Category: Daily Dose of Romance
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His Hands
She noticed his hands first. Not in a remarkable way — she wasn’t the kind of woman who catalogued men — but he was kneading bread at the demonstration counter of the cookery class and his hands moved with such total confidence that she found herself watching, forgetting to take notes. She’d come to the class because her daughter…
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What the Storm Left
The storm knocked out the road and she was stuck at the farmhouse B&B for an extra two days with four strangers and the owner’s elderly dog. One of the strangers was a man named Alex who had been walking a long-distance trail alone and seemed the most at peace with the delay. She found…
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Practice
“You need to practice,” her therapist said. What her therapist meant was: you need to let people in, in small ways, as practice for the large ways. You need to stop treating every relationship like a performance review. She tried it at a yoga class, of all places, where she helped the man on the…
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The Widow’s Garden
She hadn’t meant to plant anything that year. She’d meant to sell the house. But April arrived and the garden looked the way it had when he was alive and she found herself on her knees in the mud with a trowel, not because she’d decided to, but because her body had gone there while…
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Somewhere He Could Reach
The thing about wanting someone you can’t have is that it lives somewhere specific — not in the mind, not where you can argue with it, but lower, somewhere in the chest, just off-centre, somewhere unreasonable. That was where he kept Vera. Four years of friendship. Four years of being exactly what she needed, which was: reliable,…
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Instructions for Waking
He left a note on her bedside table the first morning. Just a practical thing — coffee’s on, took the dog, back in an hour — but she stared at it for a long time in the early light. She had not had a note on her bedside table in three years. She had not let anyone stay in…
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What She Carried
She had been strong for so long that she’d forgotten it wasn’t her natural state. Strong after her mother’s diagnosis. Strong during the treatment. Strong at the funeral when she held her brothers together because someone had to. Strong through the sale of the house, the sorting of the things, the particular violence of an…
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Seven Floors Up
She didn’t mean to see him. But her apartment was seven floors up and his was seven floors up on the building opposite, and the city was full and lit and she was standing at her window at midnight because she couldn’t sleep, and there he was — standing at his. He saw her see him. He…
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The Last Person She Expected
She had made a list, once — in a low moment, with wine and too much honesty — of all the reasons Daniel Holt was wrong for her. He was arrogant. He was the first to leave every party. He argued with her about films she loved and books she’d recommended and once, memorably, a route she was driving.…
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The Whole of Her
He said it casually, the way people say things that destroy you: “You’d be stunning if you just lost — “ She didn’t let him finish. She put her purse on the bar, picked up her coat, and said — very quietly, very clearly — “I’m going to stop you there,” and left. She was three streets away before she started…
Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc 