Before Callum, I dated a guy named Darren who kept a second phone hidden in his glove box. Before him, there was a man named Mitchell whose so-called cousin eventually turned out to be his hidden fiancée.
My early twenties had been, to put it politely, a masterclass in recognizing red flags. Then Callum walked into my life four years ago and somehow refused to be a mess.
From the very beginning, our relationship felt completely different from anything I had known before. On our third date, he slid his phone across the table toward me while we were waiting for dinner.
“I don’t do secrets,” he said back then, his passcode already entered on the screen. “It is far too exhausting, so let us just not have any.”
I stared at him in utter disbelief. “Are you joking with me right now?”
“I am really not,” he replied with a quiet smile.
And he certainly wasn’t. For four years, we shared all our passwords, digital calendars, bank account alerts, and group chats without a single argument.
If a woman from his office texted him after nine at night, he would show me before I even had a chance to ask about it. If I had a strange dream about an ex-boyfriend, I would tell him over morning coffee.
