Year, 1904…
Darling—
when you said you liked me that day,
I was so dumbfounded that I forgot how to breathe.
I remember it not as a moment, but as a fracture in time—before and after. Before, I was a man walking through the world as though it owed him nothing. After, I was someone who realized the world could still surprise him with mercy.
It was not raining that day. That detail matters. My memory insists on it. The sky was pale, undecided, stretched thin like linen left too long in the sun. You stood near the window, fingers curled around a porcelain cup you never finished. Steam rose, faded, rose again. I watched it more than I watched you, afraid that if I looked too directly, the truth of you might vanish.
You smiled first.
You always did.
"Harold," you said—my name, spoken gently, without urgency, as if it had never been heavy. "I think I like you."
Not love. Not yet.
Like.
Such a small word, and yet it struck me harder than any confession could have. Love can frighten. Love demands. But like—like is honest. Like is the beginning of something that doesn't yet know how it will end.
I laughed. Of course I did. A foolish, disbelieving sound. I thought you were teasing me, or worse—being kind out of pity. My life had trained me to expect pity before affection.
"You don't have to say that," I replied, looking anywhere but your eyes. "I'm quite aware I'm not… easy to admire."
You frowned then, a tiny crease between your brows. You reached across the table and touched my hand. Just once. Just enough.
"That's exactly why I'm saying it," you said. "Because you never assume it's possible."
That was the first time I understood something dangerous about you.
You saw through me.
---
Memory is a liar, they say.
But grief is worse.
I remember the way the café smelled—burnt sugar, old wood, something faintly floral from the soap you carried. I remember how the chair beneath me creaked when I leaned forward, how my heartbeat grew so loud I worried others might hear it. I remember thinking, This is not meant for someone like me.
Because even then, before everything, I carried the quiet knowledge that I ruin what stays.
You reached for your coat. You were always leaving somewhere, even when you stayed. A habit of motion, of preparedness. I asked you once if you were afraid of being trapped.
You smiled, distant. "No," you said. "I'm afraid of being late."
Late for what, I never knew.
I walked you home that evening. The streets glowed faintly beneath the lamps, shadows stretching like long fingers across the cobblestone. You talked about trivial things—bread prices, a book you couldn't finish, a neighbor who sang terribly but passionately. I listened as if each word were a thread stitching me to the world.
At your door, you hesitated.
That hesitation has lived with me longer than you ever did.
"I'm glad I said it," you told me. "Even if it changes nothing."
"It changes everything," I replied.
You laughed softly. "You're dramatic."
"Yes," I said. "I am."
You leaned in and kissed my cheek. A simple thing. A warm thing. And then you were gone, leaving behind the faintest echo of your presence—like heat after a flame is extinguished.
That night, I did not sleep.
I sat by the window, watching the dark press against the glass, wondering how something so small could make me feel so unbearably alive. I did not know then that life, once tasted again, becomes a hunger.
---
The present intrudes the way it always does—uninvited.
The year is 1904 now, but my body sits somewhere else entirely. In memory, I am younger. In memory, my hands are clean. In memory, you are still alive.
The tea before me has gone cold.
The bakery is quiet at this hour, caught between morning bustle and evening return. A familiar place. A dangerous one. The smell of bread pulls at something deep in my chest, something animal and aching. This is where ghosts linger. This is where I first saw her again.
Not you—but someone wearing your face like a borrowed miracle.
I close my eyes, and the past rushes in unasked.
---
Elizabeth.
Your name is a bruise I press again and again, just to prove I can still feel.
They say time dulls pain. What it actually does is teach it patience.
After you died—after the ground swallowed you and the world pretended nothing sacred had been taken—I learned how silence sounds when it has weight. My rooms grew larger. My breath grew heavier. Every object remembered you, even those you never touched.
People told me to move on. As if grief were a road with signposts. As if love could be folded neatly and stored away.
I tried.
God help me, I tried.
But each attempt felt like betrayal—not of you, but of the man I had been when you believed in him.
And then she appeared.
The girl at the bakery. The one with your eyes and your impossible familiarity. The one who walked into my life as if the universe had made a mistake and was trying to apologize.
I told myself it was coincidence.
I told myself I was unwell.
I told myself a hundred lies, and believed none of them.
When she smiled at me, my heart did not race. It recognized.
That was when I knew I was already lost.
---
The bell above the bakery door rings.
I do not look up immediately. I have learned caution. I have learned that some sights undo you.
But something in the air shifts—subtle, sharp.
Footsteps. Another presence.
I lift my eyes just enough to see a reflection in the glass.
A man.
Tall. Familiar in a way that has nothing to do with memory and everything to do with fate. He stands behind me, unaware, ordering tea. His voice is steady. Ordinary. The kind of voice that belongs to someone who believes the world makes sense.
For a moment, I consider staying.
For a moment, I consider pretending I did not see him.
But destiny is not kind enough to allow such mercy.
I rise.
Quietly. Carefully. I leave coins on the table, untouched tea cooling behind me. As I pass the door, I catch a glimpse of his face reflected in the polished counter.
Edmund.
The name moves through me like a blade.
I step into the street before he can turn.
Cold air bites. The past loosens its grip, replaced by something sharper—anticipation, dread, inevitability.
I walk faster than necessary.
I do not run.
Running implies fear.
This is something else.
Behind me, somewhere in the bakery, a man will notice an absence he cannot explain. He will feel a curiosity that does not yet have teeth.
Two days from now, he will wake on a rooftop with questions I have waited years to answer.
But not yet.
For now, I walk.
And in my mind, Elizabeth still smiles at me from across a small table, steam rising between us, unaware that love—once given—never truly dies.
It only waits.