Almost Love, Then Everything - Chapter 5: Chapter 5

(“Sometimes love doesn’t need a reason. Sometimes, it just wants to be let in.”)
The rain came in softly—first as mist, then as something heavier, as if the sky wasn’t sure it wanted to weep just yet. Leah stood at the edge of it, under the small green awning outside Willow & Words, her sketchpad pressed to her chest beneath her coat. Her boots were damp. Her hair clung to the curve of her neck. But she didn’t turn back.
Jade was already inside, seated by the corner window table—their table now, somehow. Leah caught the flicker of her laugh through the glass, soft and brief, as the barista handed her a pot of tea. She was spinning her spoon in the saucer absentmindedly. Waiting.
For Leah.
Leah opened the door, and the scent of earl grey and old books swept over her like a memory. The bell above the door jingled.
Jade looked up.
“You’re wet,” she said, rising just enough to help Leah remove her coat. “Did you walk here?”
Leah shrugged. “Didn’t feel like waiting on a ride.”
“You could’ve said something. I would’ve picked you up.”
“And miss the romantic cinematic rain entrance?” Leah deadpanned, her lips tugging into the smallest smile.
Jade grinned as she handed Leah a dry napkin. “Of course. You had to make an entrance.”
They sat across from each other, the steam curling between them like the pause in a sentence they both felt too deeply to name.
“I ordered the usual,” Jade said, nudging a cup toward her.
Lavender earl grey. The one Leah had mentioned, just once, weeks ago. Jade had remembered.
“Thanks.” Leah cupped the mug in both hands, letting the warmth travel into her palms. Her eyes drifted to the window, where rain was threading its way down the glass in slow-moving rivers.
Jade was watching her again.
“I missed you,” Jade said.
Leah looked at her, startled not by the words—but by how much she’d wanted to hear them.
“I missed you too,” she admitted, the words catching on a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
There it was. Said aloud. Like opening a window after years of dust.
They didn’t speak for a while after that. The silence between them wasn’t awkward—it was full. Like a favorite song with no lyrics.
Then, softly, Jade asked, “Do you want to go somewhere after this?”
Leah tilted her head. “Where?”
Jade leaned forward just enough for her voice to drop, her eyes shining with something that might have been nerves—or hope.
“Somewhere it’s just us.”
Later, they walked under Jade’s umbrella—Leah holding her sketchpad like armor, Jade carrying the weight of something neither of them had said out loud.
They didn’t go far. Just down the winding cobblestone path behind the café, toward a nearby park. The rain had thinned into mist again, and the world felt smaller in the best way—quieter, gentler.
They stopped at a bench beneath an old willow, its branches dripping gently around them like a curtain.
Jade glanced at her sideways. “Leah?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever feel like you’re standing on the edge of something, and you’re not sure if it’s the start… or the fall?”
Leah stared at the puddle beneath her boots. Thought about her heart. Thought about how she had stopped sketching anything human until Jade showed up.
“I think maybe,” she said, “they’re the same thing.”
Jade reached out, slowly, and brushed a damp strand of hair from Leah’s face.
Leah didn’t flinch.
“I like the fall,” Jade whispered.
And Leah whispered back, “I think I’m ready to fall too.”
They didn’t kiss.
Not yet.
But they were closer now.
Close enough that neither of them would forget the space between their breaths, or how warm the rain felt when someone else was holding part of your storm.