Patience
He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. The sun was going down now, and the evening breeze picking up. Not only that, it felt like it was starting to spit with rain. He hoped it wouldn’t get heavy. Or better, that’s she’d get there soon. Sooner the better.
Patience!
He stamped his feet. They weren’t cold, but he felt that kind of peculiar stiffness that only comes when you’ve been hanging around on a street corner for a couple of hours. He looked at the window behind him; a warm light came out of it, and people went in happy and came out happier. No. He would stay out here. For a bit longer, anyway.
Where was she? He checked his phone. No message. He scrolled up; checked his calendar again, to see if there were a discrepancy there that might explain… No, the chat and the calendar agreed. Meet at three-thirty. He sighed.
This wasn’t wholly unexpected. She could be like this, sometimes. Well, quite a lot of the time, really. He was used to it. He just knew that he needed to have patience. She would come, at some point.
She’d apologise, of course; she always did. There would be a reason. And he’d believe her, too, because the reason was always plausible. Nothing like “sorry, I had to save a small child from a car accident and then give a statement to the police”. No, much more likely to be “I lost track of time”. And she did; she did.
He sighed again; looked up the street again; looked at his watch again. Just gone six.
It was definitely starting to rain. He felt the prickles on his forehead start to merge, and threaten to start dripping down into his eyes.
He stamped again. He would keep waiting; he knew it would come good, eventually; he knew he just had to have patience.
For something to do, he looked again across the street. Read the shop names, and (where his eyes were good enough, in the murk) the wording on the posters in their windows. This time, for a change, his did them right to left down the street. He got annoyed when a bus pulled over right in front of him, and blocked his view for a minute, but it pulled off and he resumed. High Steet News. Pawnbroker: gold bought here. Chemist; why did they always have those flashing green crosses? Sale, 50% off.
His shirt was starting to stick to him, and in the breeze he shivered. Should have brought a brolly. But he didn’t have one, so that was a pointless bit of self-admonition.
Wait…was that her? It looked a bit like…no, another young woman, walking with a group of her friends. He’d caught himself like that half a dozen times.
He wiped the wet from his brow; thought about dabbing it with a tissue but it’d only get wet again. Might as well let it drip.
Patience. He would absolutely have patience. He must have patience.
He sighed; turned round again to the warm light and the happy ins and outs of the customers. Was he desperate enough to go into a Macdonalds? Nope, he’d just get wet.
He knew it would make him look a bit pathetic, to be standing outside, wet and shivering. He knew she’d feel more guilty about being late. Part of him felt she should. Dammit, he had been on time, and he had stood in the rain for her. But…meeting her was just that important to him. He would do it, if not with noble self-sacrifice, at least with dogged resignation.
He looked at his watch again. Quarter to seven. How long would he stand there until at last he gave up? He didn’t know. He knew that he had asked himself this question quite a lot, today and on…quite a few previous occasions. But always, somehow, he hadn’t. She would come. He would be rewarded for his long wait. He would have patience. He would have patience.
“Hey!”
He started. It was her! He practically ran to her, threw his arms out for a hug – but his shirt was soaked now and his arms too, so at the last moment he stopped himself and just blurted out, “Hey, you’re here! I’m so glad to see you!”
His eyes drank her in. Yes, she was still gorgeous. And she did have that look of contrition that he knew she would have, and it would melt his frustration instantly.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she began, “It’s just…” He cut her off with a flourish. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here now. I’ve really missed you.” His eyes fell on her, and if he’d tried he couldn’t have done a better lost-puppy-now-found impression. Yes. His vigil had paid off. His patience.
“Shall we go back to the flat?” he asked, and shivered. “I’ve got some stuff there, something to drink…we can get a takeaway,” he added conscious of the hour and that there was no time to cook anything properly. And he didn’t want to go to a restaurant.
She smiled and looked happily at him with those big, trusting eyes. “Yes. Yes, that sounds lovely. My god, you must be frozen!” She touched him lightly on the arm.
He led the short way back, and he did then put his arm around her. He would hold her close now, so that, for a time at least, she was his, and she couldn’t get away.
He looked at her. A bit too hungrily, maybe. “It’ll be fine, Patience,” he said.