The morning light spread softly over the linen sheets, but it was the sweet smell of her perfume drifting through the open bedroom door that woke me. The lovely scent of her, like vanilla and citrus and something I could never quite name, pulled me out of sleep the way a scent can summon a moment you thought you’d lost or buried for good.

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I turned over, half expecting her to still be there, lying on her side with one leg draped over mine, her hair fanned out across the pillow like spilled ink. But the bed beside me was cool and empty.

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From the kitchen came the soft clink of a spoon in a mug. I didn’t move. I just lay there and stared at the ceiling, tracing the crack above the headboard that looked like a broken branch. We never fixed it. We never fixed a lot of things. But for a while, it hadn’t mattered.

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I got up and pulled on the old college t-shirt she used to sleep in—because I always wore it when I wanted her to laugh. She used to call me a sentimental idiot. I didn’t mind.

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And there she was. She was standing at the window when I walked in, her hands wrapped around a coffee mug, looking out at the world like it belonged to someone else. She didn’t turn around.

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“You made coffee,” I said.

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She nodded. “There’s toast too.”

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I didn’t want toast.

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Instead, I crossed the room slowly, the way you walk toward someone you love like gravity depended on them. And maybe it still did. I stood behind her, close enough to breathe in her warmth, but far enough not to press things.

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She finally looked at me.

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“Do you remember,” she said, quietly, “when someone told us we should get a room in the middle of Times Square?”

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I smiled. “We were soaked. It was pouring, and we didn’t even care. You kissed me like no one else in the world existed.”

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“You kissed me first.”

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“I think I’d still kiss you first.”

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She turned fully now, her mug cradled between her hands like a shield.

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“That was a long time ago.”

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“It doesn’t feel like it.”

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“It does to me.”

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Those words landed hard. Not because they were cruel—she didn’t say it like she wanted to hurt me—but because they were true. I could see it in her eyes, in the way she looked at me like I was a house she once lived in. Familiar, maybe even beloved, but no longer her home.

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​She looked down.

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“I miss us,” I said. “I miss the way we used to be. I miss how you’d steal my fries when you said you weren’t hungry. I miss you waking me up by putting your cold feet on me. I miss making you miss your flight because we couldn’t stop our passion; we couldn’t stop saying goodbye and we didn't want to.”

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Her lips curled into something between a smile and a wince. “You made me miss two flights that year.”

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“And you never regretted it.”

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“No,” she said, softer. “I never did.”

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I reached for her hand, and she did let me take it. Her fingers were very warm from the coffee mug, and they curled around mine like they remembered.

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“We don’t touch each other like we used to,” I said.

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“We don’t kiss like we used to,” she added.

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“We don’t look at each other like we used to.”

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She exhaled.

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“I still think about the way you looked that night in the backseat of your car,” I said. “Your lipstick smudged, your laugh echoing in my ears. You kept saying we were too old for that kind of thing, but I never believed you.”

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“We weren’t too old then.”

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“Are we now?”

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She didn’t answer.

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So, I kept going, because silence had never fixed anything between us.

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“Do you remember waking up late in my t-shirts? You’d pull the covers over your head and refuse to get out of bed. And I’d be late for work every time, and I didn’t even care. Not once.”

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“You’re remembering all the good parts,” she said. “You’re not remembering the arguments. The silence. The nights we went to bed without saying goodnight.”

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“I remember those too,” I said. “But they weren’t what made us us.”

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She pulled away then, walked to the kitchen counter and set her mug down.

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“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

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“Tell me you still love me. Tell me you still want us together.”

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She shook her head—not in refusal, but in confusion. “You’re acting like love is enough. Like it’s a light switch you can just flip back on.”

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“Maybe it is. Maybe we just stopped turning it on.”

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Her eyes welled up a little, but she blinked it away before a tear could fall. She always hated crying in front of people, even me.

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“Remind me,” I said.

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“What?”

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“Remind me how to help make you fall in love with me again. Remind me how to kiss your neck the way you used to really like. Remind me what it was like when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, when we didn’t just go to sleep.”

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She closed her eyes.

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“You can’t rewind time.”

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“No,” I said. “But we can remember. And maybe that’s enough to try to begin again.”

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She looked at me for a long time, and something passed between us—something I hadn’t felt in months. A spark. The first flicker of a flame that used to be a fire.

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“I don’t know,” she said.

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I walked up to her and gently took her face in my hands.

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“Then let me show you.”

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And I kissed her—soft, uncertain, tender at first. Like brushing dust off something buried. But then it deepened. Grew warmer. Hungrier. And I swear—for just a moment—I felt her melt the way she used to. Her fingers found my hair, tugged just enough to say don’t stop.

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When we finally pulled apart, she didn’t say anything. She just pressed her forehead to mine and let out a breath I think she’d been holding for a year.

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“You still remember,” she whispered.

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“Everything,” I said.

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Later that night, I watched her fall asleep in my t-shirt again. Her arm draped over my chest, her breath soft and steady against my shoulder.

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And maybe nothing was fixed. Maybe tomorrow we’d argue again about who forgot to buy milk or who left the lights on or something else not important. And maybe our fire would someday flicker out again.

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But on this night we chose to remember. And in remembering, we’d come back to each other. And if it was only for tonight, then let tonight be the night I will always remember us by.

 

Written by Mark Gammill

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This story was inspired by the song "Remind Me" by Brad Paisley & Carrie Underwood.