for kaei & rue, with love.
(always fondly remembered)
People think love begins in spring— warm, blooming, effortless.
Ours began in the dead of winter. In the echo of a gallery, under flickering fluorescent lights, with cold wine in hand and hollow hearts in our chests.
The engagement had just broken off. I thought T was the love of my life. I had even written his name into the margins of my first menu. And yet, the night he left, all the spices I once loved tasted bitter. The knives in my kitchen felt heavier. The silence, louder.
And then there was Rue. The quiet, tall, stranger.
He was standing by a wall of paintings. Stark pieces. Stark like grief. I remember one canvas had no color at all, just a line through the center, jagged and cruel. I didn’t know it then, but it was titled "The Day He Forgot My Name."
That night, we didn’t fall in love. Not yet. But we sat on the curb outside afterward with our fancy suits, eating street food with frozen fingers, and we stayed. And sometimes, that’s where love begins— with someone who stays.
It was just a scent. Orange blossom, faint but sharp, woven into the perfume of a passing stranger at the edge of the farmer’s market. The kind T used to wear in spring. My hand froze above the crate of white peaches.
That scent had no right to still undo me.
My chest ached with the phantom of all the painful memories. Even then, we had been fraying. Even then, I loved T.
Rue noticed. He always did. He didn’t ask questions, didn’t push— he just walked beside me in silence until we reached the car, until my grip on the steering wheel whitened, until the tremble started.
“I’m fine,” I lied, because it was easier than the truth: I still miss someone who shattered me. I still ache where he left.
I couldn’t speak the name. I didn’t have to.
Rue reached out, placing his hand gently over mine. “You don’t have to be.”
There was no resentment in his voice, no jealousy. Only something soft. Solid. Rue, who had held me after the collapse, when I could barely stand in his kitchen, let alone run the restaurant. Rue, who had never once asked me to erase his past, only to let him in when he could.
“I thought he was the rest of my life,” the words dry in my throat. “I built every plan around him. Even the worst days felt bearable because I thought we’d fix it.”
Rue didn’t say anything for a while. Then, softly: “He was your first love. That matters. It doesn’t make what we have any less real.”
I looked at him then, really looked. And the haze of the memory receded, like smoke clearing from a pan left too long on the fire.
“I’m not trying to forget him,”
“I know,” Rue replied. “But you don’t have to carry him alone.”
That night, I let myself be held, Rue's head on my chest.
I didn’t say thank you. Rue wouldn’t have wanted me to. But as my fingers traced slow patterns against Rue’s spine, I thought about how I used to believe my heart had stopped beating the day T walked out.
Now, it beats quietly beneath Rue’s ear. Steady. Healing.
Because Rue reminded me that love— real love, does not demand you erase what came before.
It just asks you to stay.
Our apartment smells like espresso and burnt toast. Rue always forgets the second step of using the broiler. The windows open to a narrow street, and every morning, the boulangerie lady waves at us like we’re some old married couple.
My restaurant in the 7th arrondissement has one Michelin star.
Rue says I’m too modest when people ask. “Tell them the truth,” he grins. “You’re a genius with a knife and a maniac with truffles.”
Rue’s studio is in the sunroom of our flat. He paints in the mornings, always shirtless, canvas propped against the light. Sometimes I pretend I’m not watching him, but I am.
And then, I cook downstairs in the kitchen, my kitchen, with the sound of his brush like a heartbeat through the floorboards.
He doesn’t ask why I still wake at 4 a.m. or why I sometimes pause while chopping shallots like I’m somewhere else. He knows.
Just like I know he still paints in layers because one color never tells the whole truth.
We’re still learning how to live in the light. But every day, it gets easier.
We also fight differently now.
I used to slam doors. He used to shut down.
Now, I make tea when I’m too angry to talk.
He paints in silence until the colors calm him.
Then, I find him. He doesn’t look up, but he always says,
“Come here.”
And I do.
We still carry our ghosts. I don’t think love erases them. But Rue makes coffee the way I like it. I plate his lunches like they’re for royalty. At times, we may still argue about silly things; paint on the floor, wine corks left out, but we never go to bed angry. That was a promise.
Some evenings, after service, I come home exhausted, apron stained, and he meets me at the door like I’m the masterpiece.
He kisses my forehead.
Asks how many compliments I deflected.
I tell him, “Just enough to leave room for yours.”
And we laugh.
And we eat leftovers on the couch.
And we say, “Still here.”
Because even after all the love that broke us,
We’re still here.
Still choosing.
Still healing.
Still home.
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