It was Saturday night: the day of my first second date after your departure. I played with the rings on my fingers as I waited for the clock to hit 8:45 p.m. My silver Pandora crown and my crystal ring couldn’t fill the void of a bare left-ring-finger. The rose-gold crown you bought me as a promise ring. You once told me that when you went into the store and asked to see their promise rings, they showed you this beautiful crown filled with sparkles. You knew it was made for me, or so you claimed. What you didn’t know was that it would soon fade into rusty green, and the crystal would fall off– just before you fell out of love.

I sprayed my Prada perfume on my wrists and my neck, remembering the hundreds of times I have done the same before one of our date nights. The date nights that over the years became scarce. I felt the alcohol of its formula burn through my skin, avoiding the instinct to rub it off. The memory of you saying, you smell nice, sunk into my body.

The night was humid. There was a new moon. The sky was dark, barely sprinkled with dimmed stars. I doubt you remember, but the night of our first date, it was one of the heaviest storms in the state of Florida since I moved here.

When I opened the passenger seat, he smiled at me. “Hi,” he whispered. I noticed how wrong it felt to be sitting next to someone who wasn’t you. He lowered the music for us to talk. He set the volume to twelve. I smiled to myself because I remembered how you only set it to ten or fifteen, but never twelve. A voice in my head said to new beginnings.

He asked about my hobbies and like always I said, “I like to write.”

“What do you write about?” I should have known the question was coming. I should have known not to let the pieces of you drip into our conversation. I couldn’t tell him I still wrote you into my life. How could I admit that I found your name spilling onto the page to someone who is supposed to be your replacement?

“Just about life,” I said. Not mentioning that I had lost the meaning of life since that last morning I woke up by your side. Not mentioning that I was hoping, praying this guy sitting by my side would perhaps remind me, just for a second, what it felt like to be utterly happy. But how could I rely on a stranger when the person who claimed to love me the most failed to do that?

We sat at a restaurant I have never been before. When he had asked where I wanted to go, I asked him to choose. I said it was because I was indecisive, which is true. But there is one thing I am not indecisive about, and I am scared to admit that it is how much I love you. A part of me didn’t want to choose because every place I knew was stained with your memory. I was not yet ready to erase your presence from every place we had even been to yet.

I ordered a peach Bellini, my drink of choice, and he ordered wine. What I liked about him is that he was nothing like you. I remembered your face every time you had red wine, how your eyes would thin, and you pressed your lips together. He didn’t. He drank the whole glass, not once frowning.

He didn’t place his silverware mimicking a cross, the way I taught you you are supposed to do while you are still eating. The way my grandma had taught me. He used his knife with his left hand, like I sometimes also did. But sometimes, when he laughed at a bad joke, his laughter reminded me of you. No, he sounded nothing like you– but it reminded me of how much I wished the guy sitting in front of me would have been you and not him.

That night, when I got home, I almost texted you. I almost reached out to tell you how much I missed you. But I didn’t. I couldn’t allow you to know I still found you in the pages of my journal, the missing ring on my finger, or the guy who sat across from me at dinner.