Why would she want me? The sight of me, with my tattoos and cold demeanor, is enough to make most people turn away. I don’t smile, I don’t beg for attention, and I keep my distance. There’s a rawness to me—one that screams of roads travelled and battles fought. But in her eyes, it’s as though none of that matters.

She. She is like fresh air on a winter morning, a breeze that cuts through the chill and stirs something deep inside. The first time you feel the sun on your skin after a long and dark winter, warming your very soul, awakening something you didn’t know was asleep. She’s the light that makes everything else seem insignificant.

And yet, here I am—broken, rough around the edges, tangled in my past—and she sees me. How? How could someone like her look at someone like me and see anything worth caring about? She deserves more than this, more than me.

But when she smiles at me, something shifts, like the world slows down. I wonder if she can see the cracks in me and still think I’m worth it.

I sit on my bike and wait for her shift to end, I have been adamant to always pick her up after her evening shifts, to keep her safe . She never asked me to. Never once hinted that she needed me there. But I show up anyway, leaning against my bike, cigarette burning low between my fingers, watching the doors of the diner like a man waiting for something he knows he doesn’t deserve.

And then she steps out.

Her hair’s a little messy from the long shift, apron slung over one arm, exhaustion written in the way she moves—but when her eyes find mine, she smiles. Like she’s happy to see me. Like I belong there, waiting for her.

That smile does something to me. It tugs at the edges of the walls I’ve built, shakes something loose inside my chest.

She walks over, and I stub out the cigarette, straightening up as she stops in front of me.

“You didn’t have to wait,” she says, but there’s no scolding in her voice.

I shrug. “Didn’t have anything better to do.” A lie. A poor one.