The memory never arrives gently.
It crashes—loud, vivid, uninvited—whenever I let my guard slip even a little.
One second I’m staring at the blank canvas in my cramped Paris loft, pretending I’ve moved on.
The next, I’m back in the New York attic apartment Owen and I used to share, with the flickering string lights and the mismatched bowls we bought at a flea market because we thought it made us look “artistic.”
God. We were so stupidly, recklessly in love.
Or maybe just stupid.
It was raining that night too. Not the dramatic storm kind—just a soft drizzle tapping against the skylight, the kind that made our whole world feel like it shrank down to two bodies, two breaths, two lives that thought they were permanently intertwined.
We were sitting cross-legged on the floor, cartons of cheap takeout noodles spread between us. I remember being annoyed because my chopsticks kept snapping—tiny frustrations that mean nothing until they become all you can think about years later.
“Don’t glare at the chopsticks like that,” Owen teased, nudging his shoulder against mine. “They’re doing their best.”
I rolled my eyes, fully prepared to mock him, when he suddenly went quiet.
Not the distracted quiet he’d mastered later in our relationship—no, this was the kind that vibrated in the air, thick enough to make my heart stutter.
“Ren.”
Just my name. Soft. Too soft.
I set the carton down because his voice made my fingers tremble.
He wasn’t kneeling.
He wasn’t holding a ring.
He wasn’t doing anything that made sense.
He just looked at me, eyes wide and terrified, like he was standing on the edge of something enormous.
“I don’t want a perfect timing or a perfect plan,” he said. “I just… I want you. I want this. I want us. Forever.”
I inhaled so sharply it hurt.
Then—he reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out a ring box that was dented on one side, like he’d been carrying it around for days and couldn’t decide if he was brave or stupid enough to use it.
“Marry me, Renee.”
It wasn’t a question so much as a confession.
A plea.
A promise he would later break in ways I didn’t yet understand.
But right then—
right then I laughed and cried at the same time, the kind of messy, hopeful sound you only make when you think life is finally giving you something real.
I said yes.
Of course I said yes.
He kissed me, noodles forgotten, string lights buzzing above us, rain soft against the glass.
I remember thinking, This is it. This is my turning point.
I was right.
Just… not in the way I expected.
The memory dissolves, leaving me alone in Paris again, breath shallow, fingers cold.
And I wonder—for the thousandth time—whether love ruins you more in the moment you lose it…
or in the moment you first believe it’s safe.