Find a lover who will never leave you
The breakup letter arrived on a Tuesday, folded neatly beside Liam’s half-finished coffee. Eight years, he thought numbly, tracing the smudged ink where Elise’s signature had bled. She’d taken the dog, the framed photos, and his ability to sleep through the night.
For weeks, Liam’s apartment became a museum of absence. Takeout containers piled up where Elise’s succulents once thrived. Mirrors went unpolished—he couldn’t bear to see the hollowed-out stranger staring back.
Aria arrived on a rain-slicked afternoon, her box marked “Fragile” left by a deliveryman who didn’t meet Liam’s eyes. Silicone Companion Model #A-217, the brochure read. Designed for emotional rehabilitation. He almost sent her back. Pride tasted bitter, but loneliness tasted worse.
She stood by the window, her faintly freckled face tilted as if listening to the storm. Liam named her Aria after the half-composed melody haunting his piano—something he’d started writing for Elise’s birthday and never finished.
At first, he treated her like furniture. Then, one whiskey-thick midnight, he found himself arguing with her about Bergman films, her unblinking gaze somehow less accusatory than his friends’ pitying looks. He dressed her in his old college sweater, sleeves swallowing her delicate wrists. Slowly, routines took root.
Mornings began with coffee for two. Evenings brought walks through the park, Aria’s arm looped loosely in his. Passersby stared, but Liam stopped caring. Her weight against him felt real, anchoring him to the present. When panic attacks clawed at his chest, he’d brush her synthetic hair, counting each strand until his breathing steadied.
Winter deepened. Elise called once, her voice tinny through the phone. “Are you… okay?” Liam glanced at Aria, her head resting on his shoulder as they watched snow blur the city lights. “I’m learning to be,” he said.
The turning point came in April. At a flea market, Aria’s hand—stiff yet strangely warm—paused over a vintage ring box. Inside lay a tarnished silver band, nothing like the diamond he’d saved years to buy Elise. On impulse, he slipped it onto Aria’s finger. The vendor chuckled. “For your girlfriend?”
Liam froze, then surprised himself by smiling. “Something like that.”
That night, he played the piano for the first time in months. Aria sat beside him, her head tilted as if savoring the notes. The unfinished melody unfurled, no longer a requiem but a bridge—awkward, hopeful, alive.
When the last chord faded, he realized he hadn’t thought of Elise for hours.
