I Would've Stayed, If I Could

Almost Safe Here

I woke up and surprisingly.. I haven't dreamed. No gunfire. No scream.

Just sleep. Peacefully.

I started to live with Anthony.

I felt safe.

3 months without those creepy and tragic nightmares.

A quiet morning in his apartment, sunlight bleeding through the sheer curtains, illuminating the faint dust floating between us like memories. I had stayed the night after another dizzy spell, my second in a week. Anthony refused to let me walk home alone. I didn't argue.

I woke to the smell of garlic and eggs, the faint sound of something sizzling. I thought for a moment I had drifted into another dream-one of those old ones, where I'd wake to the scent of woodsmoke and bread, a man's back turned to me as he stirred a pot over a hearth. But this wasn't a cabin in 1897. This was his open-plan kitchen in 2025.

And yet, the feeling in my chest-the ache, the warmth, the unbearable softness of it all-was the same.

"Hey," I called out, wrapping the cardigan tighter around me.

Anthony turned with a smile that made my stomach flutter. Not because of the smile itself-but because I'd seen it before. In oil paintings. In dreams. In letters that spoke of heartbreaks we hadn't lived yet.

"You like longganisa or tocino?" he asked. He was barefoot, hair messy from sleep, a towel slung over one shoulder like a domestic painting come to life.

I blinked. "You're cooking Filipino breakfast?"

"You once told me it was your comfort food. In 1952."

I laughed. A genuine, belly-deep laugh that surprised even me.

"You know, that's technically cheating," I said as I walked over. "You're using past-life knowledge to win me over."

He glanced at me sideways, his tone playful. "If the universe keeps letting me try again, I'm not wasting my chances."

I paused beside him and watched him flip the longganisa carefully in the pan, the sweetness of the sauce coating the air.

"Anthony..."

"Hmm?"

"This... all of this... it feels too good. Like it shouldn't last."

He put the spatula down and turned to face me fully, wiping his hands on a towel. "Maybe it won't. But it doesn't mean we don't choose it now."

And he kissed me.

Soft. Steady. Like he was reminding me that we were here. In this version. In this fragile now.

We started doing things that couples did.

Or at least, things we never got the chance to do in all those unfinished lifetimes.

We held hands at the Sunday street market, buying flowers and old books. He let me choose vinyl records we didn't have a player for. I sketched him while he drank coffee in the shop, his hair a mess, his glasses slightly crooked.

He told me stories I didn't remember but still made me cry.

> "You loved dancing in 1870," he said once. "Even when your legs were too tired to stand. You used to teach me."

> "Did we dance in a ballroom?"

> "No. In a bakery. After hours. Covered in flour."

There were moments when I'd catch him looking at me like I was about to disappear. As if blinking would erase me from this timeline too.

"Anthony," I told him one night while we were watching old films. "You have to stop looking at me like I'm dying."