When Your Partner Says “I’m On My Way”

In this relationship, 'I'm on my way' is not a location. It is a genre.

I was ready at 6:40 for a 7:30 reservation I had repeated twice, the way you repeat a gate number for someone who has already missed a flight in a previous life. Dress on. Shoes found. The small earring that always hides had been negotiated out of the bathroom floor. I smelled like a person who had made an effort, which is a scent on its own.

Kunle texted at 6:52.

'I'm on my way.'

A brief geography

He was not on the way. He was on the bed, according to the photo he did not mean to make relevant: a sock, a ceiling, the corner of a man who has entered a philosophical discussion with his wardrobe.

'On your way from where?' I asked.

'From the house.'

'Are you outside the house?'

A pause long enough to iron a shirt.

'I'm putting on the shirt.'

'So you are on your way to the shirt.'

'Don't start.'

I had started in March. We were now in a mature phase of the same conversation. I sat on the arm of the chair so I would not sit properly and become someone who waits in comfort. Comfort is how reservations die.

The second on my way

At 7:11 he sent the sentence again, this time with a car emoji, which I have learned is decorative. At 7:19 he sent a voice note of traffic that sounded like traffic from inside a room. I played it twice. A tap was running in the background. The traffic was the bathroom.

I called.

'Be honest.'

'I am literally leaving.'

'Literally is doing a lot of work.'

He laughed, and the laugh was why I was still in the chair and not in a taxi alone, telling the story to a driver who did not ask. Kunle is late the way some people are tall. It is not a strategy. It is a condition, and he is sorry in real time, which is worse, because you cannot even enjoy being right.

Arrival

He got to me at 7:48, smelling excellent, shirt unfairly good, face arranged into the apology he has copyrighted.

'You look beautiful,' he said, which was true and also not a clock.

'The table is gone,' I said.

'Then we walk, and we find food, and I will be early on Saturday.'

'You will text that you are on my way at the time we agreed to meet.'

'That is still a kind of early.'

We walked. The evening survived. I have added thirty minutes to every plan and told him the earlier time, which means I have become my mother, and the cycle is complete. When people ask how we are, I say we are fine. We are on our way. We have been on our way for a while. Some days we even arrive.