Page 73 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
“And me. I was unhappy. The house was very unhappy. It was…”
He closes his eyes. “I don’t like to remember this.”
“You don’t like to, or you can’t?”
“When I have my memories, I don’t like to have these.” He is insistent, his voice firm. And it takes me a moment, but then I understand. He doesn’t think about this time of his life. Not ever.
There is a strange, haunted expression in his eyes, and I hate to see it. So much more than I would’ve thought. I don’t want him to be hurt. That truth rings through me sharp and clear as a bell. No matter how complicated my feelings are for him, I don’t want him to be hurt.
It’s such a terrible thing. Because I love him, but I don’t know him. Because I love him, but it might be the death of me. I never thought in the literal sense, but now I’m beginning to wonder.
“Do you remember anything now, looking at it?”
He pushes the photo away. “My father’s a bad man. He hurts my mother.” He turns to me, and he puts his hand on my face. “Did I ever hurt you, my Cassandra?”
My Cassandra.Like he always calls me.
“No. You never put your hands on me like that, Dragos. I never feared that you would. You’re a brick wall, but you’re not a wrecking ball. Those are two very different things. You have never raised a hand to me. And I…”
“But you were afraid of me. When I found you in Paris, you were afraid.”
“Yes. Because you did come after me. You did come to find me, and as much as I never thought that you would hurt me, I didn’t know what you would do. And I did have to accept that there was very little that I knew about you.”
“You think I have the potential to be dangerous.”
“You said yourself, that if I were sleeping with the man that I went out with in Paris you would kill him. I don’t think that you would ever hurt me, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t hurt someone else.”
“I see.”
I’m trying to be as honest as possible, but I feel guilty. Which is ridiculous. I’m only telling him the truth about himself. What I know to be in his character.
“What am I?”
“I don’t know. I spent a lot of years not wanting to know.”
“Then maybe I don’t want to know any of this.” He grips my chin. “Can we start over? Can I just have you? Can I just love you?”
This is absurd. It’s also the thing that I want more than anything else. I want him to love me. I, in many ways, have been given the most absurd fantasy that I could’ve ever asked for. This man, completely different in some ways, sitting there asking if he can love me. Wanting to forget all of it. All of the negative things that we went through. All of the toxic things between us.
I’m weak. Because I miss his body. I miss his touch.
This isn’t him…
I stand up from the bed, my hand pressed to my chest. My heart is beating so fast I can hardly breathe. “I can’t. Dragos, we can’t have sex. That’s what we do. It’s what we do instead of talking, it’s what we do instead of getting to know each other.”
“But you don’t know me. And I don’t know me. We cannot know each other. Except through our bodies. I want you, my Cassandra.”
“I want you too. But I always want you. I told you… The day that I left we had sex. On your desk. That’s who we are. If you can understand one thing, then I need you to understand that. You sitting on this bed and giving me soft promises of love is not us. It never has been. I feel things for you. I want you, I always have. From the moment that we first met. But we don’t make sense. Whatever this is will end because you’ll remember and you’ll go back to being you. A life cannot be built on this kind of sharp dangerous desire. It’s a fling, it isn’t a relationship.”
“But perhaps it can be.”
“Based on what? Do we just stay here forever? Me a woman who paints, and a man with two memories?”
“What is life? I don’t know anything outside of you, Cassandra. And I’m not certain that I want to. All that is waiting for me is more of this,” he says, pointing to the picture. “More bad things. Everything is bad. You were the only thing… The only thing that my brain saw fit to hold onto. Perhaps you were the only good thing in my life.”
“Then what is the good thing in mine?”
I feel racked with guilt as I say that, as I walk out of the room and leave him there. I feel like I might as well have shot him myself.
