Back then, I didn't hate red. Not yet. It was just a color I avoided—too bold, too loud, too sure of itself. I preferred grays, muted blues, quiet shades that didn't demand attention. Red was for people who didn't flinch from being seen.
Emma was red, in every sense of the word.
The more time I spent with her, the more I realized she didn't walk through life so much as burn through it. She had a kind of gravity about her—an energy that pulled everything toward her orbit. And I was helpless to resist.
It started with weekends that bled into Mondays.
We'd meet for coffee, for lunch, for nothing at all. She'd drag me through flea markets and street fairs, her fingers brushing mine when she wanted me to follow. She'd buy old photographs of strangers and invent elaborate stories about them.
"This one," she said once, holding up a picture of a man in a worn suit beside a woman who wasn't smiling. "He looks like he keeps too many secrets."
"And her?" I asked.
"She knows them all," she said, tapping the edge of the photo. "But she'll never tell. That's what love is, right? Knowing and staying anyway."
I didn't answer. Not then. But I thought about it for a long time afterward.
By the end of that first month, she'd found her way into the small rhythms of my life. My mornings began with her voice on the phone, sleepy and warm, teasing me about my coffee addiction. My nights ended with her head resting on my shoulder while we watched some black-and-white film she insisted I "absolutely needed to see."
I told myself it was casual. Temporary. But every time she looked at me, it felt like she was sketching something permanent.
One night, after a movie at her place, she was painting again. The canvas glowed under the lamplight—a storm of crimson, gold, and soft white brushstrokes.
"It's abstract," she said, biting her lip as she painted. "But it's supposed to feel like a heartbeat."
"Whose?"
She smiled without turning. "Maybe ours."
Something in the way she said ours made my chest tighten.
It was late spring when I realized I was in love with her.
We were at the park, stretched out under the trees. The sun was dipping low, painting the world in that soft golden light that makes everything look gentler than it really is. She was sketching me again, pencil moving quickly, almost impatiently.
"Don't look so serious," she said. "I'm not drawing your mugshot."
"You're making it hard to relax," I told her, though I couldn't stop smiling.
She set the sketchbook aside and lay down beside me. "You know, I never draw people I don't care about."
"Lucky me," I said lightly.
She turned her head toward me, her expression unreadable. "Don't joke. I mean it."
When she kissed me, it wasn't sudden or dramatic. It was slow, certain, the kind of kiss that doesn't ask—it remembers.
And just like that, it wasn't casual anymore.
We spent almost every night together after that.
Sometimes at her apartment, sometimes at mine, though she preferred her place—it felt more alive, she said. She filled it with color: red blankets, red curtains, red candles. Even the way the light filtered through the fabric made everything glow like the inside of a living thing.
She said red meant safety. Warmth. Heart.
I told her it made me restless.
"Restless isn't bad," she said one night, tracing lazy circles on my chest. "It means something inside you wants more."
"More of what?"
"Of this," she whispered. "Of life."
And in that moment, I almost believed her again—that red was life, not loss.
By summer, we were inseparable. Her friends teased us, called us "old-married" even though we'd only been together a few months. We didn't care. We had our routines—lazy Sunday breakfasts, late-night walks to nowhere, small fights that always ended in laughter.
She'd paint while I cooked. Sometimes, she'd smear a little paint across my arm just to see if I'd notice. I always did.
"You're impossible," I told her once.
"And you're predictable," she said, grinning. "Perfect balance."
One evening, while we watched the city lights from her balcony, she leaned her head on my shoulder and whispered, "You feel like home."
It was such a simple thing to say, but it landed somewhere deep, somewhere dangerous. Because I hadn't had a home in years—not really.
That night, I told her I loved her.
It came out quietly, like a confession I'd been carrying too long. She didn't answer right away. She just smiled, slow and radiant, and kissed me again.
"I know," she said against my lips. "I've known."
After that, everything changed in subtle ways.
She started painting more red into her work—sometimes streaks across a dark sky, sometimes whole canvases drowned in it. I teased her for it once, said she was trying to convert me.
"Maybe I am," she said. "Because one day, you'll see what I see."
"What's that?"
"That red isn't loud. It's honest."
I remember laughing. I remember kissing her again, the smell of paint and wine clinging to her skin.
And I remember thinking—for the first time in a long time—that maybe she was right. Maybe red wasn't so bad after all.
Now, driving through the dark years later, I could still taste the warmth of those nights, still hear the echo of her laugh.
Before the fire.
Before everything went wrong.
Back when red meant love instead of loss.
Back when I still believed it could save me.