The Quiet Thing That Stayed

I've been so sick, this was all I could manage. 🌧️

They met in October, of course they did. The month that smells like endings and unexpected permission. A work thing—something involving slide decks and capitalist discontent. He wore a watch like a wound; She took notes like a spy, even in the absence of paper.

Their first real conversation happened outside. The air felt less managed but curation threatened to bleed into their aside through the manicured hedges. He lit a cigarette like someone who didn’t want it. She tightened her trench coat around her shoulders beneath the overhang.

“Do you always start fires when you don’t want to talk about something?”

That was the first thing she got right.

He was the kind of person who believed you should only love once, maybe twice. She was the kind who knew love wasn’t a singular event but a series of small agreements between ghosts and longing.

They didn’t fall. Instead, they noticed things about each other.

That made it dangerous.

She told him:

“I’m not looking for someone to complete me. I’m looking for someone who won’t flinch when the mirror shows them their own teeth.”

He told her:

“I can’t promise not to run. But I’ll always leave a trail back.”

They never made it official. Naming things too early sometimes breaks the spell. Instead, they built a language of gestures: The way he straightened her necklace before a meeting, the way she brewed two teas even when she was alone. Notes left under coffee cups. Song lyrics scratched on legal pads. The small, sacred rituals of people who understand that love is less about possession, and more about the attention paid.

One day, she caught him folding her coat over a chair like it was something fragile.

Another dubious thing she got right.

They didn’t last in the usual sense. But there’s a drawer she never empties, where one of his buttons lives like a coin meant for passage. And every time she crosses a city street too quickly and someone grabs her arm, she half-expects it to be him—still showing up like a bell ringing in a place that no longer has a tower.

Because some love stories don’t end.

They just go quiet.

And stay.

She sees him again in an airport, because fate has a sense of humor and airports are modern-day liminal spaces: Where everyone’s slightly disheveled and full of existential vulnerability.

He looks older, sure. But not broken. More… reassembled. Like someone who finally realized that closure is just another word for a door you never needed to lock.

They don’t speak at first. Just eye contact.

A flicker.

A remembered rhythm.

He gestures toward the empty seat next to him at the gate and she sits. No words, just shared presence. Two people who were once each other’s secret language, now fluent in the silence that follows.

He finally confesses:

“I still write lyrics on receipts. I just throw them away now.”

She smiles, half-sad.

“I still boil two cups of tea sometimes. I drink them both. One bitter, one sweet.”

They laugh. It's soft, private, sacred.

Before boarding, he reaches into his bag and hands her something small: A matchbox. It has a small square of foil inside. Her reflection, warped and gold-lit.

He says:

“In case you forget. You’re the bell. You’re the mirror. You’re the thing that stays.”

She keeps it.

She doesn’t ask him to stay.

She doesn’t have to.

They already did the hardest part:

They saw each other. And lived anyway.

Until next time,

Nico

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