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It wasn’t uncommon for Tim to reach for Lucy in his sleep. Sometimes, he’d wake up to his arm around her waist or his fingertips barely touching her back where her shirt had slightly ridden up. What was uncommon was for him to reach for her and find nothing. At first, Tim didn’t even know why he had woken up, but his eyes opened when his hand ran over the empty pillow next to him. At first, he leaned back into the pillow, expecting to hear a toilet flush, or footsteps coming from the kitchen back to bed, but he heard nothing.
Minutes later, he picked his head up, looking around the empty bedroom. “Lucy?” he called, peering at the bottom of the ensuite bathroom for light, but no light or sounds of movement attested her presence. He reached for his phone on the nightstand to check the time. 2:07 am.
That was when his first flicker of panic arose, but he swallowed it down. Lucy was no stranger to a midnight snack ever so often, despite Tim’s health-nut protests that it was bad for her digestion. He’d open his bedroom door, and there she’d be, sitting at his dining table with a yogurt cup in hand, eyes wide at being busted.
Except she wasn’t this time. He opened his door and it was still pitch dark. No light in the kitchen or at the dining table. He flicked the light on and was greeted by his empty home. “Luce?” he called again, receiving no answer.
Maybe she’d had a nightmare. A bad one that had triggered a panic attack, and she needed some air. Tim crossed to his backyard, sliding the backdoor open to look around. “Lucy?!” he whispered loudly to not alert the neighbors.
She wasn’t in their room. She wasn’t in their backyard. She wasn’t in the kitchen or bathroom. That ugly feeling of panic rose again in Tim’s throat, and this time it was harder to swallow down. With his hands balled into fists and shoved into his pockets to keep them from shaking, he strode back into the house, closing the door behind him.
“Okay,” he whispered, trying to soothe his own rising anxieties. “Alright, where could she-”
He cut himself off when his eyes landed on their shared key bowl in the entryway. After taking a deep breath, he hurried over to it, his blood going cold when he saw her keys were absent. But his alarm hadn’t been tripped, nor was the door locked, so he knew she hadn’t been taken anywhere. Before he could go into full panic mode over the implications of that, he ran back to his phone to check for messages from her that his phone might not have alerted him of.
But no, his last text from her was asking him to pick up soy milk at 4:47 pm that day. But now it was 2:14 am and she wasn’t home, and her keys were gone, and SHIT!
He hit the call button, and without the phone even ringing, he heard her voicemail message. “Hi, you’ve reached Lucy Chen!” her bright, cheery voice called to him. “I’m definitely not watching true crime or playing with my dog, I have more important things to do. I can’t tell you what they are right now, but it’s definitely not those first two things. Leave a message!”
Finally, the message tone prompted Tim to speak. “Uh, hey, baby, just wondering where you are. If you could give me a call back or shoot me a text, that’d be great.” He would’ve been proud of how level he kept his voice if his energy was not fully devoted to preventing freaking out.
The last cells in his brain clinging to logic were reminding him that all of her things were here, but the overwhelming majority of his thoughts were that Isabel didn’t take anything either. But Lucy wasn’t Isabel, and Tim knew that. Lucy wasn’t like any woman he’d ever been with, any person he’d ever known, but these were rational thoughts, and his irrationally panicked brain, functioning at 2 am level, was screaming that Isabel took her money and left, and now Lucy’s purse, Lucy’s car, and Lucy were all gone.
He called again and got her voicemail. He texted and got no response. No amount of balling his fists could prevent them from shaking now as he walked back out into the dining area, needing the open area to breathe. He couldn’t lose her. She was the good parts of his past, the happiest present he’d ever had, a future brighter than any he could’ve planned himself. And he thought they were on the same page. No, they were on the same page. She wasn’t growing distant; they were stronger than ever. He’d put a ring on her finger and set a date to make it official, but she’d said herself that she felt tied to him in every way even without being married to him yet. And he’d thought it was cheesy when she said it, but now he was clinging to those words as he typed another text, skimming the multiple texts he’d sent her just enough to see they’d been increasing in urgency as hard as he’d tried to stay casual.
“Hey!” he suddenly heard behind him, and he spun around to see Lucy in the doorway, still dressed in his old tee shirt and her leggings she’d gone to sleep in. He hadn’t even heard her car pull back into the driveway. “You were supposed to still be asleep when I got back, sorry if I woke you.”
His eyes didn’t leave her face until the sound of her keys dropping back into their bowl jarred his attention. Her opposite arm held a purple and white box with the name “Insomnia Cookies” on the front. “You….” His voice was ragged, and his sentence went nowhere.
“I know what you’re gonna say,” she said, holding up a hand in defense. “ Yes, my midnight snacking did get a little out of hand this time, but I did get you snickerdoodles, so you can’t make fun of me.”
He hid his shaking hands in his pockets and bit his bottom lip so she wouldn’t see it quivering. “I… I called you.”
“Did you?” she asked, marching past him to set the purple box on their kitchen counter. “I meant to text you in case you did wake up, but my phone didn’t charge while we slept, and it died in the car. I tried to charge it, but it still hasn’t started again.” She pulled it out of her pocket, holding down the power button and shrugging when it didn’t wake up. After putting her phone back in her pocket, her eyes met Tim’s, giving her pause. “Tim?”
He knew that voice- it told him that he wasn’t doing a good enough job at schooling his expression. He took a deep breath and walked in long, confident strides to come up beside her in the kitchen. “Let me guess,” he started, gesturing to the cookie box. “Chocolate chip and peanut butter?”
She held up a hand to correct, “Among other things. I also got a few s’more ones I want you to try. Will you be joining me?”
He wanted to, but he’d just spent twenty minutes battling a terror he didn’t even know he still had, and the last thing he wanted to do was fall apart in her presence. Instead, he shook his head with a soft smile. “I would, but I need my beauty rest,” he responded, bringing a fond eye roll from her. “Warm them up for me in the morning?”
Lucy turned to open the box, hitting them both with the scents of fresh-baked cookies and brownies. “Deal. I’ll head to bed as soon as I curb the craving.” She turned from the box to stick her lips out toward him. He meant to oblige her with a peck but found he couldn’t part from her that quickly just yet. She sighed happily and laid a hand on his face, pleased to get a real kiss from him. “I’ll see you in there,” she said once they parted, dropping her face down to kiss his shoulder through his sleep tee.
“Goodnight, baby.”
Tim meant to lay down. He meant to go back to sleep with the peace of mind that Lucy was enjoying her cookies in their kitchen, that she’d be in bed soon to wrap her arms around his sleeping form. But he could do none of that. All he could do was sit on his side of the bed facing his closet, with his head in his hands and his breathing ragged. Because while rationality had won out, the alarm of waking up in an empty home still hadn’t left his system. Once his brain had drawn the frivolous connection between Lucy and his past, it seemed determined to keep him there. He was a grown man, a cop. He’d lost men at war, he’d almost lost his life multiple times, he’d once pulled his rookie’s temporarily lifeless body out of a hole in the ground. And here he was, fighting tears because his fiancée left to get cookies.
He didn’t know how long it had been when the door opened beside him, and he immediately turned his face from view. He was supposed to be asleep. “Tim?” she called, and he knew he was caught. Her footsteps approached until he could see her kneel in front of him in his periphery. “Honey?”
“I’m fine, Lucy,” he rasped out. “Just tired.”
Maybe one day, Tim would be able to fight against her touch, but today was not that day. Not when she reached her gentle hands up to pry his away from his face. Definitely not when he felt her fingers on his cheek, feather-light, angling him toward her. “My phone woke up.”
He cringed. “You read the texts?”
She nodded. “I didn’t listen to the voicemails yet, but I assume they were similar.”
“Probably,” he responded with a dry laugh.
Lucy didn’t laugh with him. “Baby, what happened?”
He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes before a tear could form. “It’s stupid, I just… I woke up, and you were gone, and…”
Her brown eyes widened in understanding. “And you thought I wouldn’t come back,” she whispered.
“No, of course I knew you’d come back, but… I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t know for a few minutes.”
She got off of her knees to stand up, pulling his head to her stomach in a hug. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
As good as her hold felt, he pulled her away by the waist so he could look up at her. “It’s not your fault. You’re a grown woman, you should be able to go get cookies whenever you want without worrying about me.”
She shook her head, running her palm over the back of his neck in soothing motions. “You have triggers, Tim. Triggers linked to traumatic experiences. And I should have been more mindful.”
“I do not want you to think I’m carrying my old baggage into our life together. You are not Isabel, and I know that. I’m not who I was when I married her. This is completely new, and it’s better.”
“But the you you are now, Tim… this man I love so much, and would never, in a million years, think of leaving, was formed by your experiences. Some good, but a lot were bad. And while I love who you are now, I wish you didn’t have to go through what you did to get here. If this was switched, you’d be saying the same thing to me, right? Part of what makes us so great is that when old feelings and fears flare up, neither of us have to face them alone.”
“Okay,” he agreed with a nod. He tried to lean back into her stomach, but her thumbs gently pressed the sides of his neck to force him to look at her again.
“I mean it,” she said, and he was taken aback by the sternness in her voice. “Promise you’ll never try to smile and laugh your way through an anxiety attack for me again. Even if you don’t want me to do anything, please let me know when something’s going on. Let me be here for you.”
A fresh batch of tears sprung to Tim’s eyes, but this time, not from fear. In fact, they were from the exact opposite. From awe and wonder and acceptance. Because Lucy accepted Tim with all of his baggage and anxieties, and he could recognize that it was his turn to accept all the love she had to give him, even when it was so much, it scared him.
He pulled her back for another hug, and this time, she came willingly. “I promise to let you be here for me,” he breathed, surprised at how easily the words came out of him. “You’re pretty good at that.”
She giggled. “Damn straight,” she replied, and if he didn’t know better, he’d say she sounded choked up. In fact, he didn’t know better. “Now, were you serious about going to sleep, or do you wanna eat some cookies with me before they get cold?”
He laughed into her stomach, knowing it would trigger her ticklishness. “You said you had snickerdoodles?”
“Mmhm. They’re nice and soft, too.” She made to pull away, but his arms tightened around her waist to keep her close.
“Can we… not go just yet? Can we stay here?” His voice was quieter than he was used to, a bit weaker. And he was okay with that.
Lucy hummed, running her fingers through his hair before cradling his neck. “We can stay here as long as you want.”
The cookies had long grown cold by the time they released their embrace.