The Answer She Didn't Ask For

His Love I held For Her: Part One

"What if the person you're grieving right now... is you?"

I’ve rehearsed this moment in my head for six years, thinking I would be the happiest woman in the world.

Subconsciously — planning with a checklist, researching venues, and saving makeup looks to my Pinterest board. But in the quiet architecture of my imagination, there had always been a version of that night: Candles, roses, sunflowers, maybe. Marcus looking anxious yet nervous. The two of us laughing about how long it took.

Instead, he was sitting across from me at our kitchen table, the one we bought together at a flea market after deciding I would move in. Two years later, and he was saying a name I haven’t heard in years.

“Elena reached out,” he said. “We started talking again. And Luna, I have to be honest with you — I never stopped.”

I heard the rest of it by studying his lips, looking for any hope of choosing me. Muffled. Far away. Something about first love and unfinished. Then it came. “I’m sorry, you deserve someone who isn’t split in love.”

My heart broke. Six years. I turned down a job in another city for this. I’ve learned to love foods I didn’t like because he cooked them with such pride. I built my whole sense of existence around a foundation I never once tested.

“Say something,” he said.

I looked at the kitchen table, then slowly met his eyes. I remembered running my hand over the wood grain, imagining meeting here for the rest of my life — and I said the only true thing I could.

“I don’t know who I am without us.”

I didn’t mean to say it out loud. But I’d think about that sentence for a long, long time.