“Your schedules were different.”
I stared at Adrian.
He continued before I could interrupt.
“Sophie told people she hated coffee. You sent me pictures of coffee almost every morning.”
My fingers went cold.
“She said she couldn’t cook. You once stayed on the phone with me for forty minutes because you burned soup.”
“That proves nothing.”
“She hates thunderstorms.”
I stopped breathing.
Adrian’s expression softened.
“You loved them.”
I remembered lying beneath my blanket three years ago, holding my phone beside my ear while rain struck the windows.
I had told him that thunderstorms made the world feel smaller.
Safer.
Like everyone had been forced indoors together.
He remembered.
Adrian looked down at his phone.
“By the fourth month, I knew the woman I was talking to couldn’t be Sophie.”
My voice came out barely above a whisper.
“Then why didn’t you ask?”
“I was afraid.”
I almost laughed.
“You?”
“Yes.”
His answer was immediate.
“I had originally asked a mutual friend for Sophie’s contact.”
There it was.
The part I had always known.
The reason I had disappeared.
Adrian didn’t deny it.
“At the beginning, I believed you were her.”
My heart sank despite everything.
“But after a few weeks, that stopped mattering.”
I looked at him.
“I didn’t fall in love with a username, Summer.”
He stepped closer.
“I fell in love with the woman who stayed awake with me after my father’s surgery.”
Another step.
“The woman who sent me terrible jokes before important meetings.”
Another.
“The woman who admitted she was afraid she would never be anyone’s first choice.”
My throat tightened.
I remembered saying that.
At two seventeen in the morning.
I had been crying quietly so my roommate wouldn’t hear.
Adrian had remained on the phone until sunrise.
“You never told Sophie those things?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then how could I have been loving Sophie?”
I couldn’t answer.
The garden suddenly felt too quiet.
Finally I whispered:
“But you said her name.”
“Yes.”
“And I heard enough.”
“No, Summer.”
His voice became firmer.
“You heard one word and disappeared before hearing the next sentence.”
I looked at him.
“What were you going to say?”
Adrian took a breath.
Then repeated the sentence he had never finished three years ago.
“Sophie… is that actually your name?”
Everything inside me stopped.
He continued.
“I had already started investigating because things didn’t match. I knew someone had given me the wrong account. I just didn’t know who you were.”
I felt ridiculous.
Painfully ridiculous.
“So when I sent you that message saying I wasn’t Sophie…”
“I already knew.”
“And when I said we should end everything?”
“I called you twenty-three times.”
I blinked.
“Twenty-three?”
“Twenty-seven if we count the next morning.”
Despite myself, I stared at him.
“That’s excessive.”
“You disappeared to another country.”
“That was also excessive.”
“Yes.”
For one impossible second, we almost smiled.
Then reality returned.
Three years.
Three entire years.
I lowered my eyes.
“Why didn’t you find me?”
“I did.”
My head snapped up.
Adrian reached into his jacket and removed an old envelope.
It had been opened and folded many times.
My name was written on it.
SUMMER SONG.
Below it was the address of my university abroad.
“You knew?”
“I found your university six months after you left.”
“Then why didn’t you come?”
His expression changed.
“Because of this.”
He handed me the envelope.
Inside was a letter.
Not his.
Mine.
Except I had never written it.
Adrian,
Please stop looking for me.
Everything between us was embarrassing and I regret it. I don’t want to meet you. I have someone else now.
Don’t contact me again.
Summer.
My hands began trembling.
“I never wrote this.”
“I know that now.”
I looked up.
“Who sent it?”
A voice answered behind us.
“I did.”
I turned.
Sophie stood at the edge of the garden.
Her face had lost all color.
“Sophie?”
She walked toward us slowly.
“I need to explain.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“You have needed to explain for three years.”
I stared at my sister.
“You knew?”
Tears filled her eyes.
“Not at first.”
She clasped her hands.
“When you left, Mom found out why.”
My stomach dropped.
Our mother.
“She was terrified,” Sophie continued. “Adrian’s family was complicated. Powerful. Mom thought you had become emotionally involved with someone you barely knew and had ruined your studies because of it.”
“So she forged a letter?”
“She asked me to write it.”
I stepped back.
“And you did?”
Sophie started crying.
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“By making him believe I regretted him?”
“I was stupid.”
“Yes.”
She flinched.
I rarely spoke to Sophie that way.
But three years of my life had suddenly acquired a different meaning.
Three years believing I had been someone else’s substitute.
Three years believing Adrian had wanted my sister.
Three years running from a humiliation that had never actually existed.
Sophie wiped her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t answer.
Not yet.
Forgiveness wasn’t something I could manufacture because someone cried.
Daniel appeared behind her.
He quietly placed a hand on her shoulder.
Then he looked at Adrian.
“Maybe we should go inside.”
Adrian nodded.
Sophie looked at me one last time.
“I really am sorry, Summer.”
Then they left.
Adrian and I remained alone.
Again.
Just like those countless nights on the phone.
Except this time there was no distance protecting us.
“What happens now?” I asked.
Adrian looked at me.
“Nothing.”
I frowned.
“Nothing?”
“I’m not asking you to become my girlfriend tonight.”
“That’s surprisingly reasonable.”
“I’ve had three years to become reasonable.”
I almost smiled.
He continued.
“You thought I loved Sophie. I thought you rejected me. We were both wrong.”
“And now?”
“Now you’re home.”
His voice softened.
“And if you allow it, I’d like to meet you properly.”
My chest tightened.
“No usernames?”
“No.”
“No assumptions?”
“No.”
“No calling my sister’s name during intimate conversations?”
Adrian actually looked embarrassed.
“That will never happen again.”
I laughed.
A real laugh.
The first one I had shared with him face-to-face.
And suddenly I understood something strange.
We had fallen in love backward.
We knew each other’s fears before knowing each other’s faces.
We knew each other’s dreams before sharing a room.
Maybe we didn’t need to recover the relationship we had lost.
Maybe we needed to start the one we had never been given the chance to have.
So I held out my hand.
“Summer Song.”
Adrian looked down at it.
Then he took it.
His palm was warm.
“Adrian Cole.”
“Nice to finally meet you.”
His fingers tightened slightly around mine.
“I’ve been waiting three years to hear that.”
We did not become a couple that night.
Adrian kept his promise.
We started again.
Coffee first.
Then dinner.
Then long walks.
And occasionally we returned to phone calls late at night, except now I could picture exactly what his face looked like when he laughed.
I learned things about him I could never have learned online.
He hated olives.
He folded receipts into tiny squares when nervous.
He became ridiculously competitive at board games.
And whenever he was tired, he rubbed the same spot above his left eyebrow.
He learned things about me too.
That I sang badly while cooking.
That I stole fries from other people’s plates.
That I still loved thunderstorms.
Six months later, during one, we sat together beside my apartment window.
Rain covered the glass.
Adrian looked at me.
“Do you remember what you once told me?”
“What?”
“That thunderstorms make the world smaller.”
I smiled.
“You remember too much.”
“I had three years with nothing except memories.”
That silenced me.
Then he reached into his pocket.
My heart nearly stopped.
“Adrian…”
“It isn’t a ring.”
He pulled out his phone.
I slapped his shoulder.
He laughed.
Then he showed me an old message.
One I had sent four years earlier.
Someday I really want to see you.
Adrian looked at me.
“Well?”
I leaned against his shoulder.
“You finally did.”
A year later, Sophie married Daniel.
At the wedding reception, she came toward me wearing her white dress.
Adrian stood beside me.
Sophie looked between us and smiled cautiously.
“So…”
I immediately knew what she was going to say.
“Don’t.”
She laughed.
“Can I finally call him your boyfriend?”
Adrian answered before I could.
“For now.”
I turned toward him.
“For now?”
He looked suspiciously innocent.
Daniel burst out laughing.
Sophie covered her mouth.
And suddenly I understood.
“Adrian Cole.”
He reached into his jacket.
The entire table erupted.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
I backed away, laughing.
“You are not proposing at my sister’s wedding.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Then what is in your pocket?”
He pulled out a small velvet box.
Everyone screamed.
I covered my face.
“Sophie, control your guest.”
“He’s your problem now.”
Adrian leaned toward me.
“Tomorrow?”
I peeked at him between my fingers.
“What?”
“Can I ask tomorrow?”
My face burned.
“You just ruined the surprise.”
“I waited three years. I’m done with surprises.”
I laughed.
“Tomorrow.”
His smile became the one I had once learned to recognize only through his voice.
The next evening, he asked.
I said yes.
And two years later, at another family dinner, Sophie walked into the room carrying her baby.
Adrian was beside me.
She smiled mischievously.
“Summer, your brother-in-law is here.”
I pointed at Daniel.
“Yes. That one.”
Everyone laughed.
Adrian leaned toward my ear.
“You know, the first time you called me brother-in-law, I nearly lost my mind.”
“I noticed.”
“I thought you had come home married.”
“You deserved ten seconds of suffering.”
“After three years?”
“Fine. Five seconds.”
He kissed my forehead.
And as I looked around the table, I thought about how easily our entire lives had nearly been destroyed by one wrong username, one unfinished sentence, and one forged letter.
For years, I believed I had accidentally fallen in love with the man who loved my sister.
But I had been wrong.
Adrian had approached the wrong account looking for Sophie.
Then somewhere between midnight conversations, burned soup, thunderstorms, fears, dreams and whispered promises…
he had stopped looking for her.
He had fallen in love with me.
The mistake had only introduced us.
Everything after that had been real.
