Love, With a Side of French Toast

The first time she made me breakfast, it was a disaster.

Burnt toast. Cold scrambled eggs. Juice from a can that tasted like expired oranges. But she served it with a proud smile, like she was offering me a five-star meal, standing there in my oversized T-shirt with her hair in a messy bun and socks that didn’t match.

“You’re not allowed to say anything until you’ve tried it,” she said, pointing a fork at me like a weapon of confidence.

I didn’t say anything.

I took a bite. Chewed. Paused.

“Needs... more fire extinguisher,” I said.

She burst into laughter so hard she spilled juice all over the table. We spent ten minutes cleaning up and the rest of the morning arguing over who got the last slice of toast.

That was four years ago.

Now, I stand in our tiny kitchen on a lazy Sunday morning, flipping French toast like a professional. The kind with just the right amount of cinnamon and vanilla, a golden crust and soft center. She hums off-key in the living room, reading a book she’s already read three times. The sunlight cuts through the blinds, landing in patches across our scuffed wooden floor like golden confetti.

Her cat, Darwin, knocks over a plant on the hallway shelf. I hear her mutter something about “natural selection.” I smile.

This is what love looks like now. Not rose petals or handwritten poetry. But French toast and spilled soil and music we never finish learning the lyrics to.

We met the kind of way you only read about in second-hand paperbacks: awkwardly and completely by accident.

I had just moved into the apartment above the bookstore where she worked. One evening, I wandered in, half-lost, half-looking for something to fix the way I felt about life that week.

She saw me holding The Time Traveler’s Wife and raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t look like someone who reads tragic love stories,” she said, tapping the cover.

“Maybe I’m trying to change that,” I replied.

She smiled like she knew a secret.

“Try Attachments. It’s hopeful. You look like you could use hopeful.”

I returned the book two days later. Not because I’d finished it, but because I needed an excuse to talk to her again.

We weren’t a fairytale. Far from it.

She liked to talk in movie quotes. I preferred silence when I was upset. She’d cry during commercials. I never knew what to say in moments like that, but I always handed her a tissue.

We disagreed on music, movies, even pizza toppings. But somehow, none of it mattered. Every disagreement folded into something warmer, something patient, like two people learning a language together.

We made up rules like:

Whoever cooks doesn’t clean.

Always kiss goodbye, even if it’s just to the grocery store.

Never go to bed angry (or at least, not without a solid effort to try not to be).

Six months ago, we broke every one of those rules.

The fight wasn’t about anything important — it never is, is it? Maybe it started with something stupid, like dishes or forgetting to call. But it grew. Grew into distance. Into silence. Into two people forgetting how to reach across a space they once called home.

She left.

Took Darwin, her pillow, her raincoat, and the half-used vanilla candle from the kitchen. I didn’t stop her.

For two weeks, the apartment felt like a museum. Still, but not peaceful. The French toast stayed in the freezer. The cinnamon went untouched.

I didn’t cry. Not at first. But then I found one of her hair ties under the couch and fell apart like a child who lost his mother in a grocery store.

Then one morning, I opened the door to leave for work—and she was there.

Wearing that raincoat. Holding Darwin in one arm and a Tupperware container in the other.

“I made you breakfast,” she said.

Inside was burnt French toast.

“I figured we should start over,” she added.

I didn’t need more words. I stepped aside and let her in.

We didn’t fix everything in a day. It took long talks, short apologies, and more than one therapy session. But we stayed. We chose to stay.

And now, on this warm Sunday, she walks into the kitchen, hair tangled from sleep, eyes puffy but shining.

“You made the good kind,” she says, taking a bite from my plate without asking.

“I always make the good kind.”

She smirks. “You didn’t always.”

I laugh, passing her her own fork.

We eat standing by the counter, our hips touching, the world outside quiet and irrelevant.

Here’s what I know now:

Love is not found in grand gestures. It’s in breakfast made badly but served with heart. In staying when it would be easier to go. In laughter during the messiest moments.

It’s French toast on a Sunday morning, when everything else feels uncertain—but this, this is simple. This is safe.

This is us.