09/21/2025
Hunger for love !
The first time I met Aiden was in a café that smelled like burnt caramel and hope. He walked in wearing a denim jacket and a grin that said he’d never been told no. When he caught me staring at the rain striking the window, he said, “Looks like the sky’s writing in Morse code.”
I laughed. He smiled. And I let that be enough.
Our beginnings were a montage: warm hands, late-night fries, long drives with music too loud for conversation. He texted, he called, he leaned in close. He spoke with his eyes, but not for long. Within weeks, I knew the way his fingers traced the rim of a cappuccino mug better than I knew his middle name. He liked my hair when it was down, my perfume when it was citrus, my laughter when it was breathless. He liked me best, I discovered, when I didn’t ask questions.
The first crack appeared the night I cried.
It was something small—a bad grade I didn’t expect, a friend who moved away, a rent increase on a life that already felt too expensive. I was tired enough to be honest, so I said, “I’m not okay today.”
Aiden held me for exactly two minutes before his phone buzzed. He loosened his arms, looked at a notification, and said, “Can we talk about this later? I’m just… I had a day, too.”
Later never came. But midnight did. And he did, too, with kisses that tasted like apologies he never said.
Somewhere parallel to this version of me—soft, pliable, always apologizing—lived another version of me who still existed around Elliot.
Elliot had been my friend for years. He had the uncanny talent of calling when the kettle whistled, of texting “Home yet?” right as my key missed the lock. We met when I spilled coffee on a library table and ruined his color-coded notes. He said, “If you’re going to sabotage me, at least commit to it.” I bought him a fresh notebook and we sat next to each other until closing. He walked me to the bus. Then he waited with me in silence, as if silence were a language we both spoke.
Where Aiden dazzled, Elliot noticed. He noticed when I switched to glasses on Thursdays because my contacts hurt. He noticed the way I clicked my pen when I was anxious. He noticed when I lied and said, “I’m fine,” and noticed even more when I didn’t.
Back then, I told myself the difference between them was simple: Aiden was lightning; Elliot was a lighthouse. One excited the horizon; the other kept me from crashing. I told myself people don’t write songs about lighthouses.
One afternoon, after a particularly dizzying week with Aiden—three dates in a row ending in “Come over” and no conversations that survived the daylight—I found a bouquet outside my door. No note. Just wildflowers: messy, stubborn, the sort that grew despite everything. I assumed they were from Aiden. He denied it with a laugh. “I don’t do flowers,” he said. “I do experiences.”
I placed them in a chipped mason jar and felt inexplicably seen.
That night, it rained. The kind of rain that makes traffic forget its way home. Aiden was out with friends; he sent a photo of neon lights, and a caption: wish u were here. I wrote back: Wish you were here. He didn’t reply.
At 11:47 p.m., my phone rang. Elliot.
“Don’t freak out,” he said, which is the fastest way to make someone freak out. “I passed by your building and saw your hallway light flickering. I told the super. He’ll fix it tomorrow.”
“Why were you near my building?”
“I brought you soup,” he said, as if that were the most ordinary answer. “You sounded tired earlier.”
I opened the door to find a paper bag with a scribbled note: *Try to sleep before the day beats you to it.*
I didn’t tell Aiden. I didn’t know how to explain kindness that wasn’t performative, wasn’t a prelude to anything else.
The second crack opened when I met Lila.
We were at a rooftop bar for Aiden’s friend’s birthday. The city glittered like it was trying too hard. Lila was all red lipstick and laughter shaped like weapons. “You’re Aiden’s…?” she asked.
“Girlfriend?” I said, testing the word.
“Right,” she said, dragging the vowel until it bruised. “I used to be that. Don’t worry, I graduated.”
When I asked Aiden about her, he shrugged. “We hooked up,” he said. “But I like you.” The sentence was so clean, so confident, it left no space for me to feel what I felt: that I was occupying a role he kept open for whoever arrived next.
A week later, Elliot and I went to a night market. It was a friendship ritual we’d started in our last year of college: find the weirdest flavor of ice cream (this time it was basil-lemon), split an order of dumplings, and talk about nothing like it was everything.
“Do you ever feel like you’re auditioning for someone’s attention?” I asked him, staring at a stall selling handmade rings that promised forever while tarnishing overnight.
He chewed, thought, swallowed. Elliot never answered fast; he answered true. “I think the right people don’t make you audition,” he said. “They hand you a seat and ask if the chair is comfortable.”
“What if you like the stage lights?” I asked.
“Then you have to decide whether you want applause or a home.”
I didn’t text Aiden that night. He didn’t notice.
The twist began on a Thursday—the kind of Thursday that wakes up pretending to be a Monday. My professor announced a surprise presentation. My boss added a last-minute shift. The bus broke down two stops early. By the time I reached home, the hallway light was still flickering like a bad omen.
Aiden texted: *Come over. Miss u.*
I wrote: *Rough day. Can you come here instead?* I stared at the typing dots like they were a fortune-teller. They disappeared. He replied eight minutes later: *Can’t. The guys are here. Tomorrow?*
It was always tomorrow with him. Tomorrow was a landfill.
I went for a walk, because angry walls cannot comfort you. The rain had just stopped; the street smelled like petrichor and takeout. On the corner, I noticed a new poster taped to a lamppost: *Community Self-Defense Workshop: Learn Boundaries.* I laughed at the universe. Then I took a photo, because boundaries felt like a foreign language I should probably learn.
When I returned, I found a small package at my door. No sender. Inside: a simple phone holder for my bike, and a note that read, *So your maps don’t leave you stranded.* My heart instantly asked, *Elliot?* My pride rolled its eyes.
I texted him: *Did you send me a bike phone holder?*
He sent a single question mark. Then: *No. But that’s a great idea. You cycling at night again?*
I hadn’t told him that I started biking home after late shifts to save time. I stared at the holder, then at the wildflowers, now wilting but refusing to fall apart. Once is chance. Twice is pattern. But from whom?
The surprise didn’t reveal itself until the night of the blackout.
I was closing the café I worked at when the street went dark. Not the romantic kind of dark—the kind that swallows you. Power outage, the owner said, shrugging like the universe was a leaky faucet. He offered to walk me partway; I said I’d bike. I strapped my phone into the new holder and pedaled down a city that had forgotten how to glow.
At the third intersection, a car slowed down next to me. The window rolled down. Aiden. “Hey,” he said, as if this were a sitcom and the studio audience had just applauded. “Get in. I’ll drop you.”
“I’m fine,” I said, patting the handlebar like it had ears. “It’s faster this way.”
He laughed. “You’re ridiculous. Get in.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I said so.”
The old me would have folded into the seatbelt. The girl in this story gripped the handlebar and said, “No.”
Aiden’s smile sharpened. “Don’t be dramatic. I’m trying to help.”
“You could start by listening.”
We stared at each other through the dark. Finally, he said, “You know, you’re not the only girl who needs me.”
He sped away. The air tasted like metal.
At the next block, my back tire hissed. Then sagged. I pulled over, heart thudding, counting the seconds between the lightning that wasn’t there and the thunder in my chest. I checked my phone: 3% battery. Of course.
I was on the edge of panic when a small cruiser bike pulled up beside me. The rider wore a reflective vest and a helmet that made them look like a comet. They lifted the visor. Not Elliot. A woman in her forties with kind eyes.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Flat tire,” I said, forcing a laugh. “It chose drama.”
She grinned. “They always do.” She pulled out a tiny portable pump. “Want help?”
I nodded, grateful. As she worked, she said, “Saw you at the community board last week. You took a photo of our self-defense poster.”
I blinked. “You run that?”
“Volunteer,” she said. “We also do bike safety. You should come by Saturday.”
She got my tire to a limping 45 PSI and handed me a reflective band. “For your ankle,” she said. “So cars see you.”
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it like a prayer.
“Get home safe, sweetheart.”
She pedaled away. I stood there with a patched tire, a glowing ankle, and the feeling that sometimes angels look like people who carry tiny pumps.
My phone died one block later. I started to walk the bike, calculating whether I’d rather cry now or later, when a familiar voice came from behind me.
“I thought you’d choose the high road.”
I turned. Elliot. No comet helmet. Just a sweatshirt, a concerned brow, and a ridiculous flashlight clipped to his backpack.
“How—?”
“You shared your live location with me months ago after that late study session,” he said, a little out of breath. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
“I did,” I admitted. “You didn’t.”
He took the bike from me, spun the wheel, and winced. “We can carry it,” he said. “Or I can run home and bring my kit.”
“You have a bike kit?”
“I have a you-kit,” he said, like it wasn’t a sentence that could rewire a person.
I laughed. Then I cried. Not the dramatic, cinematic tears. The human ones—the kind that fall out when your fear is finished and your gratitude has hands.
He waited. Elliot always waited until I was ready to speak. When I did, the words came like overdue mail.
“I think I’ve been trying to turn chemistry into commitment,” I said. “And hoping attention would grow into respect.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, the way you do with priceless things you’re trying not to drop. “You don’t have to audition for what you deserve,” he said. “Not with me. Not with anyone.”
We walked the rest of the way. It was the slowest distance I’d ever traveled and still the shortest way home.
In the days that followed, Aiden texted less. When he did, the messages were hollowed out. *You good? Wanna come over?* When I said no, he stopped asking. He posted photos with captionless girls. The neon lights faded.
I went to the workshop on Saturday. The woman with the tiny pump hugged me. We practiced saying no with our whole bodies. We practiced leaving. We practiced staying—with ourselves.
On my way out, I found a flyer on the corkboard: *Community Garden Needs Volunteers.* I took one tab. Elliot took another. We started spending Sunday mornings planting things that would outlive the season. I learned the names of tomatoes. He learned that basil smells like summer if you crush it between your fingers.
One afternoon, while we watered a row of stubborn sunflowers, I said, “Did you send the wildflowers to my door?”
Elliot smiled, a little sheepish. “I wanted to,” he said. “But no. I didn’t.”
“Then who?”
He shrugged. “Maybe you have more than one lighthouse.”
We never solved the mystery. The flowers were a kindness from a stranger, or the building’s guardian angel, or the part of the universe that refuses to let you believe you are invisible.
The next twist arrived three weeks later, wrapped in an apology that pretended to be a compliment.
Aiden showed up outside my work with a single red rose and the same easy grin. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “We should be official.”
“Official what?” I asked.
“Officially us. I miss you.”
“What do you miss?” I asked, because sometimes the only way to save yourself is to demand specificity.
He looked briefly confused, like I’d asked him to calculate the circumference of a feeling. “I miss…your energy,” he said finally. “Your body. The way you make me feel.”
There it was. A confession shaped like a proposal.
“I want to be with someone who misses my *mind* when I leave the room,” I said, my voice calm with the kind of courage that accrues interest. “Who asks how my day was and wants the long answer.”
He scoffed. “So you’re with the other guy now? The Boy Scout?”
“I’m with myself,” I said. “Finally.”
He left with an eyeroll. I went inside and made a perfect cappuccino for a woman who tipped me with a smile that said, *Keep going*.
That night, Elliot and I sat on the steps of my building eating takeout straight from the carton. We talked about everything and nothing: the smell of rain on warm concrete, the way some songs feel like they were written for your particular ribs, the absurdity of socks disappearing in washing machines like they’re drafted into a fabric army.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Ask me two,” he said.
“Why didn’t you ever… say anything?” The word *anything* carried a thousand bookmarks.
“Because love isn’t possession,” he said, then winced. “That sounds like a quote on a mug. What I mean is—I didn’t want to be another voice telling you what to feel. I wanted to be a place where you could figure it out.”
“I think I figured it out,” I said, and the city exhaled.
We didn’t kiss that night. Or the next. There is a kind of intimacy made of patience, and we were fluent.
The real surprise came months later, on a day that looked boring on purpose. We were at the community garden when the woman with the tiny pump waved us over. “We’re naming this corner,” she said. A little sign read: *Wildflower Patch—Anonymous Friend Fund.*
“We have a donor,” she said. “Someone who keeps sending us envelopes. No name. Only notes like: *For the ones who walk home in the dark. For the ones who need a lighthouse before they find one of their own.*”
I laughed then, because some mysteries are better left unsolved—they make life feel magical
And maybe that magic followed me, because soon we stood in front of the little wooden sign: Wildflower Patch—Anonymous Friend Fund
We stood in front of the little wooden sign: Wildflower Patch—Anonymous Friend Fund.
Elliot read the note aloud, his voice soft. “For the ones who walk home in the dark. For the ones who need a lighthouse before they find one of their own.”
The words sank into me like rain into thirsty soil.
My heart whispered what my mind already knew: not every kindness needs a name. Not every love story begins with fireworks. Sometimes it begins with wildflowers left on a doorstep, with soup waiting outside your door, with someone carrying a bike beside you through a blackout night.
Maybe the flowers had been from a stranger. Maybe from a neighbor I’d never meet. But the truth was, it didn’t matter. Because I finally understood the lesson hidden in all of it: real love doesn’t need credit—it needs constancy.
That night, I walked with Elliot through the rows of growing plants. The air smelled of earth and hope. At the gate, I turned to him.
“You’ve always been here,” I said.
“And I always will,” he replied.
It wasn’t a grand confession. No thunder, no neon lights. Just steady truth.
And somehow, that felt louder than all the noise Aiden had ever made.
We finally kissed—not the urgent, greedy kiss I used to mistake for love. But a kiss that felt like roots finding water. Patient. Certain. Alive.
🌹 The Moral
Looking back, I see the difference clearly now:
Sexual love had been about possession, hunger, and taking.
*Love without sex—at least in the beginning—was about presence, respect, and giving.
One burned bright and fast, like lightning—beautiful but gone in seconds.
The other was a lighthouse, steady and unshaken, guiding me home when I couldn’t find my own way.
And I realized—true love isn’t measured by how badly someone wants your body, but by how gently they hold your soul.
