Before the Taxi Arrived

The minaret behind him caught a shift in the light, going from shadow to gold in the space of a breath.
“I have a flight,” she said.
“I know.”
“In two hours.”
“I know that too.” He set the camera down on the low terrace wall. “Delphine. I’m here for three days. You could — ” He stopped. Tried again. “Or I could come to Paris when the assignment is done. I’ve been looking for a reason.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
Lian had spent three years telling himself he had let her go cleanly. He had almost believed it. But standing here, the morning light on the pale plaster walls, the smell of jasmine from the courtyard below threading up through the warm air, he understood that some things don’t get let go of — they just wait, patient as a letter in a drawer, for the right moment.
He was done waiting.
“I want to show you something before you leave,” he said.
He picked up the camera. Turned it so she could see the screen — not the architecture shots, but one photograph taken the previous evening. The courtyard at dinner. Two people at a table, shot from a distance, their faces obscured by the soft focus of candlelight and distance. But the lean of two bodies toward each other was unmistakable.
She hadn’t known he took it.
“That’s what it looked like from the outside,” he said quietly. “In case you were wondering.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Then: “Change your flight to Paris for the day after the assignment ends.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
She handed him the letter. He took it, and for a second their fingers overlapped on the yellowed paper — three years and a drawer and a thousand small cowardices between them, and then not.
“I should go pack,” she said.
“You should,” he agreed.
She went down the stairs. At the bottom she paused, not turning back, just tilting her head up slightly as if listening to the fountain below.
Then she kept walking.
Lian stood on the rooftop and watched the medina stretch out gold and rose and ancient in every direction, and thought: four days. He had four days, and then Paris, and then whatever came after that — which was not nothing. Not anymore.
Below, in the courtyard, the jasmine sent its scent up through the warm still air, the same as it had three years ago, the same as it would be long after both of them were gone.
Some things, it turned out, were patient enough for almost anything.

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About the Author

Elara Wynford — Her dreams comes true or not? Who knows, she stopped differentiating reality from dreams 10 years ago. Each of her stories has part of a dream…

— Elara Wynford

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Categories: Romances, Second Chance

August 14, 2026

10min-stories