Back then, love didn't feel dangerous. It felt inevitable. Like gravity. Like the world had been tilted just enough to make falling the only logical thing to do.
By the time spring rolled around again, Emma and I were inseparable. Our lives had blurred at the edges, our habits tangled together—her paint-stained coffee mugs among my notebooks, my worn leather jacket hanging beside her red coat by the door. I'd wake up to the smell of turpentine and toast, to her humming under her breath as she painted barefoot in the morning light.
Every day, she brought something new into my orbit: color, noise, life.
And without meaning to, she was painting me, too—changing me in small, impossible ways.
There was one night—late, humid, the air outside heavy with the smell of rain—that felt like the center of it all.
We'd gone out walking after midnight, the kind of impulsive thing that always started with her saying, "Let's just go." The city was quiet, streetlights flickering gold on wet pavement. She slipped her hand into mine, her red gloves catching the faint glow like embers.
"Doesn't it feel alive out here?" she said.
"It's the middle of the night."
"Exactly," she said, smiling. "That's when everything worth feeling wakes up."
We stopped by the river. The water shimmered darkly, catching fragments of the moon. She turned to me, eyes glinting.
"You know," she said, "you never told me what you dream about."
"Who says I do?"
"Everyone dreams," she said, stepping closer. "Even the ones who pretend not to."
Her breath mingled with mine, warm and steady.
"I used to dream about getting away," I admitted. "From everything. From myself."
"And now?"
I hesitated. Then: "Now I dream about staying."
She smiled—slow, soft, knowing. "Then I guess you're home."
She kissed me then, under the broken streetlight, and the world went very still. I remember the sound of rain beginning to fall, the sharp sweetness of it against the asphalt, her hands on my face—cold leather and warm skin all at once.
It was the kind of kiss that rearranges you. That convinces you love might be something eternal after all.
After that, everything between us deepened.
She started painting us—not portraits, not literal—but versions of what we were. A storm of reds and whites, a streak of gold in the center.
"It's energy," she said one night, showing me the canvas. "It's you and me. What happens when two things crash and make light."
"You think we're crashing?" I teased.
She grinned. "Maybe. But don't you see it? It's beautiful."
I did see it. I saw her—her wildness, her faith in beauty, her refusal to fear being alive.
She taught me that art didn't have to be perfect. That love didn't have to be safe.
And I, in turn, steadied her. She said I was her calm—the still point in her storm.
"You're my gravity," she murmured once, head on my chest.
"And you're what keeps me moving," I told her.
We believed it. Completely.
As the months passed, our love began to feel… larger than us.
We spoke about the future sometimes, though never directly. She'd talk about opening a small studio someday, where people could "paint their ghosts out." I'd talk about writing again, about finishing something that meant more than survival.
We'd stay up until dawn, lying on the living room floor, half-drunk on cheap wine and too many dreams. She'd trace invisible shapes on my arm, whispering ideas, colors, fragments of worlds she wanted to build.
"I think we find each other again," she said one night.
"In another life?"
"In every life," she said. "The world just gets in the way sometimes."
"Sounds exhausting."
She laughed, kissed me, and said, "Then I guess we better make this one count."
There was nothing supernatural about the way she looked at me back then—but it felt like there was. Like she saw through the surface of things.
She said once that I carried ghosts in my silence.
"You hold yourself like someone bracing for impact," she told me.
"Maybe I am."
She brushed a thumb over my cheek, her red glove still on. "You don't have to. Not with me."
And for a while, I believed her.
That summer, we took a trip up north to a cabin by the lake—a week of nothing but the sound of wind in the trees and the water against the shore. It was the happiest I'd ever been.
We swam, we cooked over a small fire, we made love like we were trying to memorize the world.
One morning, I woke up to find her sitting at the edge of the dock, legs dangling above the water, the red gloves beside her.
She turned when she heard me. "I can't stop painting you," she said softly. "Even when I close my eyes."
"Maybe you should try painting something else for a change."
She smiled faintly. "I don't want to."
I sat beside her, our shoulders touching.
"If anything ever happens to me," she said after a long pause, "I want you to remember the red, not the fire."
I frowned. "Why would you say that?"
She looked out at the lake, her reflection trembling on its surface. "Because sometimes, love leaves a mark. And I don't ever want mine to hurt."
It wasn't until years later, haunted and hollow, that I realized what she meant.
That love, even the purest kind, leaves something behind when it goes.
Something that doesn't die.
Something that waits.
The memory began to fade—the lake, her voice, the sunlight across the water.
And then—darkness.
The hum of the road brought me back. The steering wheel beneath my hands. The faint red glow of the taillights ahead, cutting through the mist.
For a second, I didn't know where I was. The world around me blurred, headlights flickering on the slick asphalt, rain smearing across the glass.
Her voice drifted through the static of the radio—soft, familiar, impossible.
"Remember the red, not the fire…"
My fingers tightened around the wheel. The words lodged in my chest like splinters.
"Emma?" I whispered.
But the only answer was the sound of rain—and the faint scent of smoke in the air.