Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

She called him three times before she understood she was calling him.

The first was practical. Her car had broken down on the motorway and he was the first person in her phone with mechanical knowledge. She’d forgotten, for three seconds, that they’d broken up four months ago.

He answered on the second ring. He drove forty minutes in the rain.

He didn’t say: why are you calling me. He just said: are you safe? and then: stay in the car, I’m coming.

She watched him in the headlights — crouched by the wheel, in the rain, at ten-thirty at night, because she’d called and he’d come — and felt the grief of him hit her somewhere new.

The second call was an accident. Drunk at a birthday party, scrolling, his name appearing because muscle memory is brutal and doesn’t consult you first. He was gentle about it. Talked her down. Put her in a cab.

She hated that he was still so easy to talk to.

The third call she made sitting on her kitchen floor at midnight for no reason she could name. She had been fine all day. She had made dinner and watched something good and done everything right and then sat down on the kitchen floor and called him.

He answered.

“What happened?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said. “I just wanted to hear your voice and I know that’s not — “

“Maggie.”

“I know. I know it’s not fair to — “

“Maggie. I’m coming over.”

“You don’t have to — “

“I know I don’t have to.”

He arrived in twenty minutes. He sat on the kitchen floor beside her without making her explain. She leaned into him. He was exactly as solid as she remembered.

“I think I made a mistake,” she said.

He didn’t say: yes, you did, or: I told you so, or anything that would have been fair and that she deserved.

He just said: “I’ve been waiting for you to figure that out.” Then, quietly: “I was starting to think you wouldn’t.”

She turned to look at him.

“I think I needed to miss you,” she said. “To understand what I’d had.”

“I missed you every day,” he said. “For what that’s worth.”

It was worth everything.

She kissed him on the kitchen floor at midnight and he kissed her back like someone who had been careful with something breakable for a very long time and had finally been told he could stop.

She wasn’t going to make him careful again.

So you made it to the end… which probably means you’re the kind of person who enjoys a little romance with their coffee ☕. If you’re in the mood for more stories about messy feelings, stubborn attraction, and women who absolutely refuse to settle for boring love, you can find all my books here.

Fair warning though. One story tends to lead to another. I’ve seen it happen. Repeatedly.