A Kiss For Three

chapter 30

Morning sunlight spilled through the tall glass windows, washing my kitchen in a pale gold haze. From there, thirty-four floors above Manhattan, the city looked like another universe—tiny moving dots of people, horns echoing faintly from below, life going on in endless rhythm. I stood barefoot on the marble floor, a mug warm between my hands, steam curling into the air. Cappuccino. Not espresso anymore.

The bitterness had never suited me. I had learned to let things be a little softer by then.

I took a sip and let the taste linger. The quiet hum of the coffee machine faded into the background as I rested my hip against the counter, my gaze fixed on the skyline that had both ruined and rebuilt me too many times to count. Somewhere down there were thousands of lives crossing paths, falling apart, beginning again. Just like mine once had.

Arms wrapped around my waist from behind, firm yet gentle. “You’ll go blind if you keep staring at the city like that,” Daniel murmured against my shoulder. His lips grazed my cheek, warm and familiar.

I smiled, tilting my head slightly into his touch. “Maybe. But it’s a nice view to go blind for.”

He laughed softly—the kind of laugh that sounded like home. “Dinner at six,” he said, loosening his embrace but keeping one hand resting lightly on my hip. “After that, we take that walk I’ve been promising, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, still looking out the window.

When he stepped away, I glanced down at my hand. There was a photograph between my fingers—edges softened from years of handling, the three of us crammed into the frame on the rooftop: Nico squinting at the skyline, Adrian half-smiling like he knew a secret, and me in the middle, wind in my hair, all of us wrapped in blankets and night. I had kept it without realizing why, but maybe I did then. Some things you didn’t throw away. You just carried them quietly, like a mark that didn’t hurt anymore but rather brought up good memories. Like a compass.

I placed the photo on the counter, next to the half-empty cup, and let my eyes wander beyond my reflection in the glass.

There it was. The rooftop.

Not too far from that building—across the street, slightly higher, still visible in daylight if you knew where to look. I could see the glass table, its surface dulled by dust. The couches were still there, faded and weather-stained, their cushions slumped like tired memories. Even the old blankets remained, tangled carelessly in a corner. And the pizza boxes—those ridiculous boxes we used to forget to throw away—lay half-hidden under the railing.

That rooftop had been our world once. Our escape from everything that demanded we be perfect. I stared at it then, feeling that familiar ache bloom quietly in my chest.

I wondered how they were doing.

Adrian first—always too controlled for his own good, too proud to show when something hurt. I had heard he was still with Serena. For then, at least. But the news had said his company took a hit, some scandal with investors, a downturn that stripped away the shine he used to wear like armor. No more magazine covers. No more carefully curated headlines. Just a man trying to survive in a world that had finally stopped admiring him—no, not surviving; finally living for the real, not for the fake.

And Nico.

Nico, who had always hidden behind that smirk and his paint-stained hands, pretending he didn’t care when he cared too much. He and Camille had divorced months earlier—or maybe a year; time slipped fast those days. His career, though, had bloomed from the ashes. He wasn’t the mysterious painter everyone whispered about anymore. He was something rawer then. A real artist. A real man. Reborn from the ruin.

Sometimes I saw his new exhibitions on posters when I walked downtown. I never went in. I just smiled at the sight. It was enough to know he was thriving.

I didn’t talk to either of them anymore. No calls. No messages. No chance encounters in cafés or hallways. We had drifted apart, like threads pulled from the same fabric that found new patterns to belong to. Maybe that was what growing up was—learning that some stories were meant to end softly, not loudly.

Still, there were days like that when I caught myself wondering what they were doing right then. If Adrian still took his coffee black, if Nico still hummed when he painted. If either of them ever thought of me.

I took another sip of my cappuccino, letting the warmth spread through my chest. I didn’t need to know the answers.

Because the truth was, I already had everything I needed from them—memories. Laughter under city lights, spilled beer on glass tables, whispered rules about no secrets and no lies, the way their hands had felt when they held mine like the world might end if they didn’t. Those nights had built me just as much as they broke me.

Daniel’s voice echoed faintly from the other room. “You want pancakes or pasta for dinner?”

I smiled, setting my cup down. “Surprise me,” I called back.

His laughter drifted in response, warm and steady. The kind of laughter that belonged to the present, not the past.

I turned back toward the window, the city glittering like a field of stars below. The rooftop caught the light just right for a second, and for that brief flash of reflection, I could almost see us again—the three of us sitting there, wrapped in blankets, sharing beer and dreams, laughing into the wind.

The image faded with the next blink, leaving only the real rooftop behind—empty, quiet, forgotten.

I exhaled slowly and let a small smile curve my lips. Some stories didn’t need forever. They just needed to be remembered.

And I would.

Forever.