Call Me Up Again

a/n: SURPRISE!!! Have a little extra chapter today, guys!
It's rather short anyway and since I'll be back to work on Tuesday, I will have to change up the posting schedule/time to make it work, and I figured you might enjoy having two chapters a day for once instead of waiting for a couple of extra hours.
So yeah, this will most likely be the new update time from now on and it's also very possible that I won't be able to post every day. I'm thinking that I maybe have to take one to two days off per week, but that's about it.

And also: WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ALMOST 6K READS ?!?! I'm freaking out over here! This is far more than I could've ever expected, so thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I love having you here on this journey with me!!!

Sam <3

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Chapter Twenty-Five
- I wanna feel you by my side, standing next to me -
March 4th 2023

The following weeks pass by in a whirlwind. When I wake up, I do so with a smile already plastered on my face, then shoot Allie a quick text, and sometimes, if I'm lucky enough, she's still awake and answers with a morning call. Starting the day with her laughter echoing through my room from the speaker makes up for all the lack of sleep I'm getting and turns my grumpy ass into a giggling goofball.

After that, it's rushing to work, or hanging out with Sean, or catching up with my family, or whatever. Aoife takes up a lot of my spare time with preparations for the Eras Tour, and Niamh joins in whenever she's free as well. None of us saw it coming, but it's bringing us so much closer together. I guess spending hours threading up ridiculously tiny beads, hot-gluing rhinestones on clothes, and studying lyrics as if they were vocabulary just does that.

Of course, Allie and I keep texting back and forth throughout all of this, except for when I'm on a plane somewhere in the sky or she's in a meeting again. The latter is becoming increasingly common, and some days I rarely get to talk to her at all. Whenever I question her about those meetings, she brushes it off, explaining it away by stating it's part of the super-absolutely-crazy-top-secret project her work has coming up, but I'm never able to squeeze more out of her. More often than not, I don't even try to press it anyway, since I've learned she won't tell, and I much rather spend our time doing something else.

All the little conversations during the day are what gets me through them, but at night, when we're on the phone, is when our relationship truly blossoms into something stronger and more meaningful. We're working hard on building a deeper connection, discussing our morals, and imagining what a shared life could possibly look like in the future.
Every now and then I'm able to convince her to play me something on her piano, and while I enjoy anything she comes up with, I like it best when she plays me my lullaby. It's not really mine, but it's the song she did the very first time I heard her move her fingers over those keys.

Sometimes, though, we don't say a thing at all and just lie with each other for a while. Listening to Allie's breath, my eyes shut, and wrapped up in one of my blankets, the phone as close to my ear as possible, I can almost pretend she's there with me, and for a brief moment, it feels like I have everything I could ask for. Admittedly, I've lost myself in that daydream a couple of times already and actually tried to reach for her hand, only to be met by the cold sheets next to me.

This always leaves me craving for more.
I know I fell for Allie long ago, and I meant it when I told her I could see myself loving her some day, but I also know that I can't bring myself to actually say it yet. Maybe I do need to meet her first.
It's not just about wanting to touch, feel, and see her—not about any of the million other physical aspects—but about how I need to find out if our dynamic will work in person. Not that I'm doubting that; I just... I need to be sure, and I don't think that's a bad thing!
Besides, there's still something that Allie hasn't told me. She asked me to give her time, and I am more than willing to do so, but curiosity is eating me alive. I'm practically dying to find out what she's hiding—it's driving me insane sometimes.