I woke to the smell of bacon — crispy, smoky, the kind that makes your eyes water and your stomach answer before your brain does — and something sweet, cinnamon melting into warm toast. The scent wrapped around me like a blanket. For a heartbeat I thought I was dreaming.
I opened my eyes. Sunlight striped through the blinds. At the foot of the bed stood Clay: barefoot, hair all messy from sleep, holding a tray with both hands like it was something fragile. On the tray were two slices of cinnamon toast stacked like golden bricks, a heap of bacon, and a single white mug — my favorite, the one with the chipped rim.
He had that rare smile, the kind that barely touched his lips but warmed the whole room. “Happy anniversary,” he said softly and set the tray on my lap like it was precious. I stared at it, then at him.
“You remembered?” I asked.
He gave a small shrug, like it was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing. It was huge. It was our first year together. One year meant more than a date to me — it meant we had survived the awkward months, the silly fights, the careful learning of each other. It meant I wasn’t just someone passing through his life.
Clay wasn’t a big-gesture kind of man. He’d told me early on his last relationship had broken more than his heart; it had left him jumpy around the idea of commitment. He never said “I love you.” I hadn’t either. I was waiting. Maybe it was pride. Maybe fear. Probably both.
When he sat on the edge of the bed and watched me like he was holding his breath, I felt a lump rise in my throat. “I made plans,” he said, clearing his throat. “We’re taking a road trip. Just us. Whole weekend. No phones.”
“You planned all this?” I blinked.
He nodded, eyes bright. “You’ll love it. I promise.”
And with the toast still steaming and the bacon scent curling in the air, I wanted to believe him. Maybe that wanting was the start of everything.
By midmorning we were on the highway, coffee cups snug in the holders, Clay’s favorite playlist humming through the speakers. The sky stretched wide and blue. Iowa’s cornfields rolled on both sides like golden rugs, their leaves whispering in the breeze.
Clay drove with one hand on the wheel, the other tapping a rhythm on the dashboard. Every few miles he’d glance over and some small smile would pull at his mouth.
“I’m not telling you where we’re headed,” he said for the third time.
I laughed, leaning back. “You’re really sticking to the mystery, huh?”
“I’m sticking to it,” he said. “Just wait. You’ll see. Trust me.”
We passed winding rivers that gleamed, cliffs that looked like folded stories, and barns with peeling paint and slanted roofs that seemed tired from standing so long. Clay pointed things out as if naming them made them more real.
“Look at that barn!” he said. “The way it leans? Like it’s thinking about falling but holding on.”
I reached for my phone. “Want a picture?”
“Yeah, yeah. But get the hill behind it, too. That slope — the light is just right.” He sounded pleased with himself like he’d found the right line in a song.
I snapped a photo, though the angle felt off in my hands. Then we passed a field dotted with wildflowers — purple and yellow clusters dancing in the wind. I smiled and said, “That reminds me of my grandma’s garden. She had flowers like that near her porch.”
Clay’s face changed. Not angry — just… off. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Forget the flowers. Look at the slope. Look at the light.”
“Right… okay.” I blinked. He turned his attention back to the road and was quiet for a while. A little voice inside me tightened like a rope: Why does this feel like a test I didn’t know I was taking?
Still, I kept telling myself he was trying. He had planned this trip, made the playlist, brought breakfast. This was his version of love. Maybe it didn’t look like mine, but it was something.
Late afternoon we pulled into a tiny gravel lot by a state park. The tires crunched. Tall trees bracketed the lot, and the air smelled of pine and damp earth. Somewhere in the distance a steady rush of water whispered like a secret. Clay was out of the car before I finished unbuckling. He walked fast, almost impatient.
“Come on,” he called. “This is the best part.”
We followed a shaded trail. Sunlight spilled through leaves and made small gold pools on the dirt. Birds kept up a score in the canopy. The trail bent, and then I saw it: a waterfall, not huge — maybe ten feet — but beautiful. Water tumbled over dark rocks into a shallow pool, mist dancing in the sunlight like silver smoke.
Clay stood very still, looking at it like it meant something more.
“I think I’ve been here before,” I said. “When I was little. My parents brought us camping once. I think this was the place.”
His face changed again. The warmth in his eyes dimmed like someone had closed a window. “You’ve seen it before?” he asked low.
“Yeah, but—” I started.
He shook his head quickly. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Then he walked away, and the words hung between us unfinished.
At the motel later, he unpacked without talking. He set our bags down, closed the door, and sat on the edge of the bed with his back to me. The room smelled faintly of stale coffee and cleaning spray. I stood, not sure what to say. Had I ruined the trip? Did my mention of my childhood change something he hoped to control?
I needed air. I wandered back toward the trail, breathing until the pine smell steadied me. Near the tree line I saw a carved heart in the bark of an old tree. Inside it: Clay + Megan.
The world tilted.
Megan. The name that had been part of his life before me. The one he said was in the past. The carving made everything click into place in a cold, sinking way. I stared at the letters until the grooves blurred.
Back in the motel room Clay lay on the bed, hands folded on his chest, looking up at the ceiling like it had answers. The air felt heavy, like time had stopped moving.
“This wasn’t about me, was it?” I asked. My voice was small, a pebble dropped into a deep well.
He didn’t answer right away. He sat up slowly, elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the stained carpet. He looked like he was holding smoke in his chest, like breathing had become an effort.
“It was supposed to be for us,” he said finally. “A fresh start.”
He rubbed his hands. “But yeah… I came here once. With her.”
My heart did a sudden drop. I didn’t need to ask who “her” was. It was there in the carving, in the way his voice closed around the name like a secret.
“I didn’t mean for it to come out like this,” he whispered. “It was one of the best weekends of my life. I thought if I came back — with you — maybe I could rewrite it. Make new memories. Push the old ones out.”
He swallowed. “I didn’t know it would all come back so fast.”
I couldn’t speak. Thoughts and feelings tangled into a tight ball I didn’t know how to undo. “Do you still love her?” I asked, the words flat like I was asking about weather.
Clay’s jaw moved like he was chewing on something bitter. He opened his mouth, closed it, took a breath. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so. But maybe… maybe I miss who I was when I was with her. That version of me felt lighter. Happier.”
That hit me like a fist. This trip — the careful planning, the places from his past — wasn’t really for us. It was for a ghost. For someone he used to be.
I felt a strange, sharp not-anger at Megan but hurt because I realized I hadn’t been the lead in my own love story. I’d been a visitor in a story still written around someone else’s memory.
“I need you here,” I said, barely above a whisper. “Not back there. Not with her.”
He nodded, still not meeting my eyes.
The words slid out of me before I could stop them. “I love you.”
Clay’s head snapped up, surprised. He didn’t say it back. Tears tightened my throat. I grabbed my sweater and walked out the door.
Outside the air was cooler. The sky had gone soft blue, almost lilac. I stood alone in the parking lot, wind tugging at my sleeves, and tried to breathe. I wiped my eyes though the tears had dried. My chest felt like a rope had been cinched around it.
A door slammed behind me. “Wait!” His voice cracked like glass.
I turned. Clay ran across the gravel barefoot, his steps clumsy, hair messy, face flushed. He didn’t stop to get shoes. He didn’t care who saw. He grabbed my hand like he needed it to breathe.
“I was stupid,” he panted. “I thought I could cover up old pain with something new. Like if I just copied the steps, I could trick myself into moving on.”
His hand squeezed mine. “But you were right. This isn’t about her. It was never supposed to be. You’re not a replacement. You’re the real thing.”
He swallowed hard. “I love you, too.”
Then, in a moment that startled me and probably everyone within earshot, he pulled back a little and shouted — loud enough to echo off the motel siding — “I love her!” A window above creaked open and someone poked a sleepy face out. A dog barked. Clay didn’t care. He looked at me again and said softer, “I love you.”
His forehead came to rest against mine, warm and steady. I closed my eyes and felt everything — the smell of his hair, the roughness of his cheek, the steady beat of his heart. For the first time I felt the words land.
This wasn’t a borrowed story. It wasn’t a ghost of a weekend. It was happening now, real and raw.
We stood there for a long minute. He held me like he was afraid I might slip away. I let myself be held. I let the newness and the oldness exist in the same space without pretending one chased the other away.
Later, in the motel room, we sat on the bed and talked — awkwardly, honestly, pulling threads apart. He told me things I didn’t know: small, human things about fear and memory, how some places keep ghosts that show up even when you’re trying to make new pages.
I told him about my own past, about the way I’d waited for someone to prove they would stay. We didn’t fix everything in two hours. We didn’t promise the world. But we listened.
When morning came, the air smelled like pine and coffee. Clay made me eggs on the little motel stove, and they were terrible, lumpy eggs — but I laughed anyway. We packed slowly, a quietness between us that felt different this time: not empty, but careful and determined.
On the road home the cornfields rolled past again. Clay reached over and took my hand. I didn’t ask if he still loved Megan. I didn’t demand guarantees I couldn’t live with. Instead I let my fingers lace with his, small and steady, and felt the realness of the moment.
“I’m sorry I tried to copy the past,” he said, thumb tracing the back of my hand.
“I’m sorry I said it first,” I told him, and we both smiled at how foolish that sounded and how brave it felt.
We didn’t erase the ghosts. We didn’t need to. We learned how to walk with them behind us, where they belonged. Clay’s memories and my present could sit side by side without stealing the other’s light.
The rest of the year wouldn’t be perfect. We’d have quiet days and loud fights and nights where the past nudged its way in. But that weekend taught us something simple and stubborn: being present matters. Saying the truth matters. Showing up — really showing up — matters more than any carefully planned scene meant to outrun a memory.
For the first time, I truly believed him. The breakfast, the drive, the carved heart — all of it became part of our story, messy and honest and new. And that felt like the most important kind of beginning.
