What if ?

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She walked in, shaking the rain off her jacket like she was shedding a whole day. Her footsteps were soft, heavy; she had been fighting the weather and something else she hadn’t named yet.

“Long day?” I asked.

“Long year,” she said, laughing and exhaling at the same time.

She sat at the bar, her fingers tapping lightly on the counter.

“What are you drinking?” she asked.

“Negroni,” I said.

“Is it good?”

“I don’t know, but you definitely need one.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that medical advice?”

“It’s emotional advice,” I said.

She laughed like she hadn’t laughed in a week.

There’s something about making a drink for someone who actually needs it.

I set the glass in front of her, and she stared at it for a second, swirling it gently, like she was testing its weight.

“You ever get that feeling,” she said, “that something’s about to go wrong? Even when nothing is actually bad?”

“All the time,” I said.

“I swear I’ve spent the last nine months preparing for disasters that never showed up. I check for signs, I overthink, I make backup plans for my backup plans. I don’t even know what exactly I’m scared of. Just… the possibility of things falling apart.”

“Maybe the possibility of things going well scares you more,” I said.

She looked up.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re always rehearsing the worst. But no one teaches us how to handle things when they go right. Success, timing, the good kind of surprise… that’s unfamiliar territory. And unfamiliar feels dangerous.”

She blinked, slowly.

“So you’re saying I’m afraid of good news?”

“Maybe. Or maybe you don’t trust it yet.”

She looked down at the counter for a moment, letting the question sit between us.

“Okay,” she said. “So what if I stopped preparing for everything to go wrong?”

“Then you’d make space,” I said.

“For what?”

I slid another Negroni her way, its color catching the low light.

“For the possibility that everything goes right.”