Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

Daily Dose of Romance – Short Stories for FREE |

She’d been in therapy long enough to know her own patterns, which meant she saw it happening and still couldn’t stop it — the pulling away, the getting quiet, the performing fine at exactly the moment she most needed to not be fine. It was her oldest trick and she’d used it in every relationship she’d been in.

She was using it now, on a man who, inconveniently, noticed.

“Laila,” Marcus said.

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask.”

She looked up. He was sitting across from her in the kitchen with his book open, entirely calm. He’d been watching her not eat her breakfast for ten minutes.

“You went quiet on Wednesday,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me why.”

“I don’t want to burden you.”

“That sentence,” he said gently, “is the problem.”

She looked at her coffee. She knew he was right. She knew it the way you knew things intellectually while your nervous system did something entirely different.

“It’s old stuff,” she said.

“Old stuff counts.”

“You didn’t sign up for old stuff.”

“Laila.” He closed his book. “What do you think I signed up for?”

She was quiet.

“I signed up for *you*,” he said. “Which includes Wednesday and whatever happened Wednesday and the part of you that goes quiet instead of saying it.”

“The going quiet is the problem.”

“No,” he said. “The going quiet is just what you do when you’re scared. It’s not a character flaw. It’s information.”

She looked at him.

She’d been with people who took her silences as rejection. Who read her quietness as disinterest or manipulation. Marcus read it as — information. Which was what her therapist said. Which was accurate. Which no one had ever said to her before Marcus.

“Wednesday I had the meeting with my mother,” she said. “And it was difficult. And I came home and I didn’t want to cry in front of you because we haven’t been together long enough for me to—” she stopped.

“To what?”

“To cry in front of you. And have it be okay.”

He moved his chair around to her side of the table. He sat beside her, not touching — giving her the choice.

“It would be okay,” he said. “It’s okay now, if you need it.”

“I don’t need to cry anymore.”

“Then just sit here and eat your breakfast.”

“Okay,” she said.

He picked up his book. She ate her breakfast. His knee was against hers under the table.

After a while she said, “My mother said something cruel. She didn’t mean it cruelly but it landed cruelly and I’ve been carrying it since Wednesday.”

He put his book down.

She told him. All of it.

He listened the way she’d needed someone to listen, and then he said the right thing — not a fix, not a reframe, just: ‘I hear you. That was unfair.‘

She leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You don’t have to thank me for this.”

“I know. I’m going to anyway.”

He put his arm around her.

She was learning — slowly, imperfectly — how to ask for things.

He was making it easier by simply being there every time she tried.

---

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.