You're two minutes late. I was fifteen early. I know you're coming, still I can't help but feeling like you let me down.

You know, it's the thing with me. You can be gone for a minute, an hour, a day, it still feels like you're gone forever.

See? Tears almost falling from my eyes, and you're only four minutes late.

It's not only you, don't worry, I'm not that over attached psychotic friend... or am I?

Who knows?

The point is that I feel this way with every person I care about.

You're five minutes late. I'm shaking. I start to imagine you actually let me down. I'm standing outside this fancy restaurant, imagining that you're in there with your friends, with everyone but me. I can't see through the windows, so for now, it's the most believable possibility.

You're nine minutes late. I'm checking once again if you haven't sent me a text even though I've had my smartphone in my hands the whole time.

I know you guys were together today, spent the afternoon studying. You asked me if I wanted to come, but I didn't feel like seeing people. Paradoxal, right? Sometimes I can't stand being surrounded with people, even my friends, and sometimes I'm standing in the rain while wondering why you're thirteen minutes late.

I hate coming in late. I hate knowing that people shared a moment without me and that this evening has started without me. I don't like being there totally sober while y'all are on your way to be drunk. I don't like it when you make references to moments I wasn't there, it makes me feel I'm outside of the group.

You're sixteen minutes late. I've been standing here for a long time now, watching people passing by. Maybe they're wondering if someone has stoop me up. Maybe you did, I'm not sure yet. You actually asked me to be fifteen minutes early, so now is the time I should've been arriving but I was fifteen minutes earlier than the fifteen minutes early. It's now been thirty-two minutes that I've been waiting in this dead cold rain. I'm not even cold anymore. My legs hurt from standing still for so long.

I managed to hold back my tears when you were four minutes late, and I'm still fighting. Now I'm wondering if I should text you. What would I say? That I just arrived and wait for you? Lies.

I sent the text. You're twenty-two minutes late. You answered that you'd do your best to come as soon as possible. That doesn't reassure me. I still feel as left out as when you were only five minutes late.

You're twenty-seven minutes late when I see your friends. I don't like them, but they saw me and I don't want to seem rude. They talk together, try to include me in their conversation even though I don't talk much, and you're fifty minutes late when we decide to walk in. I'm secretly thanking your friends because without them I would've gone back home crying.

We're trying to decide if we should order something, because you're fifty seven minutes late and we're starving. The waitress comes and we finally order drinks. Nothing else, thanks, our friends are coming.

They run out of conversation topics when you arrive, sixty seven minutes after what was planned.

Hey guys, you say. How are you? Have you been waiting for a long time?

No, I answer. Because it doesn't matter anymore, because you're here.