Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

Daily Dose of Romance – Short Stories for FREE

She was thirty-four and he was twenty-six and she kept waiting for it to feel wrong. She’d been waiting for two months, through the first hesitant coffee and the second less hesitant dinner and the moment in the gallery when he’d stopped in front of a painting and said *this is grief, isn’t it*, and she’d thought: there it is. The thing that makes age irrelevant.

“You keep making that face,” Oliver said.

They were in her kitchen. He was cutting bread, which he’d arrived with, because he’d asked what she needed tonight and she’d said ‘bread and quiet’ and he’d taken both instructions seriously.

“What face?”

“The one where you’re thinking about whether this is sensible.”

“It might not be sensible.”

“Camille.” He turned. He had a kind of directness that surprised her every time — not aggressive, just clear. “Are you happy?”

She thought about it. “Yes.”

“Am I good for you?”

“You’re very good for me. That’s not the issue.”

“Then what is?”

“You’re twenty-six.”

“I know how old I am.”

“In eight years I’ll be forty-two and you’ll be thirty-four.”

“And?”

“And you might want different things.”

He put the knife down and came to where she was sitting at the island, and he stood in front of her, and she had to look up at him which she still wasn’t used to.

“I might want different things in eight years,” he said. “So might you. That’s not a reason to waste the time before it.”

“That’s a very young-person thing to say.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s right.”

She looked at him. At the bread on the board. At her kitchen, which had been hers alone for three years and was beginning to have his presence in it — the good bread, the way he moved around it without needing instruction.

“I’m scared,” she said. The direct truth, because he’d earned it.

“I know. I can see it.” He cupped her face. “I’m not asking you to be not scared. I’m asking you to be scared with me here.”

She put her hands over his.

“You are,” she said, “an unreasonable person.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

She pulled him down and kissed him — properly, with the full decision of it — and felt the last edge of resistance dissolve into something warmer and more true.

They had bread and wine and she told him about her terrible twenties and he told her about the year he’d been convinced he was in the wrong life, and they found that they’d both been in the wrong life before they’d found the right one.

“See,” he said.

“Don’t be smug.”

“I’m not smug. I’m correct.”

“That’s worse.”

He laughed, and she felt it land in her chest like warmth.

She stopped waiting for it to feel wrong.

It felt entirely, specifically right.

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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.