I cooked for him, finally. 3.5 years after we stopped dating, 3 months after we restarted talking. A meal made with care, made for him, made for us. 

I wonder if he knows that I’ve never cooked for a guy before? Sure, there was my ex-boyfriend back in University, but that wasn’t cooking, that was an attempt to provide fuel for two bodies: how on earth my ex never spit out the tasteless calories I put before him remains a mystery. There was that one time I intended to impress a date by cooking, but all that happened is my date laughingly took over the kitchen after I set off the fire alarm for the third time. No, this time I cooked. I cooked properly, giving myself the time to make a multi-course meal, and enjoy myself in the process – copious amounts of wine and opera as seasoning. 

I cooked this meal as a celebration. A celebration for growing into the fierce, beautiful, smart, powerful, caring, responsible, woman he claims he always saw in me. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be fifty before I become her, but at least I’ve accepted to undertake the journey, something I hadn’t yet when we were dating. A celebration that he and I were enjoying each other’s company once again. 

I cooked this meal because I don’t know how else to show my love. I’ve always shown it through my body but that wasn’t enough. I needed to show I care and think about him even in his absence. I don’t think he knows how devastated I was after I cut him off. That hurt him, my sudden disappearance. I’m glad I articulated what was going on before I fully ghosted him, but I know he felt confused and betrayed. 

In another lifetime, I would have wanted children, we would have become parents and I would have cooked our family meals galore. I can still remember the primitive arousal that hit me when he told me he saw me as the mother of his children. Just like that, my ovaries were in control, screaming “It’s time to have sex now. Right now! Yes now, in the car on this street corner, who cares that you are both late for dinner? Procreation must occur: man see woman, man impregnate woman, time for sex.” I never had felt so fully alive and connected to this earth as in that moment. 

In yet a different lifetime, he would have abandoned his narrow definition of family as his sperm and my eggs, choosing instead to invest in us, and broaden the scenarios of family life from the traditional to the open-ended. He wouldn’t have limited my place in his life to the quality of my egg-bank, discounted for the risk of mental disease. He would have accepted my boundary that my motherhood can never be biological but that doesn’t disqualify me from giving one or more children a home and loving them to the best of my abilities. He would have believed that, with the right partner and a bit of time, I’d become mature enough to mother myself and other humans, protected from the burden of my genetics by the gift of adoption. He wouldn’t have given me an impossible ultimatum.

And there it is. The delicious agony I don’t know how to deal with. I can almost taste the happiness we might have had. I know he feels the same, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, eating in my kitchen, laughing and talking and discussing our plans for the future. Because there is an us, even though there isn’t. He changed my life. Believed in me. Taught me the freedom that comes from feeling safe in a relationship. I am not the same person because of him, nor is he because of me. I become more grounded, happier and at peace when he is around, and he stands up taller and reaches harder for his dreams with me cheerleading by his side. We celebrate each other’s successes with lots of pride and no trace of envy. 

We make a good team. Pity we aren’t one.

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Afterword: I wrote a version of this piece in December 2022 as part of Firefly’s Life Stories creative writing workshop. I’ve made a few tweaks here below, especially that of intentionally omitting the subject’s name; not only does this respect his privacy, but my hope is that by withholding his name, the reader can more easily access the universality of the emotions related to longing and nostalgia. Let me know if you think this stylistic choice works in the comments!