Page 16 of Love Letters from a Libra (BLP Signs of Love #13)
Notes App – This is where men like me usually mess it up, overthinking. Show up even if it scares you.
I checked my watch. It was too late for an unannounced visit by most people’s standards, but I wasn’t most people to her, or at least I wasn’t becoming most people until I pulled my disappearing act.
The text I sent replayed in my head for the hundredth time. It was the kind of message that created more questions and answers, the kind designed to maintain distance while pretending to bridge it.
“Fuck,” I whispered, letting my head rest against the steering wheel for a moment. The leather was cool against my skin, grounding me in the reality of what I was about to do or chicken out of doing.
This pattern was so familiar it might as well have been written into my DNA: get close, feel vulnerable, retreat, lather, rinse, repeat.
It was a perfect system for maintaining connection without risking intimacy.
It worked with Candace until it didn’t. It worked with Imani until it didn’t.
It worked right up until the moment someone realized they were getting the appearance of closeness without substance.
Still, Zanaa figured out faster than most. She saw through me in a way that terrified and exhilarated me.
When she called me Moon Man, something in me recognized the truth about it.
I pulled people’s emotional tides while remaining distant, unreachable, present, but not entirely there.
I lifted my head, staring up at her window again.
The lilies were an impulse buy from a twenty-four-hour convenience store, the one with the cat that always looked at me like it knew my secrets.
I stood in front of the refrigerated flower display for ten minutes, debating whether roses were too intimate or carnations too little.
The old man behind the counter finally took pity on me.
“For forgiveness, white lilies. Trust me.”
So I did. Now, they sat beside me, wrapped in green paper that crinkled when I reached for them.
I imagined my little sister telling me, “You have a way of disappearing when things get real.” Amir called me out over brunch and saw right through the walls that I thought were invisible, just like Zanaa did.
“You don’t get to be the emotionally intuitive one and still run when someone gets close. That’s not romantic. It’s cowardice,” I muttered to myself with a firm voice.
The truth of this sat heavily on my mind. My phone sat in the cupholder. She hadn’t responded to my message, and I didn’t blame her. If our positions were reversed, I’d be questioning whether the connection was worth the effort, whether I was worth the effort.
The car suddenly felt too small and confined, so I grabbed the flowers and stepped out into the night air.
The cool breeze hit my face like a wake-up call.
This wasn’t like me. I didn’t do grand gestures.
I didn’t show up unannounced. I planned with calculated control, but that version of me was exactly who needed to stay in the car right now.
For a moment, I considered leaving the flowers on her porch and texting her that they were there, the coward’s compromise, but I spent too much of my life finding the middle ground between intimacy and isolation.
Too much time spent calculating the precise distance, allowing me to care without being vulnerable. Too many relationships where I was physically present but emotionally halfway out the door.
I knocked. Footsteps approached from the other side.
Zanaa paused, checking the peephole. I imagined her surprise seeing me there, the debate she was having about whether to open the door.
I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. Part of me almost hoped she wouldn’t so I could retreat to the safety of my car.
But then came the sound of the chain sliding and the lock turning as the door opened, and there she was, Zanaa in gray sweatpants and a head wrap, her face carefully composed, but her eyes alive with questions that I was finally ready to answer.
“Jules,” she said. My name was neither a question nor a welcome, just a statement of fact.
“I know it’s late. Can we talk?” I asked.
Zanaa didn’t smile, but she didn’t close the door either, just stepped aside, a silent invitation that felt more like a challenge than a welcome.
I entered her apartment with the lilies awkward in my hand like some peace offering from another century.
Tonight her home felt undeniably different with its plants, books, and crystals.
The warmth that enveloped me the last time had been replaced by something more cautious, as if the apartment was watching me, waiting to see if I disappeared again.
“It’s late,” Zanaa said, closing the door behind me. It wasn’t accusatory, just factual.
“I know. I’m sorry. I needed to see you.” My words came out stiff and formal.
Zanaa crossed her arms, her head wrap framing her face in a way that made her eyes seem even more penetrating. I noticed she was wearing the moonstone ring as she gestured toward the couch.
“You can sit.”
I sat, perched on the edge like I might need to make a quick exit. The lilies rested on my knee. On the coffee table was a journal, a light, and an open pen resting across the page.
“These are for you. White lilies, the guy said were suitable for asking forgiveness.” I offered the flowers.
She didn’t smile, but her eyes softened. She took them and placed the flowers in an empty vase that happened to be sitting on the side table. There was no water yet, and they’d wilt without it. That problem felt symbolic of everything hanging between us right now.
“Thank you,” she said, sitting on the opposite end of the couch, tucking one leg beneath her. The distance between us felt fast and necessary.
I blew out air, searching for the right words. Not the practiced ones I’d rehearsed in the car, but something true enough to bridge the new gap between us.
“I used to think space meant care. Like if I could just take care of myself quietly, I wouldn’t be a burden.”
Zanaa watched me, face neutral but eyes alert. The silence stretched between us, and I realized she wasn’t going to make this easy, and why should she?
“That text I sent, it was bullshit. Not a lie but not the whole truth either.” I shook my head, recognizing it was an inadequacy.
“Which was?” Zanaa tilted her head slightly.
“That I got scared of this. Of us. Of how easy it felt to be with you, which made no sense because nothing about relationships has ever been easy for me.” I gestured between us.
Zanaa uncrossed her arms, her posture softening. “You’re not a burden, Jules, but you disappeared, even if it was brief. You don’t get to vanish when things get intense, then come back when you decide it’s safe.” The hurt in her voice was controlled but unmistakable.
“I know. It’s a pattern, one I’m trying to break.” My admission sat heavy between us.
Her eyes never left my face, and I forced myself to maintain eye contact, not to look away like I usually would when I felt exposed.
“I used to date this woman named Candace. She was beautiful, a brilliant environmental lawyer, always in crisis.”
Jealousy flickered in Zanaa’s eyes at the mention of another woman.
I ran a hand down my face. “She needed everything all the time. There were two a.m. panic attacks, and I had to give constant emotional support. Every crisis was bigger than the last, and I gave because that’s what I thought love was: being someone’s rock, their stability.
” Zanaa’s expression shifted not to pity, but to something more complex, understanding.
“She left, saying I was too stable. Told me that sometimes she forgot I was even here. Her words stung, even now. Told me she found someone more passionate, which I think just meant someone who hadn’t learned to hide their own needs yet.”
I shifted on the couch. “She wasn’t the first. Imani and Dawn were before her. They were different women with the same pattern. They arrived with their own energy but gradually transferred their weight onto my shoulders until I carried both of us.”
“And you let them?” Zanaa asked, not an accusation but an observation.
I nodded. “I did because that’s what I knew how to do—be the strong one, the steady one, the one who never faltered, needed, or asked.”
Zanaa twisted the moonstone on her finger, twisting it around and around. “So you learned to run before they could lean too hard.”
“Exactly. I measured love in retreats instead of steps forward, calculating the exact distance that would keep me involved but not vulnerable.” I paused, watching her face, but she remained still, waiting.
“Then you happened. You who doesn’t lean. Who stands complete in your own power. Who asked questions, not to transfer emotional weight but to genuinely know,” I continued.
Zanaa sucked her lips. “That scared you?”
“Terrified me, because what do I offer not serving as someone’s rock?”
The silence between us felt different now, less like a barrier and more like a shared space where truth could exist and be adorned. Outside, a siren wailed briefly then faded. Inside, the only sound was our breathing.
“I kept myself helpful, needed, but always a little unreachable. I don’t wanna do that with you, but I don’t know how to stop,” I admitted.
Zanaa uncurled her legs and shifted slightly closer to me on the couch, not touching but reducing the distance she had established when we sat down.
“So instead of talking to me about this, you just went quiet? I understand where you’re coming from, but it’s not fair to me.
My love language is different. I need stability in a relationship.
I’m not down for hit it and split it behavior.
” Her voice carried no judgment, just a request for understanding.