“Liar,” Elara murmured, but she reached across the center console and took Mina’s hand. Her fingers were warm. “Thank you. For taking me. For leaving when I needed to leave.”

“Well,” she said softly, “you are.”

“No,” Elara said, and her voice was wide awake now, full of that quiet, fierce certainty Mina loved most. “It’s the day you drove all night so I could sleep. It’s the day you remembered my hash brown order. It’s the day we sat in a Waffle House at one in the morning and you looked at me like I was the only person in the world.”

“Where…?” Elara whispered, her voice gravelly.

And Elara, for once, had actually listened.

They walked into the Waffle House at . The fluorescent lights buzzed. A waitress named Dottie poured them coffee without asking. They slid into a booth by the window, knees bumping under the table.

Elara blinked, then smiled—that crooked, sleepy smile that always made Mina’s chest ache. “You drove the whole way. You must be dead.”

“Hey,” Elara said quietly.

Mina’s throat tightened. She wasn’t good at big declarations—that was Elara’s domain, the poet, the one who could spin a single moment into a sonnet. But Mina showed love in other ways: the extra blanket in the back seat, the playlist she’d made for the drive, the way she’d silently taken the exit for this rest stop because she remembered Elara once said she loved their hash browns “scattered, smothered, and covered.”

“Thank you for tonight. For the 16th.”

“I’m glad it’s still the 16th,” Elara said suddenly. “I was afraid I’d sleep through the whole day.”

They sat like that for a while, hands interlaced, watching the steam rise from the Waffle House’s chimney. A trucker ambled inside, bell jingling. A stray cat crossed the parking lot, tail high.

“Hey yourself.”

The timestamp glowed faintly on the dashboard of Mina’s old Subaru: .

Elara.

Loving Ladies 2024 01 16 -- 00-33-1226-04 Min ★ Popular & Popular