Three Words Too Late
Late night and by the time I reached her door, the sky had already started crying for me. Fat, cold drops fell in uneven rhythms, soaking through my coat and hair, turning the street into a river of reflections. Streetlights and regret pooled together beneath my feet. The rain had that particular scent it gets in early autumn, when the first chill crawls under your collar, reminding you that things are changing, that summer is gone for good.
Still, I knocked. Once. Twice. A third time, softer, as if I could undo the first two.
The door opened a crack.
And there she was—barefoot, hair tangled from sleep, eyes red from nights that had gone on too long. She looked like she’d been waiting for something, though maybe not for me.
“Eli,” she said. Just my name, nothing else. It landed flat between us, the way a bird hits a window, soft, stunned, and already falling.
Inside, the apartment smelled of toast and rosemary. She used to plant it in little pots on the windowsill, said the scent helped her remember her mother. Now the plants were wilted, stems drooping, soil dry. On the table sat a half-drunk cup of coffee, gone cold. A thin rim of lipstick marked the edge like a fading heartbeat.
White noise emitted from her cellphone. She always said she liked the whoosh because silence sounded too much like goodbye.
“Why did you come here?” she asked, voice low, the way people speak when they already know the answer.
“I almost didn’t.”
We stood there a long time, the air thick with everything we’d never said. The rain behind me and the static inside her apartment seemed to fuse into one long sigh. If faded love had weight, the room would’ve buckled under it.
She crossed her arms, the sleeve of her sweater slipping to reveal the scar on her wrist, the one from that summer we rebuilt the old boat her father left behind. She’d cut herself on a nail and laughed it off. “A mark of stubbornness,” she’d said. That was her. Always moving forward, even when bleeding.
“I was wrong,” I said finally, my throat burning around the words.
Her gaze drifted toward the window, where distant lightning drew thin white veins across the sky. Her face caught the flash, and for an instant, I saw the woman she used to be, the one who believed in me.
“Eli, don’t.”
She said it softly, but it landed like a blade.
“I just need you to hear me.”
“I’ve heard you,” she said. “I heard you every time you didn’t say anything. Every silence was an answer.”
I wanted to tell her that silence was just fear wearing armor, that I hadn’t known how to speak without breaking something. But all I managed was, “I thought we had time.”
Her laugh was small, sharp.
“We did. You spent it.”
Lightning again, closer now. The air felt charged, as if the storm was feeding on what was left between us.
I looked around the room. Everything was the same but slightly wrong. The books we’d collected still filled the shelves, but there was dust on the spines. The photo of us at the lake, she’d turned it facedown. The afghan her grandmother made hung over the arm of the couch, its loose threads like life unraveling.
“You still live like I’m coming back,” I said before I could stop myself.
She met my eyes then, a weary calm settling over her face. “And you still talk like words can fix what time broke.”
She turned away, walking toward the bedroom, and that movement—so small, so final—was the sound of a door closing forever.
I should’ve said it then. The three words that had stuck in my throat for months, that had burned every time I swallowed them back. I love you.
But they felt useless now, too light to bridge the distance I’d built. She was already walking toward another room, into another life where I didn’t exist.
“I love you,” I whispered anyway, though I don’t know if she heard.
She paused, hand on the doorway, just enough to make me hope, but didn’t turn around. “No, Eli,” she said quietly. “You loved me in theory. Not in time.”
The words cut clean, no malice, no heat. Just truth.
And then she was gone.
I stood there, damp and stupid, staring at the half-empty coffee cup, wondering if love really dies, or if it just lingers, pacing behind closed doors, waiting for someone to let it out.
I left her apartment quietly, closing the door without another knock. The stairwell smelled of dust and rain. By the time I stepped outside, the storm had passed, leaving the city damp and gleaming, as if it had been crying for both of us.
The inside noise gone, replaced by the faint hum of an outdoor AC unit, and the arching of a neon sign about to go out. It struck me then how strange it is, the sound of ordinary life continuing after the extraordinary has ended.
I walked aimlessly, hands shoved in my pockets, feeling the weight of everything I hadn’t said pressing against my ribs. Each puddle reflected her face, each flash of passing light looked like forgiveness until it wasn’t. I felt like my love had just missed the train and I was left standing in the station with a suitcase full of words. How I wished I’d said some of them earlier.
I stopped and turned toward her building, more out of ache than hope, expecting only the dark outline of her window, but desperately hoping she’d be standing in the window, watching.
And there she was.
Not just standing.
Not just watching, but waving, with both arms slicing overhead, frantic and bright, like a beacon desperate to guide a lost thing back to shore. I didn’t need to hear the words, to turn and hurry back, ignoring the splashing in the puddles. I wanted to hold her in my arms until she barely had breath to breathe. I’d never hold back telling her how much I loved her again.
I flew up her stairs, heart pounding the way it should have months ago, and when she opened the door, she said, “I changed my mind.”
I didn’t speak—I couldn’t. I just pulled her into my arms, into everything I’d been afraid to give her, into the moment that made every unsaid word collapse into one truth.
Her lips met mine, breathless and warm, and between kisses I whispered the words like a vow I’d been saving my whole life.
“I really do love you.”
M.D. Smith of Huntsville, Alabama, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Frontier Times, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bewilderingstories.com, and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats.
https://mdsmithiv.com/