The late-night texts began innocently enough. Lia and Adam exchanged the occasional joke or work-related quip. But as the days turned into weeks, the messages slipped into the quiet spaces of Lia’s nights. They weren’t about receipts or spreadsheets anymore. Instead, they were about the small cracks in their lives—the things they didn’t say aloud to anyone else.
One evening, Lia sat on the bedroom floor folding laundry. The soft cotton of a sweater twisted tightly in her hands, a reflex she didn’t notice until her phone buzzed beside her, lighting up the dim room. The sound of her partner’s footsteps echoed from the hallway, a distant reminder of the life she was supposed to be living. She glanced at the screen: Adam’s name. It had the same effect it always had, her heart race and her lips tugged up into a soft smile.
Do you ever wish you could just disappear for a while? his message read.
She froze, the sweater slipping from her grasp. The question hit her like a sharp wind, pulling her breath away. Those intense questions weren’t frequent, but she felt the weight of them in the way Adam asked them. Instinctively she knew how he felt and why. She didn’t dare saying so, though. Finally, she set the sweater aside and typed back:
Sometimes. Doesn’t everyone?
His reply came quickly:
I think about it all the time. Not running away… just freedom. A break from everything pressing down, you know?
Lia’s chest tightened as she stared at the screen. She wanted to dismiss his words, to laugh them off, but she couldn’t. She felt the longing for something neither of them could name. There was more to his words than just their literal meaning. Adam surprised her almost every day. Some days he was playful and teasing, other days his intensity grabbed her heart and took her breath away.
What would you do with that freedom? she typed back.
After a moment, his reply appeared:
Breathe.
The simplicity of his answer unravelled something inside her. She leaned her head back against the bed, her eyes closing as she let out a slow breath of her own. She wanted to tell him that she understood, that sometimes she felt like she was suffocating too. But the words stuck in her throat. She wasn’t ready to bare herself like that. Not yet, maybe never. How could she justify unmasking with Adam this way, when she had never done it with her partner?
Her phone buzzed again.
Can I call you?
Lia didn’t have time to reply, her screen lit up with Adam’s name on her screen. She glanced at the doorway, the sound of her partner watching television in the living room drifting through the house. She hesitated for only a moment before quietly locking the bedroom door behind her. With trembling fingers, she pressed the answer button.
“Hey,” Adam’s voice was soft, tentative.
“Hey,” she whispered back, her voice steady but low.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Lia pressed her back against the door, her heart pounding as she listened to the soft sound of his breathing. It felt like he was right there, just on the other side of the silence.
“I don’t mean to unload on you,” Adam said finally, his voice heavy with something unspoken. “But sometimes it feels like the walls are closing in, you know? Like I’m treading water, and every day it gets harder to keep my head up.”
Her throat tightened. “You don’t have to apologize, Adam,” she said softly. “We’re friends. I’m here.”
He let out a quiet laugh, the sound tinged with sadness. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Lia.”
Her eyes stung as she pressed the phone closer to her ear. She wanted to tell him that his words meant just as much to her, that his presence had become her lifeline too. But the words stayed locked inside her chest, too heavy to say aloud. The realization of the truth was unexpected. Those thoughts had been there in the back of her mind, but she had never before allowed them to matter.
That night, something shifted between them. The line they had tried so hard to keep clear began to blur, their words spilling over into something deeper, something they both knew they couldn’t take back.
The next few nights followed the same pattern. Lia would wait for the quiet moments when her partner was asleep or distracted, her phone already in her hand before his message appeared. Adam would call, and their conversations became their sanctuary, a place where they could shed the masks they wore for everyone else.
One night, as the rain drummed steadily against the windows, Adam’s voice carried through the quiet darkness of her room.
“Do you ever feel like you’re fading?” he asked suddenly, his voice breaking the silence.
Lia’s chest ached at the vulnerability in his words. “Fading?” she repeated softly.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice quieter now. “Like you’re here, but not really. Like you’re pretending to be fine, and no one notices.”
She closed her eyes, her breath hitching. “Yeah,” she admitted after a moment. “I do.”
“It’s like I’m drowning,” Adam continued, his voice cracking slightly. “And I have to keep smiling, keep pretending everything’s okay, so no one realizes I can’t breathe.”
“You don’t have to pretend with me,” Lia whispered. “I see you, Adam.”
The silence that followed was heavier, his breathing uneven on the other end.
“You don’t know how much that means to me,” he said finally, his voice raw.
Lia’s throat tightened. She wanted to tell him she understood, that his words meant just as much to her. But all she could manage was, “I’m glad I can help.”
Their late-night conversations deepened even more after that. They became more personal, more intimate. Lia wondered sometimes if it was okay to share these things with Adam, but she liked these moments of freedom too much, and she pushed the doubts away. Adam began to share pieces of himself in fragments, small, carefully measured confessions that felt like glimpses into a world he rarely let anyone see.
“There’s this park I go to sometimes,” he said one night. “It’s quiet, tucked away. I sit on a bench and just… exist for a while. It’s the only place I don’t feel like I have to be anyone.”
Lia closed her eyes, picturing him there. “What do you think about when you’re there?”
“Nothing,” he said softly. “And everything. Mostly, I think about what it would feel like to share that space with someone who gets it.”
Her chest ached at his words, the weight of them pressing against her like a tidal wave. She wanted to tell him she understood, that she felt the same. But the words never came.
reflections of an unquiet mind 