Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

Daily Dose of Romance – Short Stories for FREE |

She’d been painting his hands for three weeks before she admitted what she was doing, and by then she had seven canvases and a problem.

Rafael was a sculptor. He used his hands the way other people used language — with precision and intention and a directness that Mira found she couldn’t stop looking at. He worked two studios down. They shared the communal coffee machine and the habit of working late, and somehow over the course of a residency she had painted the shape of him more than anything else.

“What’s this series called?” Camila asked, standing in front of the seven canvases.

“Unnamed.”

“Mira.”

“I’m working on the title.”

“These are Rafael’s hands.”

“They’re compositional studies.”

“Of Rafael’s hands.”

“Of hands in general.”

Camila looked at her. The way best friends looked, which was unbearable.

“Have you told him?” she asked.

“There’s nothing to tell. They’re compositional—”

“Studies. I know.”

Mira looked at the canvases. In the most recent one, she’d painted them reaching for something out of the frame. She knew what was out of the frame.

That night, Rafael knocked on her studio door at nine.

“The machine is broken,” he said. “I have spare coffee. Can I use your stove?”

She let him in.

He made coffee and then stood in front of her canvases in the quiet, and she sat on her stool and watched him look at them.

“Mira,” he said.

“They’re—”

“They’re mine,” he said. Not accusing. Just naming it.

She didn’t deny it.

He turned around. She was on the stool and he was standing and the distance between them was very exact.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.

“Because painting it felt more honest than saying it.”

He crossed the studio. He stopped in front of her.

“Can I see them? All of them?”

“You’re looking at them.”

“No,” he said. “The ones you’re not showing.”

She pointed at the covered canvases along the east wall.

He uncovered them one by one. She watched him look. In the last one — the one she’d worked on at three AM, the one she’d meant to paint over — she’d painted his whole face.

He stood in front of it for a long time.

“Mira,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

He turned and looked at her with the same expression she’d been looking at across the communal coffee machine for three months — the one she’d been cataloguing without admitting she was cataloguing.

He held out his hand — the left one, the one in five of the seven canvases.

She took it.

She’d painted the feel of it exactly 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.