Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

“You need to practice,” her therapist said.

What her therapist meant was: you need to let people in, in small ways, as practice for the large ways. You need to stop treating every relationship like a performance review.

She tried it at a yoga class, of all places, where she helped the man on the next mat adjust his block — just a small thing, instinctive — and said something about it and he laughed and she didn’t immediately retreat.

His name was Marco. He was a chef, he said, which explained the hands — calloused, precise, used to doing things correctly. He bought her a coffee after class without making it a thing.

She told her therapist. Her therapist said: good. What happened next?

She went back to the class.

He was there.

They did this for six weeks. Coffee after class. Conversation about small things — his restaurant, her work in landscape architecture, the yoga they were both middling at and kept attending anyway.

“Why do you come?” he said once. “You don’t seem to love it.”

“My therapist,” she said, which was more honest than she’d planned.

He looked at her with something interested in his eyes. “Mine too,” he said. “Different directive though.”

“What were you told?”

“To stop working eighteen-hour days and be in my body for one hour a week.” He looked at his hands. “The body part I can do. The stopping part is harder.”

She understood this. She understood it specifically.

“I was told to practice letting people in,” she said. “In small ways.”

A pause. “How’s it going?”

She considered. Six weeks of coffee. Six weeks of small honest things.

“Better than I expected,” she said.

He reached across the table and tucked a piece of her hair back, which was gentle and slightly too intimate for six weeks of coffee, and she didn’t pull away.

“Good,” he said.

She told her therapist the following Tuesday. Her therapist said: and how did that feel?

She thought about his hands. The lack of performance in him. The way he’d said: good, like her progress was his too.

“Safe,” she said. “It felt safe.”

Her therapist smiled. “Keep going,” she said.

She did.

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.