Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

Daily Dose of Romance – Short Stories for FREE

She’d moved back to her hometown for all the sensible reasons — cost of living, her mother’s knee, the particular pull of familiarity when the world got too fast — and had not, in all her planning, accounted for the fact that her childhood best friend still lived three streets over and ran the Sunday farmer’s market and had apparently become exactly the person she’d always suspected he’d be.

“Evie,” he said, from behind a table of very professional-looking preserves.

“Sam,” she said.

“You moved back.”

“I moved back.”

“When?”

“Last week.”

He hadn’t changed — that was the thing. He’d grown into himself more fully but the essential Sam-ness was intact: the particular ease, the way he never performed for anyone.

“Is the blackcurrant jam still the best one?” she asked.

He handed her a jar without comment. She opened it and tried some on the bread sample and it was, absolutely, still the best one.

“Same recipe,” he said.

“Your grandmother’s.”

“Still hers, yes. I just maintain it.”

They stood in the market morning and seventeen years contracted to nothing at all. She’d moved away at nineteen. She’d thought about him in the scattered way you thought about formative things — not daily, but at certain moments, at certain angles of afternoon light.

“Come for dinner,” he said.

“Sam.”

“Not like that. Just dinner. You’ve been back a week and your mum is terrible at cooking, which hasn’t changed, and you’re going to be hungry.”

“My mum’s cooking has improved slightly.”

“She made the same shepherd’s pie for twenty years. Has it improved?”

“…No.”

“Come for dinner,” he said again.

She came for dinner. He made something proper with the kind of ease that came from years of practice, and they sat at his kitchen table in the house that had been his grandmother’s and talked for four hours.

He’d had a marriage that hadn’t worked and she’d had a relationship that hadn’t worked and neither of them was mournful about it — both of them had the tone of people who’d learned things and put them down.

“What do you want now?” he asked. “From being back.”

“Slowness,” she said. “I want to live slowly for a while.”

“You can do that here.”

“I know.”

He topped up her wine.

“I’m here on Sunday mornings,” he said. “If you want company that doesn’t require explanation.”

She looked at him across the table. She thought about seventeen years and three streets and the blackcurrant jam that was still perfect.

“Can I help?” she asked. “At the market. I could stand there and eat the samples.”

“I need someone to stop people from eating only the samples,” he said.

“That’s going to be difficult for me personally.”

“I’ll manage the risk.”

She smiled. He smiled. The kitchen was warm.

She thought: *some things are just supposed to come back*.

“Sunday,” she said.

“Sunday,” he agreed.

She walked home through the dark streets of the town she’d grown up in and felt, for the first time in years, that she was exactly where the story wanted her.

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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.