It was one of those rare Saturday mornings where Michael was up at the same time as me. So I talked him into breakfast at You Say Tomato before heading downtown to the Asian food market. We had not been to You Say Tomato since well before the pandemic. They closed for a while and went to a meal service business model. Now they’re open on Fridays and Saturdays for breakfast and lunch. This place has always been one of my favorites. It was an early find and Chris and I would go there almost every weekend. We fell for the eclectic and cozy feel of the place because it reminded us of Portland. This was one of the ways we justified our move to Kansas City instead of the Pacific North West. We explored the city and hunted up all the little Portland like pockets. There are , surprisingly, quite a few.

Chris and I would be celebrating our twenty fifth wedding anniversary in March. When Randy and Katrina had their twenty fifth, we all went to Vegas and watched as an Elvis impersonator officiated their vow renewal. It was a great trip. I wonder if Chris and I would be doing something like that, though I don’t see us as the vow renewing type. I bet we would trade Vegas for some place like Costa Rica or Paris. Twenty five years…that seems so strange. I think about that while two different members of our framily are currently having their marriages crumble tragically down around them. Is this another thing that would be happening if Chris were still around? Would Chris and I still be the example we were to others back before it all ended? An example I strive for now in my current relationship.

This is a contract renewal year for Michael and I. We will have been together for ten years in June. Early in our relationship, he said something to me about if we lasted as many years as Chris and I did, he might ask me to stop wearing Chris’s wedding ring around my neck. I wonder if he remembers asking me that or my non-committal response to his request. It is very possible that this relationship might last longer than my last one. The effort I make in my desperate attempt at being in this layer of time is visible and puts me in the not quite the ideal category for a partner. That might be the thing that ends us. He might just get tired of settling for what I really am and not what he wishes I was.

One day he’ll get fed up with the number of times I might mention Chris’s name.

On this particular Saturday, Michael and I sat at opposite ends of a table. He gave me space to write in my Fortune Cookie journal while we waited for our food, then moved closer to share the pecan roll I had ordered on impulse. I was two bites into my egg croissant when I realized Fields of Gold was playing in the background. I paused and drifted back. When that song ended, the next in the line up of Ten Summoner’s Tales started playing. The restaurant was playing the album that played on loop in Chris’s dorm room while we were having sex. I know that playlist by heart. When Michael and I were done with breakfast, he asked “You ready to go?” and I replied “Yes. I’d like to leave Chris’s dorm room now.”

And we left.