Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

The letter started: I know we agreed not to do this, but I found your handwriting in the margin of the book you left behind and I have been undone by it for three days, so here we are.

Nadia read it four times at the kitchen table, standing up, still in her coat.

She and Marco had called it a mutual decision. They’d lived in different countries for two years, they’d done the best they could, and eventually the distance had become not a fact but a character — the third person in every conversation, the thing that was always there. They’d ended it like adults. They’d cried together on video call, which was a new kind of awful, and then they’d stopped calling.

That had been eight months ago.

The book was ‘Notes from Underground‘ — his copy, left on her shelf by accident. She’d put it in a box and meant to post it and hadn’t, which was its own kind of answer.

She sat down and wrote back.

‘What did the marginal notes say?‘

His reply, two days later, in the looping hand she still found occasionally in her muscle memory when she picked up a pen:

‘You wrote ‘but WHY’ in capital letters next to the most important paragraph in the book. Which is: exactly correct and also very you.‘

She laughed — alone at her kitchen table on a Thursday morning — and something cracked open in her chest that she’d thought was sealed.

They wrote letters for six weeks. Real ones, posted, because Marco had said *I want something that takes time* and she had agreed. They wrote about things they’d glossed over on calls — the texture of daily life, the small dignities and small embarrassments, the books and the walks and the particular quality of their separate cities.

He wrote: ‘I went to the restaurant where we had that terrible anniversary dinner and it was still terrible and I sat there for two hours and thought about you the whole time.’

She wrote: ‘I still take the long way home past the cinema where we saw that film we both hated. I’m not sure what that means.’

He wrote back: ‘I think it means the same thing mine means.‘

She wrote: ‘Marco.‘

He wrote: ‘I know. I know it’s the same distance. I know nothing has changed logistically. I just needed you to know that I’m not the same as I was eight months ago. I know what I lost now. I knew before but I know it differently now.’

She read it in the park, on a bench, and then she sat very still for a long time watching a dog learn to catch a frisbee.

She called him. Not a letter — a call, direct and immediate.

He picked up.

“I’m coming to visit in April,” she said.

“Nadia.”

“Not for a decision. Just to see you.”

“Just to see me.”

“Yes.”

Long pause.

“I’ll make the reservation,” he said. “Different restaurant.”

“Please God yes, different restaurant.”

“Nadia.”

“Marco.”

“I’ve missed your voice,” he said.

She pressed the phone to her ear like she could get closer.

“I’ve missed yours too,” she said. “April.”

“April,” he agreed.

She sat on the bench a while longer, feeling the letter in her pocket, watching the dog finally catch the frisbee.

Something that had been eight months in the cold came tentatively back toward the sun.

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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.