Sunday Short: True Cancer
- Faiz Faisal
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
"I don't understand you."
Adrian looked up from the kitchen counter, still stirring a pot of mushroom soup.
His girlfriend, Mia, leaned against the doorway with her arms folded.
"What don't you understand?"
"You."
He smiled.
"Very specific."
"I've been trying to pick a fight with you all week."
"I noticed."
"And you just..."
She gestured wildly.
"...keep making me tea."
Adrian laughed.
"I didn't know tea was considered emotional warfare."
When people first met Adrian, they often mistook his kindness for softness.
They assumed he was someone who couldn't say no.
Someone too gentle for the real world.
They couldn't have been more wrong.
Adrian wasn't soft because he was weak.
He was soft because he'd already survived enough to know not everything deserved a battle.
"You're not even mad?" Mia asked.
"I was."
"You were?"
"When you forgot our anniversary dinner."
Mia's eyes widened.
"You were upset?"
"Of course."
"Then why didn't you yell?"
Adrian placed two bowls of soup on the table before answering.
"Because I wanted you to understand my feelings."
"Not fear my reaction."
That was the thing about loving Adrian.
He never punished mistakes.
He talked through them.
Not immediately.
He needed time.
He'd disappear for an evening walk, organize his thoughts, then come back and say,
"Can we talk?"
Never,
"We need to talk."
There was a difference.
One invited conversation.
The other announced war.
"I used to think love meant never arguing," Adrian admitted one night.
"What changed?"
"I met people."
Mia laughed.
"Fair."
He smiled.
"Now I think love is arguing without making each other feel unsafe."
Adrian remembered everything.
Not in an obsessive way.
In a caring way.
The first café where Mia confessed she hated olives.
The sweater she wore on their first trip together.
How she preferred the corner of the blanket when watching movies.
How she always pretended not to like flowers, yet secretly pressed every birthday bouquet between the pages of old books.
"You remember too much," she often said.
"I remember what matters."
There were difficult days too.
Days Adrian retreated into silence.
Not because he wanted to leave.
Because he needed to understand himself before explaining himself to someone else.
Mia had learned that silence wasn't distance.
It was processing.
One evening she found him sitting on the balcony.
"You okay?"
He nodded.
"You don't look okay."
"I will be."
She sat beside him.
"I don't need you to fix it," he said softly.
"I know."
"I just wanted company."
She slipped her hand into his.
Neither of them spoke again.
Some conversations didn't need words.
Months later, Mia met Adrian's mother for the first time.
His mother smiled knowingly.
"He still checks whether everyone has eaten before he starts?"
Mia laughed.
"Every single meal."
"He still pretends he's not cold and gives away his jacket?"
"Yesterday."
"And he still says he's fine even when he clearly isn't?"
Mia sighed.
"...Yes."
His mother chuckled.
"He's been like that since he was little."
One rainy afternoon, Mia finally asked the question she'd been wondering about.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Always."
"What makes you love like this?"
Adrian looked out the window.
"My dad."
She waited.
"He wasn't very good at saying 'I love you.'"
"But he showed it."
"Every packed lunch."
"Every late-night drive."
"Every broken thing he quietly fixed."
He smiled.
"I guess I learned that love isn't loud."
"It's consistent."
Years passed.
Life became busier.
Careers changed.
Bills multiplied.
Grey hairs appeared where neither of them wanted them.
But Adrian never stopped doing the little things.
Charging her phone before she noticed it was dying.
Saving the last dumpling because it was her favorite.
Texting,
"Drive safe."
Calling,
"Did you get home?"
Never because he doubted her.
Because loving someone meant wanting them to arrive safely.
Every single time.
One evening, Mia's best friend asked over dinner,
"So what's it like dating him?"
Mia smiled without hesitation.
"You know how people say home is a place?"
Her friend nodded.
Mia looked across the room, where Adrian was quietly washing dishes while humming to himself.
"It's not."
"It's a person."
Later that night, Adrian climbed into bed beside her.
"What are you smiling about?"
"You."
"What did I do now?"
"You loved me."
"I do that every day."
"I know."
"That's why I'm smiling."
He kissed her forehead.
"I'll do it again tomorrow."
Mia laughed softly.
"I was hoping you would."
Outside, rain tapped gently against the windows.
Inside, the apartment felt warm.
Safe.
Peaceful.
Mia realized then that perhaps the rarest kind of love wasn't the kind that swept you off your feet.
It was the kind that quietly caught you every single time you fell.
And if the stars had anything to do with it, she thought with a smile...
She had gotten incredibly lucky.
Not because Adrian was a Cancer.
But because he had grown into the kind of man who knew that love wasn't measured by grand gestures.
It was measured by the ordinary moments someone chose you again...
And again...
And again.
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