your choke of mercy marks the night;
ink-dark thread I couldn’t sever—
kiss or kill, I’m drowned forever.
I shake it off the way you shake off a chill. We walk to our old table and it’s open as if the night itself has set the stage. Relief and ache strike together. I sit. She sits. My thumbs worry the edge of a napkin like there’s a melody trapped in the fibers.
“You always get espresso,” I say, just to touch something familiar. “I thought that was a student thing.”
“It’s just a me thing.” She shrugs. Her gaze is steady but soft. “What happened between you and Rithy? You’ve always been so close. I couldn’t believe it when I saw that.”
“He wentintensefor a while,” I say. “He’s better now. Didn’t know when to stop poking. You know Rith.” I keep the tone bland, the way you speak to a fire you don’t want to feed.
She nods, looking down, then back up. “So—married?” I hear the careful curiosity in my own voice. “Any kids?”
She nods again. It knocks air out of me. She slips her phone across the table. A baby girl stares up, maybe two years old, eyes like Emily’s, wide and absorbing, a mouth about to laugh.
“She looks just like you,” I say, a small breath of disbelief. “Beautiful.”
“Her dad and I are figuring out custody.”
There it is.The hinge of the night.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay, actually.” She almost smiles and doesn’t. “He cheated. A girl at work. He assumed I’d accept it, keep it quiet like a complication. Like he didn’t do the dishes enough. I guess it’sthe done thinghere.C’est la vie, les histoires d’amour sont difficiles (That's life, love stories are difficult.),they say in France.” Her eyes flick toward the window, toward Paris. “But I’m not from here.”
“No,” I say. “You aren’t, and you shouldn’t accept it. That’s… that’s a big deal.”
“I’m tired ofaccepting thingsI don’t deserve.” She meets my eyes. “I’ve done it too often.”
The words hit me square in the chest. I can feel the old guilt wake up like a thing that knows me by name.
“You have,” I say. “I’m sorry, for my part in that.” I don’t lace it with anything else. No excuses. No poetry to make it palatable. Just the truth laid down between us like a coat over a puddle.
She blinks, surprised. “You seem…different, Rafe.”
“I am,” I say, and before I can say why, the coffees arrive. Mercy by porcelain.
She looks at my cup, amused. “You know the French would disown you if they knew Obelus puts that much milk in his coffee.”
I laugh, the first one that feels like mine since she appeared. “Maybe I should keep it up. It’d scare off the fans outside the hotel, at least. Remember that time I had to get a restraining order? Think she’d have stopped stalking me if she knew my coffee is more milk and sugar than anything else?”
We both smile at that. Shared joke, shared history. We sip. Night moves on the other side of the glass, scooters, umbrellas, a couple arguing under a lamp. We live in the pause.
“I heard your cover,” she says. “It’s beautiful. Why a Polish song? It seemed… different from your usual songs.”
I draw breath. Decide not to perform or avoid it. “I’ve met someone. She’s Polish.”
The air shifts. There’s the smallest fold in her expression, like wind hitting a flame just enough to lean it. I lift my cup to cover the cowardice of pretending I don’t see it.
“I see.” She sets her espresso down, lines it up with an old water ring, studies the circle like a map. “Is it serious?”
I stare at the white porcelain of my mug, turn it slowly with both hands. “It is, Em. Very.”
I hold her gaze because it’s the only decent thing left to give.Understand me, without me making you hold the weight of the explanation.I hope she can see it in my face: the terrace, the golden morning, Kasia’s name,I love youon the air.
She exhales, settles back with the cup in both palms, warming her hands. “Well. Doesn’t life have shitty timing.”
