnight when I got home, and he was curled up on the couch like a kitten.

He ran to me and asked me the most innocent thing.

"Babe, can you not come home after eleven?"

We hadn't been dating long.

He used to be a happy person.

But he changed because I would come home so late.

I looked at his glassy eyes, and he had icing on his face from his birthday cake.

So, I agreed.

"For two weeks."

For two weeks straight, he would call me and say, "Babe, it's eleven! Come home."

He was my own little watch dog.

Soon, whenever he said, "It's eleven,"

I would reply, "Time to come home."

It was our little secret.