Dawn’s rosy fingers crept across the horizon, between the high rises of the city, and pushed gently through Jenny’s bedroom curtains.
Jenny stirred, squinting at the invading light. Was it morning already?
She and Rick had been messaging all night long, and at this point she felt like she had known him all her life. He knew about her childhood crushes and old flames, and she knew about his.
They had fallen asleep sometime around 3:00 AM watching a movie – was it his favorite or hers? She couldn’t remember – now, three hours later, her laptop was still open on her bed, there was a crust of drool running down her cheek, and she was still in her clothes from last night.
But thinking back on their conversation, how intimate and safe it had been, she began to imagine what it would feel like if she had woken up in his arms. Her heart began to pound.
She reached for her phone to see what his last message had been.
The screen was blank. The phone had died.
“Dammit,” she muttered, as she searched her bedroom for her charger.
Rick, whose bedroom window faced away from dawn’s meddlesome fingers, was awoken by the sound of an ambulance racing down empty city streets.
Day 2 of quarantine and he was already not happy with the situation. He picked up his phone from the table by his bed. He scrolled through the messages he and Jenny had been sending each other all night.
That was the last message, sent at 3:03 AM. It was now 9:00 AM, the city was beginning to wake up, and she hadn’t responded.
He swore to himself. “You fucked it up again, Ricky. You moved too soon.”