The shape of us
421 Words
By February, the snow in the city had turned to slush, and the newness of everything began to wear thin.
Not the love. But the logistics.
Kobe had found a short-term sublet in Brooklyn—small, drafty, but his. He picked up freelance work and spent mornings in coffee shops, afternoons chasing light with his sketchbook. Marshel’s job kept her late, often too tired to talk until she was already half-asleep.
They were together. Finally. And somehow, it was harder than before.
---
One night, after a long silence over dinner—her reheat, his sandwich—Marshel set her fork down and said, “Do you ever wonder if we fit better in memory than in real life?”
The question hung in the air like steam off her tea.
Kobe didn’t flinch. “Sometimes. Yeah.”
She looked away. “That scares me.”
He nodded. “Me too. But I think it means we’re real now. Not a postcard version of each other. Not just letters and sketches and wish-you-were-here’s.”
She let out a slow breath. “So what do we do with that?”
“We figure out who we are in the same city. In the same room. Even on days when we don’t feel poetic.”
---
They started carving space.
Fridays became sacred—no work talk, no phones, just them. Sometimes it meant a museum. Sometimes it meant grilled cheese and lying on the floor listening to old music.
They learned new things:
Kobe liked the city more when he walked without a map.
Marshel needed silence in the mornings to reset.
They both secretly hated doing laundry, and neither knew how to fold fitted sheets.
And slowly, the shape of their love shifted again—not a distant ache, not a fragile hope, but something sturdier.
A rhythm.
A life.
---
One Sunday, as they walked through a bookstore near her office, Marshel paused at a display table.
There, front and center, was a book with her boss’s name on the spine—and her name inside, printed in the acknowledgments.
She stared for a long second, then turned to Kobe with glassy eyes.
“You did it,” he said.
She smiled. “We did.”
---
That night, he pulled out the notebook again. She’d started filling the second half.
On a blank page, he drew them—not perfect, not posed.
Just real.
Side by side.
The shape of something worth choosing.
Again.
And again.
TO BE CONTINUED...
- Writer
