Page 54 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
Of course my mother didn’t imagine me with a man like Dragos. I’d never even imagined a man like Dragos existed.
I see flashes of the two of us together. Of our passion. He isn’t cold physically. But in so many other ways he is.
I try to imagine what it was like watching me fling myself into my relationship with him, like nothing else on earth existed, but I just end up missing that feeling and I hate myself for it.
“It just wasn’t working,” I say.
I’ve been back to visit my family since the wedding. Three times. And Dragos went with me every time. I was never allowed to travel home without at least his security detail, but him preferably.
I know that it bothers my family, that they never were able to see me alone.
I know my father has been worried. And who can blame him? I brought home a rich man who rarely smiles, has tattoos all over his body and never lets me out of his sight. I’m actually aware of how it looked, I just wanted so badly for it to be okay that I pushed all of that down, and I never invited any conversations with either of my parents about it.
“He’s never hurt me,” I say.
“That is a very low bar, Cassie,” my mother says softly.
I want to shout at her thatI love him. Can’t they understand that? It was so big I couldn’t do anything but rearrange my whole life around it. It was love. It was love and it was real and it changed me.
But what’s the point of defending something that I’m killing? I can’t figure it out. Why I still feel the need to defend the choices that I made.
Why I need to hold onto how real it was.
I suppose because if it was never real there’s no point in me being scarred and bloody inside over it.
“I’ve decided to move to Paris,” I say.
“You’re not coming back home?” I can tell she’s disappointed and that makes guilt twist in my chest.
But I can’t do that. It’s for small, petty reasons. But I can’t go back. Because I was this overachiever. I was going tomake it.
I didn’t date. I didn’t go out. I threw everything into my art and a perfect GPA so that I could get the scholarships I needed, so that I could leave Idaho and travel the world and not be so stuck.
I thought that I was better than the other girls in my hometown who were going to stay there and marry their high school sweethearts. I’d had goals and aspirations that reached beyond the main street of that little place.
I can’t face going back with my tail between my legs.
My own ego makes me want to laugh bitterly now.
I would’ve been better off marrying a Kyle or a Josh. That’s the honest truth.
I flew too close to the sun and I got my wings burned off for my sins. I understand all too well now why some people never want to leave their homes. Why they don’t want to reach high.
The fall is a bitch.
I’m still falling by the time I arrived in Paris, and take up residence in the small apartment with a window that faces the Seine. It is small, but the sort of place I dreamed about as a child. The building is ornate, with glorious scrollwork, and the walls inside are robin’s-egg blue and gold.
I eat bread and cheese and drink the most glorious wine. It is a fantasy I had often when I was in high school. A small nook in Paris to live the romantic life of an artist, comfortable and cozy, glamorous in its simplicity.
And yet for me, it is not the Paris I came to that first time.
It doesn’t feel as bright or beautiful or glorious, no matter how many opulent galleries I visit. No matter how many architecture tours I take, or how many designer shops I go into.
It is like a different city altogether.
I spend a week or so pondering that. Was it really more beautiful the first time I came here, or was I just with Dragos? Was I still seeing the world through rose-colored glasses that are shattered now?
I remember it all too well.
