only help my unbelief

Around 8 p.m. tonight, I was in the middle of editing some stories when my phone rang.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten to turn it on vibrate, so Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song” was suddenly the soundtrack for the newsroom.

“Hello,” I said, as inconspicuously as possible.

“Hey, love!” said a cheerful Christian. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, just working on stuff. I’m kind of busy, so can I call you back later?”

“Oh, ummm.. do you have five minutes?” he said quite conspicuously.

“I guess so. What’s up?”

“Could you come outside?”

And so I grabbed my access card and scurried outside to a cool June evening, where a handsome young man awaited me with two medium-sized drinks from Sonic in his hand.

“You have choices,” he said. “Raspberry limeade slush, or – since I know you’re counting calories - a diet cherry limeade slush.”

Oh, Christian. I do love raspberry limeade slushes, but he’s right – I am counting my calories – and the diet cherry limeade slushes are surprisingly good.

“I thought this could be our date night,” he said, “since you had to work tonight.” We’re going to a wedding out of town this weekend, so I had to shift my schedule around, which meant working tonight and next Monday night.

Our time together was short, but sweet, and as I walked back inside enjoying my slush, I couldn’t help but think that life doesn’t get much better than this.

You’ve gotta understand – two years of a long distance relationship doesn’t leave much room for surprises like that. It’s hard to show up at someone’s work with a treat when you live six hours away.

The only thing that could have made the slush better would have been drinking it in the drive-in at Sonic while listening to Sara Bareilles.